Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

Since my original post on resources for rape survivors, 10 Things to Do If You Have Been Raped, I have received hundreds of emails from readers who are looking for resources that can help them survive the first stages of healing from rape. Since then, I’ve been searching for “first aid” resources, resources that can provide immediate support and help for people who are in a crisis and need help NOW.

It has taken a year, but I have found two resources that I feel are the best resources out there for rape survivors in crisis. They are both easily accessible, friendly, and best of all, they are provided by people who know exactly what rape survivors need in order to heal. Enough from me. Here they are:

Continue reading “Two New Resources for Rape Survivors” »

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” »

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” »

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”” »

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” »

“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?” »