“For the one with mental illness, there is the illness itself, plus a whole host of other feelings: the vulnerability that comes with letting someone truly see you as you are, the anger when they don’t get it, the guilt when they reassure you, the shame that you aren’t easily “fixed,” the fear that one…
“So what happens when we say “get over it” to someone with depression that is driven by unconscious repression? Here, the “get over it” confronts the depressed mind with an impossible task: (1) gain conscious control of an unconscious process that is currently operating out of your awareness, or (2) do a thing you simply…
“As predictable as the appearance of Santa Claus in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the holiday season is a time of well-meaning warnings and hand-wringing about depression and suicides. But while the stereotype of the lonely relative overcome by emotion during the “most wonderful time of year” has become fairly entrenched in pop culture, it’s…
“Her life isn’t perfect, and trust will probably never come easy. But the mother of three is not ashamed of what happened to her, and she doesn’t want others to ignore what happened to them or be afraid to speak up. “You discover your character,” she said. “You find out who the hell you are.””…
“If we lived in a stigma-free world, my experience of acceptance in the workplace would be common. I would not be incredibly lucky to have taken these risks and gained rather than lost. The anonymous responses I received when I looked for different perspectives and stories of opening up about mental illness at the workplace…
“So now I speak. Bravely, bluntly, honestly. However you want to look at it, I speak. I’m a sexual abuse survivor and I did exactly that – I survived. Even now as I write this, I’m aware that future employers and my father’s family can see my words but I refuse to bow down to…
