Depression. A miserable experience. When mild, it steals your dreams. When severe, it runs you over with stagnancy, painful thoughts, guilt, and shutdown. It’s also not just a single emotion. Depression comes in dozens of flavors and intensities, if not hundreds, and can vary from day to day, if not throughout the day. One minute […]
Outside-the-Box Recovery: replacing drugs with the good stuff
Outside-the-Box Recovery: Replacing Drugs With the Good Stuff The worksheet below is for addiction counselors to use with clients, as well as for anyone who is in recovery. Giving up drugs creates an enormous hole in your life. Beforehand addiction took up most of your time, and now that you’re clean, you often don’t know […]
Share this:
For introverts and people on the spectrum: how to make friends out of strangers
So you’ve met someone you don’t know and it’s time to have a conversation, hopefully create a friendship, and your first tendency is to… run. Sound familiar? If talking to strangers feels like a bucketful of icy, cold water thrown in your direction, you’ve found the right spot. This post is written for all shy, […]
Share this:
Fun things you can do for free
Sometimes money is scarce. Here are a few ideas to keep you going during those financially-challenged moments. Hang around your house. Yep, you heard that right. Look around. What do you see? Go through your old books, magazines, photos, movies, and music. You’ll be surprised with what you find — and, unless you plan on […]
Share this:
Nine tips for living with bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder isn’t for the faint-of-heart. The depressions are catastrophic. They’re black, painful clouds of existence that hardly count as living. The manias bury you with baggage and regret. And the in-betweens, when you’re trying to remember how to be “normal” and make sense out the fact that none of this is normal… No, not […]
Share this:
11 ways to overcome all adversity
“It is what it is. Isn’t that how these things always go? They are what they are. We just get to cope.” — Mira Grant, Feed Okay, give me a minute. Today I want to get up on my soap box and say “Yay!” to overcoming all adversity, finding the perfect life, and always knowing […]
Share this:
Problem-busting: just talk to the problem
Problem-solving worksheet This is a 2-page cartoon-ridden worksheet that helps the reader explore a new way to approach a problem, by talking to the darned thing! Grab a pen, start where it says “START HERE,” and follow the arrows. (Word document format) This isn’t madness. For anyone who’s curious, the formal background supporting this […]
Share this:
Finding meaning: the creative way
You’re meant to immerse yourself in this “topic” until it surfaces in your dreams, until you subliminally speak its language and bring it up at every conversation, until you understand a world you’ve never understood before…
