Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
The Overcoming Avoidance Workbook by psychologist Daniel F. Gros aims to help you stop avoiding and start living. It takes a transdiagnostic approach, meaning it focuses on specific behaviours rather than the diagnoses in which they occur. The cover says that it's for anxiety, depression, or PTSD, but the focus is on anxiety and depression.… Continue reading Book Review: Overcoming Avoidance
Mental illness can certainly feel like it ages you, but is the combination of aging and mental illness something that's visible from the outside? For a good chunk of my adult life, I looked youngish for my age. Not as in babyface, but youngish. When I finished university and started working, most people were a… Continue reading Aging and Mental Illness: Does It Show?
I mentioned in a recent weekend wrap-up that this was coming, and now it's here. As of today, I’m officially not a nurse any more. This isn't an abrupt transition by any means. I've known this was coming for a while now, and I’ve already been through a shuffling of role identities. My nurse identity… Continue reading An Identity Milestone: No Longer a Nurse
Here's what happened in my life over the past week: A highlight was Suzette Benjamin's Eh! – A Poem that delightfully captures us wacky Canadians.I decided to write a review of my now-former employer on Indeed. Indeed rejected it; I'm not sure if it included details that were too specific, or if if I just… Continue reading Weekend Wrap-Up
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is histrionic personality disorder. Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) falls within the DSM-5's cluster B of dramatic/emotional/erratic personality disorders. Like any personality disorder, it doesn't just pop up out of nowhere in adulthood; it starts early and is pretty… Continue reading What Is… Histrionic Personality Disorder
Over the last three years (wow, has it been that long?), I've read and reviewed a lot of books. Here are a few quotes that stood out for me. No One Cares About Crazy People In No One Cares About Crazy People, Ron Powers intertwines a sweeping history of mental illness stigma with the stories… Continue reading Interesting Book Quotes from Past Reviews
As an official Crazy Person, I'm all for laughing at ourselves. It makes the hard stuff a little bit easier. But when other people use stigma as an excuse to laugh at us, that makes this Crazy Person very unimpressed, because stigma isn't funny. Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC, seems to do a pretty good… Continue reading Mental Illness Stigma Isn’t Funny
Here's what happened in my life over the past week: While doing some link maintenance on my site, I happened to discover that a site over on Blogger had plagiarized my post on how to deal with plagiarism. Hey, go big or go home, right? I'm a big Apple fan, but the whole forced obsolescence… Continue reading Weekend Wrap-Up
Britney Spears, Roundhouse, London (Apple Music Festival 2016)Drew de F Fawkes, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Britney Spears has been in the news recently after the New York Times released its documentary Framing Britney Spears. It's on Hulu and FX, which I don't have access to, so I haven't watched it. Still, I wanted… Continue reading The Strangeness of the Britney Spears Conservatorship
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society I first heard of the term contemplative practices when reading the book A Fearless Heart by Thupten Jinpa. This involves approaching an inner problem without avoidance or distraction. By establishing some mental space, you can consider the problem without getting caught up in the thoughts and emotions that… Continue reading Exploring Contemplative Practices
