TW: mental illness, self harm. It’s been a few months since I’ve posted here, but I would be remiss to neglect the opportunity to contribute to the conversation before mental health awareness month comes to pass, and I have that urge - you know the one - to dig a little deeper than I do… Continue reading Seatbelts
Author: manicatthediscoo
a blurb on joy.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and, transparently, it's because I have felt that I don’t have a ton of mental illness content left to share at this point in my life…which is... kinda awesome??? The realization hit me all at once today that this is the exact reason I should be writing.… Continue reading a blurb on joy.
Side Effects
Like most other helpful, healthy new things we pick up in life, life-saving psychiatric medication most often requires us to give up something that we cling to. In my case, it was fitting into size 4 jeans. When I first discovered that the zippers on all of my old pairs of pants were a little… Continue reading Side Effects
Naked Hugs
I grew up in your classic “non-practicing” Christian home. I was raised going to church with my family on major Christian holidays, and referring to God when we needed to believe that everything happens for a reason. I went to Christian summer camp and listened to Hillsong and occasionally posted John 3:16 as my Facebook… Continue reading Naked Hugs
Gratitude
“Everything happens for a reason.” “Something good will come from this.” “God has a plan for your life.” These are all incredibly easy things to say as someone who isn’t living with a mental illness to say to someone who is, but is absolutely infuriating to hear as the person suffering. Really? Part of God’s… Continue reading Gratitude
Excellence
“Stanford creates a culture of excellence” my family and I read on the brochure of my Welcome to Stanford packet soon after I received my acceptance letter back in 2013, my junior year of high school. We all hovered around on my bedroom floor, flipping eagerly through the pamphlet we’d received from the admissions office… Continue reading Excellence
Medicine & Doubt
The difficulty with Bipolar Disorder and many other mental illnesses is that their symptoms aren’t always present, and the better your medication works, the less you think you need it. There are times when you feel so ‘normal’ that you begin to doubt whether there was anything wrong in the first place, and question if,… Continue reading Medicine & Doubt
Group Therapy
The only vision I had ever had of group therapy was a bunch of quiet, awkward, timid people with bags under their eyes gathering in a circle in a church basement with fluorescent lights and bad coffee, one by one confessing their addictions and receiving feedback out of nicety, most of them there because they… Continue reading Group Therapy
My Bipolar Story
Since I was ten years old, I had been tentatively diagnosed with a whole handful of different disorders and seen a variety of therapists and doctors, none of whom ever seemed to get it quite right. Some called what I experienced Generalized Anxiety Disorder, some PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder), and later others prescribed me birth… Continue reading My Bipolar Story
Welcome to Manic! at the Disco
At the beginning of 2020, after having moved to San Francisco for the second time since graduating from college, a few weeks into a job I was determined to keep longer than my previous track-record of six months, I sat in my little black Volkswagen Tiguan, FaceTiming my therapist like I did every Tuesday morning… Continue reading Welcome to Manic! at the Disco