A blog about the search for integrity, DIY psychology, and customizing my own life

Tag: self help

  • ADHD Hacks for Actually Using a Planner

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    “Have you tried using a planner?” This question must be one of the top pet peeves of the ADHDer. As if the real problem is that we just haven’t tried the most obvious solutions in the world. Many ADHDers have collections of unused planners sitting neglected on a shelf, bearing silent testimony to the wild… Read more

  • Personalized New Year Rituals

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    I’ve developed my own traditions over the years. My personal rituals have made New Year’s Day my favorite holiday. These traditions are inspiring and give me that “fresh start” feeling, but also help me continue my healing work from CPTSD, and to build on prior successes. Here’s a quick take on a ritual that takes… Read more

  • Journaling For Mental Health

    Journaling For Mental Health
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    I’ve been outlining the various steps I took starting in late 2019 and going into 2020 to try to emerge from a state of mental illness and misery. Although they seem random and unrelated, these steps led me, for the first time in my life, to a period of continual improvement out of the state… Read more

  • Hiking For (Mental) Health

    Hiking For (Mental) Health
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    In other posts, I’ve described the first effective steps that I took that let to sustained improvements in my mental health. These included creative projects, self-improvement tips, and meditation. The first hike The next “little” thing I did, that ended up being huge for me, was to start more physical activity. In particular, physical activity… Read more

  • Mindfulness Meditation: the Thin End of the Wedge

    I’ve already described how, during 2019 and 2020, I had started to break down what I’d always thought of merely as intense anxiety, and define what was really a cluster of debilitating symptoms that added up to feeling unbearable tension. In another post, I described a few, perhaps odd and shaky, but effective early steps… Read more

  • Another Symptom and a Little More Early Recovery

    In a previous post, I outlined a list of some “symptoms” that I started to be able to identify, out of the fog of anxiety and confusion that’s plagued me for most of my life. Spinning In Circles One other symptom that I began to notice (these symptoms didn’t just start recently, but I just… Read more

  • Full of Poison: Family Dynamics and the Realization That I’m Not Broken For No Reason

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    In 2019/2020, I was bearing up under the burden of lifelong struggles that had never been resolved, but only endured. And this two-year period was a watershed of insights, which I started writing down to make sense of them. I started figuring out tactics and strategies for finally trying to remove some of the burden,… Read more

  • How Long Can You Try to Get Better Without Succeeding?

    I’d had a lot of ups and downs during a long and brutal period of anxiety, stress, and depression, but I’d never stopped working on trying to get better and happier. I am a self-improvement junkie, in some senses. It’s just what I do. I’m in love with ideas and thinking and figuring things out.… Read more

  • A Long Effort to Alleviate Peronal Misery

    I’ve been working on my self improvement since…forever, maybe. I don’t think I’ve ever not been working on a project to make over my life. Actually, I’ve gotten really good at starting over in life. It’s kinda what I do. My career has had more iterations than I can count. But now, I needed to… Read more

  • The Search for Integrity and Happiness: the Why and the What

    This blog will be a journal to attempt to solve some big problems for myself. I reached a point where I just can’t – no, I don’t want to – go on like this anymore. I’ll start by tracing how I reached a turning point. 2019 was a difficult year. It started with an incredibly… Read more