I wrote yesterday about cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and how it is about using objective facts and positive reinforcement to redirect negative thoughts. Yet it isn’t a process that happens overnight. Battling mental illness is a marathon, not a sprint. And no one expects a runner to get up and run 26 miles without training, […]
I talk a lot about my subjective experiences with my mental illnesses, but I don’t talk enough about the therapy and treatment I am getting and how that is helping me battle my demons. My therapist focuses on using cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, to treat the negative and harmful thought patterns I have that […]
Mental illnesses can be incredibly isolating, and can make you feel like you are the only one fucking shit up. At least that is the case for me. Even though I know that making mistakes is human, I feel like every mistake I make is glaring and obvious, and that the whole world is judging […]
Today I woke up with just a hint of depression. Not the all encompassing major depressive episodes that leave me stuck in bed because the energy of moving is just too much and it is impossible to feel hopeful about anything, but rather just a twing of depression, a I’d-get-out-of-bed-if-I-could-see-a-point-to-doing-so-but-right-now-I-just-don’t-see-it type of depression. I’ve been […]
I have struggled with mental illnesses since I was in middle school. Anxiety was the main bully of my mind, but occasionally it brought its buddy depression. I didn’t fit in, and my separation made me an easy target for kids to ridicule because kids will be kids and kids can be absolutely awful. And […]
Several years ago, my therapist asked me if I knew who I was. I couldn’t answer. It is a strange and deeply unsettling feeling, not being able to answer a question like that. Perhaps the hole left by that unanswered question has left the perfect hiding place for the darkness of my depression and anxiety […]
One of the most insidious tricks my mental illnesses play on me is impostor syndrome, the feeling that all my accomplishments are mistakes, and that it is only a matter of time until I am exposed as a worthless fraud. A failure. And even though I know depression lies and that this is its most […]
