Tomorrow I shall be at court, having my appeal heard against the decision not to award me ESA. ESA, for those who do not know, is Employment & Support Allowance, and is a benefit given to those deemed too sick to work. I have bipolar disorder, and for the past ten years that I have […]
Things Not To Say To A Depressed Person 2
June 1, 2012 by 7 Comments
“Pull Yourself Together“ Some people assume that depression is a state we can fall into when not paying attention. A natural, but lazy response to modern life. They assume that if we wished to, we could stop feeling depressed, by pulling ourselves together – by forcing ourselves out of a depression and into the required normal/happy mood […]
Honouring My Parents
June 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
A theme running through the Bible, both Old and New Testaments is that of honouring our parents. There are times when we all face difficulty doing this, and I know that I have difficulty here both normally, and also during periods of mental ill-health. The Bible specifically says “honour your father and mother” seven times, […]
‘Coming Out’ as Mentally Ill?
May 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Right, so here goes with the “not just article-y type stuff”! I’ve had a great day today. Firstly, I met a lady who is going to help me get some work experience in chaplaincy, we had a nice conversation and she seemed to like me, which is always good. She also mentioned possibly getting me […]
Cats as Therapy
May 28, 2012 by 2 Comments
I have always had pets. I started with a goldfish, moved on to a hamster, and now have a cat called Fluffy. Fluffy has been with us for around seven years now, and is, in my completely biased opinion, the best cat ever. She is very affectionate, loves being stroked and cuddled, and spends […]
Getting Some (Christian) Education
May 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
I want to be more fully immersed in my faith. I don’t know whether it is a feature of my bipolar but I am very much an all-or-nothing sort of person. I either want to spend all my time doing something, or not do it at all; the idea of having a faith but doing […]
Time to do some planning
May 22, 2012 by 2 Comments
I have been thinking of what to write on this blog. My creativity seems to have become sadly impaired in the years on medication, so I’ve been having some difficulty deciding what to write. I may expand a little, moving from specifically “Christianity+mental health” to more generally “mental health” and some general “Christian” posts. However […]
Sorrow for Sanity
May 13, 2012 by 1 Comment
When mental illness strikes, we experience loss. We have temporary losses, our health, our “sound mind”, our happiness. We also experience longer-term loss, like the loss of friends, jobs, housing, and the discrimination and stigma we face lead to many losses in our lives. When we are diagnosed with a severe mental health problem, one […]
Truthfulness About Myself
May 7, 2012 by 3 Comments
As a Christian I serve the one called The Truth, Jesus. As a human I too often fail to tell and see the truth about myself. As a person with a mental health problem I have trouble seeing truth from the lies told by illness about myself. I speak, now, from a position of wellness […]
Do you have “depression”?
May 6, 2012 by 4 Comments
What I’d like to write about here is, I think, an intense irritant to most mentally ill people. That is, the way people loosely use the term “depression” to refer to things that are not medical depression and get themselves all twisted up and end up stigmatising us. I am making it sound more simple […]
Believer's Brain 