Tag: mental illness

~ 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.

» 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?

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

rev-enant:

anddancewithourheartsonfire:

coollikerinthetardis:

jordansjourneyto130:

This is the greatest thing I have ever seen. People do not understand that mental illnesses, such as depression, are actual chemical imbalances in your body. They are not brought on by choice. My dad was diagnosed with depression. He was so ashamed of it that he hid it from me and my brothers. A month later, he killed himself. The stigma that comes with mental illness made my Dad embarrassed to talk to his own kids about this problem because he felt like less of a man.

Erase the stigma. The more we talk about mental illness, the less likely it will end in suicide.

Please reblog.

I can’t even express how much i love this, and I wish everyone at my school could see this. because I am so tired of being judged for something i can’t control.

this is simply amazing.

~ 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

sherwat:

All credit goes to the masterpost…posters. Because they’re great people. 

Cheer up and Relax
Fun Stuff
Mental Illness
Self Harm
Films
General Self Help
Everything
In Case Of Emergency
Others
~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

adviceforall1:

You never know what somebody is going through. That’s why it’s important to treat everyone you come across with love and compassion.

Everyone is fighting their own battle with some people it may surprise you with the struggles they face in their day to day life someone who appears to be happy and have everything may in fact be facing some pretty dark stuff in their personal life.

This is a STOP STIGMA campaign and original credit for the images goes to http://www.stopstigmasacramento.org/

A lot of tumblr paganism has responded to asks dealing with the difficulties of being good to the Gods by giving spells and charms to deal with depression and anxiety. That has never worked for me, and it sometimes feels really simplistic and…misleading almost. What do you think we can do to actually help each other when dealing with mental illnesses instead of answers that do not work?

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

cocreate-paganism:

Hi anon.

For some people who are going through a rough patch, spells and charms like that are a way to hold onto something that can help. But for many more of those, they don’t help, or they are ineffective bandages. 

We each have different ways of dealing with mental illnesses, and we need to make our community more open to the many ways that we approach the issue. 

I think a good first step is making room for people to be open and safe about talking about mental illness. We need room for education – and education from people who actually have these illnesses or personality disorders! Without this, we will continue to get ineffective bandages. By opening the road for communication, by reducing shame around admitting illness or the problems we are facing, we open the road for better answers to our problems. So the first step we need is open communication.

And don’t think that’s easy! It’s easy on paper, but it’s hard to achieve in communities. Often, without meaning to, we demonize people by saying they are ‘crazy’ or they ‘have problems’ or ‘need to see a therapist’. 

I want you to imagine a community that has people who can actually help people get therapy if that is what they need. (And that sort of thing can never and should never come from anons or someone who do not know. If it does, it’s just more ableism and shaming.)

I don’t want to clog this ask with ways to open up communication, though, so I’m going to try to get back to your question.

The second step in actually helping each other is acknowledging that we have different needs. Some people will be able to use spells to hold them through a tough time. Other people need therapy for a short time period to help them through. Other people need long term therapy, or perhaps lifelong. Others need medication. Some people need friends that they can talk to and be honest and open with. Others will need to pursue herbal healing.

We cannot demonize any of these methods. If we truly want to help people, we can’t demonize therapy or medication – or herbal healing or spiritual healing. We do need to make sure that whatever a person is using is actually helping them. 

The third step is communal activism. What this means is:

  • we keep an eye on each other to make sure people are doing okay – and this means everyone! We have to look out for each other.
  • helping people get the resources they need – when you’re depressed or otherwise sick, getting to those resources can be almost if not actually impossible
  • we support those who are dealing with illness – in a way they are comfortable with. This means not forcing people to be public about their experiences, and it also means not silencing people.
  • if local, we have to make sure that our community members are being treated fairly by the medical establishment and step in to help them if they are not. We cannot let people be hurt when they are seeking help.
  • and, finally, we don’t let people use mental illness as an excuse for abusive behavior. We have to make sure that we do not give a pass to abuse because someone is mentally ill. If we do, we are helping no one.

To give good answers for issues like these, we have to truly understand them. We cannot treat them as ‘just in the mind’ (the mind is powerful!), nor can we dehumanize those that have mental illnesses. 

To give good answers, we have to listen to each other’s stories. Which, unfortunately, we’re not there yet. We are, currently, a very fast-paced community. That is great in some cases! But when it comes to getting answers that can help us through tough times, or through tough lives, or through dark nights of the soul – fast-paced is exactly the opposite. If we want to give good answers, provide good support, we have to sit ourselves down and open our ears and hearts up to people.

(Cheesy, I know. But when someone listens to us, truly listens, that opens up paths we would never have expected.)

We can’t know your story; we can’t know what you actually need without listening to what is going on. That is how we get good answers. That is how we get more than spells.

Problem: We have ineffective aid for people struggling with mental illness and spiritual crisis.

Ideal Solution: We need people who will patiently listen to people’s lives and stories and help them work through to useful help – whether that is seeking alternative healing, medication and therapy, or something else. In most religions, this person would be a pastoral counselor. We don’t have many of those in Pagan and polytheist communities. 

Suggested Solution: Share your story aloud. Talk about what you are going through, your struggles – make a public sort of diary. Do this anonymously if you do not feel safe. Attempting to network with people who have made safe space may also be helpful. 

I will attempt to post links to helpful Pagan and polytheist organizations that provide counseling or support later today (4/24).

Thank you for your question, and feel free to respond back if you want to add more.