5 Tips for Taking Mental Health Workshops Online
I’ve been facilitating workshops for years, in mental health and business strategy. Adapting design thinking exercises to mental health has been so effective. It’s engaging but it’s also incredibly useful for understanding complex challenges we’re running into and seeing solutions to get out of them. The thing is, though, traveling for an in-person workshop to…
LARB Interview: Writing as mental health practice.
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!…
Toronto Event: Mindfulness Recovery
Update: Awesome panel! Thanks to Myodetox and Studio YYZ for making the space to have these conversations. This was the first panel I’ve been on where everybody was talking about recovering from mental illness to get back to doing the businesses they’re passionate about. It is amazing to see this cultural shift towards recovery. You…
The making of a mental health book.
Since YOU ARE NOT A ROCK launches in North America this week, I wanted to share about how we got here and what goes into a book like this. Everything begins with sticky-notes. I had a seething mass of constantly evolving sticky-notes that helped me layout the structure of the book before I began writing.…
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:
Overcoming anxiety at work and on the job hunt.
Recently, Daniela posted over on the Everybody has a Brain Tumblr about some anxiety challenges she tackled after getting laid off, then searching for a new job, and then at her new workplace. Her story was such a great example of all the skills we’re always talking about, and it includes vomit! It’s so useful…
Order The Mind Workout in the UK
My book, The Mind Workout, all about the steps anybody can take to get comfortable with the stuff in their heads as they do more of what they care about in life, hit bookstore shelves in the United Kingdom on June 1st. You order it on Amazon here: If you’re not in the UK, you…
What would you give up for safety?
We can always come up with a rational reasons to excuse self-destructive compulsions while we chase safety. But chasing that feeling is no different than chasing any other feeling: it only leads to more of the experiences you’re trying to avoid.
University Peer Health Engagement Workshop
This past weekend I was at the Toronto Peer Health Network’s annual symposium to facilitate a workshop on peer engagement. There were around 60 student leaders in the workshop who run peer health education programs at universities and colleges around Toronto. They’re working with their peers right around the age when all sorts of mental and…
First episode of The OCD Stories podcast
Stuart Ralph has launched a podcast to go along with The OCD Stories site, all about exploring OCD and recovery from OCD. For the first episode of the podcast, which you can watch here in video, we discussed a slew of topics about recovering from OCD. Check it out: