Living in recovery with trauma includes easier days and more difficult days. Being grateful for the easier days seems easier. Having both easy and difficult days is something to be grateful for. Easy days can be enjoyed and difficult days can be overcome. Living through both is a reminder that living, and thriving, is possible.Read More
Phobias are considered part of the anxiety disorder family. Having a phobia is having an intense and often irrational fear of a person, place, thing, or situation. For some, phobias are a minimal experience, like feeling uneasy at the thought of spiders or hating to fly in airplanes. For others, phobias are rooted in deepRead More
Hitting ‘rock bottom’ in any sense of the phrase, is a life changing experience. After living with such a great amount of pain for so long and trying your best to cope with it in the ways that you could, it can be hard to tell when things start getting better. You become so usedRead More
Recovery from depression can lead to remission. Remission, and recovery, can lead to relapse. Relapse is most often associated with recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Mental health recovery is less understood than recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Relapse can happen after periods of feeling ‘better’ without the common symptoms of a mental healthRead More
Everyone has beliefs. Often, the word belief is given a spiritual or religious connotation. We can have beliefs and belief systems that are spiritual and religious. A belief can be defined as “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists”. Looking at this definition of belief, we can begin to understand thatRead More
Being anxious is being human. Everyone has anxiety because anxiety is naturally built into the human brain. The fight or flight response system is part of the way humans have evolved to survive. When anxiety becomes a mental health issue in the form of an anxiety disorder, the brain gets stuck in survival mode. EverythingRead More
Love, caring, and compassion are beautiful things. Watching a loved one struggle with something difficult in their life, be it a traumatic experience, an addiction to drugs and alcohol, or related mental health issues, is difficult to do. Caring deeply, we want to try and help our loved one as much as possible. We wantRead More
If we let someone else into the inner workings of our minds to listen into our deepest thoughts, insecurities, and fears, would they be shocked by what they hear? We tend to think that we are the only ones who think and feel the way that we do. Nobody else could possibly think or feelRead More
“Vile” is an adjective used to describe. Some of the definitions for vile can include: wretched, bad, repulsive, morally debased, depraved, despicable, or foul. “Vile” is closely related to violent, villain, and vilify. When something is violent it could be described as vile. When someone is violent, they could be described as a villain. WhenRead More
To anyone who hasn’t lived with the effects of trauma, an active addiction to drugs and alcohol, an eating disorder, or a mental health disorder, living with suffering doesn’t apply. People who live with active mental illness live in a different world than other people. Addictions and self-harming behaviors are maladaptive forms of coping thatRead More