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So much of mental illness in all of its forms relies on self-hatred and self-loathing. The brain is hardwired to notice and cling to negativity first, over positivity, which is why it takes so much mental training to practice positivity. Shame, guilt, trauma, self-deprecation, and self-harm are ways that everyone gets down on themselves, holding themselves in contempt for being a flawed human being. Those who are living with mental health disorders and substance use disorders often take this eroding behavior to the extreme. When confronted with the question of how they think of themselves, they are often surprised by the answer: not very highly. Low self-esteem and self-worth are the foundation upon which we build a foundation of ourselves in acceptance and and self-love. Acceptance is the way we receive ourselves fully, allowing for ourselves to be who are we are in every way that we are- mental illness included. Once we start moving into self-acceptance we are recognizing that who we are as we are is correct. There is nothing wrong or mistaken about us. We are unique, just as everyone is unique and we are accepted, just as we are learning to accept everyone. We accept rather than except. We stop telling ourselves we are an exception to the rule of acceptance. These are 3 signs that you are starting to accept yourself:

Addiction and alcoholism aren’t always the fully developed experience of chemical dependency. There are different stages of addiction in all of its forms. Most often, people ask whether an addiction is really an eating disorder because they don’t want to admit that they have any kind of problem. Unfortunately, this is how many fully developed addictions fully develop-denial and comparison. Someone denies that they have a problem and compares themselves to what they believe to be the real definition of addiction. Since they don’t meet the level of addiction they believe to be truly problematic, they don’t consider their problem to be truly problematic. Any kind of compulsive problem is a problem and can quickly develop into a bigger problem. For example, with gambling. Gambling addiction can be considered in three different levels: compulsive, binge, and problem gambling. Each phase of gambling addiction poses a unique threat to the person experiencing it. It is easy to move up in the ranks of gambling addiction but almost impossible to move back down without abstaining from gambling entirely and entering recovery.

For most people who go to treatment for alcohol use disorder, their drinking wasn’t restricted to the weekend anymore. Still, when the weekend rolls around, there can be triggers for drinking as millions of other people do so. Weekends can still be fun, safe, and healthy. Here are three ideas:

Food addiction recovery is hard to understand. Someone is out of control, completely unable to manage and regulate their consumption of food. When someone is addicted to drugs and alcohol, there is talk of abstinence in their recovery. An addict or alcoholic has a unique inability to manage and control their drinking or drug use after the first drink or use of the drug. For their recovery it is suggested they abstain from drugs and alcohol in order to avoid that first drink or drug. What about food addiction? Food addicts cannot abstain from food. Food is vital for survival, physically and psychologically. For food addicts, their temptations don’t lie only in special places or obscure street corners. Food is everywhere. Restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations- the temptations to eat and overeat and abuse the body with food is everywhere. It isn’t so black and white. Alcoholics don’t avoid everything to be drank. After all, water is necessary to survive and it's arguable that humans are addicted to water. However, alcoholics have to choose not to drink alcohol or any beverage that would trigger their cravings for alcohol. Likewise, food addicts don’t avoid all food at the risk of relapse because that would be irrational. According to Food Addicts Anonymous, abstinence is defined through a series of dietary choices and behaviors. For example the FA program includes weighing and measuring portions in a specific way which is explained in their dietary guidelines. Like most healthy eating programs, FA suggest square meals a day, though no food in between. Most importantly, the FA guidelines suggest avoiding trigger foods like flours, sugars, and binge foods. Sugar is highly addicting and most simple carbohydrates that include flours include a lot of sugar- but carbohydrates are sugars. Binge foods are different for everyone, but can often include things that munch and crunch, snacks in bags, and food that food addicts find it difficult to stop eating. Recognizing that their addiction to food can be likened to drugs and alcohol, people in recovery from food addiction adopt a recovery lifestyle which includes abstinence, treatment, therapy, and often 12 step participation. In time, they learn about what triggers their food addiction, relapse prevention techniques, and healthy living lifestyles for long term recovery.

Social media has created a culture of voyeurism where we spend hours of our time examining the online lives of other people, wondering about their real lives on the other side of the screen. In the meantime, you are spending your real life on the other side of the screen, looking at the screen.

When it comes to stories about mental health and treatment, it is the tendency of the media to take a small part of the truth and stretch it as far as it can go. Yoga has been a popular topic in research, debate, and conversation for quite a few years. Within the last year, yoga has been in conversation with the topic of depression. Is yoga a cure for depression? Does yoga do anything for depression? Should we even be doing yoga at all? The benefits of yoga are undeniable because of the copious amount of research that has been done. Yoga is scientifically proven to reduce depression symptoms by reducing symptoms of ruminating thoughts, physical distress, internal inflammation, and more. A great stress reducer, yoga helps alleviate many of the triggers which causes the symptoms of stress to worsen. Many tests have been done to measure different components of the effect of yoga, some of which has included brain imaging studies. Most recently, studies on yoga and the effect it has on depression tested the actual scales of depression before and after many weeks of yoga. Hatha and Bikram yoga are the two main forms of yoga studied. Groups of participants in multiple studies did yoga classes for about eight weeks. Researchers evaluated the intensity of depression symptoms in participants before and after their approximately eight weeks of yoga. After yoga, the depression symptoms were reduced. Some studies which included mindfulness courses found that depression scales dropped so low that the depression was clinically in remission. These studies enforce the belief that yoga is helpful for treating depression. Yoga is not, however, a cure for depression. While there are many evidence based practices, like yoga, there is not a cure for depression. There are no cures for mental illnesses. Each person experiences their mental illness in a different way which means they experience their recovery in a different way. Each of the proven methods for treating depression that reduce the symptoms of depression either reduce it into remission or into a manageable state. Yoga helps make depression livable.

For millions of people, sex is love. This description resonates with people who identify themselves as codependent, love addicts, sex addicts, relationship addicts. Sex is love. In order to feel love, feel something that feels like love, or pretend that there is love, people use sex. Unfortunately, it never sticks. Love can be expressed through sex just as a sex can be an expression as love. Sex and love can also be completely separate from one another. Sex doesn’t mean love and love doesn’t always mean sex. Sometimes, however, the confusion can be detrimental and cause an addictive process that ends up painful for everyone involved. Sex addiction and love addiction are described as process addictions. Sex and love are not chemical substances, but they do cause chemical reactions in the brain. Both sex and love create a production of dopamine, the neurochemical for pleasure. They also produce oxytocin, often called the love hormone. Sex feels good and love feels good as well. People who develop a sex and love addiction, or a sex addiction through a love addiction, get addicted to the good feelings created by sexual activity and feelings of love real or perceived. Most often, they have experienced a deep pain in their life, which might be attributed to sex, but most likely attributed to love. They were abandoned, rejected, neglected, or abused. The trauma they have experienced in their life has brought them to a place where they feel they need the sexual interactions and the feeling of love in order to survive. Without the constant engagement of love and sex, they feel lost and empty. Process addictions form by inspiring an addiction to the process of finding, participating in and sustaining a process as long as possible. Without that process in their lives, like sex and love, they are forced to confront their feelings of pain, discomfort, and trauma. Sex and love feel better than their reality. The lack of love is made better by sex. The lack of sex is made better by love. The cycle is relentless.

Psychopath raises a very particular kind of image in the mind. Thanks to the perpetuation of some very vivid, grotesque, and cruel stereotypes, we tend to think of psychopaths as clinically insane- there is a difference. We see them as murderers, thieves, and comic book story villains. There is a difference between the clinically insane- those who are completely and dangerously detached from the roots of humanity in reality, and those are living with a form of psychopathy, which is different.

Narcissists are self-involved and thrive on bringing everyone around them down in order to build themselves up. Despite any other indication, their effort to do so is not actually vindictive, though many of their behaviors will be. Adults who are narcissists typically grew up in a household where adults where narcissists and the pattern can be traced back. Crippling low self-esteem drive the narcissist to exact their own childhood revenge on their children, tying the way they love and validate their children into an extension of themselves. Rather than love and appreciate children for the unique individuals that they are, a narcissistic parent uses shame, guilt, anger, humiliation, and manipulation to try and turn children into who the narcissistic parent wants them to be. As a result, children who are raised in a narcissistic home grow up understanding that love is conditional. If you satisfy the narcissistic parent, you might earn their love and adoration. If you don’t, you won't’.

It is a remarkable and wonderful feat of technology to be developing the field of telehealth or e-therapy. Everything from chat rooms, smart phone apps, and artificial intelligence “bots” on social media messaging platforms are providing proven therapeutic techniques to those in need. Therapy is not accessible by everyone and can still be effective when it is not done in person- depending on the diagnosis. New research suggests that for binge eating disorder, in person therapy is the most effective in promoting remission. Published in JAMA Psychiatry, the University of Leipzig Medical Center found that “...while an internet-based self-help program did help people binge eat less often, face-to-face therapy led to a larger and faster reduction in binge eating episodes,” reports Reuters. In person therapy proven to be the most effective of binge eating disorder includes cognitive behavioral therapy and traditional psychotherapy. Though the online therapies being offered are based on cognitive behavioral therapy, they are not the same as cognitive behavioral therapy which can be conducted in person by a professional therapist. Binge eating disorder is the most common of eating disorders and one of the only eating disorders more heavily populated by men. Though the diagnosis is new to eating disorders, the experience of uncontrollable eating is not new to those who have been struggling with it. This study proves that spending time in a treatment program where you can work with a therapist, multiple therapists, in person every day is a better chance at full recovery. In addition, there is another face to face component of treatment that is helpful for recovery: supporting peers.

Many of the world’s most famous creatives struggled with mental health issues. Often the existence of their mental health as a contributor to their creativity is overlooked because their struggles become just another part of the glamorized story of their lives. When they pass because of alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide, they are immortalized through their memory as an artist. What people are quick to forget is the fact that behind the creativity and perhaps the fame was an individual, a human being like anyone else, who was struggling with mental illness. The Big Think examines the relationship between creativity and mental illness. A 1931 study, the article cites, interviewed over 800 well known creative “geniuses” at the time and found that a small percentage, the minority, of participants had no struggles with mental health. Recent research supports the finding. Bipolar disorder, for example, is highly correlated with high intelligence and creativity. A screening of over 700,000 teens in Sweden, the article explains, found that “exceptionally creative” teens were four times more likely to have bipolar. Other studies have found that people who are highly creative are highly likely to have bipolar disorder or another personality or mood disorder. Writers are the most likely to struggle with a severe mental illness like anxiety, depression, or schizophrenia. Additional research has found a scientific link through neuroscience. Though many of these studies point to a correlation, the article points out, none draw a definitive line of causation. Creativity and mental illness may be linked, which is why creative and expressive art therapies are helpful in mental health treatment. The mind is full of genius, finding ways to express itself other than words. Music therapy, art therapy, drama therapy, dance therapy, and other creative forms of therapy help clients express what they might not otherwise be able to express. Creatives in the spotlight who struggle with mental illness use their gift of creative talent to communicate a human experience that cannot be understand by anyone else other than those who also struggle. Yet, with their music, their art, their creativity, they are able to spread awareness, touch lives, and make an impact. Still beneath the surface they are people struggling with challenging symptoms in need of understanding, love, and care.

When you are given a mental health diagnosis you gain a new part of your identity. There is specific parts of that language to pay attention to. You gain a new part of your identity. When you are given a mental health diagnosis you do not gain a new identity. Often in mental health treatment and recovery we encourage people to work against the shame and stigma that comes from mental illness by telling them, “You are not your diagnosis”. Some people, however, embrace that identity. After struggling for years of their lives to understand what is going on with the state of their mental health, they are relieved to have a title. These individuals beat themselves up, shame themselves, and live by the stigma they have been given just for being different. Whatever shame and stigma comes with their specific mental health diagnosis, it doesn’t matter to them. Within the community of having a mental illness, being mentally ill, and meeting people with their specific diagnosis, they find belonging. The identity doesn’t wear them down, it helps build them back up. It’s a matter of person-first or identity-first language. Person-first language is saying “I have mental illness”. Identity-first language is saying “I am mental illness.” However, the language and name of mental health disorders complicates this. For example, you might say “I have narcissistic personality disorder” or “I am narcissistic”. Most often, however, the title appropriated is “They are a narcissist.” Yet, in comparison, someone with an anxiety disorder it wouldn’t make sense to say “I am anxious” because anyone can be anxious. They can say “I have anxiety disorder”. In further comparison- “I am bipolar” versus “I have bipolar”, “I am depressed” versus “I have depression”. Part of the reason this language dichotomy falls short, like in the case of depression, is that mental illness can be remitting. People can and with treatment often do fall into remission from depression.