You Don’t Look Sick: My Journey With an Invisible Illness by Kristen Dutkiewicz is a memoir recounting her experiences with multiple sclerosis. The book is written in a way that’s likely to be useful for people who have MS, people wanting to support someone in their life with MS, and people who are curious to …
Living with a chronic health condition, it can be hard to see patterns in all the different things that are going on. That’s especially true if brain fog gets in the way of being able to remember things. That’s where tracking in a bullet journal (or in an app, or elsewhere) can come in handy. …
Mental Health Bullet Journalling: Habit & Symptom Tracking Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms… but not this week. Instead, we’ll take a look at ME/CFS, and why it’s absolutely not all in someone’s head. The National Institutes of Health describes ME/CFS as “a debilitating disease that lacks a universally accepted case definition, cause, diagnosis, or …
What Is… ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue) Read More »
This post on mental health effects of COVID reopening comes from Escaping the Cage. Mental Health and COVID Restriction Easing I’m worried about my mental health as COVID restrictions are eased. I know that for many people COVID has brought many challenges to their mental as well as physical health. For me, however, it has …
Mental Health and COVID Restriction Easing (Guest Post) Read More »
You may have heard of spoon theory, a popular metaphor for dealing with chronic illness and energy-depleting activities. You’re probably less likely to have heard of a variant called fork theory, and you probably haven’t heard of knife theory. In this post, we’re going to do a deep dive into the mental illness cutlery drawer, …
The Mental Illness Cutlery Drawer: Spoons, Forks & More Read More »
I suspect that many of us living with mental illness, or any other chronic illness, for that matter, have a standard set of responses that we sometimes draw on when answering questions about how we are and what we do. “Not okay” just isn’t something most people want to hear. For me, these standard responses …
How Are You? When “I’m Okay” Means Not Okay At All Read More »
On a fairly regular basis, I see messaging along the lines of “it gets better,” or some variation thereof. While the intention behind it is good, I’m not convinced that it’s useful, because it’s not necessarily true. There’s a U.S.-based non-profit organization called It Gets Better that provides support to LGBTQ+ youth who are being bullied. …
It Gets Better… Or Does It? – Dealing with Chronic Mental Illness Read More »
This post is by Mio of Mentally Ill in America. My Possible Origin Story It most likely began when I was two. I was taken to the ER for a fever that would ultimately rise to 107. But, first there was church to attend to… Once that let out (or whenever it was that my …
Emerging Blogger Series: Mio (Mentally Ill in America) Read More »
What does the gate control theory of pain have to do with a mental health blog? Well, co-occurring mental illness and chronic pain are remarkably common. For example, among people with fibromyalgia, over 50% experience depression. The rates of anxiety disorders are also over 50%. People with depression and anxiety disorders are also at increased risk to …
The Gate Control Theory of Pain – What It Means for Pain Control Read More »
In my 15 years working as a mental health nurse, I had never come across the concept of spoon theory; I only learned about it once I started blogging. More recently, I came across fork theory, which we’ll look at in this post. I’ve gotta say, I’m loving the cutlery metaphors to represent mental illness …
Fork Theory: How the Anti-Spoons Affect Mental Illness Read More »
