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 …
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 …
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 …
Depression is a profoundly isolating illness, as many mental illnesses can be, and as my illness progresses in many ways I find myself evolving into a hermit of sorts.
