• Sharing – Don’t Just Post About Supporting Those With Depression, Support Them

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    John ends his post with an important message, one that I echo for sure because his story is something I’ve heard too many times. He talks about “reaching out” to people only to be dismissed. Being told “Oh you’re strong, you’ll get through this”, or that it’s not that serious, and then the struggle to reach out to a hotline or for professional help and be met with some short term strategies, and lack of available resources, etc. is how you “support” depression without really supporting the person in front of you dealing with depression.

    Just the other day I saw someone close to me talking about spending 45 minutes just trying to figure out how to set up an appointment with a therapist through the app her insurance has set up for her through her employer, before finally giving up.

    This is why we need reminders like this for the people we know, and why we need to remind the entire mental health care industry of this as well.

  • Sharing – Aly Raisman Talks Healing from Triggering Senate Testimony

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    This makes complete sense, but I fear it’s something we don’t remember when it comes to our own healing. We kind of forget that there are ups and downs, and we also tend to forget just how much energy and effort is involved in talking about it anywhere, let alone in front of a Senate Committee and national audience, and how that’s going to impact us for a time.

    What Aly, and the other gymnasts, did that day in the hearing is brave, but we’d do well to also recognize how much energy that took as well, and the need to recover from that energy expenditure, because we should also be applying that to ourselves, and our own healing.

  • Sharing – Feel Emotions—Don’t Fight or Feed Them

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    You know, many of us are guilty of this. We like to suggest that people feel their emotions, but we never really define what that means. I enjoyed the article below because it talks specifically about what it’s not, fighting not to feel them, or feeding them so much that they swallow us whole.

  • Sharing – Other People Don’t Think You’re a Mess

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

    The key is to have some compassion for yourself, similar to the compassion you might have for someone else in a vulnerable situation. When you can do that, suddenly what the other person does isn’t as important, you’ve given yourself grace, and acceptance.

    As childhood abuse survivors, of course, this is tricky. Self-compassion is not generally one of our strengths. How could it be? All our lives we’ve been told that bad things happen either to bad people, or for a reason, and we’ve had something horrible happen to us, so we must be broken in some way to have had that experience. Didn’t we all think that way at one point or another? How could we not?

  • It’s The Time of the Year When We Need to Talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    As I realize that those of us in the US will be turning the clocks back to standard time this weekend, and those of you in other Northern Hemisphere countries may have done the same last weekend, it’s important to remind ourselves of what that time change, and change in the amount of daylight to follow, can mean for folks.

    So, I’m sharing a link and an image from the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) to remind us that SAD is a thing, and it can be mild and treated by taking some small actions, or it can truly interfere with living our lives and might require something more than eating healthier. Either way, keep this handy and know when the season might be affecting you.

  • Sometimes Self-Care Isn’t About The Self

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I have heard Shelly Tygielski’s story before. Right at the start of the pandemic, she put together a sort of community-based mutual aid organization that was designed to match people in need with people who could help. She has now written a book about that experience and shared her mindfulness teachings. 

    I caught an interview piece/book review over on the Time website this week and I thought this is something that really makes a lot of sense, and might be something we need to think much more openly about when we encourage people to self-care.