Owning your Anxiety

By Anon When you hear about mental health problems, the stigma instantly makes you think bad things. However, when I’ve opened up to my friends about my struggles with anxiety, their first response is ‘Oh, but you seem like you’ve got it together.’ Owning my anxiety helps me cope. A Continue Reading

You Don’t Overcome Depression, You Simply Get Better At Handling It

By Gabriela One thing that no one understands, is that my mental illness will never just disappear. It is a part of me, and I am stuck with it for life. It has become my best friend, and my worst enemy, all at once. I have no way of putting Continue Reading

Reflection – Letting go of the past

By Tina Blacksmith “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Søren Kierkegaard This year, I have started letting go of the past and making an effort to heal. My letter is part of that reflection. It feels like one of those “two steps forward, Continue Reading

A Performer with an Anxiety Disorder

By Gabriela I was once asked a question that got me thinking. It made me take a deeper look at myself and the complexity of anxiety disorder. The question was this: How can you be a performer that gets up in front of hundreds of people without a problem, yet have an anxiety disorder? My type Continue Reading

Police Officers & Those in a Mental Health Crisis

By Shirley Davis Introduction There is considerable media coverage in the United States of what has been termed police brutality towards those who live with mental health conditions. I have watched this with growing concern. In my opinion much of what occurs directly correlates to the training officers receive. And there is a vast Continue Reading

I Accept Who I Am With a Mental Illness

By Gabriela It doesn’t matter how medicated I am or how much therapy I do, I will always have depression and anxiety as my right and left hand men.  They don’t magically disappear.  Instead, I accept who I am, and they become manageable – but ya, sometimes the thought of Continue Reading

When Your Locus is Out of Control

By Shirley Davis Locus of control is a state of mind where we place our belief in how the outcomes of our lives internally or externally.  Looking for someone else to make us happy is external locus of control, and a recipe for disaster.  Looking inward for control over our Continue Reading

‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ – A Story about Life with Mental Illness

By Catherine Neish If you were going to write a book about your life, what would be the title?  Who would you want to read it? Would you cover anything up?  Would you expose an area of your life into the light?  I want to lend you a story: ‘The Continue Reading

Surviving mental illness

By Samuel Cridland Everyone knows growing up is tough.  Unfortunately growing up is tougher for some than it is for others, particularly those of us who are surviving mental illness.  Through my teenage years I found it incredibly difficult to survive in the education system, due to the social groupings Continue Reading