I witnessed verbal and financial abuse at my first job after leaving my ex. When the abuser was not around, the shop was fun and I enjoyed working there. When the abuser was present, people acted differently and the atmosphere became oppressive. The air would lighten a little when she, the abuser, would enter the shop and appear happy, but darken the moment she stormed through the doors with a scowl. The shop doors were like a stage curtain opening - we really didn't know what to expect until the diva appeared in view.

Ed Chavez says he became addicted to pornography as a teenager. When he discovered, as an adult, how accessible pornography is on the Internet, his compulsion became unmanageable and he sought therapy. Ed says his pornography addiction almost cost him his marriage, but with sex addiction treatment, he was able to recover.

One thing I remember from high school science class is Newton's third law of motion--in a nutshell, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. As an adult, I've learned this is true--and not just for motion. A lot of things in life--actions--produce a responsive reaction of equal intensity. Particularly, the actions of a child living with a psychiatric illness.

I'm sitting in my apartment, my mind playing fast and loose with past and present, time and space. It's humid and muggy and I haven't slept properly in weeks. What makes Nightmare on Elm Street seem like Annie?

Despite reminder tools and sheer determination, I keep forgetting to take my medication. I get up in the morning and think to myself, 'Now don’t forget to take your medication!' while heading to the bathroom where it’s waiting for me in a brightly colored container right there on the counter. And I repeatedly discover, much later in the day, those pills lying untouched in their little compartments. I have dissociative identity disorder and this is just one example of how my dissociative memory affects my everyday life. On its own it may not seem like a big deal. And if my memory problems were exclusive to forgetting medication or if they were irregular, here-and-there occurrences they probably wouldn’t be much of an issue. But what I just described is how my memory works all the time, with everything.

Every medical treatment comes with risk. If you have a headache, you could take ibuprofen or you could have a craniotomy looking for brain cancer. One has considerably more risk than the other. (Of course, if you have brain cancer, then the reward could be quite great.) This means every time you undertake a bipolar treatment knowingly, or not, you weigh the risks vs. rewards in your head. And one of your doctor’s main jobs is to manage that risk vs. reward scenario. Doctors, for example, almost never prescribe barbiturates anymore due to the fairly large risk of addiction. Instead, they prescribe benzodiazepines (or nonbenzodiazepines; very similar) which do not carry such an increased risk. In both cases, they carry the reward of managing anxiety. But some people don’t want to take benzodiazepines either, because some people tolerate more risk than others.

In my neighborhood, the typical household composition goes something like this: a husband, wife, 2.5 kids under the age of 10, and a dog. My family looks something like this too. Everywhere you look there are kids and more kids. So it’s no surprise that there is an explosion of businesses and groups catering to mommies and baby bumps, and that I’ve met other moms and their little ones. People say that it helps to meet other moms going through the same things that you are (which it does), except that I’m beginning to feel a bit like the odd one out.

Years ago in Al-Anon, I learned that it is almost impossible to be at my best if I am Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and/or Tired. I discovered that I could HALT myself, take a breather, and remedy any of those conditions before moving on with the day. For the most part, it is good advice. The troublesome aspect of being Angry with someone who believed I had no right to be angry plagued me. He ignored my anger or met it with escalating anger of his own; there was no peaceful conflict resolution in my marriage. There was quite a bit of stuffing anger down deep inside because it did no good to express it to the one person who could help resolve it. There was also quite a bit of yelling and crying on my behalf, mostly directed at him but regretfully spilling out onto my children too.

People with bipolar or depression often slow productivity at work when the symptoms of depression increase.  We are told the more you accomplish, the more the reward you will receive. Sometimes the reward is a financial gain, sometimes a job status gain and maybe both types of gain will occur. The more productive we are in a given set of time, whether it is a work day or an assignment, might lead to more free time or less overtime, giving us more time in our personal and family life. Let's try a few productivity habits for bipolar or depression (you don't have to try all of them at once, but utilizing multiple techniques may lead you to success more quickly).

As one of many people living with a depressive illness, I can attest to the crippling nature of depression. But I'm fortunate to have found a depression treatment that works well for me. While I've yet to find a medication or lifestyle change that eradicates major depression or dysthymia from my life altogether, there are drug treatments and lifestyle choices that together provide measurable relief - enough to make a profound difference. Others are not so lucky. Some people have tried medication after medication and have yet to find anything that markedly eases their depression symptoms. These people are living with treatment-resistant depression. What can they do?