Gum on My Shoe

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by number of page views, most popular first. Let It Go: Reducing Holiday Triggers for Your Child, by Tricia Season’s Greetings, by Roiben Untitled, by Brynn McCann Communicating Is a Two Way Street, by Roiben Media, Stigma and Psychosis, by Roiben Our Top Posts of the Month (November 2017) How Can I Best Help My Bipolar Friend? by Julie A. Fast What If We Treated Problems with Our Bodies and Minds Like We Treat Our Tech? “How Do You and Fran Get through Your Darkest Days?” One Day in the Life of Marty Our three most visited pages were: Resources News and Appearances High Tide, Low Tide  

Fran and I live on opposite sides of the Atlantic. We use technology. A lot. Without it, we couldn’t do our friendship at all. Indeed, we would never have met. Fran has a Windows laptop and an iPhone. I have a Samsung Android phone, a PC, and a Chromebook. I like Googledrive for sharing documents and cloud storage. Fran prefers Onedrive and her iCloud. Connecting might be simpler if we agreed to use the same technologies and platforms but we get by, and learn a lot in the process. One way or another technology is an integral part of our everyday lives, whether at work or at home, or out and about in the world. Computers. Phones. Cameras. TV. WiFi. Internet banking. Shopping. Entertainment. We have some basic (and probably incorrect) ideas about how it all hangs together. We want it to work most of the time and grumble when it doesn’t, but we accept there are going to be difficulties and do our best to work around them. When problems and complications arise, we don’t think worse...

Wednesday December 20, 2017 7:02 am. I’m usually awake before my alarm goes off but today I’m woken by the beeping of my phone. Up, washed, dressed, I’m out of the door by 7:15. 7:15 am. I take my daily photo as I leave the court and message it to Fran: a good morning routine that grounds me as I start my day. Some time I will gather the photos together and post them up as an album: Kingston Park through the seasons. Today is very mild. The app on my phone tells me it is 52F / 11C. 7:25 am. It is a short walk to Starbucks in the Kingston Park Tesco store. The staff know my order: a tall black Americano in my reusable cup which saves me 25p each time I remember to bring it with me. There are few other customers. A couple of tables away, a woman is writing in a notebook or diary. I’ve seen her before and wonder what she is writing. I check our book’s Amazon rankings (print and Kindle, dot com and UK) on my phone and record the numbers my Midori notebook. The rankings give an esti...

By Tricia I believe there are a great many expectations that we put on our children during the holidays. We expect them to help decorate the tree with the family, go shopping with us, maybe wrap presents, and the worst part of all is having to spend time with extended family, oftentimes crammed into too tight of quarters. And we expect all of this to be done with a smile on their face. They must be polite to Aunt Rita and Uncle Joe who are always making jokes at their expense. They have to accept hugs and “Merry Christmas!” from people they only see once a year, again all with a smile. Maybe we could let them off the hook at least a little this year? If you have never suffered from any sort of mental illness, you likely do not realize the extra stress that this puts on those who do. Most kids enjoy decorating the Christmas tree, but if your child doesn’t want to this year, why would you want to force him? Nobody enjoys being made to do things, but kids who suffer from bipol...

I see, hear, feel and believe in things that others do not. Medically, I have been told this is Psychosis. I do not believe that is what it is. What I see and hear are as real to me as anything else in the world. I see through the cracks between what is generally accepted as this world, this reality, and the Veil – the world of ghosts, call it Purgatory if you will. I see the two bleed into each other and the gaps in between. There are Classes of ghosts: From the every-day individual that can’t accept death and wander, or sit forlornly, forever lost; to the Messengers and the Reapers. The Messengers are the ones I hear. Sometimes they yell and shout angrily, or laugh derisively, but mostly they taunt and tease, telling me I am wrong and bad or that I shouldn’t be here. Urging me to Self-Harm and Kill myself. They also tell me to harm other people. This means that medically I am considered a risk not just to myself, but to others as well. I am the dangerous, risky sort of Mentally ...

Excerpt from chapter 9, “A Hero’s Journey: Sticking Together When Things Fall Apart,” of our book High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder . The chapter deals with how we navigated the three months Fran was traveling around Europe in 2013. “How Do You and Fran Get through Your Darkest Days?” When things are at their worst, we focus on three basic principles: trust, challenge, and self-care. I could not support Fran at all if she did not want and trust me to do so. She trusts me not to hide or run away, and to hold a space in which she feels safe no matter how perilous her thoughts, feelings, and experiences might be. She also trusts me to handle my issues, so she can focus on hers. We share a belief that even the most difficult experiences can yield rewards if we remain open to exploring them. The three months Fran spent in Europe were an immense challenge to her health and stability, yet she believed there was value to be gained from the experience. I...

By Roiben Christmas and New Year can be a difficult time for many people, for many reasons. The pressure on finances alone can be enough to increase stress and worry. This is without factoring in Mental Illness or a Chronic Condition. Towns and Cafes become more crowded and frenetic and can make simply going outside feel harder than normal. Then, there are the expectations to socialize – to see friends and family and partake in the celebration of the Season. A Season with short, cold, wet days and long dark nights. A Season filled with the pressure and expectation to be happy and together and well. So what happens, when you cannot afford it? When you are separated from your family by circumstances that won’t change? When you have a Mental Illness or Chronic Condition that means the sheer pressure and stress in the build-up to The Day mean you use up all your energy, all your strength, all your will-power and social acumen just to get through the month. By the time The Day arrives...

The flame of a thousand fires… dances in her head... a forethought, an afterthought. Someonewhereinthemiddle thought. burning through her brain like so many candles in an ocean of brain waves. He wants to dance with her but is afraid of the bonfire she builds nightly in her mind... he’s looking for a balance that only exists between water and fire. A place where darkness ends and the sun sets peacefully on another day of nine to fivers. A world where everyone sleeps at night or exactly when they are supposed to... and finds their dreams in the dark with an easy breath. But breathing for some isn’t always easy, And sleeping for others doesn’t mean sleeping. It means... finding rest where you can find it and building fires to keep you warm at night when the winds of your mind pick up and blow your house down over and over and over again. It means living in a world that runs on daylight and breathing through it and in it. It means putting up with sun people and hugging the moon when...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by number of page views, most popular first. Informal Admission and Being Sectioned: Seeing Life in a Psychiatric Unit from Both Sides, by Soph Hopkins One Small Chip: Living with Psychosis, by Roiben My Interview in a Cupboard for BBC Radio 5 Live, by Aimee Wilson Community, Cake, and Conversation: Talking Freely in Ely From Here to Edisto: My Life as a GPS Angel How Can I Best Help My Bipolar Friend? by Julie A. Fast Welcome Home! Post-Vacation Support for the Bipolar Traveller How to Write the Best Acknowledgement Page for Your Book Our Top Posts of the Month (October 2017) Taking My Mental Illnesses to Italy for a Holiday, by Peter McDonnell Our three most visited pages were: High Tide, Low Tide News and Appearances Resources