Blogs
Journaling can be a wonderful tool to use whenever you feel like your life is falling apart. The act of writing something down on paper works like magic. Your mind calms down, your emotions become more transparent, and you gain control over your self-harm thoughts.
As an autistic person, I have been told many times that I am “sensitive.” My whole life, the smallest of inconveniences or changes in plan can bring me to tears. Getting stuck in the rain would cause a full meltdown. I’ve even had a doctor dismiss my symptoms and tell me “you’re just too sensitive.”
There are a number of facets in the relationship between hygiene and mental health stigma. We probably recognize that mental illness affects hygiene, but the relationship extends to how both are viewed and the overall impact because of that relationship. This is where stigma comes into the picture.
Giving yourself a mental health check-in is a way to be honest with yourself about your emotions and how they are affecting your life. This way, you can handle stressful situations that trigger these emotions and find peace of mind. In this blog post, I will share information about how to do a mental health check-in.
Using a trust test for anxiety helps you decide whether you should trust what your anxiety tells you. Often, anxiety comes on too quickly for us to do much about it, and we easily get swept up by the intensity of our anxiety. Whether we know it or not, this happens in part because we implicitly accept that our anxiety is trustworthy and only shares true information.
Self-forgiveness in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recovery is a valuable, yet often ignored, aspect of trauma healing. While we hear a lot about the importance of forgiving people that have hurt us, learning how to forgive ourselves is something that is not regularly discussed. However, self-forgiveness is crucial to our wellbeing, especially for people with PTSD.
As a recovering addict, I know just how daunting it can be to prepare for the summer party season. From miscellaneous pool parties, summer weddings, and all the various holidays that fall throughout the summer months, this time of year can be challenging for those of us with a history of addiction.
Music soothes my schizoaffective disorder and I’ve been a fan of Tori Amos since I was in high school in the 1990s, before my first schizoaffective psychotic episode. Amos’ heyday was in the ‘90s, but she’s continued making music about controversial themes such as sexuality, suicide, and rape since then. Her fearlessness in what she sings about as she straddles her piano bench has comforted me since I first started listening to her and especially comforts my schizoaffective anxiety now that her music has gotten more mellow--although her lyrics still pack a punch.
Self-harm reasons, both for starting and for stopping, are as numerous and varied as colors in cathedral windows. I can only speak from my own experience, but in so doing, I hope to help others better understand their own reasons—or those of someone they love—for doing what they do.
Do you know how to meditate when your anxiety won't let you be still? Recently, I wrote about mindfulness meditation for anxiety. Because it's so powerful and yet so frustrating, I'm returning to the topic of how to meditate to expand on it further--helping you to learn how to meditate despite anxiety.
I completely agree with you that fear of rejection and sense of responsibility are huge. These are concepts worth exploring!