One of the crucial things to remember about living with mental illness is this: the more you know yourself the better chance you have of having a happy successful life. When you receive a diagnosis, remember that this is a diagnostic tool to help you heal. Once you know what you have, you can start [...]
The first antidepressant side-effect to hit me was the yawning; it became a constant. I started to wonder if I'd ever be able to stop. “Don’t worry about it,” Duncan reassured me. “After the sleep deprivation you’ve been through, yawning all the time is perfectly reasonable. It’s your body’s way of giving in to the [...]
Prozac stopped my nail biting I used to be a nail biter. I can remember biting my nails from the time that I was a small child (probably only six or seven) I would do it when I was nervous because I needed something to focus on rather than anxiety . But at the time [...]
I can remember sitting in my therapist’s office and feeling a distinct sense of loss. I had just been given a temporary and non-medical diagnosis of Cyclothymia. For months leading up to this moment I had been dealing with increasingly harder downswings followed by upswings of mania. Most of these episodes would happen over the [...]
"Do you have your keys?" "Yes." "Do you have your wallet?" "Yeah." ... "Okay, so do you have your keys?" "I told you, yes." "I still want to make sure." "Nothing has changed since 45 seconds ago." "Right, but still. Can you just check?" "I have them." "Can I see them?" Unzips bag "Here." "Okay [...]
dear bipolar, you’d think after 18 years together we’d know each other pretty well. but yet there are still parts of you that are unknown to me. you are like my innermost organs, always there but i didn’t learn about you till later on. this body isn’t mine anymore bipolar, it’s ours. i can’t see [...]
I don’t remember her at all. I was four when she died. I recall standing in the kitchen hugging a woman’s leg. I suppose you could say I remember her but that wasn’t her. That was her leg. I remember going to my uncle’s house one day and there was explaining why. They told me [...]
I’m a great actor; I fooled everybody including myself. I go on stage and I smiled, I laughed, I cried. Nobody knew what to believe. I am another out there version of myself on stage. I am who I choose to show you. I am a creative genius- I can fool you into believing that I’m normal. [...]
And I give you… my anxiety disorder I’m only thirty-three years old, so I figure I’ll have another good fifty years left to live before I’m dead, that is if I don’t get hit by a car, bus, train, get shot, stabbed, bludgeoned to death or just simply drop dead because the internet is a [...]
Dating in the Internet World with Mental Illness Dating is tough. It is hard to find someone you click with, but it is even harder when you have an illness. A mental illness. And online dating? Well, that brings up its own set of difficulties because when you meet someone online you aren’t really talking [...]
