Category Archives: Mental Health

Of all the techniques that I’ve used since 1976, the following eight techniques have been my basic mainstay for my mental health:

1. Upon awakening, recite or write a gratitude list. Always begin with the gift of breath. Without breath, we’d have no life. My spirit is so rebellious at times that many days my gratitude list included only my breath. But having gratitude for even one thing was a growth from having no gratitude. Do 5 minutes of deep breathing-relish the feeling good lungs gives you.

2. Living with a positive mind is a continual discipline. Remember your thoughts are your choice. You need to learn to tune in to your thoughts. If you are thinking negative, you’re feeling negative. Is anything getting better with the choice of negativity? Be careful not to condemn or judge yourself as these choices are negative also. Learn how to get a check on the committee of voices that live in your head. Become your “observer self “when you are feeling negative. Change your thoughts and change your feelings.

3. Exercising your body daily for 30-60 minutes. The exercise can be divided into segments but it generally takes 20 minutes of exercise to change your level of metabolism.

4. The type or kind of food you eat isn’t as important as the portion. Count the calories or guess at the total calories involved. Use a small plate at every meal as a way to keep a check on the quantity of food eaten.

5. Help others every day. When I started this practice, I made it a rule to call 3 people that I ordinarily wouldn’t call in order to monitor my motives in helping others. My condition for myself on these calls was that the help had to be only for them and couldn’t include anything I might want from them for myself.

6. Spend some quality time with yourself enjoying or discovering your personality. This practice can be added to your meditation daily as you ask the God of your understanding to guide you.

7. As you let go of judgment, you learn to love yourself. Anyone else that you tear down, tears you down, too. Use the mental picture of throwing mud and notice that you get dirty. As Maya Angelou reminds us, “We did the best we could, and when we knew better, we did better.”

8. Begin acquiring books that are easy to pick up and review. Each day choose one section of a book to reflect on for the rest of the day. Even if you just have time to copy down a sentence, it will give you a path of self-improvement to follow.

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“Real happiness is not dependent on external things. The pond is fed from within. The kind of happiness that stays with you is the happiness that springs from inward thoughts and emotions. You must cultivate your mind if you wish to achieve enduring happiness.”   William Lyon Phelps

1. It. Must. Be. from Mommy Wants Vodka:

“Maybe I’d tell her that I’d lived my life the daughter of a bipolar alcoholic and I was sorry that she’d found herself there, too. Because I was. So sorry. We’d tried to reach her, my God we tried, but she was lost in the bottle and not a single one of us who had loved her back when she sparkled and shone, not one of us could get through. But we tried because we still loved her and we still believed that she was in there.”

“I could tell her that her funeral was so full of people who loved her that it was standing room only.”

“That when the string trio started playing “As Tears Go By,” the entire room wept. We all wept at the tragedy of losing someone who had so much of that sparkle, so much of that shine.

How the image of her two sons screaming and wailing to, “See MOMMY!” as they shut the casket will be forever seared into the brains of so many as the most heartbreaking thing we’ve ever seen.

She is so, so loved.

I could tell her that two years later, I still cannot talk about her without crying. How I cannot hear “Tears Go By” without weeping. How I still have her phone number in my address book. How I dedicated Band Back Together to her because I think the stigma of mental illness and alcoholism and all those demons we hide, I think that’s bullshit. How I think she’d like the site.”

“I guess I could tell her any of those things if I saw Stef again. But I think she’d already know.”

“Maybe I’d just hug her one last time, have one last laugh and say the right words: Must it be? It must be.”

2. New year on the psych ward from My Crazy Bipolar Life

“Today is really dragging out, everything seems to be taking ages. Every 10 mins feels like at least an hour. We had traditional steak pie at lunch – is steak pie traditional everywhere or just Scotland?”

“Anyway, we had that and some trifle which was vile. Tonight there was a buffet but I slept through it, they kept me 2 little triangle sandwiches 2 mini sausage rolls and 2 mini quiches. Oh and 2 bite size strawberry tarts. At least I wasn’t forgotten about anyway.”

“There is a new girl in my room and she was in during my admission in 2003 with quite severe anorexia, well I don’t know much about eating disorders but she had a tube up her nose and one into her stomach and looked about 5 stone. Now she has recovered a bit maybe is about 7 stone now and remembered me from all those years ago. She said she was just in for a few days respite but all she has done is cry. She doesn’t really do it in the room though, instead she will sit outside the staff room or kitchen and do it. I got worried as I asked her if she was ok and she said yes so I quietly mentioned it to a nurse who told me not to worry that’s “just what she does” on every admission.”

3. Christmas 2010 from Bipolar and Me:

“I heard this song today, and I keep hearing songs or listening to messages from pastors about how God gives us grace, and we should do the same for others.  You know, forgive them no matter what they’ve done.  The first person that always pops into my mind is my mother who I cut out of my life years ago, at a counselor’s prompting.  I told Mark about what I was thinking, and he said there’s a big difference between forgiving someone and contacting them.  I could forgive her, but that doesn’t mean I should try and have a relationship with her.  (Of course, emphasis on *try*)  She makes me crazy mad like no one else, but of course it’s because I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven her.  My current therapist called her a narcissist.  But people I talk to only know her through me – what I’ve chosen to tell them, they don’t actually know HER, and I know her side of the story is quite different than mine.  But to get involved with her again, that could jeopardize my entire emotional stability.  Or at least I think it would.  I don’t know if I’m strong enough to deal with what she could say that would hurt me.  What would I expect or what would I want to come from trying to contact her?  I’ll never have a normal mother daughter relationship with her, maybe it’s best I leave it alone.  Yet, the thought of what I should do, what Jesus would do, keeps gnawing away at me.”

“I watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the cartoon version) and had to turn the channel after about 15 minutes of it.  It took me back to when I was a child watching it, what was going on in my life, and it was just too painful.  Why on earth would I want to remember that?  I thought the memories would be happy – Christmas as a kid is so magical, I wanted the Christmas spirit and thought that would be a good way to get it.  Instead it just depressed me for a little while.  But it made me glad to be where I am today and I felt lucky not to be in a similar situation.”

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