By Kathy Ha | Featured Contributor
Overthinking and overanalyzing is a common problem with anxiety sufferers. The mind likes to run in endless loops of worthless conjecture, questioning, dissecting and criticizing every decision and response. It becomes a hardwired obsessive behavior that leaves the person physically exhausted and emotionally drained. Without intervention and retraining of the mind, life can feel like an insurmountable hurdle.
By Cliff Eshom | Featured Contributor
Can blessings of life truly be free?
Sunshine, flowers, the shade of a tree.
Finding true love, is one of the keys.
Listening to ads, their only a tease,
tempting your flesh falsely to please
a portrait of life, seek only of ease.
By Evelyn Jervey Willburn | Featured Contributor
Looking back, I would say that the first time I became depressed was when I entered fourth grade. That year, my class was divided into two groups, and I found myself separated from all my previous year’s playmates. I didn’t bounce back: that year started my long, mostly self-imposed exile at school. At recess, I paced the perimeter of the playground, and as I moved up through the grades, I effectively rendered myself invisible. The occasional thoughtless comment that came my way from some popular kid became my excuse for further isolation. Once in seventh grade I went to see the school counselor, and she showed me a poster on her wall. In the poster, a group of cartoon hippos were piling into a small boat, threatening to swamp it. The caption read, “More is not always better.” That message stayed with me, in the background, but it was many years before I really understood it or was able to assimilate it into my worldview.
Continue reading “In Which I Face Down Depression and Gain the Upper Hand”
By Marija Eljuga | Featured Contributor
Most of us find it hard to eat less than we would want to, experiencing constant craving for more food or kind of food that we are struggling to separate ourselves from. How unhappy does this make us feel? Then when we give in to our cravings, we feel self-reproach, self-loathing, shame, guilt. What a nightmare of our daily experience?! When we ‘manage’ to deny ourselves, working so hard to lose some weight, our body and our mind do not forget. In sensing, feeling and thinking we ‘know’ that we have denied ourselves; the pleasure of eating what we want, is our due. Before long, we make it up to ourselves; one way or another. The weight is back on…, or some other diversion equally remorseful. A constant cycle of harm/discomfort and defense against it. Constantly unhappy, constantly in a struggle. Wonder if there is another way?
By Cynthia Cady Stanton | Featured Contributor
In the right light,
the morning greets me
with the kind of hope needed
to float joyfully into the day.
I start with a smile
lit from within.
In the right light,
my elderly cat appears like a
kitten resting after deep play.
As the rays of sunshine he bathes in
shimmer across his gray coat,
they seem to hide how frail
he really is.
By Abigail A. | Featured Contributor
Anxiety. One word, four syllables—but carries such a heavy load for millions of people across the globe. Anxiety is defined as “an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes.” As a young girl, I have always known that something didn’t feel quite right when: a) I felt faint whenever it came to public speaking, b) I hated the thought of confrontation, and c) I always felt nervous when it came to being around a group of people, etc. I never knew what it was until 20 something years later when my doctor diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder, aka GAD & SAD. I finally had a name for what I was feeling all these years as a child/teenager and into adulthood. Numerous factors contributed to me developing anxiety. However, in my early twenties, I battled severe depression, and If I ever lost all hope in life, it was those 5 years because those were my darkest mental days. As the saying goes, I wish that on no one because it was a very scary place to be in.
Continue reading “Battling Anxiety & Depression: Abigail’s Story”
By Laura Fox | Featured Contributor
She sleeps
Beneath a stone
With pallid lips sealed tight.
But when come shades of night
Then forth, alone,
She creeps.
Her wan
And ghastly frame
Should, ages since, be dust –
Yet, after death, she must,
Despite the same,
Live on.
![Freedom to Care [a poem]](https://i0.wp.com/phoebemd.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/pexels-andrea-piacquadio-712413.jpg?fit=1152%2C768&ssl=1&resize=40%2C40){kind=small}
