stigma is killer man! wow. imagine a world where people leap up to help, instead of you dreading revealing anything. imagine sharing yourself completely and having people understand, instead of expecting to be misunderstood as a fucking crazy. the thing that irks me is we're the people that need a boost and a little help, a little understanding the most since we've been dealt a shitty hand. yet the reality is we can barely reach out because we can't talk. we are mutes about our illnesses. i bet healing could come in waves were we able to reveal and talk about stuff. i'm so stifled at times. i censor myself. i hide. i sink. it's a terrible thing. we need to educate. for real.

a thought

if you can let go of others consideration of you, then you'll find yourself being you more often. now let's say you were bashed, hurt, or experienced a bad feeling caused by others. in the final analysis if it was a result of you being yourself, let's say you can live with that. you can be ok with it, even as it stings.

don't put on an act. go with you. if you go with you, then you really experience things, and you're alive. there's no better feeling than being alive. the price of being false is not being alive. not experiencing things. hidden we find nothing.

Boards of Canada's music has helped through the ruff times. So here it is. A stellar track. When my symptoms were at there worst I walked around everywhere with headphones and their album "The Campfire Headphase" playing. Sit back and relax. It's recovery noise. whut whut!

We lack the self control inside us, so what's happening outside of us is just a manifestation of the inner unruliness. Or something like that. God this is so true. I've heard it said that mental illness is just an internal build-up of problems over-time that have covered up, and diminished our true spirit. What's hopeful about this is we have the power to rid these problems from ourselves. There's so much work to do though. It's tough when you realize just how far you have to go. One day at a time.

introspect that sheeeitt

Introspection is hugely necessary to recovery. I MEAN IT. I don't think you can get anywhere without it. Now I used to say thought is like a wall to recovery. I believed that thought gets us nowhere, and that's a hard stance. In my case thought would not lead me in the direction of progression. It would only make things worse and more negative. It wasn't til I found enough stability that I began giving my thoughts the right direction. It started by basically taking the parenting approach. How would a parent treat their kid, and from that I went well they would encourage and support them unconditionally. Starting out when you're weak you need to start loving yourself as a parent would their kid. We are the lost and confused, but we're going to start giving ourselves the boost we need.

In the beginning I would remember a thought I had that day, write it down, then turn it around. Thought-changing is a basic idea in recovery circles, anyway that's where I started. I believe through the process of subjecting our thoughts to our inner parent we are able to change them for the better. This can become common practice. You can do this on the fly when a mean thought enters your brain. I prefer writing it down so I can cross out the old thought, and write a beautiful new true thought.

Of course introspection is not limited to thought changing, but it might be a good excecise to start with. Write out a thought, and summon up your inner wisdom and inner parent and change that thought around. Over time you can start looking over all the thoughts you've had and begin seeing trends, a good step to a self-inventory which their will be a lot to talk about later.

good luck yo!

VOLUNTEER YO!

I think I'll start updating this blog again. I don't know if anybody is out there reading this, and I don't really care, but I'm going to try to inform you on the subject of mental illness to the best of my ability.

I harp on work as the foundation of stability. Now I realize not everyone can work. If you can't, then I don't know what to say. In my case without work I get sucked into my emotions. I can feel shitty all day with nothing to pull me out of the dumps. I mean a phone call to someone is great, but when it's over if you're just going to hang out on the couch and stare out the window... biding your time til the next thing presents itself I think you're going to need help.

When to-do lists don't cut it what do you turn to? I could make all these little suggestions... like balance your life out. Apply attention to whatever is important to you, but still without a job you're going to get complacent. I would say the next best alternative to not working is volunteering. Yes.

If you can muster up the energy to to a google search and find out about a food pantry that'd be awesome. A soup kitchen. A red cross blood drive. etc...

So I guess my opinion on the issue of working is, if you can't work VOLUNTEER.

normal, yes!

So my life is sorta normal, and what's wrong with that? I know people eek at the word normal. Like whaddya mean, it's gotta be interesting, spicy, we must do the unexpected. Yes i'm down with all that, but honestly with mental illness it's a struggle toward normalcy.

If you don't have a job try and get one, honestly work is a huge step in recovery, and the centerpiece of living a normal life. Whatever your work entails, as long as you're working. I believe it's necessary to get away from the obsession that characterizes having a mental illness by getting a normal life. That means: having relationships, working, having conversations, getting up at a decent hour, getting three meals a day, taking care of finances whatever... One thing I don't mean is being like everyone else, and honestly, we don't have to worry about that. We have mental illnesses, nuff said. We'll never be normies, but we must struggle towards it.

Why? Why, because at some point we lost touch with reality, or just lost our way, and we rediscover it through what everyday people go through. We don't know it, until we've been through it. It takes time, are we willing to spend the time getting ourselves straightened out? Isolate all you want, you'll never know the feeling of being part of a group, or what the significance of it is. If groups aren't your thing, maybe it's to care about a project. Now we're talking free-time. That's when we have sex, create things, and rock out!  Whatever it is, it's important to experience the significance of it!

I believe there are levels to experience we can't explore in our heads, so if you want the solution, and are ready to listen, stop worrying about mental illnesses. They're actually quite empty, and no amount of interpretation is really helpful. Looking for a solution leads to emptiness, and meaninglessness. It will not prepare us for real life. When life goes down, challenges us, hurts us, teaches us, finds us.

Live a normal life, and you will find, the specialness comes to us through the pathways of stability. We need to discover things through action, constant action. We should learn how to do things the right way by doing them the wrong way, but to have done them! You will find your way through this approach: the approach of having a normal life.