Seeking validation from others is often demonized today. We are made to feel guilty for this human desire — for craving attention, reassurance, and support. And while it's healthy to give yourself the validation you're searching for, shaming yourself for seeking validation from others will not help you.

I like to avoid tense situations in my everyday life. I enjoy living in a peaceful, harmonious, and stable society. Yet tense situations are an inescapable part of nature. Life-or-death struggles are ever-present, whether fighting over territory, for a mate, searching for food, or avoiding being eaten. In an increasingly civilized world, can intentionally engaging in tense and stressful situations benefit our experience of bliss?

My name is Daniel Lyons (they/he), and I am the new co-author of the blog "The Life: LGBT Mental Health." I am 36 years old and a transgender, queer, bisexual, non-binary person living in California with multiple mental health diagnoses. Throughout my life, I struggled with misdiagnosis and struggled to get adequate care for my mental health. Some of this had to do with being assigned female at birth and doctors not taking my symptoms seriously and underdiagnosing. Some of it had to do with diagnosis difficulty and the presence of multiple diagnoses. I can confidently say now I live with bipolar disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I also live with gender dysphoria, which I will talk more about in blog posts to come. It’s a complicated matrix of diagnoses, but I want to write this blog post for folks to know there is hope.

The question is, can you heal from verbal abuse? Verbal abuse is prevalent in many relationships. It does not choose age, skin color, or social standing. Instead, you can find this harmful behavior in various places, like the school playground, between partners at home, or even in the workplace. With such a widespread problem, is it even possible to heal from the negative effects of verbal abuse?

A lot of worrying comes with my schizoaffective anxiety. I am constantly worrying—ask anyone who knows me. Even someone who doesn’t know me that well knows that I worry all the time. And to top it all off, I blame myself for my worrying, even though it's anxiety-related. Here’s what it’s like.

I struggled quite a bit with procrastination when I was younger, and it wasn't until recently that I realized it had been associated with my anxiety. Not only does anxiety cause you to want to avoid tasks, but it also results in avoiding important tasks for as long as possible and completing them at the last possible minute. Anxiety can make you procrastinate.

Shame can trap people in a cycle of alcoholism and addiction. Often, this becomes a skewed internal dialogue where the sense of shame exceeds the inciting event. An example would be someone isolating themselves from their family or friends after a potentially embarrassing episode whilst drinking. Rather than suppressing shame or guilt, I believe that exposure by self-evaluation and reflection is the best way to avoid the cycle that links shame and alcoholism. 

Emotions make us human, but sometimes I wish I didn't feel anything. I believe life would be a lot easier without the ability to experience emotions and feelings.

Suffering from anxiety is hard. With all of life's challenges, it can be difficult not to let anxiety mold itself into an ever-looming monster in one's mind. I've had a habit of elongating my own suffering from anxiety with needless rumination, worrying, and dread. But why allow my anxiety to take away from all the other moments in my life?

There are coping skills for breakups, but learning them took me a while. One of the things I hate most about the summer is that it seems to be my season of breakups. Every time it happened years ago, I felt like something was wrong with me. I lost hope in ever having a lasting relationship. My mind went to dark places for several months. This time, however, I have techniques to ease the healing process. Continue reading to learn about my list of breakup coping skills.