Recovery and Well-being

Action for Happiness: More Than Just “Choose Happiness”

I’m definitely not a fan of the whole toxic positivity business, and no, happiness is not a choice (or at least not always). But a while back I stumbled across the Action for Happiness website, and I like their style. I was looking through my journal and came across the 8 pillars of joy I’d …

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What We Can Learn from the Medicine Wheel

While we’re used to looking through a Western lens at health and wellness, I think there can be a great deal of value in looking at other ways of understanding to gain new ideas. The medicine wheel is used by certain North American Indigenous peoples to tie together culture, traditional knowledge, health, and healing. Traditionally, …

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Modern and abstract colourful cat paint by numbers from Winnie's Picks

Painting as a Mindfulness Activity

Disclosure: I received a free paint by numbers kit from Winnie’s Picks, but all opinions are my own. I probably hadn’t done any kind of painting since elementary school. I’m not visually artistic at all; all of my creativity comes out in words. But when Winnie’s Picks reached out to me, I thought it sounded …

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Is Mental Illness Recovery a Choice?

“Mental illness is not a choice, but recovery is.” While this image floating around on Pinterest originated with Healthy Place, I couldn’t figure out the original source of this mental illness recovery quote (if, in fact, it is a quote from another source), but seems to have been around for a while. Anyway, I don’t …

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The moving target of mental illness recovery: more of a journey than a destination

The Moving Target of Mental Illness Recovery

Mental illness recovery can be more of a journey rather than a destination, and if you’re aiming for a destination, that can end up being a moving target. Let’s begin this discussion by looking at what recovery actually entails. An Australian National Standards for Mental Health Services document from 2010 defines recovery as: “… gaining …

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Emotional Support Animals for Mental Illness

Animals are wonderful for mental illness. But first off, what exactly is an emotional support animal? Unlikely service animals, they’re not specially trained to provide assistance to people with disabilities, and they’re not granted the same universal access that service dogs have to do their duties. Rather, emotional support animals are recommended by a mental …

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stacks of coins growing

Can Money Facilitate Happiness?

We’ve all heard that money can’t buy happiness. But is there some sort of relationship between money and happiness? And if so, what does that look like, and can money facilitate happiness? Meeting basic needs Clearly, it takes money to meet our most basic needs like food and shelter. When those basic needs are on …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Mental Illness Recovery

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is mental illness recovery. The word recovery can have various connotations depending on the context. It began to gain popularity in the context of mental health in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was used by …

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TED Talks logo

TED Talks on Mental Wellbeing

Here are some of my favourite TED Talks that relate to mental wellbeing. The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage (Susan David) I recently reviewed Susan David’s book Emotional Agility, and this talk covered similar subject matter. She points out how problematic it is to avoid emotions that are considered negative or illegitimate. She says …

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