I started this week feeling a bit off. To be clear, this wasn’t in a good way or a bad way, it’s just kind of the conclusion I came to as my Monday progressed. Part of it is that this week will take me out of my usual routine, which always does something to make me slightly anxious. But the other part of it is this feeling that I’m missing something.Â
The Difference Between Mental Health and Mental Illness
I talk about mental health a lot, I write about it a lot and I read about it a lot. It’s a big part of my life (if you haven’t guessed that already). When you’re learning about a new aspect of yourself, you want to learn as much as possible about that aspect so you can understand how to deal with it. In doing all of that, early on I learned about a few common misconceptions about mental health, and anxiety and depression in particular.
Shifting Our Mental Health Perspectives
So an interesting thing happened over the weekend – I broke my laptop. Nothing major, just a cracked screen. I took it into the store the next day, they confirmed that’s all the damage was (no hardware issue), and I should have it back by the end of the week. When things like that happen in my life, events that warrant a reaction of any kind, I tend to use those as examples on my blog. It’s kind of a ‘lesson learned’ for how to react to certain things. But before I could get to writing, someone who’d been going through my blog (shoutout to the new reader!) gave me a helpful reminder that made me laugh out loud: I’d already written that post before.Â
Something to Remember When We Feel Overwhelmed (Part 2)
Earlier this week, I wrote part one of this post where I talked about a possible approach to take when you feel overwhelmed. Obviously, there are many things we can do when feeling overwhelmed (I even wrote about some of those things last year), but this two-part post is more about the thought process we have while feeling this way, and some thoughts we can stick to so that we don’t feel too overwhelmed.
Something to Remember When We Feel Overwhelmed (Part 1)
Sometimes life can be overwhelming. Regardless of the external or internal factors that cause it to be that way, we’ve all hit those moments in our lives where we just feel like it’s too much to handle. So how can we deal with it?
Common Types of Anxiety Disorders (From the Experts)
Continuing on the topic of anxiety disorders and their symptoms from earlier this week, I thought I could further the conversation by sharing with you all some of the more common anxiety disorders that currently exist in the United States.
Common Physical Symptoms of Anxiety Disorders
The first time someone brought up the term ‘symptoms’ in connection with mental health, I was confused. All my life, I’d been told that symptoms are diseases and chronic conditions. If something feels off, it was understood that you hit up WebMD to find out which symptoms could match up with what you’re feeling. So when this therapist brought up several physical symptoms to describe my chronic (which I didn’t know at the time) anxiety, I was put off. But once they explained further, I began to understand that certain physical symptoms can indicate other types of anxiety disorders past my own.
Improving On My Post-Vacation Blues
Sometime last year, I wrote about the post-vacation blues. I’d just gotten home from a trip to Texas and even though I go there every year (sometimes more than one), I was particularly down. Fast forward to this week: I once again visited Texas, and when I returned from my trip I felt a little bummed out. There were two key differences here, though. The first difference is that I was in Texas for my twin brother’s bachelor party (!!!), which of course is something I’ve waited my entire life for (being a twin). The second difference is that this time, while I am a little bummed out, it didn’t hit me as hard this week as it did then. And I’d like to expand on that second difference.
On Making It Through A Tough Time
As I said on Tuesday, this will be a difficult week. One of the things about a difficult week is that even though it’s a lot to handle because of one specific thing, the world doesn’t stop spinning. I’m not saying the world moves on, but other things happen during that week that demand our attention.
This Will Be A Difficult Week
When I wrote my post last week about the impact and influence we have on other people, it was inspired by the recent passing of a man, a former basketball coach who worked with my father. His influence and impact on the game, and on so many people, is immeasurable, and so much of what I know was learned by coaches who learned from him – about the game and about life. The funeral was yesterday, so I knew this week would be difficult regardless. And then I heard about Kobe.
My Brain's Not Broken 