MIFSITS is created to offer a “check-in” every now and again for those of us dealing with mental health issues. This can be personal — living with mental illness ourselves — or for people living with the mental illness of an intimate friend or partner.
Many of us here at Daily Kos experience various forms of mental illness, both personally and as caregivers. It doesn’t matter what kind of mental illness you are dealing with, you are welcome in this group! It can been extremely helpful just to know that there are others who are walking the same or a similar path as we are.
Howdy All! Hope this finds everybody doing alright- but the whole point of this is to have someplace to check in no matter how we’re doing, so if it’s a rough day- that’s just fine. We wanna hear from you even more. How are things? How are we doing?
So, last week I started an eight-week MBSR ( Mindfullness Based Stress Reduction) class. My primary dX these days is PTSD, so stress management is pretty key to managing my symptomology. I’m hoping to see some concrete results in terms of coping strategies- My life’s pretty stressful just at the moment.
Basically, it’s a program of meditation and yoga- both very out of character for me. We’ll see what we get.
Definitely falls into the “can’t hurt, might help” category.
What are folk working with? What are the challenges, what are the gains?
My Brothers and Sisters in Custom Nuerology, How are We holding up?
RIP Paul Kanter- He seemed to get it….
( And, since it’s traditional to throw some resource links up at the bottom of this kind of thing, here are some of the places that I’ve found most helpful-
NAMI, the National alliance on Mental Illness, has some great resources here.
I really really appreciate the real-world experience of the good folk over at Crazymeds.us. We “consumers” often know a lot more about our meds than the Docs who prescribe them. Do me a favor and let the ads load- those guys need the cash. These guys are great, because they understand that having an MI requires a really really good sense of humor. Ya can laugh, or ya can scream.
For my particular flavor of brain cooties, there’s some GREAT resources over at MyPTSD.com.
An intimate who’s wearing a Bipolar type II jacket has found a LOT of relevant information over at the PsychCentral forums.
...and if anybody’d care to suggest a resource, I’d be glad to add it.)