Blog 21 of Top 25 Mental Wellness Blogs by Moms

Favorite Blog Posts

• On Doing and Lethargy
• What is Your Measure of Success?
• On Depression and Recovery

Mental Health Issues I Blog About

I blog about living with chronic depression, social anxiety, and being the child of a hoarder.

My Mental Wellness Tip for Moms

A few things:

• Be proactive about your mental health. Seek out help from professionals and don't let the stigma of medication deter you from taking it if you need it.
• Remember that this one moment is the only thing you need to get through. Learning to live in the moment instead of the past or the future is the key to peace and joy.
• Related to that, it is always true that this feeling is temporary. No bad feeling ever lasts forever. I may not be able to control my ups and downs, but I can control my reactions to my inevitable downs by not seeing them as permanent.

Mental Wellness Resources for Moms

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, and/or The Feeling Good Handbook — I have found Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to be a more successful form of therapy than rehashing one's childhood over and over because it requires action, not just talk. These books teach that Feelings / Thoughts / Behavior are inextricably connected and give you the tools improve all three.

Loving What Is, by Byron Katie — Katie has pioneered a way of doing self-inquiry, called The Work, that achieves the same exact results as CBT, but faster, easier, and with a zen twist! In addition to her books, I like to watch videos of this technique in action at www.thework.com and by searching for Byron Kaite on Youtube. Whenever I watch any of these videos, my mood is improved.

Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding, and Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding — Two invaluable books that address the emotions and reasons behind obsessive collecting and offer CBT techniques for recovery.