Family

Mental Health @ Home book review: Safe, Wanted, and Loved by Patrick Dylan

Book Review: Safe, Wanted, and Loved

Safe, Wanted, and Loved by Patrick Dylan is a memoir about the author’s wife’s experiences of mental illness, how that affected the family, and the difficult journey in the direction of recovery. The book’s powerful opening line is the author’s wife, Mia, saying “Pat, I am going to prison.” At that point, she was first …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Enmeshment

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is enmeshment. Enmeshment was first described by family therapist Salvador Minuchin. It occurs when there is an extreme lack of boundaries, which prevents healthy differentiation into autonomous individuals. It occurs most often in families, although it can happen in …

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Feeling Like a Stranger in My Own Family

I never would have thought that I would feel like a stranger in my own family. Depression changed everything, though. The present story I spent Christmas with my family this year. It was a small gathering – just my parents, my brother, his fiancee, and me. Except it didn’t feel small; it seemed like there …

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