My family has a history of mental illness, pretty much all of it completely un-diagnosed. When I say my family is crazy, I'm not elaborating. Some are more crazy than others, but all of us deal with depression and anxiety to some degree. I'm writing this post anonymously because it's a hard one to discuss...the [...]
I am passionate and extremely involved in mental health engagement in my community. I launched www.bipolarbabe.com in May of 2009 and created a logo with a talented artist titled ‘Bipolar Babe: Stomping out Stigma.’ Thereafter, I designed and distributed bipolar babe postcards, which read “Creating a World of Understanding, Empathy, and Acceptance for Those that Have a Mental Health Condition.” [...]
In my eyes, it is the anticipation that is the toughest part about anxiety. We build up the worries and stressors in our minds to the point that they become almost impossible to deal with. Most of anxiety is irrational in that we know these concerns are not as bad as we make them out [...]
I was diagnosed bipolar in August of 2008. The diagnoses made so much sense out of the life I was living, out of the lows and highs I kept jumping between. It made sense out of the crazy stories from my early 20’s, out of the jobs I quit over and over, out of the [...]
Especially Love I sat in my favorite chair. The sun warmed me as I sipped my morning coffee. Tears began to stream down my cheeks. Suddenly my breath became more rapid. What was wrong with me I sobbed. I thought I was am past this… The years before my mother’s death were filled with incredible [...]
"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly" Proverb I had overcome a lot of things in my life and was constantly working on myself, but at 25 years old I still had so much work to do, and a long way to go, in terms of healing and learning [...]
My name is Joe The Sicilian. I grew up in a Bipolar family. My family's Bipolar Disorder seemed normal to me for much of my life. The only person who doesn't have Bipolar Disorder in my family is my mom, who finds it extremely hard to understand the disease. All of my grandparents had it, my aunts and uncles had it, and [...]
My Story My childhood was not a childhood. In my family, men had sex with little girls. It was our normal. It was our culture and it was generational. My parents grew up with it. Their parents grew up with it. Most of the victims in our family didn’t even remember it because the trauma [...]
I was raised by a depressed mother. My Mom’s depression dictated much of my life. When it was not under control, when she was unable to “climb out of a hole,” when she needed someone to talk to, I was there. Because of this, I learned about depression from a very young age. My understanding [...]
They’re coming back. I can feel it. I know they’re gonna try to take over again. I want to fight them off. But I don’t know that I have what it takes to do that. I’m already in such a low place, and they’ll just drag me even further into the depths of my own [...]