Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

I recently wrote an article for rape survivors called 10 Things to Do if You Have Been Raped, and I received a few emails from men asking me if I could write an article specifically for men who have been raped, either as children or as adults.

Male rape is a strange crime. It’s usually the subject of jokes about prisons (don’t drop the soap), but the general public really doesn’t have a very good awareness of how serious a problem this is. One in six boys will be the victim of a sexual assault by an adult by the time he is 18 years old. That’s almost 20% of all boys.

The situation is equally as bleak for male rape victims. Most charities are not set up to handle male victims, and, while they are making very positive progress, there are still few police departments that are aware of male rape and are trained to handle male rape victims.

Add to that a shortage of therapists who specialize in male rape, and the various cultural myths and misconceptions about male rape survivors, and it becomes a pretty tough road for a guy who has been victimized as an adult or as a child.

In this article, I am going expand my original article on what to do if you have been raped to cover a few of the specific things that I learned along the way as a male rape victim. I hope some of them help you with your own struggle.

Continue reading “What to Do if You Are a Male Rape Victim” »

Everybody hurts.

I can still remember one of the most painful memories of my life. It was when I was in Grade 2 and my first dog died. My parents had him before I was born, so he was my buddy since I was a newborn baby. He was my best friend and he was gone.

It hurts even now to think about it, but I remember that when I was a kid, it was like my world had come to an end. It was the first time in my life that I had to face the loss of a loved one.

We will all hurt at some point in our lives; either from a death, or from trauma, or from being betrayed by a loved one. At some point we will all feel like the little boy who just lost his best friend.

Continue reading “What To Do When It Hurts” »

We’re swamped this week with putting our house up for sale, so I haven’t had any time to write an article for today. So instead I’m going to share one of my favorite Youtube videos.

Have a great weekend.

Continue reading “Friday Laugh” »

It happens to everyone. At some point in our lives there comes a time when we just run out of money. Whether it is through no fault of our own, or because of bad financial decisions, there are very few feelings as hopeless as getting that “Insufficient Funds” message from a bank machine. (It’s even more fun when you get it when you are using a debit machine at the grocery store, just after buying a cartload of groceries)

Add mental illness to the mix, and you have a recipe for a full-blown meltdown. Running out of money really sucks, and it can make already bad problems like anxiety so much worse.

In this article, I will share a few tricks that have worked for me in the past when the moths have taken over my wallet.

Continue reading “What to Do When You Have No Money” »

April 5th is Blog Against Sexual Violence Day. For my contribution I am sharing a short poem written by a rape survivor. The poem is called: “I’m Right Here.” You can find links to the other articles at Abyss2Hope.

Continue reading “Blog Against Sexual Violence Day: I’m Right Here” »

I needed to watch this video again this morning. Hope it brightens your day as much as it brightens mine.

Continue reading “Free Hugs” »

“You have depression.”

I can still hear my doctor’s words. I had been to see him because I knew something was wrong. I was tired, my moods were all over the map and I just couldn’t seem to focus on anything. After asking me a few questions, he gave me a depression screening test, and the results came back; I had “moderate to severe major depressive disorder.”

The words were like lead weights.

“Major Depressive Disorder.”

I felt like a freak.

Being diagnosed with depression was one of the lowest points in my life. My mood and my self-esteem, already low to begin with, sunk even further. The writing was on the wall. No matter what I said, or did, I couldn’t avoid it; I had depression.

It took me over 2 years of going to therapy and taking medication to recover from depression. And along the way, I made a lot of painful mistakes. However, the worst mistake I made was when I treated my diagnosis of depression as a negative label; a label that I was crazy or worse.

If you are reading this article, and you, or someone that you know, has recently been diagnosed with depression, I hope that my words will help convince you. Being diagnosed with depression isn’t the end of the world. In this article, I hope to share with you the advice that I myself should have taken when I got my diagnosis. It would have saved me a lot of pain.

Continue reading “What to do If You Have Been Diagnosed With Depression” »