Every month I receive emails from parents (just like you perhaps) of adult children who have serious mental illness. You tell me many things, but the one on which you all agree is how painful it is to see your son or daughter in anguish yet at the same time not accept help. She’s angry […]
Bird Nerd I am. I’m a bird nerd. They make me happy. Just watching them hop around, flitting here and there, puts a goofy smile on my face. I really love watching the ones in those small wee groups, like juncos, sparrows and robins. Oh and chickadees! Who doesn’t like chickadees? They’re so plucky! And […]
When I was a kid, Halloween scared me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved trick or treating (mini Oh Henry Bars in particular). I loved creating costumes from scratch. I loved making multitudes of Kleenex ghosts and hanging them in our front window. What I didn’t like was walking home the weeks before and after […]
For all the talking we’re doing, for all the well-meaning campaigns, I still believe we are woefully under-trained (or untrained for that matter) in how to effectively and comfortably talk to someone about their mental health, particularly in the workplace. This was the focus of a workshop I facilitated at the recent, successful Working Stronger […]
For the past month, I’ve been practicing a breathing meditation my Chi Kung teacher, Renate, gave me. Each time, I’m amazed how calm, relaxed and alert I feel after about 5 minutes of this controlled deep breathing. Like really peaceful. And for someone who’s recently been as anxious as a hummingbird on cocaine, this is […]
While I sipped coffee and munched on a croissant, a supervisor approached me. I had just finished performing ‘Funny You Don’t Look Crazy’ (my story of mental illness and return to work) for a quiet but wonderfully engaged group of managers at a breakfast training event. He confessed one of the biggest barriers he, the […]
The attitude of gratitude – yes, yes, we’ve all heard how it’s a good thing. But what if it’s not always easy to feel, especially if you’re in the midst of a depression? Oh yeah, I can quickly rattle off a list things and people I’m grateful for. You know do the ‘Oprah Winfrey’ thing. […]
When mental illness hits, it can hit hard. It hits the person who has it hard and it hits the family equally hard – though in very different ways. One of the most common questions I get after my workshops and keynotes is, ‘How can I help my loved one when they don’t think they need help […]
Before you go all nuclear on me saying ‘how dare you make fun of people with psychiatric disorders!’, check my two previous posts about my rules for finding the humor in mental illness: rules for finding the humour in mental illness and 13 One-Liners About Being Crazy. Mean-spiritedness, degradation are NOT my M.O.s The two most important tenets in […]
Warning: possible triggering content. This post deals with suicide. We lost two high profile individuals by suicide in the last couple weeks. But there are thousands of people who will die by suicide today who we won’t hear about on TV. Those people mattered too. There are millions more who are suffering from the pain […]
