With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim’s self-esteem until he or she is incapable of judging a situation realistically. He or she may begin to believe that...

PART 2 I felt doomed to death,But in a flash, Before I could reduce my thoughts To an emotion, I felt a mass leave my body:Departing. Then my mind becomes anonymous As is each night....

It struck Hsing suddenly that Masada didn’t even understand the nature of his own genius. To him the patterns of thought and motive that he sensed in the virus were self-explanatory, and those who could...

DID is about survival! As more people begin to appreciate this concept, individuals with DID will start to feel less as though they have to hide in shame. DID develops as a response to extreme...

This will sound strange, and yet I’m sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round...

Sometimes the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions.

In the 1980s, research on post traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans was regarded as important, noble, and useful. When the same researchers looked at the same problem in children who had been sexually abused,...

If you haven’t caused a scene in a psych unit, it’s just because you haven’t been inside long enough.

Blame is a Defense Against PowerlessnessBetrayal trauma changes you. You have endured a life-altering shock, and are likely living with PTSD symptoms— hypervigilance, flashbacks and bewilderment—with broken trust, with the inability to cope with many...

A lot of people believe that mental illness does not affect our children within the school system. But the truth is that a lot of bullying stems from untreated or poorly treated mental and behavioral...

My body was a Pandora’s box of aches and pains. When Grandpa died all the ailments came jumping out. I was forever twitching and shaking. I had a persistent sore throat and had difficulty swallowing...

The distinction between diseases of “brain” and “mind,” between “neurological” problems and “psychological” or “psychiatric” ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between...

Sanity is over-rated. It lacks color.

…depressive realism. Depression is not the near death experience described by so many, [Kayla Dunn] suggests, but a rebirth in which the new psyche has removed self-delusion. Compared with so-called healthy individuals, depressives are more...

Thoughts. Thoughts bombard my head, my brain. My psyche

Make sure your priorities line up with your values.

I laughed it off but I close the bedroom door and I lose it and I stick it all down here and this is where it all stays. And this is where it has to...

The problem with having problems is that ‘someone’ always has it worse.

Violet is the most soothing, tranquilizing and cooling color vibration. It encourages the healing of unbalanced mental conditions in people who are overly nervous or high-strung. Foods of the violet vibration are: purple broccoli, beetroot...

Never give up on someone with a mental illness. When “I” is replaced by “We”, illness becomes wellness.

It is hard to bring paedophile rings to justice. Thankfully it does happen. Perhaps the most horrific recent case came before the High Court in Edinburgh in June 2007. It involved a mother who stood...

I mean, okay, let’s say we’re all going to get better. Let’s just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get better? What are we going to do with all...

The Kinsey staff asked questions of children, learning about sexuality in the family. And other psychologists, psychiatrists and paediatricians, including Benjamin Spock, explored this burgeoning field. As a result, it was known that children will...

What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not...

Although healing brings a better life, it also threatens to permanently alter life as you’ve known it. Your relationships, your position in the world, even your sense of identity may change. Coping patterns that have...

I like to compare my mental stress capacity to a dinner plate. Most people have moderate amounts of stress in their life, like a nice balanced meal. The food represents different stresses that occur in...

The acknowledgement of having suffered evil is the greatest step forward in mental health.

An engaging examination of a painful subject, with a focus on healing and forgiveness. – Kirkus Review

Take it from me, that kind of torment causes you to retreat to a place in your mind where you are so strong that nothing and no one can bother you. Or so you think!...

Forging fake smiles to hide painful truths doesn’t take away the hurt, but sometimes safeguards our emotions from those adamant not to understand.

Once I had found the courage to tell Rebecca about the children in my head, it wasn’t so hard in the coming months to tell Roberta. On the train from Huddersfield one day in May...

I would much rather have my grotesque products of the imagination compared to your delusional sanity.

We’re saying the story doesn’t end here, that the air in your lungs is there for a reason.

That was the crux. You. Only you could work on you. Nobody could force you, and if you weren’t ready, then you weren’t ready, and no amount of open-armed encouragement was going to change that.

I’m sorry I’m young,” Deborah answered with a bitterness that was half prose. “We have a right to be as crazy as anyone else.” The second part was more a plea, and to her surprise...

We are so used to our own history, we do not see it as remarkable or out of the ordinary, whereas others might see it as horrendous. Further, we tend to minimize that which we...

from: The Portrayal of Child Sexual Assault in Introductory Psychology Textbooks – Elizabeth J. Letourneau, Tonya C. LewisOne of the central questions surrounding the debate on memories of CSA is how often false or repressed...

My own studies on the natural history of DID indicate only 20% of DID patients have an overt DID adaption on a chronic basis, and 14% of them deliberately disguise their manifestations of DID. Only...

The presuming social view that mental health is not as serious as the media says it is, blocks progress. This too is political.

Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as ‘fragments’. which are ‘relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory, or carry out a limited task in the...

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren’t alone, that there is hope, then...

Oh, hell, no. I’m insane, but that would be nuts.

Keedwell cites a study of depression in the Netherlands that found that most people coped better with adversity after experiencing depression.

The drug I take is called schizophrenia, among other labels, which I desperately want to put away. I want to put the drug of schizophrenia down, and I want to put down the stigma surrounding...

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions (happy is boring, evil is interesting) about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don’t view peace of mind as a...

…his condition in Roanoke is a strong testament that lassitude, indifference and the peculiarities of his thought were primarily the consequences of his illness and not of the early attempts to treat it. The popular...

In response to threat and injury, animals, including humans, execute biologically based, non-conscious action patterns that prepare them to meet the threat and defend themselves. The very structure of trauma, including activation, dissociation and freezing...

No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.

I remembered during puberty, through the anorexic mists of intermittent menstrual cycles, that man, my father, lifting Shirley’s nightdress over her head and asking her in his mocking way to choose what colour condom she...