I wanted to take my daughter to the mall. That shouldn’t be so difficult, right? I overheard her on the phone saying to a friend, “You’re so lucky that your mom likes to shop. My mom HATES the mall.” It’s true. Malls, like carnivals and amusement parks, give me anxiety. They always have. When I […]
One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the one where Elaine snoops inside her medical chart and reads “patient is difficult.” The doctor takes a look at her rash and says, “Well, this doesn’t look serious,” and writes something in the chart. “What are you writing?” she asks. He sneers and walks out the door. […]
In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran writes: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. I thought of his words yesterday as I […]
Consider these statistics: Nearly 50 percent of asthma patients suffer from symptoms of depression. At least 40 percent of persons with Parkinson’s disease experience depression, and anxiety is often reported. Forty to 65 percent of patients who have had a heart attack suffer from depression. The lifetime risk for depression in patients with multiple sclerosis […]
As a highly-sensitive person (as defined by Elaine Aron in her bestseller The Highly Sensitive Person), it’s easy for me to become overwhelmed, or over-aroused (not in a sexual way—not on antidepressants). I have been compiling ways to calm down over the years. I learned some in Aron’s book, some as part of the mindfulness-based […]
“And I said to my body, softly, ‘I want to be your friend,’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’” –Nayyirah Waheed Every Memorial Day I am reminded that I am not yet my body’s friend. In fact, the day that marks the start of summer […]
Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” A year ago this week I tested that theory. I’ve always been depressed. I must have emerged from my mother’s womb with an overactive amygdala and a deficient prefrontal cortex–creative brain wiring that generates panic and sadness. I was almost […]
Two summers ago, our family grabbed a bite to eat in downtown Annapolis and headed over to the Naval Academy for a parade—celebrating of the end of Plebe Summer, six weeks of rigorous physical and mental training for new midshipmen. It was late August, and I was horribly depressed, trying out medication combination #45 or […]
An editor recently wrote me to tell me he shared this piece with two of his writers who were verbally attacked. It made them feel better, so I thought I’d share it again. I know I could always use the reminder. My friend is waiting for a table at a local restaurant. She is one […]
For nearly 6,000 years essential oils have been used for therapeutic purposes. A number of ancient civilizations including the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans used them for cosmetics and perfumes as well as for rituals and spiritual reasons. Oils are documented by the Greek physician and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides in the first century in […]
According to the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study, an unbiased investigation funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, at standard doses of the most commonly used class of antidepressants (SSRIs), only 30 percent of people with severe depression achieve remission with the first medication prescribed. Switching to a new drug—and it […]
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Robert J. Wicks, psychologist and bestselling author of Riding the Dragon, recently told me a story about impermanence: A psychiatrist (Epstein) went to Thailand with some colleagues to meet a well-known Buddhist sage. As they were about to leave they asked if he had a final message for them. He was drinking a glass of […]
A new study from the University of Oxford finds that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is just as effective as antidepressants for preventing a relapse of depression. In MBCT, a person learns to pay closer attention to the present moment and to let go of the negative thoughts and ruminations that can trigger depression. They also […]
This blog post is painful for me to write because I have been an avid swimmer since the age of 5, when I took the water wings off and made it to the other side of the pool on my own. As I wrote in my post 10 Things I Do to Beat Depression Every […]
Do you remember the old Zoloft (Sertraline) ad where the sad egg no longer chases the birdy, and whenever he moves, the thick cloud above follows him? Pfizer did a masterful job of taking a very complex phenomenon and simplifying it down to a concept that two-year-olds can understand. In fact, the visual props made such […]
“Were you frightened to have children with your history of suicidal depression?” a young woman asked me the other day. “Did you have to stop medication while you were pregnant?” In the last ten years writing about mental health issues, these two questions keep surfacing, especially among young women who dream of pushing a baby […]
We humans have a second brain. Come to think of it, men have three. The second one, called our enteric nervous system, consists of some 100 million neurons that are embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, which starts at the esophagus and end at the anus. It measures approximately nine […]
Most people are still locked into the theory that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain – a shortage of feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin that deliver messages from one neuron to another. That explanation works well for public consumption because it’s simple and it makes for great pharmaceutical commercials. But depression is […]
I spent this morning looking for a beautiful quote I read about a month ago, something along the lines of what motivational speaker John Bradshaw said: “I define a ‘good person’ as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their ‘shadow’ – they know their […]
