Blogs
We all want to know how long it takes to heal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I know you want to heal yesterday, but the truth about PTSD, according to its diagnostic criteria, is that it doesn’t clear up overnight like a bad rash. Instead, we each have our own healing journey that has its own timeline. Settle in now for the long haul. Be realistic about what you are attempting to do. Give yourself permission to take the time you need. Decide you will be patient. And remember, how long it takes to heal posttraumatic stress disorder varies.
Having friends with mental illness can be good for your recovery. However, when you have a mental illness it can be hard to choose the right friends to involve in your mental illness recovery. One way to choose a good person is to seek out friends who also have mental illness to help you through your recovery. Having a friend who understands about living with your disease can coach you through difficult times as well as provide company through the good times.
Anxiety can be horrendous, so why would anyone want to stop avoiding anxiety and instead practice acceptance and commitment therapy? Avoiding anxiety can make a lot of sense. After all, anxiety can cause our thoughts to race with fear and worry, it can make our emotions spiral out of control, and it can create a whole host of awful physical symptoms from head to toe.
You probably know that 12-step groups help with things like alcoholism and codependency, but did you know 12-step groups can also help anxiety disorder? Such groups are a great way to alleviate loneliness, plus they help with building self-esteem and gratitude. Over time, 12-step groups can help the pain of anxiety disorder.
Hello, my name is Kristen Virag, and I am very pleased to be the co-author of the Mental Health for the Digital Generation blog. I have had two major episodes of anxiety, depression and depersonalization (where your thoughts and feelings feel like you're not your own and you lose your own identity) which left me in a very crippled state for several months. I now consider myself recovered, but I pay special attention to myself and care for myself daily to make sure I never relapse.
It's important to keep calm when others put you down and that means staying level headed and reacting in a healthy way. Being put down by others can trigger self-esteem issues and cause emotional distress, if you allow it. The reality is that there will be people who put you down. Most people experience put downs at some point; and these can come from anyone including family members, peers, bullies or even strangers. The good news is that you can learn to keep calm and cope better when others put you down.
Learning the practice of presence will help you live your best life. The practice of presence helps you enjoy your life as you live it and keeps you from getting sucked in to the pursuit of perfection.
People with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder deal with stigma every day, but they have to deal with ableism as well. Ableism assumes that everyone functions at the normative capacity; and that’s just not true, including for people with a mental illness. For example, a facility without a ramp for people who are in wheelchairs would be a place of ableism. Ableism can also mean teasing someone with schizophrenia about leaving a party early. But self-inflicted ableism and schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder can be the worst stigma of all.
It's easy to overlook hydration when you have binge eating disorder. It's easy to overlook it when you don't have binge eating disorder. However, hydration should be an important thing for everyone, especially when you have binge eating disorder as dehydration can lead to overeating.
Do you need help finding a reason to live if you have a mental illness? For a long time I did. In spite of having a good treatment team, I just couldn't snap out of my depressive funks. I was frequently suicidal. Then I found my reason to live. Finding a reason to live when you have a mental illness can be just as vital to your treatment as finding the right medication and finding the right therapist.
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...