Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
Honesty is the best policy, right? I say no, no, no, no. And let’s add on one more no, just for good measure. I would also like to propose two kinds of “honesty”, only one of which I think actually involves honesty. First, you’ve got things that can be answered or described objectively. Let's say… Continue reading Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Honesty?
Today is World Kindness Day. How will you be kind?
Here's the text rather than graphic version of Not by Erin Hanson. You are not your age, Nor the size of clothes you wear, You are not a weight, Or the colour of your hair. You are not your name, Or the dimples in your cheeks, You are all the books you read, And all… Continue reading You’re Not Defined By What You’re Not
Our minds play all kinds of tricks on us. We've got all kinds of cognitive biases that influence what we do with our thoughts, and our brains do interesting things with the what it picks up through our senses. There's a philosophical argument as to whether or not there is a truly objective reality, but… Continue reading Perceived vs. Objective Reality
Recently I was commenting on a post about self-esteem by Caz of Mental Health 360º and decided it was worth expanding on in a post of my own. I've always has good self-esteem, and this is what I've identified as the basic building blocks that support it. Inherent worth of humanity This is probably more… Continue reading My Self-Esteem Building Blocks
Here are a few things you may or may not already know about me. My first guinea pig Ghanoush and her sister Baba were my very first guinea pigs. I got them from a pet store, since I was too clueless at that point to think of going to an animal shelter. The pet store… Continue reading A Few Random Things About Me
The internet is full of talk about toxic people. Searching for "toxic person" yields 295 million hits on Google. That's a whole lotta toxicity. If someone is abusive, you deserve to a) be free from them, and b) call them toxic or whatever else you might choose. But those 295 million online hits aren't all… Continue reading The “Toxic Person” Label and Mental Illness
PublicDomainVectors The other day I saw an excellent article by Andy of Eden in Babylon on Entitlement and Patriotism. He contrasted the entitlement of people complaining that the pandemic lockdown violated their freedom as patriotic Americans with the self-sacrifice of people in uniform that serve their country and defend its values. In Canada, we may… Continue reading I Am Not Free to…
Peopled seemed to like the This Was Me post that covered my younger years, and this post will look back at my high school years. I wasn't a huge fan of that time in my life. Nothing bad happened; I just felt like I had very different interests from the vast majority of my peers, and… Continue reading This Was Me: The High School Years
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay For a little something different, I thought I'd take a bit of a stroll down memory lane to the earlier years of my life. Here's me as a baby. My parents had built this house (okay they weren't physically doing the building) two years before I came along as firstborn. They stayed in… Continue reading This Was Me: The Childhood Years
