Blogs
Undoubtedly, social anxiety interferes with life and can ruin your fun (Social Anxiety: A Spectrum from Shy to Avoidant). Living with social anxiety means being on edge, unable to relax or let our guard down. Experiencing social anxiety means living in fear of doing something embarrassing or being judged as incompetent, inadequate, "less than." Social anxiety creates racing thoughts that are relentlessly self-critical. The anxiety, fear, and sheer exhaustion of all of this can make us shy away from people and social situations. In doing so, is social anxiety ruining your fun?
My doctor questioned my dissociative identity disorder diagnosis because dissociation is a coping skill for me. Dissociative disorders are described as having dissociation as a dysfunction that impairs living life in some way. But I don't think that is always the case. While some view dissociation as a dysfunction, many view dissociation as a positive coping mechanism that actually helps them get through the day. For me, dissociation is the very thing that allows me to function. So is dissociation a coping skill or is it dysfunction?
Finding comfort in depression is diffictul, but not impossible. Coping with depression is already challenging and it can seem impossible to find comfort in the depths of depression. Whether I'm seeking comfort from others or I am attempting to comfort myself, I often find myself coming up empty handed (Depression Support: Why You Need It, Where to Find It). But the challenge of finding comfort in depression is worthwhile and beneficial to coping with the illness.
Living in a family with mental illness, it can feel impossible to find peace. Even when I find a way to be stable and healthy while living with bipolar I disorder, mental illness and its effects still run rampant through my family. Countless times, I have looked at my doctors and asked them, "How do I find peace in a family with mental illness?" Their answer is always the same: "Give up trying to find peace in your family. Instead, find peace in yourself, in your own life, on your own terms." As I order my own world, I find a greater level of peace when dealing with my family, despite the havoc mental illness may cause.
If you want to improve your mental health, you should improve your physical health. You'll be pleased to know there is a direct association between sleep, exercise, nutrition, and emotional health. Individually, chronic sleep loss, lack of physical activity, or eating poorly can exacerbate symptoms of anxiety and depression. So if you want to improve your mental health, you should improve your physical health, too.
I have a mental illness--a disability--but should I check the "disability" box when applying for a job? I recently was laid off at one job and had my hours cut at another, for a total loss of around $500 in income per month. I've dusted off my resumes and started applying for jobs, but have been hindered by a question: "Should I check the disability box?" Several businesses claim to be equal opportunity employers and make an effort to hire people with disabilities (Should You Disclose Mental Illness in the Workplace?). But can we trust them not to discriminate? Should we check the box that says we have a mental illness disability?
When you're under pressure, it can be hard to handle anxiety at work. Many people who have anxiety struggle with change, myself included. It takes awhile for me to adjust to any new situation. At the beginning, I doubt everything and make up the worst scenarios in my head--getting shoved into a locker in middle school, failing college, getting fired from a job, etc. But one thing I learned recently is that even though change can be scary, it can also be a good thing by challenging my anxiety. Read on to learn about how to handle work anxiety when you're under pressure.
Something I always stress to people is that eating disorder recovery is not always a linear process and slips in eating disorder recovery happen. This is unfortunate, but something we need to be aware of. Throughout my recovery journey, I fell back into old disordered eating behaviors countless times before long-term abstinence from binging was able to occur. Here's how to deal with slips in eating disorder recovery.
Mental health stigma affects the loved ones of a person with mental illness, not only the person with the mental illness. I don’t mean in the situations where the loved one openly or inadvertently stigmatizes, but rather the stigma falls onto them to by association. I know it’s sometimes just a worry that we as people with mental illness have, and typically we look at it in the form of thinking we’re embarrassments rather than the targets of stigma, but loved ones face mental health stigma, too.
Our world, it seems, is becoming increasingly toxic; handling anxiety in this fearful, stressful environment can sometimes seem impossible. Negativity swirls around us like dead leaves tossed about in a gust of wind. (And it can feel like the wind picks up not just dead leaves but gravel, pelting us with the gravel; and it can feel like the wind is so violently strong that we can’t move.) It’s not uncommon right now to feel alone in that wind storm because everyone else is trapped in their own anxious storms (Despite Paralyzing Anxiety, There Are Ways To Move). Are humans still driven by kindness, or are they driven by hate toward those who disagree with them? It can be difficult to handle anxiety in a fearful, stressful, toxic world.
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...