Facing your anxiety: you are not alone
Chakameh Shafii tells her story of how anxiety consumed her identity and how she used therapy to gain the skills to get better.
Author: Superhero
Addiction, recovery, helping others and it Starts With Me
Mike Stroh medicated his anxiety, depression, and obsessiveness with drugs and alcohol for almost 20 years. It took a serious romantic relationship, and recognizing it needs to start with him, to begin his journey towards recovery.
Bipolar; a back-handed blessing
Neil Walton shares his experience when the stress of divorce, job redundancy, and the death of his father landed him in hospital and later with a diagnosis of Bipolar. The following years would result in job loss after job loss, mental break-downs, being sectioned four times, admitted to three different hospitals, and being arrested twice. But medication and therapy didn’t come close to the healing that resulted when an Occupational Therapist believed in him and supported what he thought might be possible for him.
Living with OCD; obsession, compulsion & the battle with the hair straightener
Jenn writes a compelling narrative of the obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions that invade as she struggles to leave the house with her hair straightener still hot. Now 2 years later, she shares that saying “I need help” was the first step towards her recovery with OCD.
Living with mental illness
Sara Stringer shares her experience as an intern working with a man named Ned. Ned, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, befriended Sara until he became paranoid she would deceive him. She shares what she learned.
Having Trichotillomania
University student, blogger, and mental health advocate Skye McAdams shares:
“Having Trichotillomania, at first, is like living on an isolated island in the middle of nowhere – that even the idea of trying to describe such a metaphorical island is a tad pointless because no one will find or see it. Yet I guess that’s what it’s like trying to describe to people that you have Trich; it seems utterly pointless because people stare at you as if you are either a nutter, weird or someone making a fuss out of nothing. I mean, how do you tell people that you sit in front of a bathroom mirror, for up to an hour, strategically deciding which eyelash to pull out next to satisfy the anxious voice in your head because you’ve made a mess of trying to pull out that one particular lash for a long time now?!”
She also writes about how the symptoms are easily dismissed as a “bad habit” and how she’s been “pull free” for 2 years.
Navigating the waters of anxiety
Bethany Rosselit was living in constant fear; she was terrified of losing her job, not paying the bills, losing her husband, fear for her daughter’s future and that she wasn’t a good enough parent. Longing for a life that felt safe a secure, she would escape into food, novels and movies to avoid facing her fears. Bethany discovers that her false beliefs and need for approval are what needed to change.