There are days when we muck it up. And spend hours berating yourself that you were not perfect or you did not catch one of the dozens of bug a boos that you handle in a day.    On this day I would like to suggest that you stop being mean, nasty or hyper-critical about being fallible. Practice your breathing, drink some water, move your body and actively be kind to yourself. If you need support contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-8255, the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or text “START” to 741-741. Resources Mentioned:    Katie McLaughlin si ..read more

For those of you that don’t understand about the experience of depression, I have two websites that might help folks get a grip on it.     The first is Will O’Neil’s Actual Sunlight.    It is a fictional narrative game about the experience of living and trying to exist in a depressive state.     Another expression of the experience is an old school HTML website called Deprression Quest.   It is an interactive experience about living with depression.   What am I talking about this?    In this episode, a word or two about Heather Armstr ..read more

Last time, I talked about coaching. How there are different types of coaches and that it is an unlicensed and unregulated practice. There are good and bad coaches, and we need to find ways to figure out who is who.   I tried to chop it down into chunks but this is a big topic. And not a lot of consumer friendly information sources. Many of the resources I found where connected to vendors wanting to either have folks sign up for their telehealth service or to take a class or course on health couching.    The somewhat neutral sources I've listed below.    I know this one ..read more

I’m working my way through the mental health telemedicine providers and I’m coming across the word “coach.”    I get a little leery about that word because I’ve had some experiences with people using it to wrap themselves in a health wellness cloak of respectability.   I’ve gone to conferences and sat in on sessions that I thought were about how to best provide information to people wanted health information.    A couple of those sessions went into details about how to lead your audience down a sales funnel by appealing to fears, wants and needs.   And how you can ..read more

This episode is not for everybody. Some of you will be highly dismissive. That is okay. Different strokes for different folks.     Knitting provides an object of focus for our practice. We can practice focusing our attention and letting go of distractions.   The point is, doing something analog or tactile can help you relax. Or meditate or route you and keep you in the present tense. In this pebble in the Road a quick look at crafting as a gateway to meditation. If you need support contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-8255, the Trevor Project ..read more

Long time listeners know that I am a connoisseur of the sequential arts.    It is truly the theater of the mind because I can co-create with the artist to experience an environment or an adventure.   I bring this up because sometimes healing can come from unexpected places. Like a graphic novel or a comic book.    Three of the books talk about the experience of having a perpetual negative voice interfering with the quality of their lives.    Three of the books speak to what they have done to connect with their better selves.    In this episode a loo ..read more

The anxiety symptoms can muck up our ability to see what we've done, whether it was fair, good, or excellent. There are a lot of wonderful people that have anxiety conditions that do mighty good things. People write, create or force a revolution into how we should treat each other as human being. In this week's episode, a look at a pioneer that helped to improve mental health care in the U.S. and a look at Mental Health America. If you need support contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-8255, the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or text “START” to 741-741. Resourc ..read more

As one section of America tries to move forward there are others that are determine to hold on to what didn't work in the past and certainly won't work in the future.    In this day, do the best you can. That is the lesson to be learned across all of time and space. I had to record this episode seven or eight times.    I kept messing up. Mispronounced words. Forgot to explain something. Then there were the birds and the trash truck.   Together. In harmony.   You can aim for perfection, but in the meantime you do what you can. You might muck it up but do what you c ..read more

There are times when I find myself in unexpected territories. This is one of those times. It is why I'm trying to include more attention to the virtual mental health providers.  If you have ever listed to a podcast or watch YouTube, you probably have heard or seen something about the company known as BetterHealth.    You might have seen an advertorial from a social media influencer or from a podcaster.    Yeah, this is pickle. BetterHealth presented itself as a service that helps users find and connect with behavioral health providers. Not only under the BetterHealth n ..read more

A few years ago in an episode I said: Anxiety is so much more than the typical stress reaction.  For some of us, we gag, we choke, we have heart pains, we have chest pains, we have diarrhea, we have gastric distress, we have excessive sweating. We can't leave our homes. These are not the kind of things you're going to be thinking your way through if your symptoms are that extreme. And there was a point where my symptoms got that extreme.  I decided to take medication.   I am now on team make informed decisions about taking medication. And once you have made that decision there c ..read more