“You need to accept the fact that schizophrenia is a chronic condition. You will have it for the rest of your life, so you need to start focusing on managing your symptoms.” When I heard it put so plainly, I sighed in despair.
My panic attacks are still not discriminatory nor are they accommodating. For years, they came and went as they pleased. In bedrooms, in showers, on vacations, and in cars.
I had always been a sullen, solitary girl, sensitive and moody, prone to uncontrollable emotional outbursts. But the sadness I felt that winter was deeper, the outbursts more frequent, intense, and all-consuming.
It is impossible to ignore the impact that a child’s addiction and mental health has on a parent. Because of this I started therapy myself, and I believe that it saved my life.
I felt like a complete failure. I had always been able to handle everything without an issue. But at first, navigating depression was another story.
Whenever I’d gone through stages of major depression or anxiety as a young teenager, all I’d hear was that I was stupid, lazy, and unambitious. Imagine being judged by your symptoms and not by your illness.
The passive suicidal thoughts are still there, but I have started to recognize that they are only powerful if I give them the power.
When I finally saw a psychiatrist, she was surprised that I was still alive, having been afflicted with depression for so long without medical treatment.
Persistent depressive disorder (formerly known as dysthymic disorder or dysthymia) is just what it sounds like: depression that persists.
by Sarah Hughes
Social anxiety still exists online. You’re still putting yourself out there and you feel vulnerable opening up, not knowing what response you’ll get.
In my research, I found several articles about Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures. Doctors do not use the term pseudo-seizures anymore because it falsifies them and invalidates them. Pseudo is a prefix meaning “false” or “fake,” and the seizures I was having, while not epileptic, were anything but fake.
Experiencing childhood trauma, I knew that something was wrong or different about me, but for a long time I dismissed that notion.
It took months of internal debate before I worked up the courage and the desire to at least give the depression and bipolar support groups a shot.
Groggy. Always groggy. Part bored, part feeling down. Seems I always have habits I either need to break or start—when I can get around to it. Maybe tomorrow, after my 8:30am nap.
Before I had a name for my mental illness — bipolar disorder and ptsd — this is what it felt like: playing diagnosis dress-up, trying on labels, seeing how they fit, and feeling lost — like there was nothing left in my closet to wear.
by Halle Stern
They say when you experience a traumatic experience as a child, you block out the details. My memory jumps.
I failed the postpartum screening given, as protocol, by the hospital, and yet they sent me home.
I don’t know when it started. It was not as though I suddenly woke up with a raging heartbeat and butterflies in my stomach, wishing I could run away from myself. It came in tiny bits of worry.
I started writing songs about my feelings and sharing them with audiences throughout the country as a touring musician, under the name The Homeless Gospel Choir.
Joe has wrestled with alcoholism and the stresses of life as a police officer, a sometimes combustible combination.
