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2 Weeks in Cartagena: What I Learned About Myself
Two weeks in Cartagena taught me just how much my mental illness limits me. So boom, I did my almost annual international birthday trip and decided to really challenge myself this time. After multiple covid infections plus a concussion, I have been worried about cognitive decline and struggling with anything involving memorization and concentration. So instead of my four days to one week of birthday travel, I decided to spend two weeks in Cartagena, Colombia for leisure and to attend immersive Spanish classes. This ended up being the worst international trip that I’ve taken thus far. All of the negative parts about this trip had nothing to do with the…
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What Happens After Depression?
Rarely is it like a switch being flipped going from light to dark. It happens in slow steady steps.
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When Your High Functioning Depression Stops Functioning
You may have heard of the term “high functioning depression”, also known as dysthymia, being used more and more over the past few years. High functioning depression, or dysthymia, is a form of depression. While still feeling many of the symptoms of severe depression, people with high functioning depression are still able to complete daily tasks of living like working, taking care of a family, making it to appointments, etc. Although they are able to “function” day to day, they are straddled with an inability to feel joy from activities they once enjoyed, have changes in appetite and sleep patterns, feel lethargic, and a whole slew of other symptoms related…
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What Mania Is For Me
Mania is something that many people think they understand, but they only know what they’ve seen in media portrayals. Mania takes on various forms for different individuals. Much like not everyone experiences depression in the same way, not everyone has the same type of manic episodes. Mania isn’t all shopping sprees and rapid speech. It isn’t always thinking you can fly and taking on the world. In this blog post I’ll be describing how mania/ hypomania looks on me. Let’s start with how it physically feels. I want to rip off my skin. It’s as if I can feel the blood circulating through my body and every individual hair on…
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Coping With the Winter/Holiday Blues
This time of year is difficult for many people, for a variety of different reasons. Whether it be because of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), bad memories, being disconnected from family, or a whole host of other reasons. This time of year isn’t exactly “jolly” for all. So I’ve decided to put together a little list of how I cope with the holiday blues. Here goes: Light Therapy With the lack of natural sunlight depleting our vitamin D stores, we need to find a way to replenish them on our own. Besides from just taking vitamin D supplements, you can use a light box. These are special types of lights that…
