Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
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, and… Continue reading The Mental Illness Cutlery Drawer: Spoons, Forks & More
This post is based on some of the conversation generated by a recent post, Is It Helpful to Sanitize Mental Illness? Those of us living with mental illness have a whole rainbow worth of experiences, and I wanted to find a way to represent that. Hence, the rainbow model. Mental illness symptoms There are no… Continue reading Rainbow Model of Mental Illness Functioning
Sometimes, depression can cause busy mind that's focused on the negative. I get slow mind. Slow mind gets confused and overwhelmed. I rely on my organization system to compensate for this, at least to some extent. As time goes by, though, the system gets overwhelmed, at which point it needs a refresh or a broader… Continue reading Refreshing My Depression Organization System
I've never been a big social media person. Before I started blogging, I briefly had a Facebook account, but that didn't last long. Once I started blogging, I created accounts on Pinterest and Twitter. I started a new Facebook account, but deleted that pretty quickly because I just don't like Facebook. Last year, I created… Continue reading Depression and My Cooling Relationship with Social Media
It's not uncommon to hear the term high-functioning getting tossed around to describe people's mental health conditions. But is it a term that's meaningful or useful? To clarify, I'm not referring to people describing their own level of functioning in a way that feels right for them. I'm all for people using whatever language they… Continue reading Is High-Functioning Useful to Describe Mental Illness?
Mental illness makes it very easy to focus our attention on what we can't do rather than what we can do. I also tend to disqualify (at least in relative terms) what I can do and place greater importance on what I can't. Can Many of my cans revolve around blogging and writing. Blogging and… Continue reading Mental Illness and What I Can and Can’t Do
Living alone, I have to do all my own grocery shopping. It's been that way for years, so no big deal, right? Well, what used to be a simple task has become a bit more of a production with mental illness tagging along. It turns out grocery shopping with mental illness isn't a great combination.… Continue reading Mental Illness Goes Grocery Shopping
Maximilian Weisbecker on Unsplash I have a volunteer gig with a local community services agency doing presentations to high school students on suicide awareness. There's a pretty standardized format for these workshops, and they are usually done for various grade 9 classes a few times a semester. I started doing this about a year ago… Continue reading Adjusting Expectations Because of Depression
Despite what the title might suggest, this post isn't about me being self-critical. I've been struggling for months with cognitive symptoms of depression, and on a daily basis I notice that it impairs my overall functioning. But it's not something I've ever had much of an objective sense of, until I tried the THINC-it test.… Continue reading I’m Actually Getting Stupider: The THINC-it Test in Depression
I have always found the cognitive symptoms of depression to be among the most disruptive to my overall functioning. When I'm really unwell it feels like I can't think my way out of a paper bag. I tend to describe the effect on my thinking as "mashed potato brains".
