My Mental Health: recent publications

All articles where My Mental Health is mentioned

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13.04.2023 / 16:25

How My Ex-Husband Used My Mental Health Struggles as Revenge Porn

In the last days of our marriage, I opened a YouTube link sent via text from my ex-husband with the title “Dealing with Someone who Dissociates.” That someone in the video was me—more accurately, my 9-year-old part who exists as a key member of our dissociative system. Yes, we are a person with dissociative identities and we move through life as a collective of various selves who developed in response to earlier traumas.

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Holding Onto Hope on My Mental Health Journey

There are times I think I know what I’m doing in life. I feel confident. On top of things. “I’ve got this,” I say to myself.

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The Vows to My Husband Were Also Vows to My Mental Health

When I was first diagnosed with anxiety and depression at 15, I started to think about my future. Being overwhelmed with a new diagnosis, I spent a lot of time wondering how my life would play out. All my dreams suddenly became just out of reach, and I felt limited.

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The Role 'Debby Downer' Plays in My Mental Health

Negativity holds power. But we think it’s bad by it’s very nature. What if — for a second — we thought about negative thoughts as a sort of subconscious way of protecting us? I’ve decided I’m going to start calling my negative thinking side Debby Downer. It kind of gives me a chuckle and could spark me into remembering to twist my thoughts into something more positive. My positive and strong side is now called Resilient Rachael. I discovered this before 7 am this morning as I laid in bed.

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6 Coworkers Who Helped My Mental Health

We spend a significant portion of our lives in the presence of our coworkers. If we work for eight hours a day, that’s almost a third of our lives, and half of our waking hours. Based purely on time spent together, we can have a significant impact on one another’s mental health. We all have examples of that terrible colleague that stresses us out or makes our blood boil, but it can go the other way too. I’ve been lucky enough to have some phenomenal coworkers over the years, ones I would consider friends today, who have helped my mental health whether it was intentional or not. Seemingly small actions can end up meaning a lot to someone, whether we know what someone is up against or not.

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What Became My Biggest Coping Mechanism for My Mental Health

We spend a lot of time judging others, whereas a whole world lies inside our little minds, which can turn our life upside down.

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I’m Shy, but Talking to Strangers Has Improved My Mental Health

I’m pretty shy — maybe more of an ambivert since it depends on the situation, but recently I started to push myself to talk to other people who I don’t know but I sense may share some common interests with me.

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I'm Trying the Digital Nomad Lifestyle. Here's What It's Doing to My Mental Health.

I did it. I let go of my apartment and all the associated bills and secured a digital nomadic lifestyle. I’m currently waiting for a French visa so I can start my travels where Carrie decided to take Big back for good (which I’m still mad about). Until then, I’m at my parents’ or my friends’ homes with my little dog living my best life, or I’m supposed to be.

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What I Learned After Retiring for My Mental Health

I don’t think enough people talk about retirement. Perhaps retirement is becoming a privilege to so few that we just don’t talk about it much. If you have been careful, thoughtful, and fortunate enough to retire with any degree of comfort, you know you are blessed. However, even under pretty good circumstances, retirement is a unique developmental transition that we don’t really think about until we get closer to the event. We might work with a financial planner, imagine trips we would like to take, or even places we might move to. We don’t necessarily think about what it would be like to leave a career that you spent time, effort, and heart in building.

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How Intentionally Being a Negative Ass Person Helped My Mental Health

“Good vibes only,” I used to say while sipping my grande chai latte with two pumps of matcha and two pumps of classic.

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How I Protect My Mental Health in the Age of 'Doomscrolling'

I’ll admit it: I’m a “doomscroller.” I wouldn’t call it “bad habit,” because at this point, it has gone beyond that. I’ve become an expert at perusing hundreds of articles, videos, and blog posts — some opinion, some news, and some opinion disguised as news — only to find that once I’ve put my phone down, I haven’t really “stopped.”

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Why Pursuing Disability Benefits Is Actually Making My Mental Health Worse

For the past three years, I have been pursuing disability benefits for my mental illnesses, which include schizoaffective disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Stress is a huge trigger for my mental illnesses, and the disability process has been nothing but an utter nightmare. I hope that I won’t always need to be on disability, but at this point in time, I have been directed by my therapist that this is the best option for me and my recovery. However, I have found throughout the process that the system is designed to make you feel inferior so that you will give up trying to get disability benefits, and the stress has done nothing but make my illnesses so much worse.

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22 Ways My Friends Accommodate My Mental Health Conditions

Many of us with disabilities may struggle to maintain relationships with others. It can be exhausting and scary for us to try to meet society’s expectations. Society pressures us to expend a certain amount of energy on engaging with our friends every day or multiple times a week. We are expected to be available to respond to texts quickly and be overly flexible or accepting. We are told that we should keep in touch with as many people as possible, and we are looked down upon when we choose to cut people off. We are also made to feel guilty when we want to say “no.” If we can’t meet these expectations, we are told that people will abandon us or reject us. We are taught that people will become exhausted with us if we are unable to keep up with these expectations.

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When My Mental Health Collided With My Identity as a Student

A couple of months ago, I sat in a paralegal school class wondering what would happen if my course instructors knew my medical history. They may have seen me as a dedicated student, but what would happen if they knew me as someone who had undergone three surgeries, multiple suicide attempts, and two years of eating disorder and mental health treatment? The mere thought of my health identity clashing with my identity as a student made me shudder, and as my mind drifted from legal research to my deepest fears, I hoped those two identity facets would never need to merge.

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I Will Not Compromise My Mental Health for a Job

Years of self-analysis and self-love has led me to develop a strong self-confidence. I am grateful for the strength that allows me to recognize and to leave toxic relationships. I walk away like I’m headbanging at a System of a Down concert — no f***s given, neck aching with whiplash. I do not give people permission to disrupt my peace.

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Making These 5 Changes Totally Transformed My Mental Health

ditching resolutions or the sadness of post-holiday blues, and it’s no wonder the most depressing day of the year is on Jan. 17.I urge you to focus on your mental health even more than you typically do right now: take your sick days when you just need a break (and don’t feel guilty!), schedule extra sessions with your therapist, and make small changes to your routine to give yourself grace and extra care.

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How This New Year's Eve Visualization Helps My Mental Health

Picture New Year’s Eve. The ball drop, a million balloons, big hats and funny glasses. Imagine the taste of all the snacks you’ll get to eat. Hear the laughter and maybe even see the tears. Now, feel the hope. Even in my darkest of times, I could feel the hope of this night.

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How I'm Protecting My Mental Health Against the Exhaustion of the Holiday Season

Tired. I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired. Not just your usual “man I wish I got more sleep last night” tired, but life tired. Tired of processing events that have happened in the past few months, tired of being on all day every day, tired of being me. I found myself telling my therapist that I didn’t want to be me anymore, because no matter what I do life happens and I end up back here in this place.

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How My Dogs Are Built-In Coping Skills for My Mental Health

Dogs. After having contributed over 50 articles to The Mighty since 2015, I am surprised I have never written a piece about my dogs and their role in my mental health recovery. Today is the day I change that.

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positivelypositive.com

07.10.2021 / 14:01

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Why Prioritizing Sustainability Improved My Mental Health

Medical debt coupled with ongoing care needs caused me to lose everything — including, quite nearly, my life. Only a last-minute surge of outrage kept me from becoming yet another death of despair.However, I had to find meaning in life if I hoped to escape hopeless depression over my circumstances.

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How Disneyland's 'Gay Days' Support My Mental Health

I recently visited Disneyland with my partner J.V. for “Gay Days,” an annual LGBTQ+ pride celebration at the parks.

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Aphantasia: How Being Unable to Visualize Anything Affects My Mental Health

Aphantasia is a condition where you cannot visualize — in effect, you are “blind” in your mind’s eye. When most people are told to imagine an apple, they close their eyes and can actually see an apple in their mind. However, due to my aphantasia, when I close my eyes, I see nothing but darkness. So instead of images, my aphant mind connects words. When told to imagine an apple, my mind races to retrieve everything I know about apples, from their color, shape, size and taste, to things you can do with apples, stories that involve apples, pretty much anything apple-related.

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I Left My Job, and My Boss Left My Mental Health Destroyed

I had a boss who micromanaged me and all my co-workers once, and it took a toll on our mental health and majorly affected our lives. It also changed a job I loved, and a company I was devoted to and would have retired with, to a company that disappointed me and broke my heart. I was at a job I loved most days for years. I was my boss’s right hand man, I got raises and even thought about getting back into management again when my boss decided to leave and my daughter was older.

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How Living in New York Through the Doom of 9/11 Impacted My Mental Health

Horror hovered above New York City in the aftermath of 9/11. The brisk tempo of a once-raging metropolis slowed to a crawl, the five boroughs brittle and on the brink of demise. Everything felt like it was devoid of color. That concrete jungle in all its majestic glory was eerily silent, its electrified zeal fading to black. What was once a full-throttled ultimate megacity had taken on a milieu of depeche mode. People walked slowly. They kept their heads down. They didn’t speak. Utter sadness was gripping Gotham City. And like the rest of the nation, eight million of us were collectively crying.

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How Migraines Affect My Mental Health

Migraines are, luckily, not something I get on a constant basis, but I have one at least every month. I tend to get a lot of eye migraines. Usually, one of my eyes starts pulsing and it feels like my head is splitting open. I also get incredibly nauseous. It hurts to have any sort of light near me and all I want is complete darkness. A lot of my migraines tend to be from stress or anxiety, although my seasonal allergies do contribute. When I get migraines, it tends to set off a chain of events that not only derail my daily life, but also hurt my mental health, which is precarious on its best days.

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What Helps Me Build Trust With My Mental Health Team

In my opinion, trust is the most important quality to have in any relationship. Whether the relationship is with a boyfriend, girlfriend, teacher or even an auto mechanic, trust should be established early on in the relationship. For a mental health patient, trusting your psychiatrist or psychologist is crucial in recovery. You don’t have to be best friends, but you should be able to trust whoever is evaluating your progress.

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The Impact of Endometriosis Surgery on My Mental Health

It’s been one year ago that I went into surgery with normal expectations. My doctor and I had talked thoroughly, and I was prepared for all scenarios mentioned, or so I thought. Two hours after my surgery had started, at 12:31 pm exactly, my heart went into cardiac arrest. I stopped breathing. Code blue was called, and a team of doctors and nurses fought to get my heart started again. It was eight long minutes before they got my heart started again. No one ever tells you how painful it is to wake up after eight minutes of CPR. I’m here to tell you, it hurts very badly; but I survived.

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How My Next Tattoo Will Represent My Mental Health Journey

My next mental health tattoo isn’t going to be about mental health at all — except that it will be.

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My Mental Health Diagnosis Is Just as Serious as My Cancer Diagnosis

Before anyone yells at me for the title of this article, I want to be clear that I am currently battling stage IV cancer and have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, OCD and PTSD for nine years now. So, I think I have some room to speak on this topic. And it’s interesting, because I see things like cancer and mental health struggles constantly being compared. Some in the mental health community want to advocate that their struggle is just as bad as physical health, which can lead physical health patients to feel invalidated because not all people understand mental health.

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Why I Post About My Mental Health on Facebook

As a millennial, I spend a fair amount of my day on social media. The usage tracker on my phone says that I spend approximately two hours per day on Facebook alone, which, yes, seems excessive.

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Why Sharing My Mental Health Story Sometimes Makes Me Feel Invalidated

I am a survivor of schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality disorder (BPD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), multiple eating disorders, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and fibromyalgia. In recent years, I have seen various professionals to receive my diagnoses and address them, but I have struggled with my mental health for the majority of my life. Despite my struggle with mental illness, however, I have been described by others as “high-functioning.” Unfortunately, in recent years, my mental illnesses have become so severe that I haven’t been able to work and have been taking time to focus on my health.

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How My Floatation Tank Experience Affected My Mental Health

If, like me, your first introduction to sensory deprivation tanks was on The Simpsons, then you are in good company. That episode aired, a decade went by, and just when I began to believe these tanks were the stuff of TV lore, I saw one advertised in my city. I went ahead and booked myself in.

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Why I've Been Open About My Mental Health, but Not This Physical Condition

My journey with depression and anxiety has been going on for decades. I’ve never shied away from being open about when I’ve been through, but I certainly never went out of my way to “share” my struggles. A few years ago I started writing for The Mighty. My first article was submitted on a whim, but writing became something that let me share with others that they were not alone.

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How I Cope When Being Physically Sick Affects My Mental Health

I’ve had a bad summer cold for about a week now. And I am tired of it. I’m tired of using dozens of tissues a day and coughing until my head hurts. But also, being physically sick brings out another side of me, at least in terms of my mental health. I feel incredibly emotional and sensitive. I am on the verge of tears multiple times a day. I crave validation and love, even more than usual. I haven’t felt this way on the daily since I was deep in depression a couple years ago. I’d never quite realized before how big of an effect physical illness can have on my mental health.

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How Healing My Mental Health After a Breakdown Was Like Healing a Broken Bone

I had just taken a long-term leave from work. I had a breakdown in the office and just felt like I couldn’t go back in without it being detrimental and devastating to my continued existence. Every healthy yet overworked and stressed person, upon hearing “long-term leave,” usually thinks it’s time to sit back and enjoy some TV, catch up on reading.

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How Being Forced to Come Out Affected My Mental Health

As Pride Month commences in June, celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community, I always find it a good time to reflect on my own coming out story. I think about how I was forced out of the closet before I was ready. I think about how that terrified 17-year-old girl transformed into a confident member of the LGBTQIA+ community. I think about how, even today, I’m not quite sure how that happened.

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Reflecting on The Positive Steps in My Mental Health Recovery

Looking back there are steps in my recovery from mental illness that I was totally unaware of as I was going through them. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the positive steps in my recovery.

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What I Need When I Share My Mental Health Diagnosis With You

Over the past decade, I’ve been diagnosed with multiple illnesses including a personality disorder, a mood disorder and an eating disorder. But telling someone about my mental health is still a challenge.

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How I Protect My Mental Health Against the Isolation of Quarantine

The outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has rocked our world and caused all of us to isolate in ways we never dreamed of doing before. For some of us who have a severe mental illness diagnosis, this isolation is more than we might have ever experienced with our most extreme symptoms. While I have to fight my tendency to self-isolate as a result of my schizoaffective diagnosis, recent days have caused me to think about my routine and how it can, not only keep me safe from the virus, but enable me to have a productive life.

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Why I'm Speaking Up About My Mental Health Struggles

I cast away my self-aversions, the interjects and self-doubt.

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Why Hyperfixation Feels Like a Toxic Part of My Mental Health Struggle

Hyperfixation, commonly associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is an occurrence when an individual becomes fully engrossed with something, may it be a hobby, movie, book, person, and so on. Often, this hyperfixation affects the rest of the person’s life as they have a challenging time focusing on anything other than their fixation, including work, school, self-care and relationships. While hyperfixation is associated with ADHD and autism, it is also present in various mental illnesses, and as someone with mental illness, I often experience hyperfixation and would like to share my story with you.

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What a Friend Calling Me ‘Crazy’ Taught Me About Sharing My Mental Health Challenges

A decade later and I still vividly remember the words, “you are crazy,” coming out of my friend’s mouth.

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Why I Choose to Be Open About My Mental Health

It’s 2021 and we’ve come a long way with how we talk about mental health, but it’s very clear there is much more work that needs to be done. In this digital age of sharing every aspect of our lives, it can seem like everybody has it together. Camera rolls across the world are filled with that perfect shot – and the 37 others taken before it that society has made us feel aren’t good enough. To go against this aesthetic of a picture-perfect life can be downright scary, though sharing the absolute truth of what happens behind the lens may just be what we really need.

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How My Mental Health Changed My Career Working With A-List Celebrities

I have spent most of my life focused on one career, which was working in the audio and broadcast media industry. For 20 years, I was a professional sound engineer and location sound recordist.

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Why Waiting for the COVID-19 Vaccine Is Impacting My Mental Health

I have never waited for anything with such bated breath than I have for the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine to arrive. I know I’m not alone with wanting life to return to something that looks like “normal” — everyone wishes the pandemic was simply a thing of the past. I have to admit that I’m incredibly lucky; I have a roof over my head and enough food to eat, so I’m more fortunate than many Americans right now. However, I’ve noticed that since the vaccine became available, my symptoms of depression and anxiety have worsened. So, what caused this negative effect on my mental health?

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Holding Onto Hope on My Mental Health Journey

There are times I think I know what I’m doing in life. I feel confident. On top of things. “I’ve got this,” I say to myself.

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Working on My Mental Health as a Parent

There is a battle between the kind of mom I imagined myself to be and the one I actually am. Before I had a child, I had an image in my mind of the mom I wanted to be. I wanted to be a fun mom. I wanted to be the cookie-baking, art-making mom who was always in a good mood.

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