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Do you know how to show concern and support for your friend's emotional wellbeing? It can be more difficult when your friend lives with mental illness. If your friend with depression has engaged in self-destructive behaviors in the past, you might think that he or she is currently not okay and needs help. To learn about how to respond to your friend's feelings and when to show concern, read this article.
Do you have anxiety goals? Could changing your perspective on anxiety help you to reach them more quickly?
I'm a huge supporter of ending the stigma surrounding all mental illnesses, which is why I support talking to your kids about eating disorder recovery. This said, as a mother of four children under nine years of age and someone who has been in recovery for a while now, there are two things I think everyone should consider before talking to their children.
An addiction to food is likely one of the most acceptable forms of addiction in our society, but does food addiction always imply the diagnosis of an eating disorder? Honestly, it depends on who you ask. In my experience, my dependencies and addiction with food inevitably morphed into an eating disorder, but that doesn't mean everyone with an eating disorder is a food addict.
Living with schizoaffective anxiety sometimes makes me afraid to do pretty much anything. So, I often do things even though I’m afraid because, if I didn’t do them, I couldn’t function. But since, as I’ve said, I’m anxious about doing so many things, I have to work up a lot of courage to accomplish tasks other people do without a second thought.
An anxiety journal is a powerful mental health tool. Keeping a journal can help you reduce anxiety and move forward freely into your quality life. Beyond that, an anxiety journal can empower you to know what that quality life will be like and how to create it.
I am currently using opposite action to save my social life. Learn how opposite action, a dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skill, is helping me.
There is a vicious, rampant correlation between eating disorders and bullying—the epidemic is real, and children of all ages can be vulnerable to the mental and physical ramifications. In the United States alone, 65 percent of those with eating disorders have reported that incidents of bullying caused their behaviors to manifest, and 40 percent of children or adolescents are mocked by their peers for weight-related issues.1 This data, compiled by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), also notes that when bullying occurs, a victimized person will often experience bouts of insecurity, poor self-esteem, body image distortion, and an urge to numb the painful emotions. So in order to protect children from these adverse effects, it's crucial to understand the epidemic scale of eating disorders and bullying.
My name is Kim Berkley, and I'm the new author of Speaking Out About Self-Injury. I’m looking forward to putting my writing skills to particularly good use here where I hope my words will bring some measure of comfort and clarity to those struggling with self-harm.
I've found hope is harmful. I know, the reflex is to disagree with this, but, at least in my case, hope is harmful. I recently found a bit of hope of ending a profound, debilitating depression. I knew feeling that hope was a mistake, but some part of my brain refused to listen to that. And sure enough, it turned out that hope was harmful.
Where do we go from here? Most of the family thinks just to let her hit bottom and then if she reaches out to help any we can. Some want to just keep paying her bills and just let her sit in the house with no responsibilities. Never been on medication and impossible to get to her when she refuses to talk to ANYONE.
Help.
On the day we agreed to videochat to make things less awkward IRL she woke up with a migraine so we rescheduled to the day after, I made sure to assure her that it was okay and to take her time. Later that day, in the late evening we had a nice chat but suddenly she stopped replying, even though nothing had happened. The day after I texted her good morning and said I hope she was feeling a little better. she wouldn't open my texts.
A couple days after I sent her a longer text saying that even though I had only known her for a short time I care a lot for her and would like to know how she are doing, telling her I'm there for her, assuring her I'm not going anywhere even though things might not be very easy. She wouldn't open it.
A week later I sent a text saying not to feel bad about not answering and that I will be there when she is able to answer again. It's been two weeks since this and she still hasn't opened my texts. She hasn't been active at all.
I don't know what else I can do. I assumed she might have fallen into a depression. I have tried to just not think about it anymore, and I haven't that much but when I do it sort of kills me inside...