Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

Last week I was talking to a friend of mine who was having trouble starting a healing journal. He had kept a journal before, but he was finding it difficult to use a journal as a healing tool.

I believe in the healing power of creative expression, and especially in the power of writing. Writing allows you to have a safe place to explore your own emotions and feelings, and it has an incredible way of helping you connect with your inner self. I think that if you learn to write, and you learn to trust your writing, you will be well along the path to recovery.

In this article, I am going to share some of the things that I did to get started with my healing journal, and I’ll also share some of the tricks I use to “protect” my writing.

Continue reading “How To Start A Healing Journal” »

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” »

The other day I had a terrible experience on one of the mental health forums where I am a member. A few members launched an attack on me, something that occurs all too common on any forum, but on a mental health forum they can be particularly disruptive. After I was unsuccessful in my attempts to get the members to withdraw their attack, I wrote to the forum administrators to complain.

Their response caught me off guard, to say the least:

You are known to be outspoken so you shouldn’t be surprised when you get attacked by other members.name withheld

Well.

Continue reading “What To Do When You are Being Bullied” »

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”” »

“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” »

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” »

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” »

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

Continue reading “Free Hugs” »

Talking about your mental illness is challenging, and what you say is only slightly less important than how you say it. Most people know very little about mental illness, and what they do know can be biased by myths and misconceptions. This can be a challenge if you are going to tell someone about your own mental illness. Not only do you have to overcome your own fears of disclosure, but you also need to overcome the other person’s possible lack of understanding about mental illness.

Your disclosure may be one of the most important conversations of your life, so knowing what to say is very important. In this article I will talk about a few of the things that worked for me, and I’ll share some of my own advice and thoughts on how you can talk to someone else about your mental illness.

Continue reading “Disclosure Series Part 4: How to Tell Someone Else About Your Mental Illness” »