Change is superextravery difficult.
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. Making those changes were tough because I’d spent years practicing and perfecting compulsions that made…
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 helping me recover and maintaining great mental health for the past eight years:
Shanghai and the changing world of manufacturing
I was in Shanghai to participate in a meeting on the future of manufacturing. It had been ten years since I was last there. How the city had transformed in that decade, not only in what was there but how people were interacting and businesses were operating (ex: paying for everything from taxi rides to…
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 the audience made it clear that they understood the need for patient-centered innovation and they…
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 struggled with your mental health, be very careful about searching for a magic solution by…
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 goals are often the results of the skills we need to learn, so be sure…
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 fail at lifting heavy things in my life, and then I’ll fail again and again…
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 improving your physical health and fitness. Swapping techniques on how to do difficult exercises is…
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 in that place and the supports necessary to stay in that place. You need to…
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 likes and dislikes become massive barriers to what’s going to make us happy in the…