Hello my name is Zach Liberatore and I am a victim of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I was clinically diagnosed with it and prescribed medication during the end of 2012 when I checked into the psychiatric ward at ECMC. This disease dragged me to the brink of insanity and I had reached the point where I [...]
My Secret Is Out: I Have OCD! When I was young, a neighbor accused me of creating mischief on her property. She called the police. By the time they arrived, I was about five miles away. They tracked me down and brought me home. She filed charges, and we went to court. She lost. But [...]
When I found my father’s journals, I knew I had to stop running away from mental illness. They were at the bottom of a box containing his unpublished plays and stories that revealed his struggles during the time I was growing up. By the time I read them I was a successful psychotherapist with a [...]
JUST PRETEND _____ Dear friend, How are you? Sorry I keep on forgetting to ask you about you.. I guess I am just too lost to look beyond my own head and that kinda makes me a bad friend. So, I apologize. This week hasn’t been a good one… I made a few decisions… Have [...]
Someone told me that every great story starts with the main character thinking he or she is a nobody. Arya Stark, Luke Skywalker, Rey (Skywalker?), Captain America, and Spider-Man are just a few examples. But, sadly, these are fictional people. The writers create their destinies and mold them the way they see fit. Characters can [...]
I Am Not My Illness I was drowning. Water was filling my lungs, and I couldn’t breathe. The world seemed to dance around me, but I only saw it through my blurry vision blocked by water. I was gasping, sputtering, coughing; I was trying everything that I could think of to keep breathing. My hands [...]
Reflections on Overcoming Stigma to Pay Forward Back when I was just a yuppie, I learned a few points of wisdom that I want to pay forward to some mental health academics and administrators. I was learning to chop cheese steaks at a Korean owned deli and instantly enamored with this mentor on the grill, [...]
There’s so much that I could truly say, but would it make sense whenever I said it, probably not. But it’s always worth a shot right. Truth is, even whenever it seems like its not the right thing to do, don’t be afraid to take a chance. That’s what I live by. What doesn’t kill [...]
Tennessee Williams said a writer should never be embarrassed. That great playwright’s nakedly honest writing is filled with painful truths about human nature, drawn from his own experiences, observations, and relentless self-scrutiny. I took his words as inspiration during the many difficult times in writing my recently published memoir The Broken Places. Once I made [...]
Beautifully Broken “The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.” E.E. Cummings I remember feeling different when I started third grade, as though there was an impenetrable glass wall between myself and my peers. I could see them, I could hear them, but [...]
