Image credit: Valentin Petkov on Unsplash The holidays are upon us once again! And whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, or any other holiday, you might be feeling a little extra stress. How am I going to make it? you may be asking yourself. To that, I say that you’ve survived every previous holiday, and you’ll survive this one, too. THE STRESS OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON There are a few extra variables involved when we celebrate the holidays….
Image by Finn on Unsplash I’ve been living with depression since 1984, and believe me, I’ve heard a lot of ignorant comments about mental health issues. One comment stands out the most: “What do YOU have to be depressed about?” I’ve wanted to smack each person who asked me that! If you have a history of depression, you know how much damage a question like that can do. Not only is it painfully ignorant but it’s also rude. It…
**TW: SUICIDAL IDEATION** This post is full of Hope. But it is also about surviving depression and suicidal thoughts; thus, the trigger warning. If you are feeling sensitive to such things right now, don’t read it. You can always skip it or come back to it later, when you’re feeling stronger. Image credit: Sydney Sims I’ve started this blog post four times and, dammit, this one is going to stick! LOL The first version was about Seasonal Affective…
Image credit: Gaelle Marcel for Unsplash **TW: SUICIDE** This post talks about suicide. Please do not continue if you think it might be a trigger for you. There are resources listed at the end of this post. Hello, fellow Warrior! Well, it’s taken me more than three years to do it, but I’m finally writing my 100th post! 🙂 That means a lot to me, because my moods tend to dictate what I’m willing/able to do – and I…
They say that hindsight is 20/20, right? That’s good, because I totally blanked on Suicide Prevention Awareness Week (Sept. 8-14) and World Suicide Prevention Awareness Day (Sept. 10) this year. At least I didn’t miss the entire Suicide Prevention Awareness Month! In hindsight, I realize that I need to be a little more organized when it comes to these things. I haven’t been on the Twitter machine much lately, so I didn’t see the hashtags that are associated with these…
Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash Mental Health Awareness Month is coming to an end, so let’s talk about Stigma. Merriam-Webster defines Stigma as “a mark of shame or discredit.” Now let’s see what the definition of Shame is: “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety.” Those are pretty heavy definitions, if you ask me. But they describe the experience of so many of us who live with mental illness and/or addiction. LIFE IS NOT FAIR Mental illnesses are,…
As I explained in the previous post, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Lots of organizations go the extra mile during this time to get the word out about how common mental illness really is – that we all know someone (or several someones) who have mental health diagnoses, even if we don’t realize it. The idea is to reduce the stigma associated with the term “mental illness” and take it for what it is: A medical condition. Our last…
May is Mental Health Month in the U.S. It is the time of year mental health agencies, organizations, and individuals across the country fight the stigma surrounding mental illness even harder than they usually do. You are undoubtedly aware that teen suicide (and suicide in general) is a big problem here, with death by suicide being the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. for children ages 10-14 and ages 15-24, behind only unintentional injury. In 2017 alone, more than…
Photo by Oliver Roos on Unsplash Well. The last 72 hours have been very interesting. If you read my last post, you know that I’ve been exhausted. And that can be a dangerous time for anyone dealing with a mental illness. Even though I write about depression, anxiety, and addiction (as well as life in general), and I sometimes have my shit together, I am not immune to emotional relapses. Nor am I immune to overwhelm, stress, or crises. In the last…
So, September is World Suicide Prevention Month. Related hashtags have been all over my Twitter feed this month, especially a few days ago, as it was World Suicide Prevention Day. It’s hard to read a person’s personal experiences with suicidal thoughts and attempts, but it is something we cannot ignore. Ignorance – especially intentional ignorance – leads to neither understanding nor compassion. You know that I’ve struggled with suicidal ideation from time to time, which has resulted in over a…
**T/W – SUICIDAL THOUGHTS** (T/W = Trigger Warning) Well, it’s been about two weeks now, and I’m still feeling depressed. Actually, it’s getting noticeably worse. My fears that it won’t go away on its own (even after discontinuing the Wellbutrin), I’ll have to quit tutoring, and have to do TMS again are all looming on the horizon. Not to mention all the related issues. I have little interest in doing anything; my ability to focus and concentrate have gone…
**Today’s post is a little different. Consider it an Open Letter to those who think depression and other mental illnesses are a choice and that we can just ‘snap out of it’.** Most of my friends are really good people. In fact, that’s a prerequisite if you want to be my friend. They are open-minded, thoughtful, fair-minded, and they don’t judge. (Yes, people like that really do exist!) However, I do occasionally run into someone who is judgmental and…
**TW: SUICIDAL IDEATION** Suicidal thoughts, or “suicidal ideation”, are not uncommon for the 44 million people in America who have a mental illness. What you may not know, though, is that these thoughts happen along a continuum. That’s right, just because I say I “feel suicidal” doesn’t mean I’m about to make an attempt. Of course, any talk about suicide needs to be taken seriously, because it can escalate to a more serious level. It is always a real…
**Personal Note: Though I have been diagnosed with three different mental health conditions, I usually speak mostly of depression, as that is the one I have the most experience with and have done the most personal research on. But much of what I share (in any post) can apply to other mental health diagnoses.** One of the most profound – and helpful – things I occasionally remember learning from my DBT class is that thoughts cannot hurt you. Say what?…
Here in the U.S., National Suicide Prevention Week (September 10-16, 2017) just ended. Did you know that? And, according to most mental health organizations in the U.S., September is National Suicide Prevention Month. I bet you didn’t know that. World Suicide Prevention Day was last Sunday, the tenth. I bet you didn’t know that, either. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255 [1-800-273-TALK]) has designated the Twitter hashtag “#BeThe1To” as its message for suicide prevention. If you’re on the Twitter, please…
Guess what I did last week? I got admitted to a psych unit. Again. I’d been more up and down than usual for a week or two, and it culminated in an obsession with suicidal thoughts. If you’ve ever been in that place, you know that sometimes it causes panic (or at least, it does in me). And panic sucks. Especially when you can feel it all throughout your body, right down to your toes, when you can literally feel…
It’s been about a month since Amy Bleuel died by suicide. Many of you have heard of her and the nonprofit she started, Project Semicolon. For those of you who haven’t, Project Semicolon exists to show support for those with mental illness or other mental health issues. The semicolon (;) means that an author or writer could have ended her sentence but chose not to. It continues, it goes on. And so must we. In recent years, as a direct…
