Tag: depression

Hey, big fan of your blog and you! I was wondering though, I recently went on depression medication and I feel that it is killing my sex drive and making it much harder to get off. Have you or any of your followers had this experience/have any advice? Thank yo so much.

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

submissivefeminist:

It’s possible that is a side effect, yes. My advice is to talk to your prescribing psychiatrist about these side effects. Many antidepressants have this side effect, but all medications work differently on different people. This means that this medication may decrease your sex drive, but another SSRI might not, while still helping your depressive symptoms.

It’s best to wait at least 2-4 weeks for a medication to work normally in your body, but if you’ve been on it for a while, you can discuss switching or adding a medication that won’t have this side effect. 

It may be awkward to talk about but your sexual wellness is health-related and you are justified in this concern. Your doctor should be very willing to discuss other options to help with this problem. If they are not, I would suggest a second opinion.

xx SF

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

seashellies:

I had an interesting conversation with thornedlily Sunday night/early Monday morning that I wanted to share with you guys (their permission has been granted). This metaphor was new to me but the revelation was not, even though it was new to her.

Topic was depression.

I confided to her that I can feel my depression rearing its head for another black bout. She then compared depression to a wild, unbroken young horse that you have to coax back into its stall with a carrot. I found that analogy brilliant and told her so. She laughed and then said you could go crazy with the analogy if you wanted. Like braiding glitter into the horse’s hair and keeping the spiders away from it to keep it happy.

But really, that analogy works! Depression isn’t just this dark infection that you can never walk away from. It’s flexible. It’s fluid. With depression you have to learn what ‘breed’ you have. You need to learn what triggers it to arise in you. You need to learn to resist the impulse to collapse into it and feed it along. You need to learn if and how you can head off a bout. You need to learn what proactive coping mechanism works for you be it medication, therapy, or other, or all of the above. You need to learn to open yourself up instead of shutting yourself away.

So yeah… if a glittery mane and no spiders are what tames your horse by all means break out the tinsel and braid some in. Spider-proof that stall and then close the door and walk away. At least until you can feel the wildness breaking free again.

I’m not even trying to be ablest. I’m telling you to be proactive about your depression. I learned this lesson early and from necessity. My mom is 50 and she’s just now trying to learn this lesson after living the life of an addict. The struggle I see in her trying to learn this at her age, changing her entire life, relearning everything she thought she knew about herself and her mental illness… it’s heartbreaking. I have other family that never learned it at all and they’re miserable living miserable lives. At this point they’re too deep in their misery, too used to it to try and climb out. I want to save as many people as I can from the fate of black life lived in misery. You CAN walk away from depression. Sometimes for good, and sometimes just for a little while, but you have to figure out how to tame it in the process if you let it run wild it’ll shit all over your life. I promise you, you will come out stronger for it.

Don’t believe me? Watch this.

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

yolucas:

taekookau-deactivated20160227:

heya so i thought i’d make a little help masterpost. (if you prefer a page there’s one here x)

ROUGH NIGHT? 

DEPRESSION/SELF-HARM/SUICIDE: 

ANXIETY & INSOMNIA: 

EATING DISORDERS: 

ABUSE & SEXUAL ABUSE: 

if you can think of other links to add or need help, message me anytime xx

» Depression: How do you tell your boss you can’t work?

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

If you don’t have a mental illness – whether it’s depression or alcoholism or an anxiety disorder – you’ve probably never been confronted with these questions: How do you call in sick when your mental illness prevents you from work? What do you say when you go back to work after an extended absence  because of your mental illness?

When you have to answer these questions, you realize how much stigma there is about mental illness.

» Depression: How do you tell your boss you can’t work?

Talk Therapy Online and Counseling Services.

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

BlahTherapy is run by and was founded (April 2010) by a single individual who has had moments just like you – where we really needed to speak to someone.

Today, BlahTherapy connects you with random strangers around the world who are willing to talk to you about your problems, as well as sharing their own. As a community, we’ve found that talking through our emotional, psychological, or mental issues is one of the best methods of releasing our anger, stress, depression or pain. Sharing and connecting with other strangers who are going through a struggles just like you provides great consolation to anyone in need of healing or a friend.

Talk Therapy Online and Counseling Services.

Why Stress Triggers Depression In Some People, Resilience In Others

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

A new study shows why stress can trigger depression in some people. But what’s the solution?

Depending on your genetic makeup and a host of other variables, you’ll have a different reaction to stressful events from the people around you, and even your relatives. Some people naturally get energized by the challenge, even if it’s a frightening or intimidating one, and can’t wait to overcome it. Others feel dwarfed by the stress and just want to hide from it – this is called depression. Researchers and psychologists have long tried to tease apart why people have such different reactions to stress, and now a new study offers more clues about what’s going on in the brain to explain this difference in people’s responses.

Why Stress Triggers Depression In Some People, Resilience In Others

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

opulentes:

ABUSE

Information

  • Love Is Respect (Digital Abuse)
  • Love Is Respect (Emotional/Verbal Abuse)
  • Love Is Respect (Financial Abuse)
  • Love Is Respect (Physical Abuse)
  • Love Is Respect (Sexual Abuse)
  • Love Is Respect (Stalking)
  • Help Guide

Coping

  • Caring for yourself
  • Domestic abuse

Chat Rooms 

  • Survivors Chat
  • Fort Refuge
  • Pandy’s

ADD/ADHD

Information

  • Help Guide
  • Attention Span Test
  • Attention Quiz
  • Concentration Quiz

Coping

  • Coping Tips for Attention Deficit Disorder
  • 12 Best Tips for Coping with ADHD
  • 50 Tips On The Management of Adult Attention Deficit

Medication

  • ADHD Medication Chart: Compare Drugs for ADD and ADHD
  • Drugs Used to Treat ADHD/ADD
  • ADD/ADHD Medications: Are ADHD Drugs Right for You
  • ADHD Medication Side Effects, Drug Types, Precautions

ADDICTION

Information

  • Help Guide (Alcohol & Drugs)
  • Half of Us (Alcohol & Drugs)

Coping and Recovery

  • Tools of Recovery: Addiction Coping Skills
  • 5 Ways to Deal With Urges and Cravings 
  • After Rehab: 5 Ways for Addicts to Cope
  • Addiction Recovery
  • Coping With Urges
  • Dealing With Cravings

ANGER

Coping

  • strategies to keep anger at bay
  • Anger management: 10 tips to tame your temper
  • Anger Management: Tips and Techniques
  • Feeling Angry
  • Controlling Anger — Before It Controls You
  • Dealing With Anger
  • How To Cope With Anger
  • Anger management: What works and what doesn’t
  • Ten Commandments of Anger Regulation

ANXIETY

Information

  • Anxiety Quiz
  • Social Anxiety Test
  • What are your stress triggers?
  • Coping Skills Quiz
  • Anxiety disorders explained
  • Help Guide (Anxiety Attacks & Anxiety Disorder)
  • Understanding and managing anxiety
  • learn more about anxiety
  • Anxiety Self-Assessment
  • Help Guide (General Anxiety Disorder)
  • Help Guide (Social Anxiety Disorder & Social Phobia)
  • Explanation of anxiety and self help tips 

Coping

  • a list of stress relievers
  • Identifying and Managing Anxiety
  • 11 Assorted Anxiety Tips for Anxiety Sufferers
  • How to work through feelings of isolation
  • Tips and tricks for dealing with anxiety
  • Anti-stress breathing tips
  • How to stay under control with severe social anxiety
  • Coping with social anxiety
  • Managing Stress
  • how to help a friend with anxiety
  • Help Guide (Therapy)
  • Half of Us
  • Job interviews and social anxiety
  • Dealing with anxiety
  • Coping with test anxiety
  • Tips for flying anxiety
  • Grounding techniques 
  • More grounding techniques 
  • Even more grounding techniques
  • Mindfulness
  • Belly breathing
  • Living with anxiety
  • Social anxiety disorder self help tips.
  • Coping with flashbacks
  • What anxious racing thoughts are like for me
  • Using a thought diary

Panic Attacks

  • How to handle panic attacks
  • Exploring and coping with panic attacks
  • 10 Rules for Coping with Anxiety and Panic
  • Tips to cope with panic attacks
  • Rules for coping with anxiety and panic
  • Understanding and coping with panic attacks
  • Understanding and helping panic attacks and panic disorders
  • Help Guide (Panic Attacks & Panic Disorder)
  • Coping with panic attacks workbook
  • Rules for coping with panic
  • Panic attack workbook 2

Interactives

  • Emotional baggage check
  • The Dawn Room
  • The quiet place
  • The thoughts room
  • Stress Analyst
  • cloudflowing
  • imagination
  • planetarium
  • weavesilk
  • calm
  • make sand art online
  • lifeinneon
  • dolldivine
  • barcinski-jeanjean
  • rainymood
  • do nothing for 2 minutes
  • stars
  • Muscle Relaxation
  • Mood chart

Medication

  • Help Guide (Anxiety Medicine)
  • Common Medications for Anxiety Disorders
  • Guidelines for Medication Use

Chat Rooms

  • HealthfulChat
  • Phobics Awareness 
  • Healing Well
  • Anxiety Space

BIPOLAR DISORDER

Information

  • Help Guide (Signs and Symptoms)
  • Half of Us
  • Bipolar Depression Quiz
  •  hypomania

Coping

  • Bipolar disorder and self-help
  • Living with bipolar disorder
  • How to deal with bipolar disorder without medication
  • 10 ways to cope with bipolar disorder
  • Coping skills
  • Help Guide (Self Help)
  • Bipolar Support tumblr

Medication

  • Help Guide (Bipolar Disorder Medication Guide)
  • Help Guide (Treatment)

Chat Rooms

  • HealthfulChat
  • Bipolar World
  • Healing Well

DEPRESSION

Information

  • depression information
  • Depression Infographic 
  • Help Guide (Depression: Signs, Symptoms, Causes & Help)
  • Help Guide (Teenage Depression: A Guide for Parents)
  • Half of Us
  • Depression Quiz

Coping

  • How to cope with depression
  • How to cope with depression 1
  • Natural depression treatments
  • Ways to deal with depression/stress
  • Tips to help overcome loneliness
  • 10 Tips on How to Work Through Feelings of Social Isolation
  • 8 Tips to Overcome Loneliness
  • Ways to deal with depression/stress
  • having a bad day?
  • Make a comfort box
  • 10 Things to Do When You Feel Like Crap
  • how to find a new normal in the middle of depression
  • you are not alone in the way you think you are
  • reasons to stay alive
  • how to stop trying to think yourself into happiness and actually arrive there
  • cheer me up
  • Help Guide (Dealing with Depression)
  • Help Guide (Helping Someone with Depression)

Medication

  • What to expect with antidepressants
  • Finding the right anti-depressant

Chat Room

  • HealthfulChat
  • Healing Well

EATING DISORDERS

Recovery

  • 281 Reasons to Recover
  • Eating Disorders and Emotional Eating Test
  • Relapse Prevention
  • Bloating, Indigestion, & Feeling too full
  • Why You Must Eat
  • Learning to Love Your Body
  • Tips to Stop Restricting
  • Dealing With Weight Gain
  • 10 Steps to Bulimia Recovery Workbook
  • Coping with Exercise Addiction
  • Tips to help with bulimia recovery
  • Help Guide (Emotional Eating)
  • Help Guide (Binge Eating)
  • Help Guide (Bulimia)
  • Help Guide (Helping Someone With an Eating Disorder)
  • Help Guide (Treatment and Recovery)
  • Stop Hating Your Body
  • Body Positive Zone
  • Self Care 101
  • self esteem
  • 30 day self esteem challenge
  • developing positive self esteem
  • learning-to-love-yourself
  • Something Fishy
  • Ways of coping with eating disordered behaviors
  • The addiction help center

FRIENDS WITH ILLNESS

  • How to deal/talk with bipolar and depressed people
  • What to do when your friend is talking about suicide
  • What to do if someone you know is overdosing
  • What to do if your friend is hurting themselves
  • How to help someone who is suicidal
  • here’s what you tell someone who wants to commit suicide
  • tips for looking after someone with depression
  • Friends with metal illness?
  • What to do when someone is suicidal
  • Help Guide (Helping Someone with Depression)

GENERAL RESOURCES

  • Feelings Wheel
  • PsychForums
  • Psych Central 
  • Lets Recover Together
  • How to find a Support Group 
  • DailyStrength

GRIEF AND LOSS

  • Help Guide (Coping with a Breakup or Divorce)
  • Help Guide (Coping with Grief & Loss)
  • Help Guide (Coping with Pet Loss)
  • Help Guide (Supporting a Grieving Person)
  • Help Guide (The Five Stages of Grief)

HOTLINES

  • Crisis Text Line: Text “SUPPORT” to 741741
  • Crisis Call Center Call 1-800-273-8255 (24/7) Text ANSWER to 839863 (24/7)
  • Thursday’s Child Call 1-800-872-5437 (24/7)
  • The Trevor Project Call 866-488-7386 (24/7)
  • National Safe Place Text SAFE and your current location to the number 69866
  • National Runaway Safeline Call 1-800-786-2929 (24/7)
  • National Domestic Violence Hotline Call 1-800-799-7233 (24/7) 

MEDITATION

  • Tips to Start Meditating
  • 8 Ways to Make Meditation Easy and Fun
  • 18 Minute Guided Meditation: Blissful Deep Relaxation
  • 1 Hour Universal Mind Meditation
  • Guided Meditation for Sleep and Good Dreams
  • Guided Meditation and Progressive Muscle Relaxation
  • Progressive Muscle Relaxation
  • Guided Relaxation
  • Foundations in Flow Yoga Class
  • Heart Opening 30min Yoga Class
  • 10min Shoulder Yoga Routine
  • 9min Yoga Breathing Exercise (Pranayama) 
  • Kundalini Yoga Breathing Exercises (3 min)
  • Yoga Poses

OCD

Information

  • Specific Symptoms of OCD
  • Distinguishing OCD From Other Conditions
  • The Course of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder 
  •  How do Obsessive Compulsive People Think?

Coping and Treatment

  • Natural Treatment Options
  • Treatments for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Additional Treatment Options for OCD
  • Residential Treatment for OCD
  • Medications for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • A New Relationship to Your Obsessions
  • How to Find Help for OCD
  • OCD: Exposure Therapy Versus Medication
  • Cognitive Therapy for OCD

Chat Rooms

  • HealthfulChat
  • OCD-UK

PERFECTIONISM

Information

  • Perfectionism Resources
  • Perfectionism – a double-edged sword
  • Type-A Personality Quiz
  • Perfectionism Test
  • Procrastination Test
  • Perfectionism: the road to failure
  • perfectionism and procrastination

Coping

  • How to Overcome Perfectionism
  • LEARN TO MANAGE PERFECTIONISM
  • How to Overcome Perfectionism & Procrastination
  • Perfectionism – Stress Management
  • 10 Steps To Conquer Perfectionism
  • perfectionists coping with failure

PTSD

Information

  • Help Guide (Traumatic Stress)
  • Help Guide (PTSD)
  • Help Guide (Emotional & Psychological Trauma)
  • Mental Help
  • PTSD Infographic
  • Understanding PTSD
  • What is PTSD?

Coping

  • Coping with flashbacks
  • Self Help Strategies for PTSD
  • Coping with Traumatic Stress Reactions 
  •  Post-Traumatic Stress – Self-help Guide
  • Understanding and Coping with PTSD
  • Coping with PTSD

SCHIZOPHRENIA

Information

  • Schizophrenia: What’s in my head?
  • Help Guide
  • schizophrenia
  • Symptoms of Schizophrenia
  • Types of Schizophrenia
  • Causes of Schizophrenia

Coping

  • Living with Schizophrenia
  • Coping With Schizophrenia 
  • Schizophrenia Coping and Recovery
  • Schizophrenia: Coping with Delusions and Hallucinations
  • Paranoid schizophrenia Coping and support

Treatment

  • An Introduction to the Treatment of Schizophrenia
  • Treatment of Schizophrenia
  • Drugs to Treat Schizophrenia
  • Common Drugs and Medications to Treat Schizophrenia
  • Treating Schizophrenia Successfully 

SELF-HARM

  • Cut something that’s not real skin
  • Half of Us
  • Help Guide
  • Recover Your Life
  • Self-Injury Outreach & Support
  • How to care for cuts
  • Resisting cutting
  • 25 ways to avoid self injury and prevent self harm
  • Tips to help stop cutting
  • 99 Coping Skills: Things to do Instead of Cutting
  • What to do when someone sees
  • How to fade/cover scars
  • Alternatives For Cutting 1
  • Alternatives For Cutting 2
  • Alternatives For Cutting 3
  • Alternatives For Cutting 4
  • Alternatives For Cutting 5

SELF-LOVE

  • how to stop putting yourself down
  • Self confidence
  • how to improve your self-esteem
  • How to be ok with yourself
  • tips on self-love
  • Confidence
  • Learn to love yourself
  • when told you are not pretty
  • emergency compliment
  • lessons for self-love

SUICIDE

  • Coping with Suicidal Thought
  • What to do when someone is suicidal
  • How to help someone who is suicidal
  • here’s what you tell someone who wants to commit suicide
  • Help Guide (Suicide Prevention)
  • Help Guide (Dealing with Suicidal Thoughts & Feelings)

THERAPY

  • how to get free therapy
  • Getting a Therapist – a brief step-by-step
  • Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Therapist or Counsellor?
  • 50 Signs of Good Therapy
  • 50 Warning Signs of Questionable Therapy
~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

lucysweatslove:

Making an “Alternatives” Jar

For anybody with issues with binge eating, purging, and/or self-harm (or any other type of urge), an “alternatives” jar is a good project! It is a jar filled with popsicle sticks that have things written on them that you can do when your urge hits, as an alternative to the urge.

You need:

  1. A glass jar (I used a small 8 oz old jar that I had left from a jar of jam- you can get these for $1 in some places with the jam)
  2. Popsicle sticks (I used 70 regular-sized ones from a pack of 1,000 craft sticks that I bought for $5)
  3. Markers (I used Bic Mark-It Permanent Markers, but any other marker should work, even dollar-store markers)
  4. Paints, as many colors as you want (I used Apple Barrel brand acrylic paints, which run for $0.50-$0.57 per 2 oz container at Wal Mart). 
  5. Paint brushes to use for the paints (I used Plaid brand sponge brushes, which I got for $1 for 4, and a pack of 24 different brushes which were $5 each)
  6. Ribbons and washi (decorative/paper) tape ($0.50-$3.50 per roll, however you want)

Items 4-6 are optional! You can use as much or as little paint as you want. You should only need one bottle if you are doing one color; however, you may want more!

Instructions:

  1. Gather your materials 🙂 (not too hard!)
  2. Decide how many sticks your jar will hold. Mine held 70 craft sticks; some can hold more!
  3. Decide how many colors you want to use, and if you want the colors to mean anything.
  4. Paint the craft sticks!! Do this on a surface easily cleaned, thrown away, or that you don’t mind getting messy! I used a lid from a plastic tote. You can either put the paints on a palette (if you have one), or dab it onto the sponge brushes and then paint.
  5. Let your painted sticks dry.
  6. While you are letting them dry, you can decorate your jar. Some permanent markers work on glass; others don’t. You can try them though! Acrylic paints don’t always work on glass, also. I used washi tape and ribbons, using a hot glue gun to attach the ribbons to the jar. The tape and ribbons can be removed from the jar if I so choose (so that way I can re-use the jar or re-decorate if I want to)
  7. Once the sticks dry, write on them!!

Ideas for how to use color:

You can see that I used 7 colors, each with 10 sticks. Colors can be used to denote:

  1. Type of urge (especially useful if you have multiple types)
  2. Type of emotion behind the urge or activity (feeling sad, guilty, angry, lonely, wanting sensation, etc)
  3. Amount of time the activity takes (5 min, 10 min, 15 min, 30 min, 1 hr, over 1 hr)
  4. Amount of money you’d have to invest (ie, totally free things, things you can spend $1 on, things you’d have to spend $5 on, etc)

How to use:

  1. When your urge hits, pick a color or colors to represent what you need. For example: red for me are things to get anger out, so if I’m wanting to purge because I am angry, I will choose the red sticks.
  2. Pick one stick of that color. Do that activity, and put the stick to the side. If, after you’re done with the activity, the urge is still there, pick another stick.
  3. Keep choosing sticks until the urge is gone (or you have other things you have to do)
  4. If the urge hasn’t gone away, but you are done with your sticks: choose another color and keep going.

Ideas for what to write on your sticks

  1. 101 things to do besides binge
  2. More binge alternatives
  3. Alternatives to binge eating/purging
  4. Alternatives to self-harm
  5. More alternatives to self-harm

Idea based off of: Coping Bank and Binge Jar