Bipolar is an illness of workarounds. As in, I constantly have to find ways to work around bipolar disorder. In fact, if there’s one coping skill that matters most when it comes to dealing with this serious mental illness, it’s being creative in finding alternate paths. So let’s talk about bipolar workarounds — how we can find them and how we can use them.
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Helping someone who is suicidal is daunting. In fact, even for me, someone who works in mental health, helping someone who is suicidal can be tough. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, however. If you’re here and looking for how to help a suicidal person, you’re already doing the right thing. Thank you for caring for another person so much. Read on for tips on how to help someone who is suicidal.
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You can’t change how you think and you can’t change what you feel. These are truisms. I know that some people (such as some who believe strongly in cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]) might tell you different, but honestly, these people are wrong. These people are misunderstanding the situation. After dealing with bipolar disorder — a disordered and out-of-control brain — for more than two decades, I can attest to having tried very hard to change how I feel and think. However, the impossibility of this has become imminently clear to me.
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July is disability pride month. When I learned this, I was left wondering, what is disability pride. I know that people have been made to feel bad about their disabilities for most of history; this is clearly wrong, but isn’t disability “pride” taking it a step too far? I am disabled and here’s my take July as Disability Pride Month and disability pride in general.
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As you may know, I take part in mental health podcasts quite frequently. Recently, I’ve discussed issues such as mental illness as a disability, what people with and without mental illness need to know about suicide and one of my pet peeves when people try to look for the “bright side” of mental illness. Three mental health podcasts I’ve done were released quite recently and I want to share them with you.
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Britney Spears’ conservatorship is bringing to light mental illness conservatorships for disabled people. Many people are screaming that Spears shouldn’t be under a conservatorship. This then leads people to start screaming that no one should be under that kind of control. This is a mistake. While the Spears case may be an example of abuse (maybe, I don’t know), that doesn’t mean that conservatorships, in general, are abusive and it doesn’t mean that conservatorships don’t offer huge value to people who are disabled by grave mental illness.
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I hate magical thinking. I most especially hate magical thinking around mental illness and mental health. And that’s because magical thinking actually harms people with mental illness, people like me. And many, people believe in magical thinking without realizing it. In fact, whole bestselling books have been written and devoured that posit magical thinking (the Secret, anyone?). So let’s dismantle magical thinking and stop it from harming people with mental illness.
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Today, the Burble is honored to welcome guest poster, Marvin Ross. Marvin is an author and well-known advocate for the seriously mentally ill.
I fight anti-scientific thinking and antipsychiatry. Thanks to the reaction by many against measures to help minimize the spread of Covid-19, I have begun to see the common thread underlying the opposition to masks, social isolation, proper psychiatric treatment, and vaccinations. That thread is anti-science thinking and the huge growth in the past number of years in what is called “alternative medicine.”
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Some people try to control us. Some people try to control us for altruistic reasons, and others for darker reasons. Either way, though, I think most of us would prefer not to be controlled by another person. But it can be hard to tell when someone subtly tries to control you. One thing I learned many years ago, though, is that if someone doesn’t listen to you when you say, “no,” they are trying to control you — whether they realize it or not.
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