Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Psyche.
How to Overcome Depression in 3 Steps
Thousands of years ago, Buddha said, "Life is dukkha". Dukkha has been translated from Pali into English as "suffering." This doesn't mean that Buddha himself thought that life was miserable and thus there was no point in living it with some positive purpose or meaning. What he meant is that life by its nature involves suffering.
Vanessa DiasPublished 7 years ago in PsycheThe Tools of Change — Ch 3.1
I make a deliberate effort in conversations such as these to avoid Traditional Psychology. Even casual usage of the terms involved wherever possible. It is to avoid Perspective skew. Traditional Psychology has a very particular bias, one that causes many problems. It in fact perpetuates the very thing it is attempting to address. Its root premises are fundamentally flawed. At least in terms of the common perspective as it relates to psychology, particularly psychotherapy.
Syl SabastianPublished 7 years ago in PsycheTaboo—Mental Health
Back in 2012, I was made redundant from an organization I had been with for nearly 10 years. I did not take the redundancy well and felt very bitter and twisted about being ousted! In a matter of weeks, I was not able to leave the house without a full blown panic and anxiety attack. I even feared stupid things like the postman delivering letters, being around people, speaking on the telephone, going food shopping, seeing friends, etc. Within a couple of months, my physical, emotional well-being, and family life were severely affected. I was frogmarched to the GP and was referred to a Mental Health Team. I have always been an open minded type of gal but accepting psychological help seems like I had failed as a person. I was stronger than this. I was just having a hard time and things would get better, right?
Anabel HudsonPublished 7 years ago in PsycheA Guide to BPD
I've never been quiet about my mental health, while I haven't been as open as I am now, I've never made a conscious effort to hide it. However, there are many people that I know who fight specifically to prevent people from finding out about their diagnoses. I'm hoping my writing this will help them be honest with themselves and their loved ones, but also help those close to them understand and accept who they are no matter what their issues are.
Kerri MaguirePublished 7 years ago in PsycheIsolation and Anxiety
Mental health transparency is becoming a more and more mainstream with each passing year. I know more about my friends’ mental health concerns than I ever expected that I would. I know who struggles with depression, who struggles with anxiety and I think it’s amazing that they feel like they can share those struggles in an open forum without feeling like they will be ostracized because of it.
D. Gabrielle JensenPublished 7 years ago in PsycheWhat They Don't Know
Yesterday was my 30th birthday. A day I had long been dreading. A bittersweet day to have been alive. You see I suffer from depression. Though my friends and family knew I was having a hard time recently, no one really knew how bad it had gotten. A few weeks ago as I laid in my bed crying, listening to my children play in the other room, I made the decision. I was going to take my own life. I was going to end this suffering that has haunted my family for far too long. They deserve to be happy. But how could they ever be happy when they have a mother who is always depressed?
Jaye RiveraPublished 7 years ago in Psyche4 Tips on Dealing with Depression
Self-loathing, listlessness, the inabillity to feel pleasure, the inability to feel ANYTHING. Depression is awful. However, despite how unbearable it may seem at the time, there are a few skills I have accumulated over several years of struggling on and off, which make me feel like a PRO at dealing with the disease that some people call the “black dog”.
An Altered Sense of Reality; Schizophrenia
Throughout history many explanations have been offered to explain why people act in unnatural ways; from supernatural explanations such as possession by demons or gods to an imbalance of bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile). Today, western civilizations' theories of abnormality emphasize biological causes. Our advanced knowledge of human biology has allowed us to systematically name, diagnose and offer treatment for an ever expanding list of psychological disorders.
Joe SnaithPublished 7 years ago in PsycheA Pause for Cookies and Sunshine
I am not sad. I am not grief-stricken. I am me, in all my glory, an emotional being that feels and thinks too much. I remember long ago a friend proclaimed, “Tommy, you can’t express this side of you, people will make fun of you.” She was right. How I wanted so much for her to be wrong. She saw what I did not want to see: a world that does not care that you are hurting. And today it gives me pause, as I watched a tear cascade down the cheek of an unknown woman in the middle of Starbucks, for the world to see her at her weakest, her most vulnerable. What will people think of her, as she tries to quietly melt away into the world? Why, instead of reaching out, does the world shy away from pain?
Thomas SwitzerPublished 7 years ago in PsycheStigma Reduction Can Have Different Outcomes
Things have been said in the past few months that really got me wound up about the different types of stigma reduction. It consists of raising awareness, including being comfortable talking about the topic and normalization, including an acceptance of the topic.
Bushra ShahriarPublished 7 years ago in PsycheOkay
The table was grimy, covered in years of spilled coffee and cigarette ash, the hand-made doilies my stepmother had laid out making the edges between clean and filth stand out garishly. It was late, but summer in Norway means that there was light coming into the windows even at half-past two in the morning. Across from me was a chain-smoking man with my nose and dark hair, slack faced and glazed over with either fatigue or nicotine; it didn't seem possible to tell which. My stepmother hovered just outside the door to the area that served as dining, living, and occasional guest room in the tiny European house and my half-brother who was just a few months past seven years old was asleep upstairs. As my father smoked one cigarette after another, sometimes lighting the next before the first was fully finished, I tried to find my words, to put what had happened into the air between us.
Amanda FrazierPublished 7 years ago in PsycheAre You Hermes, Tim Ferriss?
The Greek god Hermes was a trickster. He stole his half-brother Apollo’s beautiful herd of cows on the day of his birth after sprinting away from his mother Maia who had turned her back for less than an instant.