With these skills, you can soothe yourself during an anxiety attack, a depressive episode, or an emotional crisis. When I have a situation that causes me pain, the first thing I want to do is figure out what I can do about it. After I assess my situation, I can look at my options and […]
How to Be Average
I got better with medicine and therapy. Coping skills were there and played an enormous part, but I don’t think I could have done it without professional help. In fact, psychiatric medication has saved my life on many occasions: many. But what do I say to my readers who don’t have access to medical care? […]
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We’re Not Bad, Just Problematic
What do you do when you feel completely misunderstood and you see a wave of public sentiment turning more sour on your diagnoses with every passing day? An online person who will remain anonymous is in a manic episode that needs intervention, but even if she doesn’t get intervention, it’ll resolve on its own, even […]
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- Coping
- ...
Keep Starting Over! Goldfishpainter in 2023
If you need a change, start your brain over. Start over your day. Your emotional responses. Your year. Your goals. Approach an old problem or new opportunity in a freshly reset brain. A fresh brain is a calm brain, waiting to be filled up with new ideas, feelings and solutions. There is no limit to […]
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We’re Not Evil! I promise!
What do you do when you feel completely misunderstood and you see a wave of public sentiment turning more sour on your diagnoses with every passing day? There is an online person who will remain anonymous, currently in a manic episode that needs intervention. Mania often needs hospitalization to get the meds balanced as fast […]
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Welcome to the Alliance of Pissed-Off Leftists: Stand and Fight!
By Emily (@goldfishpainter0 on tiktok, @goldfishpainter on tiktok, Insta, Facebook, and twitter) Alliance of Pissed Off Leftists is a friend to all people who want to fight the ::deep sigh:: fucking Civil War. The Alliance of Pissed Off Leftists is a group of people currently gathering on social media, who are ready to take action […]
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Happy Mother’s Day, Sylvia!
The light-grey clay I was so excited to be squeezing in my hands was cold. My momma sat next to me. My hero, a true artist, taught me so many creative skills. Spread out supplies on the dining table and go to work creating. There was the Fimo clay, and I still have the tiny […]
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That Damned Snake: An Essay on Pain
Written by Guest Author, Elliott Ridenour: Like every day and night, I’m in a lot of pain. I’m not sleeping for about the sixth day in a row. Not to exaggerate, I have gotten a total of four hours over those six days. But there are lessons to be gained from pain. So instead of […]
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- Medicine
- ...
I’m My Own Lab Rat
About twenty minutes after my 4 pm dose yesterday, I had a bad reaction to my most recently added med. It made me extremely dizzy, with spinning vision similar to the way things look when you’re so drunk that you’re about to vomit. I also felt like I was walking in reduced gravity. With every […]
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Why The Fuck Am I Back Here?
Sitting in my wheelchair on the Intensive Care Patient Unit at the DePaul Psychiatric facility, I wept loudly and openly at the sight before me. “How am I back here?!” It wasn’t a question. I lost all sense of whatever decorum and dignity I had left, as I was under the watchful eye of no […]
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No Care For The Doomed: Intensive Care Ward
I’d only been on the Intensive Care Patients’ ward for five minutes before I accidentally made an enemy of a hostile schizophrenic woman who presented the possibility of danger. I wasn’t wrong. The primary purpose of the Intensive Care Patients’ ward is to prevent harm to self or others. If you’re dangerous, ICP is your […]
