Category: Mental Health

Mental Health, Motherhood

How to Raise an Emotionally Healthy Child as an Emotionally Unhealthy Adult

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on How to Raise an Emotionally Healthy Child as an Emotionally Unhealthy Adult

She had me fill out a paper, like she does every week. This week, question 1 — what would you tell a friend who was down on his/herself? Then, question 2 — what do you tell yourself when you are struggling?

The point of the exercise, originally created by self-compassion psychologist Kristin Neff, was to highlight how easy it is to be compassionate for a friend, but not necessarily for oneself. The goal — find a more compassionate, less self judgmental path to take, starting today, starting right now.

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Mental Health

A Quick Post on Happiness.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on A Quick Post on Happiness.

Maybe it’s just the pregnancy hormones, but I’ve been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster lately. Well, the reality is I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster my entire life, so it’s not exactly that different at the moment. But I do think some of those highs and lows of my teens and 20s are coming back in full force.

That said, there’s a lot of good things happening right now, and I’ve been reminded (in searching the internet at odd hours of the night due to my pregnancy-induced insomnia) that the best cure for feeling down is gratitude. Even though I’ll never be a #blessed type, I do feel grateful for many things in my life that are actually pretty amazing. This doesn’t remove the desire to want to stop feeling like such an alien all the time, but it does provide an important reminder that things are ok.

Continue reading “A Quick Post on Happiness.” →
Mental Health

Dear Depression & Anxiety: STFU.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Dear Depression & Anxiety: STFU.

Mental “health” is such a strange concept. Being human is hard. I mean, we’re animals, with full awareness, and we comprehend our own mortality. We are, for all intents and purposes, born into this earth out of nowhere, taught life has this greater purpose, and then, inevitably, return to the dust a short time later. Along the way, the people we care about often just disappear.

At an even grander scale of context, the earth has been around 4.5 BILLION years. We’re lucky if we live to 100. And even if we do, those 100 years will be filled with some really amazing moments, but also a lot of loss, pain, and events we’d prefer to avoid that are entirely out of our control.

Someone convince me being anxious and depressed is an “unhealthy” way to handle this predicament.

Continue reading “Dear Depression & Anxiety: STFU.” →
Mental Health

The Days that Turn into Weeks that Turn into Months that Turn into Years

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on The Days that Turn into Weeks that Turn into Months that Turn into Years

Time. It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Back in childhood, I intensely studied the second hand on the clock as it would tick around ever-so slowly at school. The minute hand would jolt into its next place every sixty seconds, and it only took fourty-five of those excruciatingly slow pins around the clock wheel until it was time to move on to the next class.

Summers. Those long, hot and humid New Jersey summers where the sun wouldn’t set up until nearly nine and it would still be warm. The fireflies twinkling in the distance, and up close, sometimes landing on your nose. The sound of crickets chirping, or maybe not crickets, but cicadas screaming. The freezing cold air of walking inside an air-conditioned building. Waiting forever for summer to end. It always did. But slowly. Gracefully. With all the intention of extending itself forever, always promising to return.

Continue reading “The Days that Turn into Weeks that Turn into Months that Turn into Years” →
Mental Health

Is Loneliness a Symptom of Adulthood?

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Is Loneliness a Symptom of Adulthood?

There are the recluses of society — those who prefer to spend time with cats, nature, or intimate objects to other humans. Then, there are the rest of us. As Bob Merrill eloquently put it in his lyrics for the musical Funny Girl, “people who need people are the luckiest people int the world.” Or, are they?

Just being around other people isn’t a cure for loneliness. “Loneliness is an entirely subjective state, in which we feel socially and/or emotionally disconnected from those around us,” highlights a study in Psychology Todaythat poses loneliness may actually be genetic. The data showed significant indications of loneliness, social isolation, and depression. The depression part comes in due to the genetic factor, due to a “default” reaction to feelings of loneliness in ways that increase our social isolation and depression.

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Mental Health

10 Ways to Survive and Thrive with Adult ADHD

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on 10 Ways to Survive and Thrive with Adult ADHD

If you know me, and you understand the diagnostic criteria for Adult ADD/ADHD (attention deficit disorder), you know I’m a textbook case. While there are many benefits to having an ADD mind, there are also many more challenges. If you have ADHD or know someone who does, you know that every single day needs to be approached as its own game to attack, and every interaction requires the energy to be able to engage in a conversation via listening and sharing at the right time without doing too much of one or the other.

Research has proven that people with ADHD have structural abnormalities in their brains. A lot is still unknown about ADHD, but it is said that people with ADHD may use dopamine less efficiently than people who do not have ADHD. It is said that 3 to 5 percent of adults in the United States have this disorder, so clearly I’m not alone. Yet those who hone their ADHD superpowers to multi-task and approach challenges differently than more linear-thinking types can be very successful, it just requires the ability to understand your strengths, fix a few important weaknesses, and allow yourself to accept that being “normal” is not possible nor desirable.

Continue reading “10 Ways to Survive and Thrive with Adult ADHD” →