A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
Recently, I had a bit of an aha moment while commenting on a post by Caz at Mental Health 360º, making a connection related to anhedonia that had never crossed my mind before. She was talking about the idea that motivation follows activation. Earlier in the course of my illness, I figured it was worth… Continue reading An Anhedonia Aha Moment – Motivation & Depression
g I've never been particularly interested in material things, and I don't accumulate a lot of stuff. I get satisfaction from getting rid of things, so every so often I'll do some paring down. A while back, I wrote about Depression and Closet/Identity Thinning, and whether I should get rid of the more dressy, feminine… Continue reading Letting Go of a Life Before Depression
The blue Christmas thing is relatively new to me. I used to like Christmas. For most of my life, I was a Christmas girl (albeit of the atheist variety). It was a time for food, family, decorations, and more food. Christmas was never stressful for me. I have a pretty small immediate family, so there… Continue reading A Blue Christmas – Depression and the Holidays
Chances are the first thing that comes to most people's minds when they think about depression is depressed mood, right? But while depressed mood is often a major part of depressive illnesses, sometimes it plays a minor role and other times it's not present at all. Major depressive episode symptoms The symptoms of depression are… Continue reading Depression Without the Depressed Part?
Last week I was reading another blogger's post about her weekly happy list challenge. The challenge for the week was to identify routines that bring you joy, which just wasn't doing anything for me. That got me thinking—when was the last time I felt joy or happiness? Honestly, it's been around 3 years – before… Continue reading Depression & Emotions: Positive & Negative Affect
I decided a few months ago to go ahead and book an overseas vacation. I hoped that it would give me something to look forward to, and that it would help to finally put a dent in the anhedonia that's been such a challenging symptom of my depression. I decided to go to Italy because… Continue reading The Pros & Cons of Travelling for Mental Health
There have been a lot of horrific events in the news lately. As I saw these events on the news, I knew cognitively how terrible they were, but on an emotional level, I just felt nothing. I am not a cruel, heartless sort of person, but I still felt nothing.