Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

I won’t be posting for the next week because I will be on a retreat here without any access to the Internet, or any communications technology at all, for that matter.

If anyone is interested, my retreat will be focussing on Thomas Merton and his teachings. Check him out. He’s pretty cool.

Continue reading “Away For a Week” »

Just an update on a few navigational changes that I have made to the site.

First, I have removed the tag cloud. People were reporting that they found it confusing and not at all helpful. I’ve replaced it with an easier-to-use Article Index button on the sidebar. The Article Index lists all my articles, sorted by category.

Also, I have restructured the Archives page so that it now lists article titles, sorted by date.

Finally, I have added a Bookstore. There’s not much to see in there right now, but over the next few weeks I will be adding some books that I have found helpful during my own recovery.

Please let me know what you think of the new additions, and please don’t hesitate to make any suggestions on how I can make further improvements to the site.

Continue reading “Some Changes” »

Recently, Josh over at We Worry: A Blog for the Anxious, recently wrote “Why You Shouldn’t Self-Diagnose,” an article on the risks of self diagnosis.

In his article, Josh talks of the dangers of relying on self-diagnosis, or even worse, the Internet, to diagnose your own medical problems. There are too many variables to consider, and to get a correct diagnosis it is almost always necessary to go to a medical professional.

The same holds true of mental illness. Although the temptation to self-diagnose a mental illness can be overwhelming, and to be honest, there is a certain satisfaction in self-diagnosis, it is very risky to self-diagnose your own mental health.

Continue reading “The Dangers of Self-Diagnosis for Mental Illness” »

I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Eric Maisel, who is a family therapist, creativity coach, trainer and author of the book “Ten Zen Seconds.” Ten Zen Seconds is a very cool centering technique that uses easy to learn “incantations” and breathing exercises to help you quickly become centered and achieve a state of calm. I’ve been going through a lot of anxious moments lately with our house sale, and I have been using some of Eric’s techniques to calm myself. It works pretty well. If you are looking for a good, useful tool to manage your day to day mental health, you might want to give Ten Zen Seconds a shot.

Continue reading “Interview with Dr. Eric Maisel, Author of “Ten Zen Seconds”” »

I am starting a new Category here at Finding Your Marbles called “Signposts,” where I will be featuring people who have overcome mental illness in their own lives. Some of these stories will be very sad, and some will be terrifying, and some will be filled with desperation, but they all have the same ending; they all end in freedom from mental illness.

These are all regular people like you and me. They are not stronger than us, or smarter than us, or richer than us. They were just as scared, depressed, anxious and lonely. And one day, they decided to recover.

There’s no secret to recovery. Recovery is as simple as deciding that you want to recover, and then trying to find out how. It isn’t an easy thing to do; we all have our own paths to recovery, and some of them are very difficult. My recovery took years of hard, frustrating work, and in some ways I am still recovering. However, it can be done. Mental illness can be overcome.

The people that I will be featuring in these stories have discovered their own path to recovery. They have agreed to allow me to share their stories with you, in the hope that they will help you find your way along your own path to recovery. Think of these stories as signposts, put there by other travellers on the path. And remember, that no matter how hopeless it may seem, you are not alone.

Continue reading “Signposts: Wendy Piersall” »

Ok, this is really, really late, but back in March I was tagged by Isabella at Change Therapy to do a gratitude post. With all the craziness over the past month trying to sell our house, it fell through the cracks. Anyway, without further ado, I am grateful for/to:

Continue reading “Gratitude” »

There are hundreds of online mental health forums, covering everything from depression to synesthesia. Some of them are quite large, like the About.com forums, and others are grassroots forums that emerged around small communities of mental illness sufferers who joined together to support each other as they struggled to cope with their mental illness and hopefully get on the road to recovery.

Online forums can be a great resource to help you manage your mental illness and to help you with your recovery. They provide you with a great opportunity to meet with other people who are suffering from the same conditions and talk about your problems in a safe, anonymous environment.

I have participated in several mental health forums, both as a member and as an administrator, and I have written this guide to both help you choose a mental health forum and to get the best out of your mental health forum experience.

Continue reading “A Guide to Online Mental Health Forums” »

“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.”

William Shakespeare

My son has a great skill. Whenever he gets hurt, he starts crying, and brings the hurt to mummy or daddy to get it checked out. Usually a quick kiss will take care of it, and then he happily goes right back to whatever he was doing.

Crying is our first language. As babies, we cried to let our parents know when we were scared, or hungry, or tired. It was our way of saying, “I need help right now!”

Crying has two purposes: 1) to announce that something hurts, and 2) to release the pain of whatever hurts. I don’t know the psychology behind it, but I do know that after he cries, my son is always in a great mood. Crying is a natural release for him.

Somehow, as we grew into adults, we forgot the secret of crying. We were taught that “crying is for babies” and that it is important to keep our emotions inside. So, instead of learning to release our pain through crying, we are taught to numb it through drugs, self-torture, and silent suffering.

This is what we have lost as adults. We are afraid to cry, and even when we do break down and actually shed some tears, we are overcome with anxiety because we “showed weakness.”

That’s a complete lie. Crying is not a sign of weakness. I don’t look down on my son because he cries when he is hurt. When he cries, it serves as a signal between us that he is hurting, and that’s all. He isn’t weak for asking me for help or comfort.

I can figure out where this went wrong. Adults, particularly men, can’t seem to cry. This is a terrible tragedy. Somehow one of our most valuable and powerful coping skills has been stolen from us.

Continue reading “How To Cry” »