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Be yourself, Books, Media, Personal

LARB Interview: Writing as mental health practice.

March 30, 2019

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Posted by Mark

I didn’t wake up to the fact I was struggling with my mental health until I couldn’t write anything. I loved …

March 30, 2019

Posted by Mark

Be yourself, Personal

Why peer support is so damn useful for mental illness recovery.

October 3, 2017

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Posted by Mark

We could also call this: Recovery is like rowing. You’ll be bad at both until you’re not. And then you’ll just push …

October 3, 2017

Posted by Mark

Mental Health Care, Personal, System Transformation

So you want to work in mental health…

April 8, 2017

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Posted by Mark

I was part of a panel discussion at the University of Toronto recently on community engagement work in the mental health sector. …

April 8, 2017

Posted by Mark

Personal

Overcoming stigma when blogging about health and illness.

November 11, 2016

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Posted by Mark

I recently gave a keynote presentation at Diabetes Linkup, a conference for Type 2 Diabetes bloggers, on the topic of overcoming stigma …

November 11, 2016

Posted by Mark

Personal

Five big take-aways from MedX 2015

October 13, 2015

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Posted by Mark

Stanford’s Medicine X conference was definitely the best health-related event of any kind I’ve ever attended. Launched by Dr. Larry Chu and an …

October 13, 2015

Posted by Mark

Mental Health Care, Personal

Counselor Troi is not Scalable

August 26, 2015

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Posted by Mark

In anticipation of this year’s Medicine X Conference, some reflections on one of the stickiest problems in mental healthcare innovation… In less …

August 26, 2015

Posted by Mark

公案 of the day. But really, this is a useful qu

公案 of the day. But really, this is a useful question to better understand intrusive thoughts and how to handle them differently. What is making them intrusive? If you see an image of a nacho in your head, is that intrusive? If you hear a bird chirp outside, is that intrusive? If you hear your phone beep and pick it up to find no message, you might just laugh it off, but if you hear a scream in the basement and run down to help to find nothing, you might label that as problematic. Why do your intrusive thoughts and images and physical sensations connect to the things you're most afraid of? What certainties are you chasing? What certainties are you not chasing about nachos? What beliefs and judgments and cravings are at work there? Maybe instead of hating on thoughts and feelings, it would be more useful to change up those beliefs and judgments...

#intrusivethoughts #mindfulness #mentalhealthnotes #recovery #psychology #acceptance #nachos #koan #zen #therapy #mentalfitness #nonjudgment #beliefs #compulsions #anxiety #OCD #BPD #GAD #ACT #brain #beliefs #goals

🔥 #tweet #recovery #mentalfitness #mentalhealt

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#tweet #recovery #mentalfitness #mentalhealthnotes #mentalhealth #psychology #therapy #change #depression #OCD #ACT #anxiety #intrusivethoughts #mindfulness #goals #mentalhealthawareness #psychiatry #healthcare

I do not remember why I wrote START HERE on the ma

I do not remember why I wrote START HERE on the manuscript but perhaps starting with an understanding that the absence of fear is not the presence of happiness is a good place to begin any moment/day/week/month/year/life.

#mentalhealthnotes #mentalhealthquote #mentalhealth #recovery #bookwriting #writing #writersofinstagram #authorsofinstagram #psychology #fear #anxiety #happiness #youarenotarock #themindworkout #mindfulness #emotionalintelligence

You're tending that garden up there today. What is

You're tending that garden up there today. What is all is that gardening going to produce?

#mentalhealthnotes #mentalfitness #gardening #thinking #ruminating #judging #recovery #psychology #mindfulness #compassion #gratitude #practice #mentalhealth #drawing #writersofinstagram #manuscript #youarenotarock #themindworkout

Where are you going in this moment? Even if you're

Where are you going in this moment? Even if you're only doing stuff in your head, it's taking you somewhere!

This is a page from when I was editing THE MIND WORKOUT. There were many changes before the final version.

The most recent edition of my mental health writing workshop started up last week. It is awesome to connect with people on their writing adventures. The group of writers in the workshop is so talented and I hope they enjoy navigating the wilderness to wherever they want to take their creative energies.

When we sit down to create, it's another opportunity to ask: where are you going?

#writing #creativity #mentalhealthnotes #mentalhealth #themindworkout #youarenotarock #psychology #therapy #goals #editing #writersofinstagram #recovery #writingworkshop #manuscript

I tested out a light therapy lamp! Video up on You

I tested out a light therapy lamp! Video up on YouTube now. Have you ever used a bright light therapy lamp? Was it huge? Did it do anything? Was the lamp SAD?

#sadlamp #lighttherapy #mood #research #technology #mentalhealth #Amazon #shobogenzo #Dogen #morning #winter #psychology #circadianrhythm

Mindlessness is hard work. You've got to be in two

Mindlessness is hard work. You've got to be in two or three or four places at once. You time traveler! No wonder you're exhausted.

#mindfulness #mindlessness #mentalhealthnotes #mentalfitness #mentalhealthquote #psychology #recovery #meditation

From last night's Twitch stream on cutting out pho

From last night's Twitch stream on cutting out phone checking compulsions. You can check out the full stream saved on Twitch (markwfreeman). But this is a message that applies to recovering from any mental health challenges: don't make it about fighting and defeating something. If success and happiness depend on defeating problems, the brain will happily supply more problems! To leave the mental illness behind for good, it can really help to focus the work on where you're going and what you want to build and create in life.

#recovery #Twitch #mentalfitness #mentalhealthnotes #mentalhealth #anxiety #depression #fear #OCD #BPD #psychology #therapy #ACT #values #success #goals

Look past the superficial topics of the fears. Wha

Look past the superficial topics of the fears. What's the consequence you're afraid of. For example, all of the fears above are about the same fear of losing control of living and being ourselves. The brain will happily jump from one to the next, trying to help us tackle all of the different ways our fear could come true. Instead of playing whack-a-mole, I found it most useful to stop the game and make changes around my fears about control: learning how to embrace uncertainty, stick to values proactively instead of reactively trying to control things, shift the focus to creating things I'm actually in charge of, and to trust myself. I don't have to trust that things will work out well. I can trust myself to handle whatever happens. It could be a disaster! I will handle that :)

#recovery #trust #acceptance #mindfulness #control #mentalhealth #mentalfitness #mentalhealthnotes #panicattacks #relationships #anxiety #control #solipsism #certainty #depression

The brain loves to pull this trick I like to call

The brain loves to pull this trick I like to call "differencing". It's a clever way for the brain to convince us back into the old compulsions and habits. It's all about us judging a feeling (or possibly more terrifying: the absence of a feeling 😱) as DIFFERENT 😱😱 and then we start comparing it to other feelings, checking if it's Real™ 😱😱💀, at which point the brain has already got us caught up in lots of compulsions, so then it's super easy to just start doing even more compulsions.

So for taking care of our mental health, it can really help to have any feeling. Physical feelings, emotional feelings, no feelings--these are feelings we can feel (or not feel) while we do actions that matter to us.

#feelings #emotions #compulsions #psychology #recovery #therapy #goals #feeling #recovery #mentalhealth #mentalfitness #acceptance #mentalhealthawareness #anhedonia #anxiety #depression #intrusivethoughts #solipsism #depersonalization #derealization

It's very doable. So let's make those skills acces

It's very doable. So let's make those skills accessible wherever and whenever people want them.

#recovery #mentalhealth #tweet #psychology #therapy #digitalmentalhealth #reminder #accessibility #healthcare #designthinking #mentalhealthawareness #youarenotarock #mentalfitness

It really helped me with recovery to first conside

It really helped me with recovery to first consider where I want to go in life and use that to understand the skills to work on. Sometimes, when we learn it's useful to cut out compulsions and not avoid triggers, we create even more anxiety about doing recovery "right" and we devote ourselves to chasing down every trigger. But then the triggers are still in charge! And it's a lot like saying you're scared there could be a snake under a rock in the forest, so instead of spending the day on the beach where you want to be, you spend all day in the forest turning over every rock. But are those rocks on your path? Or is this just more fear? Trying to control a feeling you don't want to see again?

Where are you going?

#triggers #mindfulness #mentalhealth #recovery #psychology #therapy #compulsions #anxiety #fear #mentalhealthnotes #reminder #questions #goals #mentalfitness

thepathtochange

@LeRemedyy Almost always gif, but sometimes I say gif just to introduce chaos into the conversation.

18 hours ago

- thepathtochange

RT @JanelCubbage: There really should be a requirement that race & racism are addressed in all courses *especially* for certain disciplines…

18 hours ago

- thepathtochange

RT @NaheedD: 39 First Nations communities across Canada are still under long-term drinking-water advisories. 10 in Ontario without clean…

21 hours ago

- thepathtochange

RT @DanicaSamuel: Okay, so boom. There's a lot of talk about the LRT and gentrification in Little Jamaica, BUT what's overlooked is the neg…

Yesterday

- thepathtochange

February 24, 2021

SAD Lamp / Light Therapy Review
January 11, 2021

Online Mental Health Writing Workshop
November 19, 2020

Life after recovery

Personal | MARK FREEMAN