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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William A. Miller

Change Your Mindset to Improve Your Productivity

How to Design Your Ideal Life

How to Stop Your Thoughts From Making You Depressed

10 Secrets for Instant Self-Confidence

Six Green Ideas for Beating Winter Blahs

How to Use Color to Enhance Your Designs

7 tips for Making the Most Online Support Groups

Use Your Mind to Get You Moving: 6 Energizing Exercise Motivation Techniques

11 Tips for the Spouse With a Lower Sex Drive

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Depression has been called the common cold of mental health. Most people will experience some variety of depression. Those who experiences these feelings to a lesser degree will be convinced that all people can shake off these feelings. But there are many depths to the misery of depression. I always advise that if you have any thoughts of suicide reach out to someone to tell them of your discomfort. If the person you reach out to seems to be dismissing your words, seek out someone else. Call a suicide help line if needed. http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org, http://suicidehotlines.net/, or http://hopeline.com/.

From Knowledge is Necessity: “In Appreciation: Mike Wallace 1918-2012″:

“I will be very brief. He was one of us. In 1997 he disclosed his bouts with depression. As much as anything else, his going public brought out into the open a topic that had been considered taboo. He was a hero, one who lived by his ideal to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted. He was a role model, working into his late eighties, going-going-going. And he remains a legend, long to be remembered.”

From Elisha Goldstein: “A Practice to Wash Away Stress and Misery”:

“Whether we’re in the midst of a storm of anxiety or depression or we’ve come out of the storm but are in fear of relapse, strong uncomfortable emotions can seem like the devil’s spawn that we try our best to ward off against.”

“For many of us there is a fear that these strong emotions will be overwhelming and lead us back into the great abyss of depression or another round of intense anxiety. However, it is in this very struggle of non-acceptance or non-acknowledgment of this feeling that our misery becomes compounded.”

“Although our minds believe they are doing the best thing for us, their acts are often driving the exact habitual mind traps we’re trying to neutralize.”

“What’s another way?”

Are Antidepressants For You?

An Evolving View of Depression

Spelunker

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I think the difficulty for doctors is caused by patients seeking drugs for an escape from reality rather than for the need of chemical imbalance. The other large difficulty for medicating mental problems is the fact that it may take several different prescriptions to find the right anti-depression (anxiety, etc.) drug to work for each patient. this slows down the rapid delivery system of getting medications to heal all as we have become a nation of “instant fixes”. This selection of drugs is difficult as any of the drugs for mental illness take 4-6 weeks to be effective in the system.So if one doesn’t work, the next one prescribed will be 4-6 weeks also. The patient feels that the doctor doesn’t know what she/he is doing so many times the patient returns to the self-medication he/she has found to work.

So most of the population who suffer from a chemical imbalance continue to be self-medicated (alcohol, other drugs, sex, work, food, etc.

Caught in the web? You need help, not labels by Todd Essig

Get help from Mental Health America

Mental help net community

Internet mental health has a self-diagnosis section

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I had clinical depression for two years–and lived to talk about it. Suicide thoughts were about slipping my car into a lake or pond. I lived in Winter Park, Florida then and there were many bodies of water. I don’t know whether it takes courage to end your life or if the courage is in continuing to live. I chose to live and am so grateful for the person I was because it all led to the person I am. And I love being me.

I attend twelve step meetings on a regular basis and often hear someone say that he/she is depressed. Many times the correct word may be sad, lonely or tired. Learning to make your mind your friend can often lead to an increase in energy. But in twelve step groups, the dual diagnosis–of being addicted and being depressed– is the correct diagnosis at least for 25% of attendees.

John Gallagher: I Went from Suicide to Surrender recounts how he and his family were healed over a period of several years. He finally saw that to heal he had to give back what he had been given.

“So I have been speaking–at churches, Rotary clubs, synagogues. I tell them the whole story of going from having a great lifestyle with my wife and kids in a suburban home to disaster striking and having to climb up the mountain again.

And then I give them my symptoms: heart palpitations, a pressurized headache that wouldn’t go away, clammy hands, mood changes, behavioral changes. I didn’t have any energy. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t want to spend time with the kids.

And I tell them my biggest problem was I didn’t know how to cope with depression. I didn’t know how to exercise my mind and my body every day, eat properly and “self talk” so I would feel better about things. Everything that I looked at was a major catastrophe. I didn’t know how to not sweat the small stuff.

Also, I advise them to seek professional help–but to go to a psychiatrist rather than a family practitioner. Psychiatrists will try different antidepressants on you until they find one that works. Mine tried several on me and learned that Celexa relieved most of my symptoms. I still take 40 milligrams every day.”

Please don’t allow yourself or someone you know to try to “snap out of it”. Seek professional help–it saved me and John and many others.

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1.  From John at Storied Mind: “Recognizing the Shadow in the House”:

“As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, for years I had a very limited understanding of what depression could do. Apart from the feelings of bleakness and despair, I never grasped that so many other things I was experiencing were linked to this condition. That’s important to know because a partner may be in treatment for depression but not be dealing with all its effects and distortions of thought and feeling.”

“I assumed that other symptoms, now so familiar to those who have tried to educate themselves about this condition, were either a part of my nature or were caused by some external circumstance. The anxiety, the obsessive way of thinking, the inability to focus and mental blank-outs seemed to be limitations that I could not change, even though they were by no means permanent.”

“My constant negative thinking and the shame I felt seemed justified by my inner failings. Projecting negative judgments about myself into the minds and attitudes of others also felt like reality. That’s the way they must be judging me. Everyone should think badly of me because I was empty inside.”

“On the other hand, I blamed my wife for the problems I imagined were plaguing our relationship. I could certainly see that I was contributing to them, but that didn’t stop me from raging at her and our kids for eveyrthing – and for nothing.”

“All of this made any real communication about what was happening completely impossible. I cast around me a net of control to capture and hold everything still. Most of my crazy behavior was based on fear of ripping that net. Everything I saw felt like part of me, an extension of my nervous system. On the surface, I was enraged at each unexpected tremor, sudden shift, raised voice, spontaneous action.”

“But anger can be a mask for fear, and inwardly I often burned in fear, even panic. Any effort by my wife to tell me what she was seeing in me and the effect it was having on her and our children only prompted more anger as I denied I had any problem and shut her out even more.”

“How did we begin to cut through the defenses and barriers to real communication? At calmer moments, we applied some tools we had learned from a therapist and gradually retrained our reactions to each other. That process made a breakthrough possible, but it was a long time coming.”

From S. Nassir Ghaemi: “Death of a Prince”:

“Politics may be debatable. Depression is not. The statistics are unforgiving: about 90% of those who kill themselves have depression, but only about 5-10% of those who have depression kill themselves. Depression is a necessary but not sufficient condition: the prince probably was biologically predisposed to severe depression, and all the rest – social isolation, loss of power and privilege, death of a sibling – added on to finalize the lethal mix.”

“Whatever the other factors, suicide in two family members generally implies biological and genetic sources. Whether the genetic source is in the paternal Pahlavi line, or the maternal Diba heritage, is unclear. The Shah also had depression, towards the end of his life, but by then he had terminal cancer. The prince’s  grandfather, Reza Shah, was not known to have had psychiatric symptoms, but it is possible that such symptoms were not noticed or recorded; he was highly energetic and charismatic, sometimes characteristic of manic symptoms, but beyond that possibility, one can say little based on what is documented.”

“Depression does not recognize princes or kings, rank or riches, privilege or power.  Biology cares not for politics. The sins of the father were not simply visited upon the sons, despite the fall from immense power to anomie. This is not enough to produce self-destruction; something else was at work, something that created such a bleak darkness that the eyes could no longer see, and the head could no longer think, and all that remained was a heart that sensed only darkness, and nothing more.”

3.  From Colleen Perry: “Saving the Lives of Those Who Save Yours”:

“Doctors in the VA are under pressure NOT to diagnose PTSD, because a diagnosis of PTSD leads to increased benefits and disqualifies the soldier from re-deployment. Bodies are at a premium here, folks, with many soldiers being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan numerous times. Hardball on msnbc.com reports that the VA docs are giving out the diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder instead. That’s like saying the soldier who shot up his comrades at an Iraqi mental health clinic was just having a bad day.”

“A 2006 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that nearly 74,000 former soldiers who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2004 sought VA treatment for mental disorders in the year after they came home. Many of those same men and women were sent back to the combat zone. The current figures must be staggering. Keep in mind that 30% of the army has PTSD or TBI (traumatic brain injury). According to Mark Benjamin who was being interviewed by Chris Matthews on Hardball, that means 30% of the army has no business carrying a gun. If we were to admit the truth of this, how would our military survive? But if we don’t, how will our military survive once they are “safe” at home?”

“Paul Rieckhoff, a U.S. Army veteran, who led an infantry platoon on more than 1,000 combat patrols in Bagdhdad, founder of the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) says “The reality is that mental health issues are probably one of the greatest threats facing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. But our country is not ready to care for them. Contrary to what our president keeps telling us, we’re not a country at war. Less than 1 percent of this country is at war. Our military is at war. Our military families are at war. Everyone else is shopping or watching American Idol.”

“I couldn’t agree with Paul more. What are you doing to show our military personnel that you support them? Are you making sacrifices so that our freedom can be protected? Even if you don’t agree with the war, you can still support the sacrifices made by these men and women. As a citizen you need to ask how you can be involved. If you don’t have money, volunteer your time. If you don’t have time, then donate money, goods, or services. If you don’t have any resources whatsoever, write a letter to congress supporting more programs specifically designed to increase benefits to those combat vets who need them, be they mental health or otherwise.”

“You see the problem is that we don’t treat our military personnel as the Warrior class they are. We treat them as expendable soldiers, and once we are done with them, they are of no use to us. You need only to look at the statistics of alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, spousal and child abuse, depression, anxiety, divorce and suicide among veterans to see the truth.”

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I had clinical depression for over two years when I had been in recovery for ten years. Unfortunately, I had learned in AA that all drugs are a crutch. So wanting to continue my drug-recovery, I didn’t seek professional help until after I had recurring thoughts of despair.

When you are in depression, the change to you is so gradual that you think that you will “snap out of it” anyday. The world takes on a deeper shade of gray every day. What leaves you are all feelings of happiness. Life is an existence only. Sleep seems to be the only release from the pressures of getting through the long nothing day.

If anyone reading this can relate to these feelings, please see a mental health professional today. Psychologists can’t give any prescriptions. Instead see your primary doctor or a psychiatrist who can prescribe medication. The medication doesn’t heal you. You will also need to learn how to be well mentally and emotionally. After you are on the right medication, you may choose to see a psychologist for “talk” therapy. But please try medication to begin the long road to recovery if you have feelings of hopelessness that life is going to get better.

The medication doesn’t make you better. You have to do the work yourself. The medication gives you strength to continue finding the aspects you’ll need to better mental and emotional health.

I take medication every day. I think it as the link to complete the chain of energy I need to function. It is like insulin for diabetics. I don’t judge others who need medications for various ailments. In fact, I consider myself lucky to have found this medication.

As well as the medication, I exercise daily. The exercise releases endorphins. I also practice various spiritual practices to fend off the negative thinking. Nutrition also plays a large role in mental health.

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Our conscious mind is where thoughts are formed. Our subconscious mind is where our creative mind takes root. As we learn to harness the vast power and energy of the subconscious mind, we are tapping into our real source.

Transactional analysis therapists estimate that we each have 25,000 hours of internalized negative self-talk. We are generally taught what is wrong with us by our authority figures at home, school, church, etc. In an effort to understand who we are, we accept these self-limiting labels as who we are. However, we each individually are the only one who can truly “know” who we are, or, at least, we are in the best position to make the best educated guess. Learn to challenge the “voices” (one of friends called them “the committee”) or negative self-talk you carry around in your head. Listen to what you tell yourself about you.

In learning to monitor your inner critic, learn to first determine if the criticism is helpful. If you find the suggestion to be helpful, next check to see if the inner critic is kind, gentle, and polite to you. If it is in a condemning voice, ask your inner critic to speak kinder to you.

The techniques you may use to change your inner critic from enemy to friend are: speed up the volume, mimic a falsetto voice, etc. My favorite ploy when I was learning this was to scream “Stop”. It is better to practice these techniques while alone. As someone has suggested—learn to join the airwaves until you own the station.

Self-esteem comes from how we evaluate and accept or reject input as well as the foundation we’ve created from the successes we’ve experienced. By learning to focus on our strengths rather than on our weaknesses, we have each taken charge of our own destiny.

After learning how to utilize our inner critic, we next need to take charge of our thoughts. What we choose to focus our thinking on determines what we will think and feel about ourselves. You are what you think you are. By substituting positive self-talk for negative self-talk, we are re-programming ourselves for positive action.

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Transactional Analysis (TA) research states that we have over 20,000 hours of negative thought by the time we are 21. If we don’t learn how to plant beautiful thoughts about ourselves in the garden of our subconscious mind, we’re surrendering control to our inner weeds.

Today I want you to think of your mind as your cash register. Picture your negative thoughts as a “No Sale” and when you find yourself thinking about yourself negatively–push “No Sale” and change your thoughts to positive.

Some others’ writing about this:

Weight Loss Without Dieting: The Weight You Can Stop Carrying- Part 1

“When we’re the most disappointed, the most frustrated and the most vulnerable, many of us have this thoroughly unreasonable idea that an emotional version of the slap-upside-the-head is what’s needed. If we allow it, the critical voices in our head that tell us we’re “not good enough” or lazy or incapable can really take control. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard tell me the harsh, awful, demeaning things their judgmental inner critic tells them about themselves and then, in the same breath, tell me how carefully they listen to it! This is not helpful!”

Independence Day Starts From Within:

“The next step in constructing a personal Independence Day document is to consider what inner grievances you have to air out. Time to be honest here. Make a list of the qualities that have held you back over the years. Maybe it is being critical of others, being judgmental without considering another side, living in fear, shutting down emotionally to others, feeling angry for no good reason, shutting off loved ones from your life or not speaking up when you know you should.”

“By writing down these qualities that no longer serve, you can give yourself permission to let them go. The infamous Tony Robbins always said, “if you have a limiting thought, change it.” Imagine replacing each grievance you have with a more positive option, and imagine the exhilaration of how it would feel to live life that way.”

Are You the Boss of You? Really?

“Once I recognized that voice and could see it was not really ME, I could ask it, ‘What makes you say that?’ Or ‘What do you think is going to happen? Death, famine? What?’ The voice was then stumped and I could see that it didn’t really know about something awful about to happen. it was not an omniscient being. It didn’t even make any sense. What a relief. I feel so grateful.”

“Now I can hear it when one of them says, ‘You need to go sit in the corner now.’ I was panicking then because I knew on some level that I was being abandoned when I was excited and hopeful and feeling powerful. And I was being asked to not be who I was.”

“I was also panicking recently because I soooo much want to start my business, and I know now that when I sit in a corner metaphorically, I am killing my spirit. But now that I know those voices are not ME I know that I can just notice them and go on doing what I think is right.”

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