I attended a dinner party last Saturday. I haven't attended such an event in years. I'm not sure what happened, but I had a great time and didn't offend anybody. I must have been off my game. That's alright, though, because I made up for it by Monday.

I am not a morning person. If you are reading this, chances are, you aren't one either. Sometimes, I have been woken up in the early hours to instant panic. There isn't a reason for the fear but as soon as my eyelids open I am absolutely terrified. Its a horrible feeling. When my day begins this way one of two things are bound to happen. Either I accept the anxiety and try to ignore it, or I feel sorry for myself, pout, and sometimes cry, and it consumes and ruins my entire day.

The upcoming HealthyPlace Mental Health TV Show is for adult women. Our topic is: What to Do When Earlier Attempts at Eating Disorders Recovery Have Failed. Some 10 to 15 percent of women suffer from anorexia, bulimia, binge eating or maladaptive eating attitudes according to a new study from the Université de Montréal and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

My kids are taking a bath. The sound of gurgling water fills our little apartment. The dishwasher hums loudly. My youngest is crying. Today, everything feels like it's crowding in on my psyche. I applied my positive thinking approach until the moment that I screamed for my youngest child to get into bed for her nap and then I collapsed.

Douglas relates his first week on the job at HealthyPlace.com and requests readers share their first week experiences.

One of the ways I've learned to manage my ADHD is to utilize the beeping & booping power of gadgets. Between my iPhone and my severely packed iCal appointment calendar, I have more alarms going off than a fire station during fireworks season. I even change the alarm sounds periodically to keep them fresh to my ears. Otherwise, I’d tune them out. ToDo lists and sticky notes are also used in abundance to help me remember to do the important things. I have them all over my Dashboard and Desktop, as well as on the dashboards and desktops of the real world.

Now I can sit back and reflect on those early days of my bipolar life.  I lived each day in fear of the next. I mostly feared that I was going crazy. I feared that my sanity was to be taken away from me easily. I feared that I would end up in a cold, confined padded cell.

I believe low self-esteem plays an extremely large role in social anxiety.  In my head, I have to be this perfect person and have my life all together. Therefore, when scary social situations creep into my trying-so-hard-to-be-perfect life, a vicious cycle begins. I worry so much that people will think less of me if they found out about my anxiety and panic attacks. I worry about worrying! Which then only makes the situation more scary and on and on it goes.

My name is Douglas and I've been diagnosed with ADHD for ages. I was ADHD before the Space Age, then during the Computer Age, and now in Old Age. I missed being diagnosed with Minimal Brain Dysfunction when that was all the rage, but did score Hyperkinetic in the 70s, which was not nearly as exciting or cool as being telekinetic.

We get a lot of email at HealthyPlace.com every month. I mean thousands of emails. Besides answering emails to help people, I sift through them to gauge what's on people's minds. One topic that comes up frequently is alternative, natural, complementary treatments for depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, schizophrenia --- well just about every mental health condition out there. A significant number of people who write us about alternative mental health treatments are interested because they don't like the side-effects of antidepressants, antipsychotics, antianxiey, or ADHD medications and are hoping that natural remedies, like herbs or supplements, or some alternative therapies such as neurofeedback or yoga will do the trick and relieve their unpleasant psychiatric symptoms.