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Music in My Recovery Journey
Music is one of the profound pleasures in my life, and has been since my early childhood. My brother and I shared a small, red record player. We had ten or so of our very own records. Our ... Read More
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Things Fall Apart: Communication Breakdown and Family Problems
During a discussion in my Family Studies class, we talked about the different type of families and why there are issues in the family. I couldn’t help but to think about my situation ... Read More
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Five Lessons I Learned from Visiting the ER with Suicidal Ideation
Mental health issues carry such a stigma that few people wish to talk about their experiences at a psychiatric ward. I am learning involuntary commitments are rarely necessary but are frequently ... Read More
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Loving-Kindness Meditation Helps Me Forgive
My story begins with childhood, which was fraught with difficulty, through a tumultuous adolescence and young adulthood. Looking back all the things that happened, I wonder how I made through ... Read More
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Unrecognizable Signs: My Struggle with Discoid Lupus
Freshman year of college was a difficult time for me. Many things had changed, I was away from home for the first time, I was not among close friends, and my course load was semi-difficult ... Read More
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Into the Woods: My Comeback from Alcoholism and Depression
Editor’s note: This story contains potentially triggering statements about childhood emotional abuse, parental alcoholism, suicidal ideation, and self-harm. Alone and scared, I think, ... Read More
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Reclaiming Truth from Distortion: Overcoming Body Hatred
I began struggling with an eating disorder at age 12. Like many mental health issues, there is a large stigma attached to eating and food issues, which include anorexia, bulimia, binge ... Read More
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Five Ways I’m Beating Bipolar Every Day
I was diagnosed with Type I Bipolar in the spring of 2006, several months after suffering two separate manic episodes almost exactly two weeks apart. Each had landed me in a psychiatric ... Read More
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Trust in Me: In Defense of the Therapeutic Relationship
Therapy is about trust: Trust in the process, in the relationship, in the person, in the cure. It is easily lost, and hard to win back. I had coffee the other day with a friend who is actively ... Read More
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‘I Don’t Need Therapy:’ Why I Was Wrong
Be honest: What’s your reaction when you hear someone mention his or her therapist? People who need therapy have something fundamentally wrong with them, right? They must have major issues ... Read More
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Writing Through Mental Illness and Recovery
Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” There are many paths to self-examination. The most obvious is psychotherapy, in which I wholeheartedly believe. I’ve ... Read More
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Mental Illness to Mental Health: How I Turned 40 And Finally Reclaimed My Life
When I was 6 years old, I used to lie in bed at night and wish that, for just ten seconds, I could be every person in the world. I imagined that overnight the “essence” that was me ... Read More