"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month."

-Theodore Roosevelt

Tag: mental health


  • What_Is_IFS_v1.zip

    I didn’t fix myself—I learned how to drive my bus again. Internal Family Systems gave me a language for what was already happening inside: a system of parts, each trying to protect me the only way it knew how. Addiction, anger, fear, and chaos weren’t personal failures; they were passengers fighting for control because they…

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  • Bipolar_Frustration_v1.zip

    One of the cruelest parts of bipolar disorder is never fully trusting good feelings. Is this joy—or the start of hypomania? Is it real, or is it a glitter-bomb that’s about to explode into consequences? Right now, I can see that some recent “good” feelings were actually mild destabilization during a medication change. Not a…

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  • Med_Change_Day_28_v1.zip

    On paper, I’m “stable.” My mood is steady. No swings. No spirals. But underneath that stability is a brutal reality: crushed energy, flat dopamine, and relentless akathisia. For years, one side effect quietly dictated my life and drove me to self-medicate with alcohol and kratom just to function. I finally named it for what it…

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  • Acceptance_And_Uncertainty_v1.zip

    Today, I hit a trailhead I couldn’t ignore: my fear of uncertainty. In IFS, it showed up as a very young part—quiet, tense, always bracing—using denial as protection. I’ve spent years fighting diagnoses, circumstances, and history, thinking resistance was strength. It isn’t. Acceptance doesn’t mean approval or giving up; it means stopping the exhausting war…

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  • Uphill_With_A_Boulder_v1.zip

    Five days ago, I began a different kind of climb — not up a mountain, but through a medication change that could finally free me from akathisia. Years of medication-induced restlessness pushed my nervous system to the edge and drove me toward substances just to survive daily life. Now, with careful medical support, I’m starting…

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