Let’s play pretend. Imagine you’re vacuuming your carpet. The room is big, the carpet’s a mess, and your vacuum cleaner is loud. Twenty minutes later, you’re finished, and when you turn off the vacuum, your ears start ringing. The ringing is so loud that you can barely hear your loud music playing. You call me […]
Empathy
Whose Pain Is Bigger?

Life is full, FULL, FULL of pain! Life hurts. A lot. But that’s okay. And it has to be okay. It has to be normal. We walk from problem to problem with the hope of turning our current problems into better ones in the future, not with the hope of creating a problem-less life. Everyone […]
The Difference Between Normal Emotions and Mentally-Ill Emotions: The Color Explanation

The way I explain the difference between normal feeling experiences and my feeling experiences (with bipolar, major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder) is with color: Imagine you’re holding a ball. It is deep blue. This ball contains all of your sadness. This ball is 100% of what you experience when you are sad. Now […]
The Coping Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed

There Is Always Hope Of Reducing Your Pain You can calm and soothe yourself when you hurt. It takes a long time, some training, and a lot of practice, but you can learn how to calm yourself during a depressive episode, an anxiety attack, a panic attack, a bipolar episode, or something similar. When I […]