A Splintered Mind

Before the year comes to a close I wanted to share with you a resource for Depression blogs. PsychCentral has updated their Top Ten Depression Blogs . They're introducing eight new blogs for you to discover and enjoy, five of which made their top ten. In the past I have found reading Depression blogs to be a bit of a downer. Some people wallow in their sadness, or seemingly celebrate it, sinking into their gothic, cynical bleakness. Although their experiences can be similar to my own, overall their writing feeds the darkness as opposed to pushing it away. If you've read my blog for a while you wouldn't be surprised to hear I don't enjoy such blogs. PsychCentral has done the research for me and I'm quite excited to dig deeper into their findings. They have top notch criteria and have found some top notch blogs focused on Depression: "We had a number of criteria when we compiled this list, but at the top of the list is a blog that is regularly updated and deals w...

Alltop's Good News Aggregator Investments down? Lost your shirt on Wallstreet? Sad Obama won? Sad Obama's too centrist now? Hate reading negative news out of Israel? Tired of war in the Middle East? Sick of Global Warming guilt while your back aches from shovelling snow? Whatever type of news you may be hearing too much of, chances are the news can leave you impotent and frustrated at times. Some people even find the news as a negative trigger for Depression. Of course, you could always not watch or read it, but news is hard to escape. Life happens all around us. Only hermits and the uninformed stay away from news for long. Consider finding balance instead. My friend's over at Alltop have put together a new aggregator much like the ADHD one I'm included in . This one is just good news - nothing but good, uplifting news. It features good news about technology, climate, culture, and just plain ole people. People doing good things to each other for a change. I found it an ...

Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the night, There were creatures a'stirring with a terrible fright. The meds were all taken by my daughter with care, In hopes that the illness soon wouldn't be there. She sang that night in Handel's Messiah with dread, While visions of a green haired, orange freak in a trench coat holding a chain saw danced in her head. Hmm, that doesn't scan very well. I may need to work on it a bit. My ten year old daughter was recovering from Strep Throat two weekends ago. She was taking the antibiotic, Amoxicillin — a medicine she has been on many times before. In fact, she was improving and pushed to be allowed to sing in Handel's Messiah that night because of all her preparation. All seemed well in the world. The performance went magnificently, my daughter sang divinely, but she was keeping a secret. Later that night she grabbed some color markers and put to paper her secret. She then shared the secret with her oldest sister, ...

ADDitude Magazine has done some research and come up with what they believe are the best ADHD blogs on the web . I am honored to be considered one of those eight. Each blogger is given a small write up with a description of their blog and a few choice quotes. My entry is alright, especially compared to that Ohio interview I did around the same time. Working with ADDitude Magazine via email was pleasant and I'm glad they were one of my first interviews. Here is a sample: Douglas Cootey began blogging three years ago, to share his struggles with his own disabilities — he has ADHD, depression, chronic motor tics, and 'rugrat'-itis (he’s the full-time parent in his family). He also wanted to connect with kindred souls. Cootey shares the humorous and serious sides of life with ADHD and comorbid conditions. In addition to “day in the life” posts, Cootey discusses his attempts to fight off depression with cognitive behavioral therapy, after suffering serious side effects from medi...

Hear this article read to you: Sometime on Friday my blog crossed the 100,000 mark for unique visitors. This was supposed to happen around the first week of January, but the CNN interview & ADDitude Magazine write-up helped boost visits. I had planned on noting the milestone as it happened, but I'm afraid I had a pretty bad ticking episode on Friday. To the new readers who have recently discovered my blog, thank you for dropping by. I hope you like what you see and come back again. To my old readers who have been faithfully following me since near the beginning, thank you so much for your faith in me. I hope that I can continue to reward that faith. I am humbled that so many people have found something to connect with in my writing. Here's to the next 100,000 visitors. May they be as as fabulous an asset to this blog as you have been.

Update 2016: This article was featured in my book "Saying NO to Suicide" , with added commentary. Hear this article read to you: Like a spectre from Christmas Past haunting Scrooge, old ideation came for a visit last night, complete with jangling chains. Despite all that is miswired in my head, I'm usually a well-balanced person. I struggle with a small cornucopia of maladies, but always put on a bright face, pushing forward. Ever pushing forward. The alternative is something I run from, having experienced it many years ago: a blackness so complete that I cut myself off from friends and family, full of self-loathing, and drawn up within myself in misery. I've been in the throes of Depression before — I've struggled with Depression since I was fifteen — and I have no intention of ever giving it power over me again. That is why I was so surprised to find myself wishing I was dead last night. When I was fifteen I flirted with ideas of suicidal ideation. ...

Hear this article read to you: After my last interview went so poorly in my opinion , I wondered if I'd ever have another opportunity to do a better job. Although it is true the interviewer took liberties with what I said and even put words in my mouth, I believed I was ultimately responsible. You see, I rambled. Yep, one of my more entertaining quirks is my tendency to talk until not only the cows come home, but until their progeny is born, raised, lost on the prairie, and found by archeologists centuries later. It's a gift. You might find this hard to believe, but not everybody can appreciate such a gift, especially people on a deadline. When I was contacted by Ms. Landau from CNN I was both wary and excited. Here was either the opportunity to do things right, or an opportunity to add another nail in my very well-built coffin. Fortunately for me, ADHD comes with an upside: rumination. Although it can degrade into worrying and problem finding, I have learned to rein it in. Ev...