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When someone who self-harms makes a mark, they do it for a reason unlike anyone else’s. No one person talks or sees or thinks the same and, in truth, that is quite a positive thing. However, when it comes to negative thoughts and choices, those too are specific to that person and that person alone can only change it.
Every self-harm scar and mark is proof of hardship, but is also proof of survival. The scars should also tell the self-harmer that it is possible to move forward after the mark is made. Sometimes, it is important to stand back, look in the mirror and really see the scars scattered on your skin. Think about why they are there and if you could have stopped yourself from making them.
Description of A "Toxic Ex"
A toxic ex is any co-parent who creates a loyalty conflict for your child(ren). Loyalty conflicts occur when your child believes they must choose one parent over the other.
A toxic ex will do things like:
Restrict or hinder communication and/or contact between you and your children.
Talk badly about you to your children.
Erase and Replace You (This phrase comes from Co-parenting with a Toxic Ex and means to ". . . erase you from your child's heart, mind, and memory and install someone else . . .").
Undermine you.
Persuade your kids to not trust you and urge them to betray your trust (the "divide and conquer to maintain control" routine).
I'm here to talk to you today about how to make a career choice that would work well with your adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I had a great job in Boston working for the Unitarian Universalist Association and I loved my supervisor and my colleagues. Still, there was always something about sitting behind a desk that just didn't work for me.
I got sober in a rigorous outpatient treatment program based on confrontational therapy and geared toward adolescents. At nearly 22, I was the oldest client. The program is unorthodox and its founder is a somewhat controversial figure in the mental health treatment community. I have mixed feelings about his methods, but something in that program did get, and keep, me sober where others had failed.
Do you wonder why your self-esteem is still low? You've been doing work to increase confidence but it still feels like you are stuck? There are a few reasons why you are having trouble improving your self-esteem.
If you've ever had a panic attack, you know what it’s like. You’re just going about your life, perhaps in class or a meeting or a store or somewhere else, even home, when bam! Out of the blue, your heart begins to pound and your head begins to swim. The world around you blurs. Your hands shake and sweat. You can’t breathe, and your chest constricts painfully. The ground wobbles, making it all the more difficult for your weak legs to keep you steady. You’re nauseated and oh god you don’t want to get sick. And as if symptoms like these (they can vary a bit from person to person) aren't horrible enough, on top of all this you begin to doubt and question yourself.
One of my biggest regrets from my drinking days is that I wasn't a support for my grandfather when he was dying. We were very close throughout my childhood and adolescence, but when he experienced a recurrence of cancer I was totally immersed in my alcoholism. My mother and I lived with my grandparents for some of his last months, but I was more harm than help. He died a few months before I got sober and for years, my wreaking havoc on my family during this difficult time pained me. For the last seven years I have experienced troubling recurring dreams involving my grandparents and their home, which was a happy and magical place for me growing up.
I've been skeptical about helpful quotes and positive affirmations for a long time. To me, they smack of the denial present in some forms of positive thinking: keep up a cheerful facade, and everything will be fine.
I'm not down with this type of philosophy. Anxious people with low self-esteem also need the freedom to acknowledge their struggles in a safe environment, free from judgmental stigma and the oppression of relentless optimism. Sometimes, we need to talk about how not fine everything is.
However, some people swear by the power of positive affirmations. An enormous self-help movement, from Louise Hay to Tony Robbins, has been built on the premise that positive statements about ourselves not only make us feel better, they can heal our lives/minds/bodies/souls/children/parents/goldfish. Oh, and our dogs, too.
So, do positive affirmations really help repair our sense of self-worth? Well, it depends.
We’re used to the negative side of depression but could there be a positive side to the beast? I thought of this recently in terms of depressive symptoms sometimes being a signal – a sign to look more closely at certain things in my life.
Coping with symptoms of mental illness can be a daily struggle for the mentally ill. Each person develops his or her own strategies to cope with these painful experiences. These strategies can be as unique to each person as you can make them. What works for you to battle your mental illness symptoms might not work for me, and vice versa.
We learn these coping strategies over time in the crucible of our illness and the ways in which we gain insight into our symptoms and how they uniquely affect us. That’s why it’s not very helpful to say to a mentally ill person struggling with their symptoms, “Just do this,” or “Just do that.”
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...