Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
Perhaps there are things you want to do, or think you should do, but they’re just not happening. How hard do you push yourself to try to get ‘er done anyway? Do you keep trying even when it becomes clear there's no way it's going to happen? I can think of a few factors that… Continue reading How Hard Do You Push Yourself When Mental Illness Pushes Back?
It's fairly common, at least in the mental health blogging world, for people to self-criticize, especially if they they think they've made a mistake or failed to do something. I don't tend to do that, and recently had a bit of an aha moment about how it came to be that I believe that it's… Continue reading How I Learned It’s Okay To Mess Up
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself is written by Kristin Neff, a prominent researcher in the area of self-compassion. It includes research findings, a variety of exercises with room to complete them in the book, and stories from the author's personal experience. The author draws on Buddhist teachings, and she writes that:… Continue reading Book Review: Self-Compassion
"Am I a bad person?" It seems to be a fairly common question. Searching for that question on Google yields 263 million hits. I've also seen it raised in the blogosphere. Regardless of what the answer may or may not seem to be, though, is it a valid and/or useful question? What exactly is a… Continue reading Am I a Bad Person? Or Is That the Wrong Question?
Failure isn't fun. There's just no two ways about that. But what does that failure mean? I think that, particularly when mental illness is involved, it's easy to leap from "I failed at [X]" to "I'm a failure." But taking a step back, they're not really the same thing. Fear of failure Fear of failure… Continue reading Are You a Failure at a Task, or as a Person?
We all have an inner critic hanging out inside our heads that makes itself known every so often. Chances are that the inner critic says things about you that are far harsher than you would ever say about anyone else. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and compassion-focused therapy (CFT) both pay quite a bit of… Continue reading What Does Your Inner Critic Have to Say?
Katzenfee50 on Pixabay “Don’t compare yourself to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.” - Regina Brett The internet makes it very difficult not to compare ourselves to other people. There they are, in their Instagram-perfect photos and their seemingly amazing lives. Perhaps the "nice" thing to do would be to… Continue reading The Mental Health Effects of Comparison to Others
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week's term is perfectionism. Perfectionism is "a set of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors aimed at reaching excessively high unrealistic goal" according to a Brown University site. It tends to be learned through messages early in life that value is based… Continue reading What Is… Perfectionism
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week's terms are shame and guilt. According to Wikipedia, guilt is a social emotion that stems from the belief that one is responsible for having violated standards of conduct or morality. It tends to be strongly correlated with empathic responsiveness.… Continue reading What Is… Shame and Guilt
