Be đź‘Ź kindđź‘Ź tođź‘Ź yourselfđź‘Ź When I started out taking care of my mental health and digging out of the mental illness hole, I had to make a lot of changes around things I thought were totally normal and necessary….
Checking into relapse
Build a new relationship with uncertainty throughout your life or your daily practices will just logically and rationally have you struggling and suffering and relapsing back into a depressive anxiety hole. This video explains an approach that I credit with…
So you want to work in mental health…
I was part of a panel discussion at the University of Toronto recently on community engagement work in the mental health sector. It was exciting to see so many people interested in working in mental health. The questions and comments from…
Is that juice cleanse just another compulsion?
I often get questions about the “right” foods to eat for mental illness recovery: What are the best foods to prevent intrusive thoughts? Will eliminating gluten lower my anxiety levels? Can a detox fix the chemical imbalances in my body? But if you’ve…
The City of Brains Project
Over at the CivicTechTO meetups, I’ve started up a project with a bunch of awesome volunteers to tackle a simple question: How do you find effective, accessible mental health services in Toronto? The answers, however, have been anything but simple. Each answer…
Want to succeed with your New Year’s resolutions? Build the boat first.
If you’re starting off the new year with plans to make changes that will support recovery from mental illness, be honest about where you are and the skills you’ll need to learn to get to where you want to be. Our…
The Failure Creed
I will fail because trying not to fail has only made things worse. I will fail my assumptions about other people and let them fill in the gaps with the truth. I will fail so I make progress. I will…
Being open about mental health isn’t brave.
It’s normal. It’s healthy. It’s responsible. Talking about stuff in your brain is no different than talking about stuff going on with any other body part. Talking about improving your mental health and fitness is no different than talking about…
Do you know how to get to a healthy place you’ve never been?
You’re an expert in where you are now. But if you want to move to a place you’ve never been, it helps to speak with people who understand that new place. They understand the culture and the language of living…
Help won’t always come in the way you want it to.
Receiving or providing mental health treatment requires significant amounts of tolerance and acceptance on every side of the equation (and it’s an equation with many sides). When seeking treatment, we can often trip over our judgments and let our short-term…
Creating an Energy Map to Design the Year Ahead
When it comes to the new year, I like to draw out where I’m spending my time and energy and position the activities by how they relate to each other, and then I look at whether that makes sense and…
Health is the implementation of innovation.
Especially if you’re ill, being healthy is a transformative innovation. But innovation is difficult. And not because coming up with innovative ideas is tough–just listen to a 3 year old talk for an hour and you’ll probably hear a million…