What is the process by which someone becomes an abuse victim? What part do abuse victims play in the abusive cycle? Those questions leave me wanting an easy answer so I can wrap up my abusive experience in a neat little package and set it away in an attic where it would slowly disintegrate in the musty air. Unfortunately, the easy answers elude me. Easy or not, here is a part of my theory about how people become abuse victims in the first place:

We covered suicide prevention last week and the efforts of one organization to reach out to communities across the nation to save lives. But is there anything you can do as an individual to help others deal with their suicide crisis?

Over the years I've heard many people advise dropping the word 'disorder' from dissociative identity disorder, citing A) dissociation as a normal response to trauma, and B) honoring subjective experiences as the primary reasons that it’s not helpful. But the degree to which something is normal really has nothing to do with whether or not it’s a disorder. Disorders are referred to as disorders not because they're abnormal, but because they actively, regularly, and severely disrupt people's lives to such an extent that their ability to function is notably, even dangerously, compromised. And labeling a particular set of psychiatric symptoms with a particular psychiatric diagnosis is no more a call to ignore individual experience than it is to use labels like diabetes, hyperthyroidism, or influenza.

Have you seen the commercials for the new movie, 50-50? If not, here's a synopsis: Guy 1 tells Guy 2 that women will like him better when they find out that he has cancer.  Cut to Guy 2 disclosing his cancer to Girl at the Bar. Now imagine what it would be like to use your mental illness as a pick-up line? Not really the stuff of one-liners, is it?

I touched on reconciling with relapse in my post, Flashbacks and The Fear of Relapse, but there is a lot more to mental health recovery than a single post can cover. An entire book spanning thousands of pages cannot describe the fear associated with relapse. Reconciling with the possibility of mental illness relapse is a difficult task.

Your body knows how anxious you are, it doesn't need you to think it, analyze or re-frame it. It knows in every cell. It knows secrets you've forgotten and it knows your future. What the body knows is how we move, sense and experience the world. Having an anxiety disorder means being disconnected from that sensate awareness.

Many days I don't want to get out to bed. I am dealing with some difficult life issues right now, and of course the first thing I turn to is restricting my food intake in order to numb the pain and anxiety I am feeling. There are some days that I feel as if this will go on forever. I contemplate my future and I can't see the light at the end of the eating disorder tunnel.

If you've been hanging out in the mental health corners of the web for longer than about a day, you've probably seen it - mental illness bashing. Mental illness, mental health, psychopharmacology, doctor, therapy and other-related-topics bashing. It's extremely common and extremely hurtful and destructive. But it's the wild and woolly web, and that sort of nastiness happens in the jungle. Here are some tips for not letting other people's nastiness get to you.

I remember the day I met my friend, Sharon.* Bob had turned four the month prior, and I was--for the third time since then--preschool shopping. Sharon was the owner/director of a small, private Montessori preschool (which I fell in love with almost immediately). She was confident, secure, and highly knowledgeable when it came to children. She had two of her own, in fact, and they were honor roll students and star athletes. In other words, she was everything I felt I wasn't. And she intimidated the Hell out of me.

Believe it or not, you truly can control your ADHD impulses and avoid being arrested for breaking and entering. All it takes is a few good thumps from the School of Hard Knocks to drive the lesson home, but even an air-headed dreamer such as myself can learn to avoid catastrophic lapses of impulse control.