Just as verbally and physically abused children internalize blame, so do incest victims. However, in incest, the blame is compounded by the shame. The belief that ‘it’s all my fault’ is never more intense than...

I became skilled at covering my tracks, filling in the blanks. Sometimes the blanks were never filled. At other times, I would recall places where I had been or things I had done as if...

About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.

As an undergraduate student in psychology, I was taught that multiple personalities were a very rare and bizarre disorder. That is all that I was taught on … It soon became apparent that what I...

Sometimes, though, we let ourselves get so used to being ‘fine’ that we lose track of how ‘not fine’ we are.

A personality disorder is not the foreign presence of demonic possession or a cancerous cluster of cells spreading among the internal organs. It is a pattern of cognition and reaction that impares the capacity to...

Can you imagine how your life would be if you couldn’t talk?

Writing my blog has saved me thousands on therapy.

Why aren’t I fine?

Resistance to change in the mental health system comes disguised as protection of civil liberties and freedom of speech. As a result, many parents, families, and caregivers are at a loss and feel defeated by...

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.

I’m broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think...

We don’t go in for that psychodynamic stuff around here. Those guys will talk you to death, clean out your bank account while they are doing it, and then invite you to come back and...

Chronic trauma (according to the meaning I propose) that occurs early in life has profound effects on personality development and can lead to the development of dissociative identity disorder (DID), other dissociative disorders personality disorders,...

But that is what these people do – the Steves of this world – they all try and make something out of nothing. and they all do it for themselves.

Most of the kids had been so mentally screwed by their parents they needed more than twelve weeks of wilderness. They needed reincarnation. To die and just come back as a grasshopper, as a fucking...

I’m so NUMB. I just don’t care, it seems-but I must do. This is all going to sound totally incoherent. I’m that bunged up, but totally empty. I think my worries about who I am...

Steve [sports psychiatrist] had already taught me to try and stop worrying so much about pleasing everyone. We knew that this was one of my most draining flaws and he again used three groups to...

Even you, the professional helper, often mistaken for the enlightened Guru or Staretz, can become lost in your thoughts that you must be competent without fault. You may become enthralled with your identity as a...

If your love for another person doesn’t include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.

When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream. A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but...

Have you ever suddenly realized it’s someone else’s mood swing and you’re just along for the ride?

Cheryl was aided in her search by the Internet. Each time she remembered a name that seemed to be important in her life, she tried to look up that person on the World Wide Web....

Some seek the comfort of their therapist’s office, other head to the corner pub and dive into a pint, but I chose running as my therapy.

…Daisy doesn’t even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom… you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset,...

I remember a scared, young girl hiding in the guise of arrogance and rebellion. I remember feeling lost in a world where everyone else seemed to have it all figured out. I remember the tears...

All mental unhappiness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.

But no matter how much evil I see, I think it’s important for everyone to understand that there is much more light than darkness.

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.

You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can...

The word is dissociate. There is no ‘a’ before the invariably say dis-a-ssociate, which, if you’re suffering Disso-ciative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder, can be irritating. People then want to know how many personalities I have...

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.

As a therapist, I have many avenues in which to learn about DID, but I hear exactly the opposite from clients and others who are struggling to understand their own existence. When I talk to...

You want to be happy? You want to be well? Then put your boots on.

What good is your reality, when justice fails and dishonesty is glossed over and the ones who keep faith suffer …. What good is your reality then?”” …. I never promised you a rose garden....

What happens is my mind starts to go in circles, thinking and thinking, and then I can’t sleep. And once a couple of days go by, if you haven’t slept, you start to get sick....

Do all kids have to worry about their parents’ mental health? The way society is set up, parents are supposed to be the grown-up ones and look after the kids, but a lot of times...

there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances?When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted...

We have a mental health system that is dominated by political and hidden forces that keep us stagnated and unable to see real, lasting change.

Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am...

I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang...

What’s more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones?

Mental illness People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting. My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s...

Dissociation is the common response of children to repetitive, overwhelming trauma and holds the untenable knowledge out of awareness. The losses and the emotions engendered by the assaults on soul and body cannot, however be...

And that will be on my medical records for ever.Everyone will always know I’m a nutter. Behavioural problems. I’m just a bloody label…A label written on a white board in a single room without a...

The vision I see in the mirror is me, who I am, supposedly, but that vision does not express the way my mind works or the way I feel inside. A realization creeps over me,...

Because minds do blow and hearts do break. Those are not just sayings. And wolves and roaches are not the only creatures that chew off their legs to get out of traps—human beings do that,...

I think more people would stay active in church, if they didn’t get so offended by the actions of members. Sometimes, you have to view places of worship as free mental health clinics, in order...

Why did I allow the abuse to continue? Even as a teenager?I didn’t. Something that had been plaguing me for years now made sense. It was like the answer to a terrible secret. The thing...

What’s the difference between sanity and madness anyway? We all play headgames with ourselves. We all have baggage. We all cope somehow. I’m not sure if I’m mad or sane. I mean, I hold my...