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Not so new but new here.

👋 all I have been a part of the mighty since early 2017 when I was diagnosed with Chiari Malformation type 1 and Syringomylia. Rheumatoid, and hyper Thyroid issues run in the family along with other autoimmune disorders, dupitrins contractions and planter fashitis (pretty thats mispelked). We also have Mental health or personality disorders as well.

I didn't ever really come on here till now. After having my son in 2021 I developed severe postpartum depression. It eventually disappeared on its own kinda, it just lessened to depression.I was battleing addiction that had started because of my Chiari diagnosis and decompression surgery. In summer of 2022 i got clean and stayed clean. I went to a psychologist who was in the company of my rehab/general therapist. I was diagnosed with general anxiety, social anxiety, depression, bipolar, and having borderline personality disorder traits. I have recently VERY recently got away from trauma and abuse. I am almost 💯sure I have C-PTSD. Are there other forms of trauma bonding, abuse, PTSD out there what are common symptoms? I have something really weird going on and I dont even know how to really explain it . It i don't know if it's a symptoms concerning my Chiari and surgery site or if its a mental, psychological issue from the trauma. Any similar backgrounds out there? Even not general answers would be appreciated as well. Thnx everyone.

#ArnoldChiariMalformation , #ChiariMalformation , #Syringomyelia #autoimmune Disorders #MentalHealth #BorderlinePersonalityDisorderBPD #DepressiveDisorders #BipolarDepression #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #behavioralhealth #Trauma #symptoms #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #PTSD #mental #Anxiety #BipolarDisorder ##Nightmares #MoodDisorders #SocialAnxiety #OtherMentalHealth #neuro

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Taking a big step…

#Anxiety #Bipolar2 #MentalHealth
I’m meeting with a mediation specialist on Friday to discuss options for mediation. I’m also wanting to confirm if I have any other mental health issues going on, specifically bipolar 2.
I’m anxious about it but also happy to be seeking needed help.

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To All of The Mighty- In case someone hasn’t told you this already 💯🤩🦋🧘🏻‍♀️💪 This quote image is what I am saying to EACH of YOU.

🙌 Yes!!

Yep, I am Also your confidence booster!
&
Your cheerleader ( 📣 🙃🤭🙌🙌 another fun fact about me - I was the first freshman in my high school to make the Varsity football cheerleading squad And I Also was a cheerleading coach in high school for junior high school kids And I did all of that while also teaching dance and helping to run a dance school in high school too, while also continuing my own dance training daily because my first love since the age of 3 has always been the beautiful art of dance- or like one of my all time favorite Professional dance companies that I paid to see live in NYC was called- “Shaping Sound”.

Yeah, I Really miss those days of Energy.

These days, if I have any energy or let’s say the infrequent but still a huge gift of having more than a little energy, it’s funny in that I can recognize the immense difference in a blink of an eye.

Oh, yeah, and about the badass part of this quote image 👆
Not having energy and still doing all that I do, That is what makes me Badass, is how I look at it- after straightening out my Perspective and Reframing my Headspace.
And honestly without my onset of major depressive disorder at age 34 (I am now 52), I would never have really achieved Becoming Badass! And, I always admired Badass people of all kinds.

Always remember this whole hard thing called life and life transitions requires us to take on new, healthier Perspectives Always, And this is what I learned from the Headspace app is also called “Reframing” (best app in the world, at least when I used it daily in 2017 - 2019)

And I have specific, Large, photo album folders on my phone - 1 titled “Reframing Headspace” from my saved key takeaways from each Headspace course lesson I took (that Of Course I will be sharing with you in my group Resilience and Mindfulness) and I have another specific, Large, photo album folder titled “Perspectives” that Of Course I will be sharing with you in my group titled Resilience and Mindfulness)

To anyone seeing this post outside of my group - here is the direct link Resilience and Mindfulness and Join Us for So Much & because literally Everyone needs to learn both Resilience and Mindfulness (and, I don’t stop there with what goodies I share To Help YOU 😁🙃)

#MightyTogether #MentalHealth #ChronicFatigue #ChronicIllness #Disability #Anxiety #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #MajorDepressiveDisorder #DepressiveDisorders #Selfharm #SocialAnxiety #ADHD #Agoraphobia #MDD #MoodDisorders #MultipleSclerosis #IfYouFeelHopeless #MyCondition #CheerMeOn #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #OtherMentalHealth #MotorDisorders #ChronicPain #Mindfulness #Selfcare #FamilyAndFriends #Relationships #AnorexiaNervosa #EatingDisorders #BingeEatingDisorder #Arthritis #BipolarDisorder #BipolarDepression #Fibromyalgia #Caregiving #Cancer #CrohnsDisease #DownSyndrome #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #Epilepsy #Addiction #Lupus #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #CerebralPalsy #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder

(edited)

Resilience and Mindfulness | An Online Health Community

I am going to break down into pieces a lot of notes I have to share from Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills Course Audited -by University of Pennsylvania + More Supports For Wellbeing Some concepts I hope to add to your cognitive skills toolkit and vocabulary are: *Learning how to incorporate *resilience interventions*-*protective factors*, *cognitive strategies*, *develop mental agility*, increase positive emotion, *decrease anxiety*, and *take control of thinking traps*, and *learning the critical skill of optimism, as well as *taking a deeper dive into the cognitive skills and wellbeing mindset of mindfulness living. Resilience can help protect you from mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Resilience also can help you deal with and be better prepared for other truly hard things in life. Research has also shown the effectiveness of mindfulness as an intervention in recurrent depression and there is so much more to this state of mind.
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Depression and Chronic Pain Can Fuel Each Other

When you think of chronic pain and depression, you might assume they’re separate conditions. One manifests physically, while the other affects mental health. However, there actually is a complex interplay between these two conditions. Many people experiencing chronic pain also grapple with depression and vice versa.

Each condition can exacerbate the other. Chronic pain can lead to feelings of helplessness and isolation, potentially triggering depressive symptoms. Depression can amplify somatic responses, including migraines, IBS, back pain, and more.

The Link Between Depression and Chronic Pain

Depression and chronic pain often form a vicious cycle. Persistent pain can trigger negative emotions and depressive symptoms, while depression can manifest as unexplained physical discomfort, such as migraines and other somatic issues. This connection often creates a cycle between the two that can be difficult to break without effective treatment.

Quality of Life

Chronic pain can significantly impact one’s quality of life by depleting your energy, reducing motivation, and limiting daily activities. If you are engaging less with people, work, and life in general, it can intensify feelings of depression, further perpetuating this cycle. Depression can also make it harder to cope with pain, as it can reduce motivation and energy levels. Additionally, depressive symptoms can manifest as physical symptoms, including increased pain sensitivity and muscle tension, making it even harder to feel motivated.

Brain Pathways

When you are living with chronic pain, it can make it more likely to experience both pain and depression. This connection originates from underlying neural mechanisms involving specific brain structures, chemicals, and pathways. Increased pain intensity is often associated with a higher likelihood of developing depressive symptoms. Psychotherapy helps open new pathways in the brain that can help heal mental health and chronic pain issues.

Limiting Factors

Chronic pain can also limit physical activity, social interactions, and work productivity, leading to feelings of isolation and frustration.

Reduced physical activity and social isolation can serve to increase stress levels, which can further exacerbate both chronic pain and depression symptoms.

Treatment Strategies

Chronic pain generally includes more than just mental health treatments. However, people often underestimate the need for psychotherapy and attention to mental health when it comes to treating chronic pain, such as chronic migraines, back pain, IBS or other forms of pain. Old traumas can also cause chronic pain and lead to depressive symptoms in the present, as well.

Here are some ways people approach the confluence of depression and chronic pain together:

Pain Management: Medications, physical therapy, and other interventions to manage pain

Psychotherapy: Psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, and somatic-based therapy to work through depression, traumas, or other mental health struggles that may also be manifesting in the body.

Medications: Antidepressants and other medications to manage depressive symptoms, depending on severity

Lifestyle Modifications: Regular exercise, healthy diet, and adequate sleep are a few things that can help improve mood and reduce pain.

Mind-Body Techniques: Mindfulness meditation, yoga, and emotional regulation exercises can help with physiological stress and help with emotional grounding.

By understanding the connection between chronic pain and depression, you can take a more rounded approach to your wellbeing. When I work with people on the mental health side of chronic migraines (which often includes depression and anxiety), one of my specialties, I generally recommend that you have physical support as well, whether it's a neurologist, and/or alternative approaches. I find that the combination of various treatment options helps to address the depression and chronic pain cycle together.

#Depression #Migraine #ChronicPain #Anxiety #MentalHealth #IrritableBowelSyndromeIBS

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I'm dying inside from grief, and I don't know where to turn.

There will be some mention of suicidal feelings here, just a gentle warning.

I have Borderline Personality Disorder, and I'm an empath (or a highly sensitive person), I feel things to such an extreme degree that it literally makes me collapse to the ground in pain. It feels like my heart has been torn into thousands of pieces, and I sometimes feel like I'm choking from the grief. https://C.S Lewis was right when he said, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.". But this time, I am actually afraid. I had to end a very unhealthy, co-dependent friendship with my best friend and closest confidante. The only person in my entire life who refused to judge me; he treated me with the love that I always wished I had. I was able to tell him things I couldn't even tell a therapist. He always gave me the benefit of the doubt. But we were co-dependent. We fed off of each other's darkest emotions, and our friendship was so often characterized by tumult. But what really did it in for me was that I loved him, I wanted to be his partner forever. But he just wanted a friendship. He isn't smart with emotions; he told me he loved me without realizing that when a man tells a woman he loves her, she feels like it's romantic. He just was saying he loved me as a friend..I felt led on, and it caused me so much pain. I pushed it aside though, just because I valued our friendship and he treated me like a partner anyways (spending time with me all the time, calling me a pet name), so I just kind of pretended and hoped the inevitable wouldn't happen any time soon: that he would fall in love with someone else.

And he did. After spending a week on vacation with his ex, he fell in love with her. And he suddenly, randomly confessed that he fell in love with her. I broke down immediately. My whole world was turned upside down in an instant. My support system, foundation, and source of stability fell in love with someone else. I lost it, and I immediately panicked. I spent eight hours straight texting him everything I was feeling, writing all the pain I was feeling. My heart rate shot up to 140. I collapsed on the ground. I was weeping and mourning and wailing. I've been through this before. The last time I went through this I fell into a deep depression for about six months. I found it hard to eat, to sleep, to breathe. I lost interest in the things I loved, and crying spells were frequent. I get so upset with people who tell me one day later, "Do you feel better yet?" No, my friend. this pain doesn't just go away in a day.

And to make it worse, the pain has reignited all the other mental health struggles I face, like shame and OCD.

All I want to do is reach out to him again. He was my FP (if you aren't aware, for people with BPD, a FP is someone "someone with whom a person with borderline personality disorder (BPD) has an intense emotional connection and dependence". My life is turned upside down and I don't know how to cope with the grief. I don't know how to cope with the loss of identity. I don't know how to cope without my best friend as my support system.

I'm grieving the friendship, but I'm also grieving the loss of someone who never judged me and always treated me with mercy, empathy, and kindness. I'm grieving the loss of someone who I could confide in, who I could tell everything. I'm grieving the loss of someone I shared my life with.

I don't want to live with this pain. I'm leaning on my faith, but it's so hard. I'm shattered and broken.

It's another brick in the wall.

#Grief
#MentalHealth
#BorderlinePersonalityDisorder
#Loneliness
#MajorDepressiveDisorder
#CheckInWithMe
#MightyTogether

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Childhood Mistreatment and Its Role in Social Anxiety

Life experiences, especially during childhood -- though not only from childhood -- significantly shape your daily functioning moving forward into adulthood. Childhood is a critical period for developing essential coping skills you use as an adult. However, adverse experiences, or trauma during these formative years can disrupt your ability to build important skills and respond effectively to various life situations as adults.

There is a deep connection between childhood trauma and the social anxiety that can develop (and strengthen) into adulthood. Emotional mistreatment or abuse in childhood can have a way of distorting your overall sense of security and safety in the world, leading to issues such as substance abuse, anxiety, and depression.

Understanding Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is generally experienced as an intense feeling of stress and worry around social situations, including fears of being criticized, judged, shamed, rejected, bullied, or otherwise interpersonally mistreated. Socializing isn't fun, it's perceived as a threat. It can be incredibly crippling for many people, to the point of completely isolating away from social situations.

Unlike shyness, which usually fades as one becomes more comfortable in a social setting, social anxiety tends to persist and have a more widespread impact. The fear experienced in social settings is often not aligned with the actual threat. You may find yourself sweating, or your heartbeat increasing, or stomach discomfort, or other physiological symptoms. You're essentially in fight-flight-freeze mode as if you actually are facing a true threat. You may not actually be bullied, shamed, judged, or rejected, but when you've had enough experiences growing up in these types of environments, your body and emotions are ready to react to the potential attack that the past has shown you, regardless of what may be really happening in the current situation.

How Childhood Mistreatment Can Lead to Social Anxiety

Adverse childhood experiences and traumas can significantly increase the prevalence of mental health struggles later in life. As a child, you're still developing skills and coping mechanisms for life’s stressors. This makes you much more emotionally impressionable to what is taking place at the time.

Stable and supportive connections with parents and general caregivers helps create a sense of security and safety in the world. However, when trauma is inflicted by the same people who are supposed to be nurturing and protecting you, this makes it really hard for a child to develop a strong sense of emotional resilience in life. Your world becomes constantly preparing for attack. It essentially disrupts secure attachment and can lead to longer-term effects, including developing social anxiety and other mental health difficulties as an adult.

Emotional Abuse, Neglect and Social Anxiety

Emotional abuse and neglect tend to set the foundation for social anxiety. Abuse and neglect in childhood almost automatically spikes your sensitivity and awareness of potential shame and rejection, which is at the core of social anxiety. This can have a way of making you feel you have to be more careful, or less authentic, and constantly looking out for how the other is perceiving you in an interaction, and overall spending a lot of energy trying to avoid the landmine that will lead to the attack. (This is one reason while people with social anxiety often feel exhausted after social interactions).

Impact on Relationships

When the impact of childhood emotional mistreatment goes unaddressed, the wounds tend to grow over time and be reinforced by avoidance, which usually increases social and emotional difficulties as adults. Trauma and violation created by parents, in particular, can eat away at your overall sense of safety, support, and self-worth in the world. This can lead to a variety of issues with anxiety, and also depression.

As you grow up and into adulthood, the social insecurities coming from adverse childhood experiences may show up in a number of ways, including:

Anxiety

Panic attacks

Isolating yourself from others

Low self-esteem and self-worth

Coping mechanisms that are often unhealthy (such as substance or alcohol misuse, or sexual acting out)

Relational and interpersonal difficulties beyond social anxiety (such as dynamic issues and friction in close relationships)

And others not listed here

Social anxiety often leads to avoiding social situations as a whole, and only reinforces isolation and feelings of inadequacy. It's a defeating cycle. Avoidance tends to breed more avoidance. If you struggle as an adult with social anxiety, or with any form of anxiety, it is possible to overcome the challenges of painful childhood experiences and have more meaningful relationships in your life. Moving forward just takes one step.

#Anxiety #MentalHealth ##SocialAnxiety #Depression ##Trauma #neglect #Abuse

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I'm new here!

Hi, my name is Kevin. I'm here because I have BPD (amongst many other mental health conditions), and I am also a recovering addict (5 years clean!!). Honestly, I am really here because I do not know anyone like me or who has experienced the things I have, so I think meeting and interacting with people with similar backgrounds will be beneficial, to my healing journey!

#MightyTogether #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Anxiety #Depression #ADHD #PTSD #Grief #OCD #EatingDisorder

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I'm new here!

Hi, I'm Dr Tulika Shukla, a psychiatrist dedicated to helping individuals navigate the complex challenges of mental health. Whether you're dealing with anxiety, depression, trauma, or other mental health conditions, I am here to offer support, understanding, and tailored care. I believe that everyone deserves the tools to build a healthier mind and lead a more fulfilling life. Let's work together to break the stigma around mental health and make healing a priority.

#MightyTogether

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Navigating the Lonely Gong Show of Despair: An Update

I've been trying to avoid OnlyFans, but it hasn’t been working. The way she makes me feel is all-consuming, especially when the job hunt is still leading nowhere. I’m stuck in this apartment that I can’t afford, and the dark thoughts keep creeping in. I’m exercising less, showering less, brushing my teeth less. Then, I found a glimmer of hope—an Instagram influencer who talks about breaking away from social norms and living a life of financial freedom. In my desperation, I was drawn to it.

She always says in her stories to DM her to talk about getting started. So, I did. She asked me how old I was and where I was from. When I told her, she said that considering where I’m from, the fastest way to make money on the side would be in crypto. I believed her and followed her advice. I opened an app to buy crypto, and she set me up with another app called Coda Investments Limited. It looked legit—I even got a KYC status.

She started me off with a live trade, and it seemed good. I was making money. She told me that the next signal would be even better, that I’d make more money, and I believed her. I did it again and again, using credit to fund these investments. Now my credit is almost maxed out, and I get a notification saying my trading bot needs to be upgraded. They want $14,550 USD in Bitcoin to reactivate it and give me access to my portfolio.

My heart sank when I told her about it. She said to speak with support and that if I offered a small installment, they should allow me access to my funds. But when I talked to support, they were evasive and raised even more red flags. They wouldn’t provide any documentation or literature about this supposed fee, just generic answers. I finally caved and asked for the minimum payment, which they said was $2,300 USD. I maxed out my two lines of credit and my credit card to come up with the money. He told me my funds would be available in a few hours.

The next day, he told me there was a mistake—it was actually $3,500 USD. I told him I didn’t have that kind of money. I told him the truth: that I have nothing left. My checking account is empty, my savings are gone, my credit is maxed out. I have no rent money, no grocery money, I can’t even do my laundry. I'm nearly $40,000 dollars in debt as opposed to $7000 just a little over a week ago. He just said, “Well, just pay the money, and you’ll have access.”

I told the influencer, and suddenly she turned into a different person. She just told me, "Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine, just pay the money." I kept thinking, how can she be so bold, portraying this life on Instagram while running this investment scam? It can't be real because it only takes one person to expose her. But now I’m stuck, and no one in their company is helping me.

I managed to get through the night despite all the dark thoughts, including driving my vehicle into the river. I'm to ashamed to tell my father. His anger atop my shame, and guilt would break me, let alone him, who's recovering from a heart infection. I’m not that cruel, even if I don’t get along with the guy. But now I’m facing the reality that I might have to go back to my hometown, the last place I want to be. The crooked police that gave me PTSD, and there’s all the emotional baggage—the fair-weather friends, the ex-wife, the family. I might have to live out a meaningless existence in my parents’ house, drowning in debt, unable to even afford bankruptcy.

I can’t even get a job. I’ll just have to live off disability and hope I can pay off the debt before I die of natural causes. That’s where I’m at. I haven’t showered in days, haven’t brushed my teeth in days, trying not to think about the OnlyFans girl in a transactional relationship that I know isn’t supposed to go anywhere. It’s the only place I find any semblance of happiness.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck in what’s likely an investment scam. On top of that, I answered a casting call ad on Instagram and got accepted. I used credit while I still had it to make the first payment, but I won’t be able to make any more. I’ll have to switch tiers, but even then, I don’t know if I want to keep doing it. Acting has always been my dream, but I’m so depressed that I don’t even know if it’s worth it anymore.

Despite all this, what frustrates me most is the awareness of how irrational this all is, yet I feel powerless to change it. I know that these feelings—this obsession, this fear, this hopelessness—are driven by a chemical imbalance and past trauma. I can rationalize the situation: I know I should step away from OnlyFans, stop pouring money into what’s likely a scam, and focus on rebuilding. But the weight of it all, the ingrained habits, and the fear make it nigh impossible to act on that knowledge. I can see the right path, but I can’t seem to take it.

I just hate that we're such an emotional species. One of the only differentiating factors about us as animals, compared to other animals, is our ability to emote in a way that allows us to reason differently and basically create, fabricate idealistic landscapes of fantasy, and philosophize with our imaginations. The power of these thoughts has the ability to do what it does to me, just completely debilitate and take me out. These thoughts are just mere fabrication. If I actually thought more with my logic brain, as opposed to my emotional brain, life would be so much easier.

But all it takes is an imbalance of chemicals, in my case serotonin, environmental factors, and trauma to render myself into this state of paranoia and borderline personality disorder and the entire goodie bag of other mental health issues. I hate that trauma can damage a brain in such a way that habits can be so ingrained, that doing the best thing actually seems scary, that I'll subconsciously self-sabotage myself from doing the right thing. I mean, it just seems so illogical and stupid, and yet I can be so self-aware and see it, and rationalize it, and still do nothing. I mean, that's beyond frustrating.

I can look at my situation with Jane and say that she's not worth my time, that it's a transactional relationship, that she's not emotionally invested, that I deserve better, that I should have left a long time ago, that I consistently waste my money on content that is fleeting, that it's just a quick dopamine dump, that I would flourish without her, and that if I actually committed the amount of time on Jane and video games, into the gym, that I would be so much more fit, and have so much more energy, and be so much more happy.

And yet here I am, in my bed, depressed. It’s very difficult not to feel lost when it feels like my world has come to an end—like everything’s closing in and crashing down around me. I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s really hard when there’s this dark void of uncertainty staring back at me. I feel like I’m on the precipice of life, just trying to figure out how to survive the night. And the endless circle of suffering continues. Round and round I go.

That’s the long and short of it—my life feels like one big joke. Knowing how irrational this all is, but knowing and changing it seem worlds apart. #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #ParanoidPersonalityDisorder #Depression #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #IntermittentExplosiveDisorder #PTSD

(edited)
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