Category: Recovery
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Connecting With Others #Online
Guest Post: Connecting With Others Online – by Fliss Baker for NewLifeOutlook Connecting with other people is vital to surviving, living and enjoying life. It is imperative in managing our mental health; we are encouraged to talk, talk and talk some more about how we feel and how our illnesses affect us. However, the stigma of bipolar disorder…
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Arm's Length
My psychiatrist has asked me numerous times how my sister has handled my parents differently than I have? How has she protected herself? How has she kept herself from being so enmeshed in the family dynamic? The answer is that my sister says no. She keeps my parents at arm’s length. She didn’t answer the…
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Early Dating Dialogue
Setting: Southern California beach town. Newly dating couple on a casual date. Female Protagonist: 31 year-old female former psychotherapist recently moved back with parents after a mental breakdown, now working as a temporary file clerk. Male Protagonist: 35 year-old male civil engineer, highly strung as are many engineers. Recently relocated to Southern California for engineering…
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Blooming Hope
The Blooming Hope Nursery is an art exhibit of The Expression Project for NAMIWalks Orange County. The purpose of this exhibit is to grow seeds of HOPE. To tell the stories of individuals who struggle with mental illness and their family members we are embarking on a journey of hope. The first leg of this journey is the…
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Have I Lost My Blogging Friends?
So I’ve been busy, much busier than usual, in my real life, interacting with people in the flesh, which overstimulates me, so I haven’t been reading and commenting on other blog posts like I usually do, like I used to do. The posts I published Wednesday received few comments. I wonder, is it because I have let…
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I’m Back and I’m Exhausted
I’m back from NAMI California‘s annual conference, held this year in Newport Beach (an easy commute from my home). Now I’m laying in bed completely exhausted. Met lots of great people. Younger adults and people of color underrepresented unfortunately. I’m one of the many older (mature) white folk in attendance. I alternated between volunteering at tables for…
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Words Fly
I remember when I couldn’t hold the letters of a word together long enough to make sense of them. They flew off in all directions or got all jumbled up. I simply could not read no matter how hard I tried. Even if I forced myself to concentrate, to focus, to glue one letter to…
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Podcast Preview
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Adam Lennon of SeaTread Studios. Adam, like me, lives with bipolar disorder. In April of 2014, Adam had a severe manic episode after taking medication that should have been complemented with a stabilizer. This “woke up” his bipolar genes, which would ultimately have devastating consequences for his…