Image Not Found On Media Library

River Street, Blue Building
5690-970 New York City

GET CONNECTED
INSTAGRAM FEED
Instagram connection not available.
TOOLKIT
Image Not Found On Media Library

Type and hit ENTER
Hi Mark, Do you have an email list you can subscribe to? Thanks for all of the great content. AUTHOR: John AUTHOR EMAIL: johnmchenry4@gmail.com AUTHOR URL: SUBJECT: markfreeman.ca Contact Form IP: 98.122.164.68 Array ( [1_Name] => John [2_Email] => johnmchenry4@gmail.com [3_Message] => Hi Mark, Do you have an email list you can subscribe to? Thanks for all of the great content. [entry_title] => Contact [entry_permalink] => https://www.markfreeman.ca/contact/ [feedback_id] => 2ac250ef4cfa0b349ab4329506168cf1 )
Image Not Found On Media Library
  • Coaching
  • Keynotes
  • Journal
  • Books
  • Contact
GET CONNECTED
  • Home
  • Journal
  • Coaching
  • Keynotes
  • Books
  • Brain School
  • Contact
Media

Mental Illness Recovery Q&A with The Mighty

November 6, 2016
-
Posted by Mark

For OCD Week, I joined The Mighty for a live Q&A on their Facebook page all about my journey with recovery from mental illness. I usually keep my videos focused on mental health and where I’m going now, so I don’t often talk about the specific symptoms I struggled with but in this video I go more in-depth into what it was like deep in the mental illness hole, and what was involved with getting out of that hole:

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related News

Other posts that you should not miss.
Be yourself, Books, Media, Personal

LARB Interview: Writing as mental health practice.

March 30, 2019
-
Posted by Mark

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

Read More
March 30, 2019
Posted by Mark
Media

Interview with The OCD Stories Podcast

September 11, 2016
-
Posted by Mark

I sat down with Stuart from The OCD Stories for another wide-ranging interview (you can find the first …

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Read More
September 11, 2016
Posted by Mark
Be yourself, Media

Mental Health Q&A Live from Bangalore with Wysa

January 25, 2019
-
Posted by Mark

While I was in India, I stopped by Bangalore to meet with the Wysa team. They’ve created …

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Read More
January 25, 2019
Posted by Mark
← PREVIOUS POST
Overcoming stigma when blogging about health and illness.
NEXT POST →
Interview with The OCD Stories Podcast

2 Comments

on Mental Illness Recovery Q&A with The Mighty.
  1. Alison Kennedy
    February 7, 2018 @ 5:52 pm
    -
    Reply

    Mark,

    You are one of my favorite people! The guidance, advice and help you offer is beyond useful to The OCD community. I am continuing to learn & grow through my recovery and a lot of my courage comes from your story.

    If you ever offer a class in the CT / NYC area, please let me know.

    Alison Kennedy

    Loading...
    • Mark
      February 14, 2018 @ 2:11 am
      -
      Reply

      Thank you, Alison! Enjoy the steps ahead as you’re creating your story 🙂

      I’ve got a book coming out in the US this coming fall so hopefully I’ll have a chance to travel around. I’ll post about any US travel on here when we get closer to the fall.

      Loading...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

ABOUT ME
Author. Coach. Facilitator. CEO at TOOLKIT. I create tools that help people make and sustain difficult changes.
TOOLKIT HQ

And this is a good mug. Click the image to grab yours from the Toolkit Store. FREE SHIPPING through the holidays. I can verify that it does an exceptional job at hold coffee, tea, Red Bull, water, and kombucha. Goes excellent with cookies and donuts (sold separately).

SEARCH
FOLLOW ALONG
RECENT POSTS
  • SAD Lamp / Light Therapy Review
    February 24, 2021

    When I struggled with mental illness, the winters were often more challenging, but …

    Share this:

    • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
    • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Online Mental Health Writing Workshop
    January 11, 2021

    I’m teaching another round of my writing workshop! The Write Your Brain mental …

  • Life after recovery
    November 19, 2020

    I always enjoy collaborating with OCD UK because they have such a helpful …

  • The Tune-Up on Twitch – Mental Health Recovery Q&A
    October 10, 2020

    Bring your brain by the Toolkit Shop for the Tune-Up twice each month …

  • What is quality treatment for OCD and Anxiety Disorders?
    March 10, 2020

    One of the reasons I originally started to share about mental health and …

POPULAR TAGS
recovery
OCD
anxiety
mental health
video
Acceptance
compulsions
therapy
mental illness
change
psychology
skills
fear
systems thinking
mindfulness
treatment
workshop
Everybody has a Brain
practice
meditation
design thinking
work
intrusive thoughts
travel
blogging
Vintage
Trends
Shopping
Party
Music
Social
LifeStyle
Kids
Family
CBT
stigma
Love
Exposure & Response Prevention
ACT
health
mental health at work
goals
lived experience
peer support
interview
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 🔥

#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

LATEST TWEETS
Twitter
thepathtochange
Follow
@LeRemedyy Almost always gif, but sometimes I say gif just to introduce chaos into the conversation.
19 hours ago
- thepathtochange
RT @JanelCubbage: There really should be a requirement that race & racism are addressed in all courses *especially* for certain disciplines…
19 hours ago
- thepathtochange
RT @NaheedD: 39 First Nations communities across Canada are still under long-term drinking-water advisories. 10 in Ontario without clean…
22 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
RECENT POSTS
  • February 24, 2021
    SAD Lamp / Light Therapy Review
  • January 11, 2021
    Online Mental Health Writing Workshop
  • November 19, 2020
    Life after recovery
Mental Illness Recovery Q&A with The Mighty | MARK FREEMAN
%d bloggers like this: