Category: mental health
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Tomorrow Is Another Day for People With ADHD
So much negativity surrounds people with ADHD and that judgement can be paramount to their poor self-esteem. But something no-one can take away from the ‘differences’ in their mindset is their relentless enthusiasm for life, when they aren’t reeled in by the constraints of a society that is at odds with their strengths and personality…
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Has Western Society Compromised Community For Adventure?
I read this article by Hugh Mackay this morning, and it reinforced my view that one of the main reasons behind the increase in mental illness in the modern world is a disappearing sense of community and isolation. The accusation that perhaps we’ve got our priorities wrong in terms of our lifestyle choices makes perfect…
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My Son Has Never Read A Book
To have to admit that at the age of nineteen my son has never read a book fills me with the sort of bad-parent angst and shame that I imagine I would experience if I stood in front of an AA meeting and admitted to being an alcoholic. He reminded me of this fact yesterday…
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Suicide, And Making Men Understand That They Don’t Have To Be Heroes
It seems a million shades of wrong to be preparing for Christmas drinks when a week or so ago another family lost their son, in his early twenties, to suicide. I cannot imagine their ongoing suffering as I worry about whether we’ll run out of wine or if I’ll poison everyone with my Thai chicken…
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This Time Last Year My Son Should Have Been Sitting His HSC
Don’t worry, I’m not torturing myself with this fact, but this post is one that I’ve wanted to write for a long time about my son. It’s similar in vein to the piece Jenny Lawson, “The Bloggess”, wrote on election day in the US – It’s Going To Be Okay. It’s about holding onto the…
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3 Top Tips To Help You Find Your Car In The Car Park When You’re Middle-Aged
Back on the subject of anxiety in middle age, yesterday I discovered one of the worst triggers of this condition when I decided to do an early Christmas shop mixed with a top secret mission for some (probably) useless decorative bits and pieces for the house that have been deemed ‘stuff we don’t need’ by…
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Learning How To Relax With Anxiety
We lead increasingly busy lives and I find it hard to relax even when I do have free time these days. Although I continually moan about having no time to relax, for some strange reason I feel more fulfilled when I’m busy, even though I know that it’s not a healthy way to live as…
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‘Pretend You’re Good At It’
I’m reading “Furiously Happy” by Jenny Lawson, (aka The Bloggess) at the moment, upon the recommendation of Lana Hirshowitz, and although I initially struggled to decipher the twisting maze of her brain patterns, I’ve since tapped in and have found myself identify with the author’s self-professed craziness and daily struggles with anxiety. The book is…
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Anxiety, Hope and Earning The Olympic Gold For Worrying
If they handed out an Olympic Gold for worrying, I’d get it. I’ve skirted around the void of depression many times, when my anxiety has gnawed away at me like some flesh-eating bacteria, so close to the bone that I’ve felt like it was all too much. Unlike many people out there who wax lyrical…
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Crap Parent Therapy: ‘Consulting’ Rather Than ‘Enabling’
I had to go back for a session of ‘crap parent therapy’ last week, tail between my legs, following another situation with Kurt where the parenting shit hit the fan and the old man and I found ourselves sucked into another potential vacuum of despair. Patiently, the therapist reminded me for the umpteenth time about the…
LOUISA SIMMONDS 