A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
I did a post a couple of years ago about exploring values, but when I was reading a recent post on the topic by Burnie at Squash Stigma Not Fat, I thought it would be good to revamp that post. While values matter across the board, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) places particular emphasis on… Continue reading The Role of Values in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
My friends at WeDIDitPTSD recently brought up Jack Kornfield's approach to RAIN, a mindfulness meditation for dealing with overwhelm, and I thought I'd explore that further in a post. RAIN, which is based on Buddhist teachings, was first described by Insight Meditation Society teacher Michele McDonald. Rain acronym R: Recognition The R is about exploring… Continue reading It’s RAIN-ing Mindfulness
I don't currently do therapy and haven't had a lot of success with it in the past, but I'm very pro-therapy in general. I've picked up a collection of therapy tools from CBT, DBT, and various others that are handy to pull out of the toolbox as needed. This post is a sample of a… Continue reading Therapy Tools for Mental Health
Your Wellness Toolbox by Ali Swift is a follow-up to her first book, My Wellness Toolbox, which I previously reviewed. Both books are based on her own experience of what has helped with depression and anxiety. This book contains 14 new tools, including descriptions of the circumstances struggling with her mental health in which the… Continue reading Book Review: Your Wellness Toolbox
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is the stress bucket model. I first heard of the term stress bucket several months ago in a post by Caz at Mental Health 360º, but it's been around for a while. It looks like it's best known in… Continue reading What Is… the Stress Bucket Model
In my depression-free days, my brain felt like a finely tuned machine. I could handle multiple tasks efficiently and effectively. I've always been organized, but when I was well it was helpful rather than necessary. I performed better when I was organized, but it wasn't a crutch. If non-depressed brain was skiing black diamond runs, depression… Continue reading Compensating for Depression Brain
Fellow blogger Skinny Hobbit recently mentioned a technique I hadn't heard of before, the worry tree, so I wanted to look into it a little more. Worry is related to but not the same as anxiety. Worry is a thinking process that is focused around problems that may arise in the future, which can then… Continue reading The Worry Tree Decision Tool
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) has a lot of useful concepts, but one of my favourites is wise mind. Wise mind is the area of overlap between our emotional mind and our reasonable/rational/logical mind. To put it another way, it's like being able to draw on our left and right brain at the same time. It's not that either… Continue reading Finding Wise Mind in DBT
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that takes the stance that avoidance and resistance to internal experiences identified as negative is what causes cognitive distress. To resolve distress, ACT suggests that we need to employ strategies like mindfulness, de-fusion from our thoughts, and recognizing the self as the context in which… Continue reading Setting Sail with the ACT Life Compass
Thoughts as leaves on a stream is a popular metaphor used in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to represent noticing thoughts and letting them pass by without attaching to them. I like this metaphor, since it's not about fighting the thoughts or trying to make them go away, but just riding them out. Busy beavers… Continue reading Thoughts as Leaves on a Stream: An ACT Metaphor