If you've ever attempted recovery from your eating disorder-- especially if you've been in a eating disorder treatment center -- you've likely heard this refrain at least once: Secrets keep you sick. It's true. Secrets keep us sick. Eating disorders thrive on secrets. How else could you get by for so long with binging and purging, with eating less than X calories a day, with exercising for hours on end, with spending hundreds of dollars a month on binges? It's not likely that you're broadcasting these things (I certainly didn't) or someone would hold you accountable.

Defining healthy self-esteem and simple tools to achieve healthy self-esteem.

Dear Fear, You are not dear, Fear. I am not sorry to say that this relationship is over! I have panicked enough! And I am done with you. Done. Done. Done. Done. I am tired of you, anxiety. I will no longer let you stop me from being who I can be. Hold me back from my full potential. No more will I allow myself to listen to your lies, anxiety, telling me that I can't handle life, that I have to stay home, seclude myself, and miss out on the fun. I have had it with your warnings that "something bad will happen" or that "I would embarrass myself" or "it will be awful."

"I live in such a fog!", Ophelia said to me last week. "I can't see my way out of it." Boy, do I remember that feeling! Ophelia lives overseas and we work on her PTSD recovery via Skype. She's terrifically motivated, open to trying new approaches and honest about her healing experience. The PTSD fog, I've learned, is universal. I myself waded through it for decades until is was so thick I felt its swirl around me was more real than the world in which everyone else lived.

Homework was a touchy subject with Bob, pre-ADHD and treatment. Bob hated it and so did I. I dreaded coming home to help Bob with his homework. I knew a battle would come because Bob never wanted to do his homework. It was boring to him.

I have talked many times about how important a routine is in bipolar disorder (Limitations and Rules that Keep Us Safe). There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is because bipolar disorder is considered a circadian rhythm disorder by many medical professionals. Your circadian rhythm is critical to your functioning as a human as it tells your body when to sleep and when to be awake (among other things) and trying to go against it is like swimming upstream. Assuming bipolar disorder is, indeed, a circadian rhythm disorder, we should do everything we can to work to regulate our circadian rhythms in a healthy manner. Keeping a strict bipolar routine is one major way of doing that.

If there's one thing true about psychiatric hospitals, it's that you have a lot of down time. When I was in the state hospital system, I used this time to play Animal Crossing: Wild World on my Nintendo DS. Believe it or not, the game was a helpful therapy. Animal Crossing: Wild World, or AC: WW for short is a video game in which you live in a rural village with a bunch of anthropomorphic animals. You go around doing tasks for these animals, making money, making friends and other various life adventures. This game taught me three skills: how to read the emotions of other people, how to set boundaries, and how to handle rejection.

Mental illness is usually not visible to the naked eye, or the private eye for that matter, or even the naked private eye, although, candidly, if you’re being followed by a naked private eye he’s the one that needs to be concerned about mental illness, not you – but enough about me. My point, which is moving across the landscape with the alacrity of a Tasmanian sloth, is this: Whackadoomians have the option of keeping their mental state a secret, a mental state secret – if you will – and if you won’t, I will, so it works out. This seems like a tremendous relief, and in many ways it is, after all this is personal information, often awkward, which we might prefer to keep to ourselves.

Alcoholism relapse prevention is an important part of recovering from active using whether it is alcoholism or another type of addiction. Any person who has entered any type of drug or alcohol treatment center or twelve-step program will have at least a general idea of what this alcohol relapse prevention program looks like for them. This plan might include the activity of doing a daily inventory to keep an eye out for increased irritability or other red flags that will help them know they are at a high risk of using again. This way they can reach out for help or increase their recovery efforts before it’s too late. Family of Alcoholic Needs Relapse Prevention Program Too Families and loved ones of an alcoholic or addict also need a relapse prevention plan and this is one key element that is missing in many recovery programs.

Drug addiction affects people from all walks of life. It is, as the old saying goes, “not a respecter of persons.” Just as the ends of addiction are jails, institutions, and death, the opposite, recovery, can be a beacon of hope. But what can you do to help someone you know who is suffering from the ravages of substance abuse?