I get asked questions like this a lot when I’m doing presentations or Q&As on Twitch and YouTube. The simple fact is I’m not struggling with or managing or dealing with any of the mental illness diagnoses I had in the past. I’m not managing OCD or GAD or depression or addiction. And it’s been…
In my book, YOU ARE NOT A ROCK, I shared a bunch about the anxieties and compulsions I struggled with around driving. I wasn’t just anxious. I would see terrible things happening to other people, worry about them happening to me, be constantly checking my memories about driving experiences I had in the past. So…
My post on the newly launched Unsinkable Stories is all about an issue that I now know is quite common when people are making progress on recovery from mental illness, but it’s not something anybody had prepared me for when I was interacting with the mental healthcare system. Overcoming this challenge is key to preventing…
I didn’t wake up to the fact I was struggling with my mental health until I couldn’t write anything. I loved writing and I couldn’t do it anymore. Forget anxiety about being poisoned or going back to check the door locks over and over again or being paralyzed by anxiety attacks–here was a real problem!…
A reader sent in this personal story of overcoming compulsions at a difficult time in his life. He’s now working on becoming a therapist: I’m 26 years old and I’ve been struggling with my mental health ever since I was just a little kid. In December of 2017 my mother got the bad news that…
Dating is all about uncertainty and learning how to sit in emotions! I had a chat with the Bustle Huddle about learning how to embrace the big feels and keep the focus on building a healthy relationship through the things you do control (hint: your actions).
A client shared this awesome adventure he took his brain on recently: I can experience anxiety and panic attacks pretty regularly. They used to control my life. Any work meeting, restaurant, confrontation, exercise, bodily sensation would send me into an hour long panic. I dealt with this for years-not knowing what was going on with…
Anxieties around panic attacks triggered by exercise, and specifically issues with riding bicycles, have been popping up frequently when I’m connecting with people online. Bikes get the heart pounding and bring up physical sensations that we can easily engage in compulsions around. Overcoming these challenges is fun because we get to hop on our bikes…
Recently, Matt and I did a couple of videos exploring intrusive thoughts or anxieties and why it’s useful to look at why we’re afraid of the consequences of those thoughts or anxieties coming true. There’s an exercise for doing that, The 5 Whys, which I shared in my book, The Mind Workout, and Matt explains…
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 harder. If you’re working with a personal trainer on your physical fitness, it’s not strange if you expect to work with somebody that’s in better shape than you, that practices the skills you…