Bipolar Advantage We Are Capable Of Far More Than The Limitations Most People Accept By Tom Wootton Do you have bipolar disorder or know somebody who does? What would change if you could learn how to turn depression and mania on and off whenever you wanted to? The entire way we look at bipolar disorder would change in profound ways. Please understand that I am not talking about people who do not know how yet say “snap out of it” or any other offensive phrase, but the actual ability to do it which is an incredibly advanced skill. I have been openly sharing my journey and exploration of the possibilities with bipolar for over 10 years now. Peer-Directed Education For Bipolar Disorder The Focus Of A New Tufts University Study The Mood Disorders Program at Tufts University Medical Center has just completed a pilot study of the Bipolar IN Order peer-directed online education program. Nassir Ghaemi MD and his team at Tufts are directing a full follow-up study in January and are looking for 750 people to join.
What if the Central Premise of Bipolar Disorder Is Wrong? Imagine you've never seen a car before and the first one you see was involved in a fatal accident. You express how tragic that is and that you would really love to be able to help keep that from happening to others. They show you videos of all kinds of car crashes and tell you how many millions of lives are devastated by them. Since you don't understand the utility of having cars, you may suggest doing away with cars altogether. Or perhaps creating a 20 mph speed limit on all roads. Neither of these solutions would work, of course, because you wouldn't get any compliance from those who have cars. It would be far more productive to study all of the costs and benefits of having cars and use that study to determine the best desired outcomes. Starting from such a premise would lead you to suggest that better education and training would make better drivers. It is easy to understand why some people choose to go without cars and use a horse and buggy instead. - Stephen P.
7 Signs Your Havingness Level is Dangerously Low » BAD WITCHES witchery Published on December 20th, 2014 | by Carolyn Elliott Your havingness level is an internal barometer of how much good stuff you allow yourself to have before your “too good to be true!” alarm bell goes off and you start unconsciously freaking out and rejecting that good stuff. The “good stuff” that a low havingness level will cause you to reject may be just about anything – love, money, sex, fun, creativity, joy. In my years of coaching, I’ve discovered that a low havingness level is the one of the very biggest obstacles to success and fulfillment that most magical people face. The bad news is that your havingness level is originally set when you’re a child, and it’s calibrated to precisely match the havingness level of your family. The good news is that you can reset and increase your havingness level in any arena so you can allow in way more good stuff. You know that your havingness level is low when: This one is a dead-giveaway. A Deeper Understanding of Havingness Related Posts
seventhvoice I’ve just read yet another post stating that women with Autism have it easier than men with Autism because they are better at ‘masking’ their behaviors. This is a gross over statement. Not all women with Autism are brilliant at ‘mimicking’ others. Not all women with Autism engage in ‘masking’ behaviors. The continued, unquestioning, promotion and legitimization of the notion that all women with Autism willingly comply with such stereotypical codes of behavior does us no favors at all. If anything, one could argue that such ideas do little more than create another rod for our backs as they are fast being employed as yet another diagnostic benchmark to determine whether or not a woman has Autism. The problem with these ideas is that they avoid or sidestep the simple truth that women were not allowed to express feelings of difference in any positive, meaningful way, prior to the understanding that women could experience High Functioning Autism (Asperger’s Syndrome) right along side men.
My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward The first time I saw my wife walking around the Georgetown campus I shouted out “Buongiorno Principessa!” like a buffoon. She was Italian, radiant, way out of my league, but I was fearless and almost immediately in love. Two years after graduation we married, when we were both just 24 years old and many of our friends were still looking for first jobs. One night, as I approached Giulia’s room, she saw me and collapsed on her bed, chanting “Voglio morire, voglio morire, voglio morire.” Giulia had a concrete life plan: to become a director of marketing at a fashion company and have three kids by the time she turned 35. This is where that lovely storyline ends. After only a few weeks in her new position, Giulia’s anxiety level rose beyond anything I’d ever seen. She saw a therapist, then a psychiatrist who prescribed antidepressants and sleeping pills, which we both naively thought was a huge overreaction. (Photos: Courtesy of Mark Lukach) That fantasy shattered in the waiting room.
Neurodiversity Rewires Conventional Thinking About Brains | Magazine Illustration: Mark Weaver In the late 1990s, a sociologist named Judy Singer—who is on the autism spectrum herself—invented a new word to describe conditions like autism, dyslexia, and ADHD: neurodiversity. In a radical stroke, she hoped to shift the focus of discourse about atypical ways of thinking and learning away from the usual litany of deficits, disorders, and impairments. Echoing positive terms like biodiversity and cultural diversity, her neologism called attention to the fact that many atypical forms of brain wiring also convey unusual skills and aptitudes. Autistic people, for instance, have prodigious memories for facts, are often highly intelligent in ways that don’t register on verbal IQ tests, and are capable of focusing for long periods on tasks that take advantage of their natural gift for detecting flaws in visual patterns. The new word first appeared in print in a 1998 Atlantic article about Wired magazine’s website, HotWired, by journalist Harvey Blume.
What it means to "hold space" for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well - Heather Plett When my mom was dying, my siblings and I gathered to be with her in her final days. None of us knew anything about supporting someone in her transition out of this life into the next, but we were pretty sure we wanted to keep her at home, so we did. While we supported mom, we were, in turn, supported by a gifted palliative care nurse, Ann, who came every few days to care for mom and to talk to us about what we could expect in the coming days. She taught us how to inject Mom with morphine when she became restless, she offered to do the difficult tasks (like giving Mom a bath), and she gave us only as much information as we needed about what to do with Mom’s body after her spirit had passed. “Take your time,” she said. Ann gave us an incredible gift in those final days. In the two years since then, I’ve often thought about Ann and the important role she played in our lives. The work that Ann did can be defined by a term that’s become common in some of the circles in which I work.
Myers Briggs: Cat Edition All 16 Myers-Briggs Types, if they were furballs. We brought together the internet’s two favorite pastimes: MBTI and Cats. Behold, Myers Briggs: Cat Edition. “Excuse me, why have you disturbed me sir?” “Nope.” “World Domination: Initiated.” “I heard there was a party! “My kitty. “Excuse me human. “Mwahahahaha!” “Hi, umm… Oh.. “Pet me. “Parkour Cat.” “Don’t screw with me.” “There you go. “Don’t you worry about those other kitties. “No. “You will obey me.” If you like these… feel free to share ‘em!
Sick of this market-driven world? You should be | George Monbiot | Commentisfree To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed. I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe. We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identities are shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. At the heart of this story is the notion of merit.
This Stunning Photo Series Nails What It Feels Like To Have An Anxiety Disorder It can be difficult to verbalize what it's like to experience mental illness, so photographer Katie Crawford decided to show people instead of tell them. In a stunning self-portrait series titled "My Anxious Heart," Crawford captures how it feels to suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and depression -- two conditions she has personally dealt with since she was a child. "I created the project as a way for me to personally express what I feel like in my experience. I know it may not be specific to each person, but I hope that it creates the opportunity to open a dialogue between those who suffer from it and those who have never understood it," Crawford told The Huffington Post in an email. "A captive of my own mind. Crawford accurately depicts how anxiety and depression feel on the inside -- from feeling like you're wrapped so tightly in anxiety that you can't breathe to the agonizing inability to fall asleep when panic is looming. "A glass of water isn’t heavy. Close Katie Crawford
5 Tips For Empaths To Prevent Anxiety And Depression By Amateo Ra| Empaths have now been scientifically proven to be more prone to anxiety, especially social anxiety, as well as depression. To be an Empath means you have the intuitive ability to interpret other’s emotions. However, while interpreting these others emotions, it’s very easy to take them on and let them affect you negatively. Soon, anxiety and depression set in, and life gets way harder than it needs to be. Here’s how to prevent that vicious cycle. Being Empathic means you have a very powerful gift, the ability to feel what other people feel and use that emotion for good. All gifts that we possess as humans come with great responsibility. So, what’s your responsibility? Since we were children most of us were told to stop crying, be quiet, sit still and shut-up. While everyone needs to express their Emotions, Empaths have a much greater responsibility than others? I was once told that the majority of people have a backlog of unintegrated emotions and life experiences.
Why Do People Persist in Believing Things That Just Aren't True? Last month, Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, published the results of a study that he and a team of pediatricians and political scientists had been working on for three years. They had followed a group of almost two thousand parents, all of whom had at least one child under the age of seventeen, to test a simple relationship: Could various pro-vaccination campaigns change parental attitudes toward vaccines? Each household received one of four messages: a leaflet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that there had been no evidence linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (M.M.R.) vaccine and autism; a leaflet from the Vaccine Information Statement on the dangers of the diseases that the M.M.R. vaccine prevents; photographs of children who had suffered from the diseases; and a dramatic story from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about an infant who almost died of measles. The result was dramatic: a whole lot of nothing.
Mother's Day: The Good Child If your mother was mentally ill, undoubtedly Mother's Day, for you, was not the holiday it was supposed to be. In fact, the very existence of mothers who are emotionally and psychologically unfit to mother, as well as the experience of having a mentally ill mother, is still taboo and most commonly, a conversation left unspoken. When a mentally ill mother "passes" as normal, often there is no one who reflects back to the child that there is something seriously amiss in the behaviors and expressions of the mother, and yeowwwww, that lack of acknowledgment and support hurts. The kind of hurt that is lifelong and personality bending. Dark secrets are held in the hearts of these children, self-esteem is nowhere to be found, emulated or developed, and shame is deeply felt. For every Mother's Day tribute urging a shout out and outpouring of gratitude for Mom, there is a bellowing rebuke to those for whom celebrating Mom would not only be crazy, but wrong.
10 Signs You May Be Involved With a Sex Addict, By a Sex Addict by Brian Whitney You've been hanging out with this guy for a while and everything is great. That's what you tell people. The truth is, everything is not so great. Things he says and does don't add up. The guy may be going through a tough time. I did all 10 of the things on this list, in all of my relationships. The list is a compilation of everything I've learned about sex addiction in my own experience and treatment and from many other men in groups I've been part of. Most doctors would prescribe treatment to help your sex addict get his obsessions and compulsions under control. "The sex addict's impulse is to cover the pain of feeling damaged, whereas the opportunist's impulse is to take whatever he can get without having remorse. So what do you do if your partner is exhibiting three or more (my estimate) of these signs? But be prepared for deception. 1. How do you know when a sex addict is lying? 2. This is a tricky one. 3. 4. You just had some of the most awesome sex of your life.