I often teach continuing education courses for health care professionals who have clients with bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.
My next live teleseminar is called Help Clients Get Things Done When They are Depressed. It’s taught through PESI: Premier Education Services Inc.
I am really looking forward to this presentation. Here is the description:
It is challenging to help depressed clients who believe they will always be immobile, unfocused, unable to work, hopeless at relationships and continual failures because they can never get anything done. The reality is that depression creates a mindset and lack of action, but the truth is that clients can often get just as much done when they are depressed as when they are well. They just need you to show them how. This seminar offers practical advice and strategies you can use to help clients make immediate changes in productivity even [ Read More ]
This is a long blog because it’s such an important topic- depression and work!
A friend of mine told me he was so depressed last week he watched TV all day on his day off. Of course he felt awful and wished he had done something different. I reminded him that this was very rare- since we have been working together, he has been much more productive and rarely has one of those Wheel of Fortune, soap opera, the Price is Right days!
I reminded him that depression has SO many ways to wreck our lives. It can be:
- agitated. This is where we can’t sit still, feel restless, can’t sleep and generally can’t sit down. We can be pretty snarky and snippy at these times.
- ADHD symptoms. This kind of depression makes it hard to focus and we tend to walk around aimlessly and get nothing done.
Nobody plans to fail, but plenty of people fail to plan.
“Plan” is the leading self-help advice from athletes, business moguls and everyday people who have achieved extraordinary goals.
I think I’ve tried to create a plan for my day almost every day of my life for the past seven years. I’ve found it helps me function when I’m having mood swings. Of course, this is harder if you’re experiencing mania or psychosis, but it does work exceptionally well with bipolar depression, anxiety, ADHD symptoms and OCD symptoms. In fact, if it’s mild mania (hypomania) and bipolar psychosis like I get, it works then too!
If I’m having trouble getting to sleep at night- I go over my plan for the next day in my head. It’s calming. If you don’t have anything planned and it’s upsetting to you, just click on the Get it Done When You’re Depressed tab to the [ Read More ]
Writing through anxietyAnxiety comes in many forms- but there is one thing they all have in common. Physical symptoms. These symptoms include breathing problems, uncomfortable waves of fear, restlessness and in some, paralysis! Anxiety is complicated because it can be seen as a person’s inability to deal with life- when in reality it’s a well documented and treatable illness. I’ve often sat down to write a book and felt such waves of anxiety I felt there was no way I could go on. I can usually write through them- on really tough days I walk around. Then there really are some days where I just give up and write more later. When I had my own radio show- I loved being live, but the anxiety was so bad a few days before the show I felt like I was going crazy. I’ve never experienced anything like it. When you listen to the shows, I bet [ Read More ]
I’m here in my office using all the ideas I can think of from my books! I have an article due- it’s going well- but getting the work done is literally physically painful! My brain feels like it’s going to explode and my body is very uncomfortable- it’s a mild form of dysphoric mania where my mood is mildly down but my energy is agitated. I’m definitely having trouble concentrating. Dysphoric mania is the opposite of euphoric mania (where things feels good!) – psychosis is often a part of dysphoric mania, though I’m not feeling any psychotic symptoms. When I start seeing things- then I’ll worry about psychosis. This all has to make me laugh a bit. I’m so used to these mood swings- and so used to writing about bipolar disorder that I am no longer even scared of the odd symptoms-
Bipolar is so very weird. When I’m depressed I can look at this rose and see nothing of beauty. I’ve also had experiences where the beauty of something is painful because I feel so left out.
With mania, the rose is too beautiful. I could look into it forever – which is not exactly true as when I’m manic I don’t do anything for very long. My attention would be grabbed by something even more beautiful.
When my ex partner Ivan was really psychotic and in the hospital- I took him a rose- it had a lot of symbolic meaning to him- it was blood red- it caused pain- etc.
Well, it’s pretty obvious that a rose isn’t just a rose is a rose….
Today I want to just look at the rose for what it is. A beautiful flower. I live in Portland, Oregon- also known as the [ Read More ]
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