This is an email from Mental Note, a newsletter by Invisible Illness.
Jun 27, 2021
Mental Note Vol. 37
Hey all!
It’s been a while since we released our last newsletter. We still want to highlight our best work and will be releasing our newsletters on a more weekly, consistent schedule. Thank you to all our readers and writers for doing the good work of eliminating mental health stigma and sharing expert perspectives and vulnerable personal testimony.
Here were 10 of our top pieces in the past couple of weeks, all of which were curated!
“6 Causes of Childhood Trauma That Our Society Doesn’t Fully Recognize” — Patrícia S. Williams
“We still view trauma as the result of an extreme, life-threatening event or situation like war, a natural disaster, or a violent crime.
However, sometimes trauma can be silent and subtle, yet extremely deep. It can affect every decision we make and transform every part of our being — even if we have no idea it is there, deep within us.
“How I Learned to Love The Brain That Injured Me” — Brin S.
“I opened my eyes and blinked away spotted dots, revealing a banal blue sky. The kind you’d expect on a warm California summer day. As the sun beamed down, my fingers grazed the dirt of the ground beneath me. A horse stood across the arena, roaming free and riderless. There was an evident soreness trickling through my neck and a familiar fogginess filling up my head. Damn it, I thought.”
“Why Does Mania Feel So Productive?” — Matthew Maniaci
“What was lost in all of this was so much of the stuff that was necessary to have a healthy life. I was often either too fixated on writing or too exhausted to cook, so we ordered a lot of takeout and ate a lot of frozen pizzas. Chores that I’m already bad at doing were dropped, and my poor partner had to pick up even more of my slack around the house.”
“Should You Discuss Your Mental Health With Your Boss?” — Missy Crystal
“Life was stressful, and I was feeling overwhelmed. My doctor said I should take a break from work so I could prioritize my mental health before things got worse. I agreed with his suggestion and notified HR that I’d be taking a leave of absence until further notice.”
“What Treating My High Functioning Anxiety Really Cost Me” — Estrella Ramirez
“You see, I am the master of working through my anxiety, depression, and stress. In fact, sometimes I even do better, so much better than usual, when I am trying to outrun a particularly hard feeling.
I’ve never had a name to put to this habit of continuing to function through life’s most difficult moments until recently.”
“Joy is Essential, Especially During Hard Times” — Martha Manning, Ph.D.
“Joy gets confused with happiness. The words are often used interchangeably. In fact, other than being positive feelings, they are quite different. Happiness is something we achieve. As columnist Arthur Brooks wrote in the New York Times (May 7, 2019), “Happiness usually involves a victory for the self. Joy tends to involve the transcendence of self.” Happiness focuses on the long term. Joy lives in the moment. Happiness is something we aspire to. Joy doesn’t care about our goals.”
“I Make the Decision to Live Everyday” — Bronté Bettencourt
“The other day I started taking Lamotrigine and I’ve been sleeping a lot more. Between 10–11 hours to be exact. Apparently one of the side effects is drowsiness, and when I finally manage to keep from nodding off, I don’t really care to do much of anything. I have to psyche myself up to get any work done when really I just want to lay in bed and binge YouTube all day.
“Student Mental Health Days Immediately Need to be Accepted” — A. T. Micalizzi
“It was dark and dim within the usually well-lit auditorium. An invisible fog clouded everyone’s already teary eyes. The only sound in the room was the shuffling of the principal’s feet. In what was undoubtedly one of the most challenging moments of his career, he had to deliver the news to his students that their friend and classmate took his own life the night before.”
“Healthy Brains Need Good Sleep” — John Kruse
“Only in the last decade have researchers uncovered how the brain collects and expels trash: the glymphatic system. The initial glimpse of the glymphatic system revealed that it flushes cellular debris and waste from the brain primarily during sleep. More recently, research on mice indicates that our twenty-four-hour biological clocks also help determine when to engage the glymphatic system. Our newfound knowledge about how the glymphatic system works emphatically reinforces the importance of not just obtaining enough hours of sleep but sleeping at consistent times, as well.”
“I’m Autistic — Here Are 6 Things I’m Doing to Better Handle My Depression” — Ines May
“It’s been a few months since I laid out all the reasons why I thought I was autistic to a psychologist. I waited patiently on the edge of my seat to hear what he had to say. Perhaps I was still hoping for him to say it was all in my head and I could just go back to my life, as usual. At the same time, that sounded like the worst thing he could possibly say.”
Thank you for reading and writing, everyone!
