Blogs
Emotional neglect stands out as a significant BPD cause. Looking back on my childhood, I can clearly see how moments of neglect contributed to my struggles with BPD. Below are examples of daily symptoms and their root incidents.
Festivals have always been a highlight of my year. The joy, laughter, and abundance of food make these times special. However, for many years, the celebration was marred by my struggle with binge eating. Learning to manage this issue was not easy, but through personal experience and practical strategies, I've found a way to enjoy festivals without overindulging.
When I started seeing a psychiatrist, he said I would get back to life before bipolar disorder (well, I was diagnosed with just depression at the time). He focused on it a lot. He wanted to know how I was doing compared to what I was like "before." But there are so many problems with that thinking. I'm not sure you can ever get back to life before bipolar disorder.
Maintaining friendships is no easy task, and it's all the more difficult when you have a mental illness. I should know -- I struggle with double depression and generalized anxiety disorder, and many of my friends have mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and OCD. That said, it is possible to sustain friendships even when you live with mental health issues. Here's how my friends and I do it.
In recent years, the practice of intermittent fasting has become a mainstream wellness trend—but while it might prove beneficial for some, intermittent fasting is not an option for me. I have been thinking about this lately because intermittent fasting sounds harmless at face-value. It's a dietary plan that focuses on when rather than what to eat, which seems reasonable. But I am also self-aware enough to know that even well-intentioned parameters or structures around eating can turn into full-blown restriction. So, intermittent fasting is not an option for me.
When we experience a stressful situation, we experience a stress response, also known as the fight-flight-or-freeze response. How we respond depends on several factors, but I’ve found that I often freeze in stressful situations. Because of this, I’ve had to learn ways to unfreeze to help me move forward in certain circumstances.
Art and tapping into creativity is an excellent source of self-therapy. When I was in intensive therapy during a difficult period of my life, I was introduced to art as therapy. I was skeptical at first, but the idea that art could be soothing and stress-relieving opened a new door for me in my mental illness recovery.
Taking intentional pauses in my life has been transformative for my self-esteem. For a long time, I struggled with feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. Life seemed like a relentless race, and I was perpetually out of breath, unable to keep up with its demands. It wasn't until I consciously started taking pauses that I began to see a change in my self-esteem and overall mental health.
Ghosting can affect a person's depression. And while people with mental illnesses like bipolar are known to sometimes ghost others, we, ourselves, get ghosted too. So, what happens to a person's depression when they're ghosted?
Coping with cognitive distortions can be a challenge. In the intricate landscape of our brains, thoughts can often be like tangled balls of yarn, distorting reality and discoloring our perception of the world around us. For those of us coping with depression, these cognitive distortions can become particularly prominent, taking the tangled yarn and weaving a complex tapestry of negativity and despair. It becomes imperative to untwist our thinking and return to a more logical and realistic mindset. In the past year, through training peers about cognitive distortions and mental health wellness, I have come up with a couple of strategies to assist with coping with cognitive distortions.
It is wonderful to hear that you are embracing YOUR progression. Although it is natural to compare ourselves to others around us, it is unhealthy. However, it does take self-awareness, continuous practice, and willingness to change our thinking. The fact is that we are all 100% unique, and there is no one else like us. Thus, we can only follow our own journey and walk along at our own speed when it comes to recovery. How we recover is normal -- at least for us.
Think of it like this: trauma is our normal reaction to an abnormal event, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if someone else doesn't think our trauma is valid -- it is precisely that, OURS. In return, our journey of recovery should also be OUR normal progression from the trauma or mental health condition.
I am happy to hear that you can change your thinking and are trying to not compare yourself to others. Keep strong and go forward at your own pace.