A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
A while back, a post about choosing to be positive came up in my WP Reader feed. The blogger mentioned that "our mind is something we do and can have control over." While they weren't making reference to mental illness at all, I don't think control over one's own mind is quite so cut and… Continue reading How Much Control Do You Have Over Your Mind?
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is really big on using metaphors to convey key concepts. This post will take a look at a few of them. Self-as-context metaphors Chessboard A core message of ACT is that our self is the context for what happens inside out head, not the content of it. One metaphor for… Continue reading Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphors
My friends at WeDIDitPTSD recently brought up Jack Kornfield's approach to RAIN, a mindfulness meditation for dealing with overwhelm, and I thought I'd explore that further in a post. RAIN, which is based on Buddhist teachings, was first described by Insight Meditation Society teacher Michele McDonald. Rain acronym R: Recognition The R is about exploring… Continue reading It’s RAIN-ing Mindfulness
Winter Dragonflies wrote quite a while back about creating your peace. It made me think about the relationship between non-acceptance and suffering in the context of mental illness, and I started this draft that I've finally gotten around to writing. Mental illness isn't fun, that much is clear. How we relate to illness, wellness, and… Continue reading Non-Acceptance, Suffering, and Mental Illness
Calm the F*ck Down by Sarah Knight is part of her series of No Fucks Given Guides. I've previously reviewed her book F*ck No, and she was one of the earlier adopters of swearing in book titles. The book begins with a note on the title, saying it's meant to be motivational rather than being… Continue reading Book Review: Calm the F*ck Down
The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD by Jon Hershfield and Tom Corboy has just been released in its second edition. I was curious what a mindful approach to OCD would look like, but, as the subtitle says, this is a mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) in combination book; it's not a pull up a cushion… Continue reading Book Review: The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD
None of us is perfect. That's probably a good thing, because perfect would be boring and quirky can be far more interesting. And maybe sometimes, rather than trying to put our best foot forward, it's worth diving into a quirky soup of messing up... and that metaphor ran out of steam in my head before… Continue reading Embracing Imperfection
Being perfect is an ideal that some people may strive for or feel that they are required to attain, but how realistic is the notion of perfection? One of the biggest problems with perfect is that a lot of things in this world are subjective. When it comes to things that are subjective, everyone has… Continue reading The Problem with Perfect
Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life by Steven C. Hayes explains how concepts from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can get you unstuck from your thoughts so you're free to actually start living. The book takes a brief look at relational frame theory, on which ACT is based, but doesn't get bogged… Continue reading Book Review: Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard was first described by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers. It involves accepting another person without judgment simply because they are a human being who has value. It doesn't necessarily mean accepting a person's… Continue reading What Is… Unconditional Positive Regard