Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

Because I am “in the business,” I spend a fair amount of time reading self-help blogs and sites. Most of these sites mean well, and their authors sincerely do want to help other people get rich, lose weight, or manage their time. Some, however, are not so good, and can present a real danger to anyone suffering from a mood disorder or mental illness.

In this article, I will talk about self-help websites, how they can benefit you in your recovery, and what pitfalls you should avoid.

Continue reading “How to Avoid the Dangers of Self-Help Websites” »

For me, one of the toughest things about recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety has been learning how to manage triggers.

If you’ve got PTSD or you have panic attacks, you know what I mean by triggers; those little things that, once your “anxiety brain” gets hold of them, send you into a downward spiral of fear, panic, and sometimes, even depression.

My worst trigger is child abuse. If I see a news story about an abused child, or even if I overhear someone talking about an abused child, my pulse rate just shoots up. If the abuse is sexual, then all bets are off and I have to take action to manage the trigger before I get anxious.

I do a couple of little things to manage triggers and minimize the effects that they have on me. They may work for you.

Continue reading “What To Do When You Are Triggered” »

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” »

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” »

“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” »

Disclosing your mental illness to another person may be one of the most important decisions of your life. If you pick the right person, you could gain a level of support and understanding that will be a major source of strength for you through the hard times. If you pick the wrong person, it could be very damaging.

Choosing who to tell about your mental illness is a tough decision with lots of implications. In this section of the disclosure series I will try to share some of the things that worked for me when I was faced with the same choice.

Continue reading “Disclosure Series Part 3: Who Should You Tell About Your Mental Illness?” »

“I Have To Tell You Something”

This was how I started. I was sitting in a bar with a friend of mine, and I was about to tell him about my experiences with depression and child abuse. I had already gone “semi-public” with my story, as I had spoken to therapists, the police, my family and a few other people, but this was the first time that I was speaking to a friend about it.

I was scared half to death. Even though I had been through years of therapy, and I had spent hours in police interviews, I was terrified that my friend would not believe me, or that he would laugh at me when I told him about what I had been going through.

But, despite those fears, I told him anyway, and he didn’t laugh at me. I actually don’t remember what he did say, because most of the evening is still a blur, but I do remember that I felt much better after I told him.

After I spoke to my friend, I began to talk to other people about my abuse and struggle with depression, and I found that the more people I told, the less frightening it got. Today, I can talk openly about both subjects with complete strangers, and although I still feel a little twinge of fear now and then, my fears of disclosure are mainly gone.

So how did I get to this point? Let me start 4 years ago, just after my diagnosis with depression.

Continue reading “Disclosure Series Part 2: How I Overcame My Fear of Talking About My Mental Illness” »

Wow do I hear that question a lot.

I think that I can confidently speak for every person who is suffering from a mental illness when I say that disclosure is their single biggest concern. Before I disclosed, I spent a lot of time worrying what my friends and families would think of me if they found out that I suffered from depression. Even now, after I have recovered and I am completely public about my history with mental illness, I sometimes worry if I have done the right thing by disclosing.

Talking about mental illness is very tough, and it is very important to make sure that you are telling people about your mental illness for the right reasons. Disclosing can put you in a very vulnerable position, so if you are not completely comfortable about why you are disclosing, you could be setting yourself up for a painful and damaging experience.

However, there is probably no greater step that you can take in your recovery than disclosing. Telling other people about your mental illness can be a very liberating experience, and it can bring you an incredible amount of support and self-confidence. The important thing is to do it for the right reasons.

Continue reading “Disclosure Series Part 1: Should You Tell People About Your Mental Illness?” »

Miguel over at the Think Happy Thoughts Happiness Blog (I absolutely love that name) writes about the importance of writing down negative thoughts.

Writing down negative thoughts is a great idea and it is a very good way to help manage depression and anxiety. By writing out your negative thoughts you get them out of your mind and down on paper where you can study them and figure out if they are “real” thoughts or if they are just being sent to you by your depression. When you see your thoughts on paper they may not seem as overwhelmingly negative as they did inside your head, or, as Miguel puts it:

“Your mind recognizes the difference between what “should” be happening and what actually is happening. The greater the difference between OUGHT and IS, the more cognitive dissonance is felt emotionally. Close inspection of these untrue beliefs is the solution to negative thinking. A person can revise their beliefs by investigating them.”

Continue reading “Link: Write Down Negative Thoughts Immediately” »

I’m frustrated by the way that our society handles suicide. On one hand, people who commit suicide, or who even think of suicide, are condemned as evil, selfish cowards, and on the other hand, we know and accept that suicide and suicidal thoughts are common symptoms of many mental illnesses.

This creates a conflict for anyone who suffers from a condition like depression, and who is troubled by suicidal thoughts. Suicidal thoughts are a big warning sign that there is something wrong, yet even though we know that these thoughts have a medical cause, there is such a culture of shame and fear around suicide that most sufferers would rather keep silent and refuse treatment rather than ask for help.

Suicide is an act of desperation. People who commit suicide do so because they have given up on the hope that they will ever feel better. And by clinging to outdated myths and unfair notions about suicide, we as a society are failing to help these people. Each person who commits suicide is a loss for us all.

Continue reading “Four Dangerous Myths About Suicide and How to Avoid Them” »