Having to do with my mental health journey, or what I have learned about mental health.
This is a blog post written in part nearly a year ago and in part just before posting. I went to edit it into something more appropriate to the present day, and I thought, no, I should leave what I wrote back then intact because it conveys a different flavour of hopelessness than what I feel now. I hope you enjoy, then, the tasting platter of despairing emotions set before you. April 2022 (Where I Was a Year Ago) First off, I’d like to acknowledge… Read More »On the Pandemic
A couple of months ago I bought myself a visual timer. Visual timers are basically what they sound like. Once set, they give a visual cue as to how much time is left before they go off. And it is so much easier to get an idea of how time is passing when you’re using one. I love my visual timer. It’s pink, which, well, obviously that’s a good thing. And the timer part is red so it has kind of a Valentine-y feel that I rather… Read More »Visual Timer
I wasn’t sure quite how I was going to put this, but I knew it was something I was going to have to say sooner or later. After much internal debate and struggle, I’ve settled on this phrasing: I don’t do well with ambiguous sensory input. Let me explain. I don’t like being in a dimly lit room (actually dark is okay, I don’t sleep with all the lights on). I don’t like very soft music (especially at a restaurant, where the noise of people… Read More »Obscured
I try not to regret. Oh, sure, little things like saying the wrong thing when I was trying to engage in small talk. I’ll regret those. I really regret those. But I try not to regret the big things. It’s possible I’ve been overly influenced by the Hallmark-type movies where the protagonist wishes in passing that they’d never… and then finds out what life would be like if they’d never… I definitely try to avoid making wishes like that. But more likely, I was influenced by Granny… Read More »Regret
It was Adam who recognized the state we were in. “We’re living in Low Power Mode.” It’s true. Some pretty basic tasks have been disabled to save power for the things we can’t survive without. But unlike a phone, we can’t just plug ourselves in until we’ve charged enough to leave Low Power or Battery Saver Mode. Humans are more complicated. I wanted to do a quick roundup of the things that keep a human battery charged, in my non-expert opinion, and see where I’ve… Read More »Battery Saver
Have you ever run down a steep hill? Maybe it was a sidewalk, maybe it was a sand dune. Maybe it was a grassy knoll. Doesn’t matter, the principle is (more or less) the same. When you’re running down a steep hill, you’re never really totally in control. Maybe your heels are skidding as you try to keep from falling over. Maybe you’re running faster than you really intended to because, well, gravity, I guess. Maybe you can see that when you get to the… Read More »Slippery Slope
We bought stickers from one of those custom branding places where you upload your logo and you can put it on all kinds of merchandise. We just thought, “I wonder if we could get stickers printed,” and then we did. Three sheets of twenty. We had a coupon code and took it out of the EP budget and in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t too bad. Why do we need stickers? Well, officially, we’re going to stick them on all our equipment and… Read More »Stickers
This week will be devoted to my decision around medication as it relates to mental health (or rather, mental illness). I know that some people don’t think any people should do that, and I have a problem with that attitude. I’m not talking about someone experiencing depression or anxiety and trying to decide for themselves whether or not it’s in their best interests to medicate (under the supervision of a doctor), because honestly, that can be a complicated decision. But I am talking about people… Read More »Pills, Pills, Pills: In Defence of a Complicated Medicine Cabinet
There’s something about holidays that calls to nostalgia. And among holidays, for me, Christmas is the one that stirs up memories like more or less nothing else. And then those memories set off other memories and… well, I cry a lot around the end of the year. Nostalgia, my quick Google search tells me, is widely considered to be a good thing nowadays. It promotes all kinds of good stuff in the psyche. I won’t summarize the research because better sources already have (heck, Wikipedia… Read More »Holidays, Nostalgia, and Grief
I see a lot of complaints about the DSM1. And honestly, a lot of them are valid. I get it. There are a lot of issues with it. I would not be uninterested in a discussion of alternative systems. But that’s not my topic today. No, today I want to explain why I am happy, for now, to be diagnosed according to the DSM. Because the reality of my situation is that, without it or something very much like it, I would likely not be… Read More »What a Difference a DX Makes