Chronic Fatigue

How to Hack the Happiness Chemicals!
Save this graphic & refer back to it whenever you need it! It's a great mental health hack. What's one thing you can add from the list below to find some extra happiness today?
#PTSD #MentalHealth #Anxiety #BipolarDepression #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #MajorDepressiveDisorder #Schizophrenia #ChronicFatigue #Migraine

It is in the full definition of Mindfulness itself — we must remember that mindfulness is not just being in the present moment, it must be “awareness of the present moment Without Judgment.”

Or stated this way:

“Paying attention in a certain way -on purpose, in the present moment, Non-Judgmentally.”

Non-Judgment in itself, as well as, when utilized along with the other 9 attitudes of the mental wellness state of mindfulness that I discuss in this group, is a game-changer when put into practice.

There have been many articles and books written about the practice of Non-Judgment.

One of my original teachers of this is the very well-known Gabrielle (Gabby) Bernstein.

This is where I learned to utilize this transformative go-to short statement every time something arises in my mind that could be a wrong judgment and could cause all kinds of chaos for no reason:

“I choose to judge nothing that occurs.”

I am going to go in-depth about this here, because it is that important.

It even has helped me tremendously in my marriage which I am very proud to say, with my dedication to mindfulness as a new way of life, and with my emotional intelligence growth that I keep sharing with you, I have taught my husband how he needs to grow along with me, and due to my persistence to create a life that I want to live, our marriage going on 15 years has evolved into what I shaped it into, based on my values, and my mental health needs. And he is a tough one, to say the very least. He never would have grown at all otherwise.

Non-Judgement of myself too has been a game-changer for me to learn one of the biggest lessons of all of life that I was not taught growing up— Self-Love.

And that my friends, is something we cannot afford to not master, so I will dedicate another post at another time to that Key to Everything.

Every time the impulse to decide whether something is good, bad, right, wrong, ugly or pretty arises, stop and say, “I choose to judge nothing that occurs.”

Everytime you see someone and think “they should” or “they shouldn’t”, “that’s good” or “that’s bad”, “she’s right” or “she’s wrong”, instead, just observe and don’t comment to yourself or others. Go cold turkey and stop judging totally for a period of time. Do a judgment detox.

A judgment detox means giving up judgment of all things. Judgment of self, others, the world, things that happen or don’t happen.

Choose to say these things to yourself instead:
“Today I choose to accept all that is for what it is – nothing more, nothing less.” You can also say to yourself daily -“Judging serves no purpose”.

You may find that you will have more peace. You may find that you feel less anxious because you are not having to figure everything out. You may find that you start observing life more and trusting more.

How much of your time and energy is taken up judging what is right, wrong, good or bad for everybody and everything? How much of your time today do you spend trying to predict the future? “That would just be terrible” or “If I do this, then I’ll be miserable.”
Or “If I do this it will make me happy”.

How would your life be different if you stopped judging and evaluating everyone and everything? Think about it. We evaluate everything. We put a value on everything. We are assigning meaning to things.

We spend a lot of time analyzing, criticizing, and pretending we know what’s good/bad, right/wrong, and on and on and on.

The real danger lies in becoming attached to our judgments.
Believing you really know what’s right or wrong, especially for someone else, can be very hurtful and damaging.
But also, we can’t assign meaning to something someone does because we might not be looking at the real reasons why they do it or don’t do it, that could have nothing to do with us intentionally.

If you want to dive into this deeper, you can read one Gabrielle Bernstein’s New York Times Bestsellers:“Judgment Detox: Release the beliefs that hold you back from living a better life.”

If you are like me and love extracting all of the teachings within the best article, here’s her articles website link: Gabby Bernstein Blog Articles | Informative Articles From Gabby

The critical ways I learned to apply non-judgement to my marriage and to my life choices I also learned from Kathy Murphy, PhD in her Article “Today I Will Judge Nothing.”

She discussed how our judgments have ruined many a good relationship.

The problem is we think we do know. Then we become limited by our perceptions and beliefs. We become bound by what we think we know and may be missing some of the greatest opportunities and lessons of our lives.

In addition, how does one design a life without making judgments, without deciding what’s good or bad or what’s right or wrong? We do need to be able to make choices for our lives, but maybe we need some new strategies for making these decisions. We can recognize and admit that all we really have are our preferences, our desires, our opinions, and our best guesses. With this information we discern what would be our best choice for today giving credence to the reality that “you never really know” how it will turn out. It’s a subtle yet powerful shift to change our language from what is right or wrong, good or bad to simply stating what we prefer.

Mindfulness Attitude of Non-Judging is cultivated by assuming the stance of an impartial witness to your own experience. To do this requires that you become aware of the constant stream of judging and reacting to inner and outer experiences that we are all normally caught up in, and learn to step back from it. When we begin practicing paying attention to the activity of our own mind, it is common to discover and be surprised by the fact that we are constantly generating judgments about our experience.

#MentalHealth #Mindfulness #MajorDepressiveDisorder #BipolarDepression #BipolarDisorder #Depression #Agoraphobia #Anxiety #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Addiction #ChronicIllness #ChronicFatigue #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #IfYouFeelHopeless #Cancers #AnorexiaNervosa #EatingDisorders #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #Fibromyalgia #Selfcare #Selfharm #Grief #SuicidalIdeation #SuicidalThoughts #SuicideAttemptSurvivors #Suicide #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #PTSD #Trauma #RareDisease #SocialAnxiety #Fibromyalgia #Loneliness #Migraine #CerebralPalsy #MultipleSclerosis #ParkinsonsDisease #MoodDisorders #MotorDisorders #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #ADHD #Relationships #FamilyAndFriends

Yesterday to this morning for me is another example of why I am so thankful every day that I took the University of Pennsylvania’s online course on learning and applying resilience skills, so grateful that I typed up every single word that was taught, and that I recently started this group to share this critical knowledge from the actual people that researched this.

U. of Penn’s definition of Resilience is not only the ability to bounce back from adversity, but also the ability to grow from challenges.

In this course, Dr. Karen Reivich focuses on the psychosocial aspects of resilience. The aspects of resilience that are determined by your psychology, and by your social relationships and interactions.

So, yesterday was one of the rare days within recent years that 1) my fatigue completely took hold of me, and 2) my brain’s sleepiness was to the point that most of my brain would not wake up - all day- and I could see myself not able to function practically at all.

It’s not like this was the first time this ever occurred, and it’s always a possibility, but it is still very hard to watch myself go through this and it is also very hard to wake up from the next morning—the kind of “slap in the face” reminder that oh yeah, I live with a chronic illness that can at times, and I will never know when, will have me almost completely disabled.

So, this morning I woke up with this “setback.” And I look at it like I was brought to a “fork in the road.” And now while yesterday’s adversity was not in my control, this morning, which I always work to look at as a fresh, new day full of good possibilities, it was actually now in my control as to which way I let myself go in my mind at this “fork in the road.”

Of course upon waking up, my mind started on autopilot and took me the wrong direction. Then, the moments that I made myself ready for, the clarity, the practice of never staying in autopilot and moving forward on purpose, with intention, with as much control as I can have and before it gets too hard to get the control back.

I turned my brain’s thinking around, I put my focus on the truths that were on my side- including but not limited to the fact that I Have Bounced Back From Much Worse Than This…;and I turned my mind away from dangerous cognitive distortions and right then and there pretty fast I would not let the negativity bring me downward.

Yesterday, I still had the mindful awareness to apply radical acceptance, non-judging, patience, trust, and just letting be with what is — for this one day -these are part of the 9 Attitudes of Mindfulness that I have begun to write posts about here for you. These all link together with the skills of resilience.

What you will learn too here, amongst other important things is that -it is when we start paying attention to our inner experience, that we rapidly discover that there are certain thoughts and feelings and situations that our mind seems to want to hold on to.

And amongst other what are called “resilience interventions” that I applied were these skills that I committed to in living with intention- what are called “protective factors” that I nurture every single day so they will be there for me when I need them most, when I have to dig deeper from a wider range of resources —

I learned the Critical Skill of Optimism —which gives us the attitude to continue to persist —and I learned how Optimism is the most important factor in resilience and in all of life - well-being and strong relationships;
I commit myself to living for clarified purposes that are bigger than myself, this is not limited to relationships, it is even better for our wellbeing to have an attachment to something larger than yourself which might also be to a mission, to a purpose, to an idea, something that you believe is critically important and worth fighting for (by the way, my personal mission is that all of you are worth fighting for);
I learned what my Personality/Character Strengths are and I learned how to leverage them;
I Developed Mental Agility;
I learned how to create a “buffer of positivity”, and what is called the “Broaden And Build” theory of positive emotions;
I learned how to take control of “thinking traps” by applying “cognitive strategies”…

All of these are what is so effective about the newest branch of psychology that I approach my life by to overcome all that I do overcome— where in addition to everything else, we build strengths supports.

Positivity Psychology, a somewhat newer term, describes a dual approach to mental health- where we build strengths supports, and healthy lifestyles, as well as treating illness and distress.

AlI of this is all what I will keep breaking down into chunks in most of my posts here to this group.
This takes some work first on my part - to keep breaking down the many variables- so bear with me.

#MentalHealth #MajorDepressiveDisorder #ChronicFatigue #ChronicIllness #Disability #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #Depression #Anxiety #MoodDisorders #MotorDisorders #BipolarDepression #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #AutismSpectrumDisorder #AnorexiaNervosa #EatingDisorders #BipolarDisorder #Selfcare #ADHD #Relationships #FamilyAndFriends #Fibromyalgia #ChronicPain #Cancers #Addiction #Selfharm #SuicidalIdeation #SuicidalThoughts #SuicideAttemptSurvivors #Suicide #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #PTSD #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis #PostTraumaticStressDisorder #Trauma #RheumatoidArthritis #SocialAnxiety #LearningDisabilities #CrohnsDisease #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #RecurringMDD #TreatmentresistantDepression #Mindfulness #MDD #TRDSupport #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #AutonomicDysfunction #PosturalOrthostaticTachycardiaSyndrome #MultipleSclerosis #LymeDisease #MajorDepression #ClinicalDepression #MotivationMonday #resilience #Grief

Hi Mighty Community,

First, I want to start by apologizing for my absence lately. Life has been a whirlwind, and I haven’t been as active as I’d like to be here. But I’ve been working on something close to my heart, and I can’t wait to share it with you all soon.

Over the past few months, I’ve been pouring my energy into designing a website—a project that means the world to me. It’s not just a website; it’s a step toward building a stable future for myself and my two children. This journey hasn’t been easy, but it’s one that I’m determined to take, for their sake and mine.

This community has been a source of strength and inspiration for me. If it weren’t for the stories I’ve read here, the encouragement I’ve received, and the connection I’ve felt with all of you, I don’t know if I would have found the courage to take this leap. Being part of The Mighty has shown me that I’m not alone, and that even in the darkest moments, there’s hope and support to lean on.

Thank you for being here for me, for lifting me up, and for reminding me that even when life feels overwhelming, I can rise above it. I can’t wait to share my project with you soon and hear your thoughts

#ChronicFatigue #KidneyDisease #lupusfighter

Dry bones rattle in a lonely soul
Slipped and fell into a deep black hole
I can tell you're lost, I'm here for you
Wildfires burning you down to stone
Blind eyes, turning from a world so cold
A million miles apart, within my reach
It's not like me to worry
But when I see you fading in the dark
I'll leave a light on for you
Through the long nights, I will be right
There for you if you drift too far
I'll leave a light on for you, you, you
The rain comes following an endless drought
To wash away the remnants of all your doubt
I hope that you'll see me looking out…….”

Please 🙏 go to this link below for a Guide to having a Real Conversation about mental health and pass this on, share it with everyone and anyone that you need to be there for you, and they just don’t know how they can help you.

I have found out myself within the past year with an old friend of mine that she just needed my guidance on how she could be a better and supportive friend through my dark which is only a part, but still a part of who I genuinely am. And she realizes now that to be my friend is to know about all of me. And, she has actually become really great at giving me the support I need without me asking for it too. And, our friendship has grown stronger from the honesty and true empathy.

On their website in their real convo guide they start by saying this that people do not know and they get wrong — “you don’t need special training to have an open, authentic conversation about mental health – and often, just talking about it can be the first important step in understanding where someone is with their mental health.”

How to Start and Continue a Convo About Mental Health | AFSP

At the beginning of the song’s video there is silence with a black screen and these words in white:
“Suicide is a topic that hides in the shadows.
It’s Time we talk away the dark.
We can all play a role in keeping ourselves, and the people in our lives (and community) safe.
Let’s leave a light on for each other by learning how to Talk Away the dark.

The song’s royalties will directly benefit the AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) for the rest of it’s existence. Suicide has impacted almost everyone and it’s so important to “Talk Away The Dark” and teach all how to have a conversation that could safe a life.

The lyrics also exist as a shoulder to lean on for those who feel alone in times of mental turmoil.

Frontman Jacoby Shaddix emphasized that mental health is not an individual struggle, but rather a serious issue that "affects all of us."

Finally, the critical message is starting to get out there that We All have a role in preventing suicide and supporting each other’s mental health.

#MightyMusic #Music #musictherapy #Songs #Lyrics #MentalHealth #Depression #Grief #Loneliness #Anxiety #Caregiving #PTSD #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #Trauma #BipolarDisorder #MajorDepressiveDisorder #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #ADHD #Addiction #AddictionRecovery #ChronicIllness #ChronicPain #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #BipolarDepression #Disability #CerebralPalsy #RareDisease #Selfharm #SuicidalIdeation #SuicidalThoughts #MoodDisorders #MotorDisorders #ChronicFatigue #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #DepressiveDisorders #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #IfYouFeelHopeless #MightyTogether #AnorexiaNervosa #EatingDisorders #Fibromyalgia #ParkinsonsDisease #Migraine #Cancers #POTS #CheckInWithMe #FamilyAndFriends #Epilepsy #Autism #PanicAttacks #PanicDisorder

These tips are *very* helpful if you're having a panic attack, severe anxiety, or mood issues, severe emotions, etc. The temperature trick has been very helpful for us. Which ones work for you & which would you like to try?
#MentalHealth #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Addiction #Anxiety #ChronicFatigue #Schizophrenia #BipolarDisorder #Depression