Nurturing your mental health means making headache-inducing decisions every day, like should you take a shower when it feels like the hardest thing in the world to do, should you get out of bed to see your therapist when sleeping is so easy, should you take your meds when they have so many side effects.… Continue reading Mental Health Tip of the Day: When no options are good… …choose the least awful one.

I hate bailing on people. I hate canceling plans at the last minute and I hate making up excuses for it because I don’t want to tell anyone I’m too bipolar to leave my house at that moment. But sometimes, that’s the case - I get depressed or tired spontaneously, and suddenly the plans I… Continue reading Mental Health Tip of the Day: You Can’t Always Do It (And That’s Okay)

People need social contact. Even if conversation is hard or unpleasant for you because you’re asocial, or suffer from social anxiety, or have a personality disorder (me, me, and me), etc., you still probably have the drive to make friends, although it might be buried. So compromise: for those days when you need to stay… Continue reading Mental Health Tip of the Day: Make Fictional Friends (Carefully)

In this modern world of constant sensory stimulation, it’s hard to stay in a healthy sleep pattern. Especially if you have a mental illness: according to Harvard Medical School, mentally ill people are up to eight times likelier to suffer from chronic sleep issues like insomnia and sleep apnea. However, just about every health professional I’ve talked… Continue reading Mental Health Tip of the Day: Getting Your Sleep on Track

Seriously, this is some of the best advice you’ll ever get. Whether you’re in crisis or just bored, it’s often extremely helpful to divert your attention to anything but how you’re feeling. That could mean literally anything: watching a favorite movie, going for a five minute walk, listening to music that’s even slightly less depressing… Continue reading Mental Health Tip of the Day: When in doubt, distract yourself

A therapist once told me that most (if not all) of her bipolar clients have a curious trait in common: the tendency to experience moods much longer than the average unaffected person does, often until it causes problems. Anger, resentment, frustration - negative emotions don’t like to evaporate from our brains as quickly as they… Continue reading Mental Health Tip of the Day: Hi, I’m a grown-up and I’m afraid of the dark.