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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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 […]
What I would say if I could go back in time to my newly-diagnosed self.

Your psychosis ends. Hospitalizations end. Your episodes end. No matter how far away you go, you always come back. It will hurt like hell and you’ll see only one way out. Hold on. Don’t let it win. Stay stubborn enough to not let it win. The hospital is where you go to start getting better. […]
You Matter.

Shit gets hard. Sometimes you’ll be lonely and want to cry. You’ll worry for the soul of the world. And you feel there is nothing you can do. Part of the wonderful curse of being human is being able to understand things that are so much larger than we are. It’s easy, and dangerous, to […]
Very Specific Instructions For Dealing With Coronavirus Anxiety

There are real, concrete things you can do to manage your anxiety. It’s not all about “thinking positive” or anything as simplistic as that. Anxiety is a physiological response to a stimulus. Since the stimulus we have right now is fear of the plague, we as a world are being presented with anxiety from which […]
Guns: The Night My Neighborhood Met Fear

By Emily K Harrington It’s midnight, and I’m half-heartedly picking up around the house with Conservative propaganda in the background. Keeping tabs on the likes of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes makes me feel like a super-spy and gives me the illusion of being protected from the evil they promote, since I’ll know where they’re […]
The world is a dumpster fire, and it’s getting worse. How this mentally ill person copes.

When the camps at the US-Mexico border came to the forefront of the news cycle, I was disgusted and dismayed. I was also angry, and anger is motivating. My mom mentioned a breakfast meeting of the Waco Immigrants Alliance, and I went. About a week later, there was a global day of action protesting the […]
How To Have Someone Committed To A Mental Hospital

The best way to get someone into inpatient treatment (while not always possible), is to have a nonjudgmental and open dialogue with the person that you are trying to help. Most people do not want to go to the hospital, especially when they’re already sick and struggling. If all of your comforting objects, habits, […]
Should We Have Labels?

Would it be better to believe you were normal than know you are sick? Does having a label make your life worse? Anything classified as a mental illness or mental disorder is, by its nature, problematic. It’s almost always distressing or painful. A person with a mental illness can usually identify that their feelings are […]
For the Strong Who Feel Weak

You: If you’ve ever been suicidal and you didn’t attempt suicide, you are strong. If you attempted suicide and failed, you are stronger. If you attempted suicide, failed, became suicidal again, and didn’t make an attempt, you’re even stronger. And so on. If you live with an ice-cold knife in your chest. If you’ve ever […]