The last thing I was expecting to do Christmas Day was rush my daughter to a hospital amid a mental health crisis. And yet, while the world was grappling with the challenges of a global pandemic, I was dealing with another real and personal health crisis. My daughter had just completed a 12-week intensive
Like 1 in 5 American adults, I live with mental illness. My diagnosis, however, is less common. Due to early and severe childhood maltreatment, my personality fragmented, resulting in episodes of dissociation and the emergence of alternate personalities, or “alters.” In other words, I have dissociative identity disorder (DID). Thanks to dramatized media depictions of DID,
I experienced my first panic attack at 13 years old. In the following years, I cut a lot of class due to having panic attacks. Usually, the symptoms were dizziness, clamming of my palms and feet, and feeling sick to my stomach. The butterflies were so intense that I often found myself gagging or
When you have a child in treatment for emotional or behavioral problems, it can be hard to know when it’s time to stop. What role should parents, the therapist and the child have in reaching that decision? And how can you ensure that the ending will be a positive experience for the child? In
Right from birth, kids learn new skills at a dizzying rate. And along with those new abilities, they also acquire the confidence to use them. As children get older, that confidence can be as important as the skills themselves. To thrive, kids need to trust in their own capabilities while, at the same time, knowing that they can handle
How Hope Affects Your Health and 5 Ways to Build It Uncertainty of the pandemic and its long-lasting effects can leave little hope. “It’s very common that when we’re faced with multilevel challenges in terms of finances, health, lifestyle, relationships, and just living in the pandemic, that we have to dig deeper and work
Delusions are beliefs that aren’t based on reality. During a delusion, you might believe that you’re close friends with a famous musician you’ve never met or that you’re leading the country’s space program. Having delusions can be a condition of its own, called delusional disorder. They also can occur during the manic or depressive
Every weekday, I sit at the child-sized desk in my daughter’s old room, plug in my laptop’s charger, put my headphones in, and place my water bottle on a coaster. Underneath the desk’s writing surface, the obsolete keyboard tray bruises my thighs, kicking off the discomfort of the next four hours. In my pandemic
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Separation anxiety has an important job to do. It’s there to keep children safe by driving them to stay close to their important adults. Gosh it can feel brutal sometimes though. Children (and adults) are wired to feel unsafe when there is a felt sense of separation. This anxiety drives children to restore proximity