Blogs
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2012 is this week. This year's theme is "Everybody Knows Somebody."
According to the National Eating Disorders Association, ten million women and up to one million men have anorexia or bulimia, and millions more struggle with binge eating disorder.
That means that you most likely know somebody with an eating disorder.
About 6 months after I left my abusive husband, I met a man who I've come to love. The loving part was easy - he's a complete turn-around from my ex-husband. My new love treats me kindly, he cooks for me and my children, he's generous with his time and affection. He tells me I'm beautiful and doesn't expect me to fall over myself with gratefulness that he said something nice to me! Perhaps better than those cosmetic qualities, he wants to hear my thoughts, he asks me how I feel, and, after I tell him these once-guarded intimacies, he does not tell me how misguided and delusional I am.
Do you have an addiction disorder in addition to borderline personality disorder? If so, you're not alone. The good news is you can fight back! Knowing warning signs of relapse is key to preventing it.
Easing anxiety with pets is animal therapy at its most natural--there's no need to be a professional to benefit from pets. Animals give us mental peace. Watch.
That which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger. We’ve all heard the cliché.
That may ring true for some, but not for me.
My depression has been raging these past few weeks, putting me through a hellacious test. Only it hasn’t made me stronger. It’s made me weaker. It’s made me tired. And it’s frustrated me to no end.
What is the definition of abuse? What counts as domestic violence? People search for versions of those questions thousands of times each month. Are there really so many people who do not know any definition of abuse?
I don't think so. I think victims continue searching for the definition of abuse because they want to believe their loved one does not abuse them. Victims would rather believe that they, in fact, are as crazy as their abusive relationship makes them feel. They want the definition of abuse to be something other than what they read on that last website.
When the Disney Corporation, icon of social conservatism, first actively began pursuing gay tourists, many consumers were shocked. However, hospitality industry insiders were not; they understood that, like other American businesses, Disney places profit over prejudice ten times out of ten.
So, much to the consternation of Grumpy, Doc, Goofy, Minnie and Snow White, wonderlands of all things Mickey were suddenly gay-friendly and in no time at all the music of cash registers began wafting breezily through the sheets of fiberglass snow falling gently on plastic hills and valleys. Disney Corp. even bundled special events, tours, and vacations specifically for this demographic.
For mentally ill Americans like me, it was a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, we were delighted to see members of a beleaguered minority group finally welcomed into the inner sanctum of what passes for culture in this country. But, on the other hand, we felt our own exclusion even more painfully. When – we wondered – when would our day come?
I met a beautiful young creature. I then flirted with said creature, as is my habit. Eventually, she asked me a question about local politics. A perfection reasonable question, one assumes. There was just one problem, I don’t know anything about local politics. This is because I refuse to watch the news as I find it depressing and I told her so. She said she understood.
Then we planned to go out to a movie. She asked me to pick the film. I picked one of the action-suspense genre as then there was no chance of me becoming emotionally activated by a stupid movie. Nope, no romantic movies on a date with me.
And then we discussed the showing to see. I have to see the early show because I turn into a pumpkin at 9:00 PM. And really, I prefer to see matinees because they disrupt my sleep cycle less which disrupts my bipolar less.
Poor girl, she had no idea what her flirtation had waded her into.
The news is exciting: a research study has found that cognitive improvements are possible for those with schizophrenia - and that the results can stick. And even better: these results can be achieved with the help of a program to teach social and cognitive skills with the use of computer games. A reporter called me yesterday for a comment before she finished her article, and it certainly got me to reflect on my my son Ben, and how he is - slowly - beginning to show more signs of "growing up."
One of the very first "aha moments" for me, when I finally began to learn about schizophrenia and its symptoms, came with the information that it is a "double-edged sword" of positive (added to personality) and negative (taken away from personality).
I also learned, in NAMI's Family-to-Family course, about the concept of being "frozen in time" for many affected by mental illness.
First diagnosed with mental illness, many of of us feel a little--a lot--angry and confused. We might wonder what we did wrong to deserve a diagnosis that carries stigma and no absolute cure.
Perhaps we feel we will never recover from mental illness, it will follow us through life, biting at our ankles like a dog we wouldn't mind kicking. And that's normal, that's human, there is not a person on this earth that---I will take the liberty to assume---does not have a hard time accepting the diagnosis. At first.
All this aside, putting your mental illness, the diagnosis of it, in perspective is important.
Stigma & Mental Illness
Mental Illness carries stigma.
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...