It’s like any addiction–the more you try to get the feeling you want, the more withdrawal you’ll experience until you’re left with nothing but the withdrawal and you’ve destroyed your life and the lives of those around you chasing a feeling it’s impossible to grasp if you try to grasp it.
As difficult as it may be, try to set aside the Trumpian focus here for a moment, and let’s just talk about the DSM diagnostics–the criteria set by the American Psychiatric Association that are used widely in many parts of the world to diagnose mental illnesses. What you see there in Dr. Frances’ tweets are […]
When we’re struggling with anxiety or mental illnesses like OCD, reacting to fears can take over our lives. From all around us and inside of our heads, there’s a never ending stream of uncertainties to react to and catastrophes to prevent. As we get started on recovery, we learn to not react to that stuff with compulsions. […]
For OCD Awareness Week, Mark did a Q&A with The Mighty all about recovery from OCD, an overview of some of the OCD symptoms he dealt with, the benefits of approaching comorbid mental illness labels as one big bucket rather than a million different problems, the problems with our mental healthcare system, the differences between how his […]
Mark joined Stuart, from The OCD Stories, for another wide-ranging interview (check out the first one here) on a variety of mental health and OCD issues, from Internet compulsions, to health anxieties, to dealing with false-memories, uncertainty, control, mindfulness, recovery, and why your therapist better start learning how to run marathons…
A story submitted to the City of Brains Project by a woman in Toronto covers the complex, difficult journey of trying to get access to mental health help for OCD. It’s so frustrating that there are evidence-based treatments, very well-supported by research, but they’re not actually made available to people. As you can see in the story, […]
It’s very popular in OCD patient communities, and in mental health communities in general, to get stuck on labeling superficial symptoms. But it becomes just another way to practice the judging and categorizing and discriminating that can fuel so many compulsions. A more effective approach to support recovery from OCD is to understand (and eliminate) the compulsive […]
Mark: What has helped the most with taking care of your mental health? Josie: I find this question difficult to answer because I can’t think of a singular entity that has helped my mental health the most overall, I think different issues are helped by different things. I suppose if I had to narrow it […]