One morning, my boyfriend misses my calls. This is unusual. He tends to be an early riser. I begin to feel myself panic. Minutes later, I’m speeding down the freeway, three towns away, just to make sure he’s okay.

I’m hyperventilating. It reminds me of the cat-and-mouse mind games my ex used to play. Flashbacks zip through the mind like a film reel, racing with negative thoughts and images of deaths and breakups. I can’t see straight anymore. There must be something wrong, right?

At moments like this, I’m sure my amygdala going into full blast with surges of adrenaline…

The night of September 20th, 2014, I stared into the void of what was to come, after taking more pills than I ever had at once. I consumed three bottles and fell asleep.

I closed my eyes and leaned into the dark.

An hour or so later, I woke up-wildly hallucinating. The walls melted before my eyes and my furniture spun. Every object in my room became a pulsating ripple. I tried to stand up, but I doubled over and vomited instead.

Suddenly afraid, I gazed down at my futon bed with its sprawled, wrinkled sheets. It occurred to me…

From social workers and psychiatrists to patients and activists, Mental Health is going through a major paradigm shift.

ISPS [short for: The International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis], held a conference in New Haven, CT, just this past November 2019.

Professionals, family members, and people with lived experience of Psychosis came together to discuss new ways and methods of understanding unusual, psychological experiences.

Instead of coming from a paradigm of hierarchy and control, participants were armed with a spirit of curiosity and discussion.

We’re riding a new wave

Changes in how we approach Mental Health, including Harm Reduction, Holistic care, Nutrition, and…

I saw you over at a Wendy’s parking lot this afternoon after picking up a few things at the Target across the plaza. The closest garbage can couldn’t have been more than a few feet away but while you were rummaging through your old, blue Toyota…

A plastic cup catapulted out of your driver’s side window, along with a flying orange straw right after. Both lay forlorn on the asphalt and already tumbling with the wind.

Seriously?

During the dawn of 2020, an age emerging as the most environmentally conscious, I was beside myself wondering how, with our cultural zeitgeist saturated…

In 2016, I graduated from a program specializing in Peer Support, also known as Recovery Support. This training helped give me tools that both empowered me in a new career and how I live my life overall.

Not every Peer Support program is the same. Some programs may highlight some aspects of the recovery model over others.

What is the Recovery Model of Mental health?

In short, the Recovery model is rooted in using a Strength-based approach over one emphasizing someone’s perceived deficits. According to SAMHSA, users of mental health services benefit to a significant degree when receiving help from a Peer, someone who is hired because of…

While awareness around Depression, Anxiety and other mental health diagnoses grow, someone who hears voices is still often considered beyond the pale in terms of treatment options.

People who experience voice-hearing are usually labeled Schizophrenic, Schizoaffective or Bipolar “with psychotic features”.

Most voice-hearers who come to the traditional Psychiatric model for help, are often met with forced hospitalizations, heavy-duty cocktails of medications, and are told to not talk about the voices because talking about voices “only makes them worse”.

Let’s take another perspective.

Is the traditional psychiatric view the only way to understand voice-hearing experiences? Or could there be more?

Advocacy Unlimited, a state-funded…

According to Business Insider, Elon Musk discussed his excitement over Neuralink, “an AI-enabled chip that could be implanted in a person’s brain to stimulate brain activity.” on a Lex Fridman podcast, which aired this past Tuesday.

While I can’t speak directly to how this microchip would work with Alzheimers’s or Parkinson’s, we need to reflect on different possibilities in terms of Autism and Schizophrenia.

I deal with mental health challenges and a neurological impairment, and I for one, don’t need a microchip to “solve” my “issues”. Many folks on the Autism spectrum consider their Neurodivergence as a way of being…

After the initial sour tears and lurching in my belly, I lay in bed, wipe the dampness off my face and take a deep breath. And this is all I do for a few moments.

Breathe in. And out.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Through the nose and out of the mouth.

It sounds so simple, I know… but it’s powerful.

I watch those feelings rise and fall like ocean tides. I ride the wave.

No more gasping or grasping. I put my hand on my stomach and continue to center my attention around the breathing and all of its sensations. …