Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

This is an experiment


Oops. I didn't realize this was published. I'm trying to figure out how to get it into a powerpoint, with the byline - this is NOT what I mean by self care. Silly. But oh well, I'll leave it up for now.

But as long as you're here, check out the labels in the column to the right. Explore some topics of past posts.

Can People With Mental Illness Become Saints?

 The day approaches - the start of Lent Madness.

What, any reasonable person might ask, is that?

Take March Madness. Mash this bracket-style competition with a list of saints, some well-known, some utterly obscure, chosen by Scott Gunn and Tim Schenk, the two members of the Supreme Executive Committee who answer to nobody. Despite years of campaigning, they still will not include Fred Rogers. But I digress...

Every weekday through Lent the reader is presented with two saints and asked to vote. Anybody with an internet connection can vote - only once - they will know. The saint with the greater number of votes advances to the next round.

Bipolar Screening - People with Bipolar Know It When We See It

Psychiatrists and people with bipolar both have told me that my book captures what the manic experience is like.

Reviewers tend to say either, She must have written it when she was manic. Too bad her editor didn't fix it. One star. Or: She must have written it when she was manic. So glad her editor didn't fix it. Five stars.

Which gets me thinking: Doctors say bipolar is really hard to diagnose. But if people who have it know it when we see it, what if we wrote a screening tool? Bear with me here. I'm thinking something like this:

They say: A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood.

What we hear is: Are you abnormal?

To which we answer: No. I mean, duh.


So what if they said: Has there ever been a time when everybody around you just didn't understand why the world was so great or why you felt so good? Or has there ever been a time when everybody around you was massively irritating?

Will This Trauma Never End?

I found this video while trying to survive the cluster f*ck of misdiagnosis, antidepressants, mixed episodes, and a psychiatrist and therapist who didn't know what they didn't know, so it must be me and maybe I had borderline personality disorder - the go to diagnosis for patients that the professionals are tired of.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass. And in fact, it did. I survived to... today? I offer it to everybody who is trying to survive the current COVID cluster f*ck in the US.

Frazzled Cafe and Ruby Wax - Yes, I am a Fan


Ruby Wax is the founder of Frazzled Cafe, a peer support group for anyone who is overwhelmed by the stresses of modern life. As Ruby says, our brains just don't have the bandwidth. If that describes you, check it out. But bring your own coffee. The meetings moved online, a Zoom meeting on account of... you know.

Ruby is an American-born long time television personality in Britain and comedienne whose career pivoted when mental illness caught up with her. She went back to school to study the brain and got a masters from Oxford on mindfulness based therapy. Since then she has written books, toured, lectured, using her prodigious brain and her comic chops to entertain and educate about brain health.

Covid-19 and Coping - The Humor Version




So, we've all been coping as best we can. My best varies from hour to hour, as I imagine yours does too. And if you have hung around Prozac Monologues for long, you know that humor is one of my go-to tools. It takes a different shape, depending on the topic and the need. This is my Covid-19 version, the gentler one.

Of course, some things have not changed for me. You might say, I am in my zone.


Where Is My Therapist?

I could have talked to my therapist yesterday by phone. She's not on vacation. But this week I decided to forgo an appointment. That may have been a mistake. . .

So I turn to a rerun from eight years ago, For When Your Therapist Goes on Vacation. I think I'll be focusing on humor for the next few weeks. Keep coming back! If you've got any good jokes, put them in the comments (click on the little envelope icon at the bottom.)

Holiday Shopping - The Mentally Interesting Version

From December, 2009:

A friend once described what it was like to have cancer. Like having a paper bag over your head, you can't see anything outside the bag. It's all about you and your cancer.

Mental illness can be like that. Try it yourself. Put a bag over your head. Make sure it's not plastic! Do you even notice a difference? Our issues can be all consuming, our fears, doubts, grief, hysteria, voices... We lose track of the world outside our paper bag.

But outside that bag are friends, family, allies. There are more of them, and they are truer to us than we can imagine when we are inside that paper bag. The bag, our absorption in our own concerns, makes certain life skills difficult.


Like holiday shopping.

Holiday Shopping for Your Diagnosed Someone

Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa shopping season has left us in the dust. Are you still wondering what to get for your neuro-diverse friend or relation? Here is Prozac Monologues' attempt ever to be helpful to my dear readers.  As my therapist said, Virgo -- your destiny is service.  Get used to it.  (I once had a therapist who said stuff like that.) The following is a holiday shopping list to guide neuro-typicals who want to please their loved ones.

This is a repost from ten years ago. So the pricetags have probably changed. But the links have been checked.

Crazy Meds can be your one stop shopping for Straight Jacket T-shirts, when you're crazy enough to let your medication do the talking, with a range of messages for any diagnosis, medication or level of in your face. The lettering is made by arranging real medication capsules for that homemade, from the heart touch. If you are shopping for me, medium size, long-sleeved, and black, of course.  My favorite message: Bat Shit Crazy.  In three years nobody ever took the hint, so I finally bought it myself.  If you are shopping for me, today I'll go with Mentally Interesting.  I'm still into black, and still refusing antipsychotics, so still a medium.

The following gift suggestions are targeted to differential diagnoses.

Giving Thanks for John Moe

Is depression funny?

John Moe begins every broadcast of The Hilarious World of Depression with that question. Then he and the comedian/musician/celebrity of the week talk.


My therapist told me about Hilarious World. I was preparing to do a seminar, OK2Talk about Mental Illness, eight hours total, five segments.  The third would be on humor. It is, after all, part of the Prozac Monologues brand.

The Five Stages of Climate Change - Another View

God just tweeted this.

How did I overlook #5 for last week's post?

·
THE FIVE STAGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1. Denial 2. Guilt 3. Depression 4. Acceptance 5. Drowning

How To Tame Your Mind -- Ruby Wax

It's like training a dragon, only harder.

Ruby Wax nails depression: when your personality leaves town, and suddenly you are filled with cement.

She nails the problem: our brains don't have the band width for the 21st century.  Nobody's brain does.  Yours doesn't, either.

And she nails the solution: learning how to apply the brakes.

Christina the Astonishing!

Basil the Great vs. Christina the Astonishing – Lent Madness begins.

Saints and Lent – is Prozac Monologues straying from its mission, reflections and research on the mind, the brain, mental illness and society?  Hardly.  First, note the Madness in Lent Madness.  Then wait ‘til you see the saints.

Lent Madness

The forty days before Easter are traditionally a time to focus on one’s spiritual growth.  But there is a looniness built in from the start.  Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday – count them – 46 days.  Oh yeah, Sundays don’t count.  Does that mean I can smoke and eat chocolate on Sunday?  Opinions vary.

And once you are debating whether you can smoke on Sunday (does it depend on what you’re smoking?), you have already leaned in the direction of madness.  Leaning, leaning…

The Suicide Monologue

Suicide Humor

They asked for a trigger alert. This is a humor alert. Oh, well.

I realize some people do not find suicide humor humorous. I get that. I respect this opinion and honor the feelings and experiences behind it.

If you have not read Prozac Monologues before, you need to know that it has always aspired to a bent sort of humor. And in honor of the World Health Organization's World Suicide Prevention Day, today's post, a long time coming, is The Suicide Monologue. Watch me while I attempt humor. You don't have to read it. Just know, it is what it is.

Farmer Wisdom - For While Waiting

Summer seems like a good time for farmer wisdom, filling in while I am filling out forms for my new psychiatrist appointment.  It's a repeat from a year and a half ago.   It has been getting a few hits lately, bringing it to my attention, and reminding me of two good therapists from my past.  Michael and Liz may or may not be on vacation right now, as they were when I first posted.  In any case, their offices are 2000 miles away, so they may as well be.  I am grateful for my time with the both of them.  I could still use double teaming.

from February 8, 2012:

For When Your Therapist Goes on Vacation

Holiday Shopping for Your Favorite Loony

Personally, I would rather stick a hot poker in my eye than go out on Black Friday.  But at reader request, I am reposting the following from 2009 -- reformatted, since I started using more images some time back, and updated in random places.

For all you who want to be part of the madding crowd, and even those who will be waiting for the dust to settle, start here for your mentally interesting friends and relations:

Holiday Shopping for Your Favorite Loony -- November 24, 2009

The Day after Thanksgiving, traditional start of the Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa shopping season is upon us.  You Hanukkah people better start cracking!  It is Prozac Monologues' attempt to be ever helpful to my dear readers.  As my therapist says, Virgo -- your destiny is service.  Get used to it.  (I have a therapist who says stuff like that.  The following is a holiday shopping list to guide normals who want to please their loony loved ones.

Curiosity on Mars

And now for something completely different, the true origin of Curiosity's name?



Marvin the Martian looks at us, and observes, There is a growing tendency to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.  There is simply no evidence of any intelligence on the Earth.

Meanwhile, in case you missed it, NASA has landed a rover named Curiosity on Mars.  If you did miss it, then you might be curious about what called Marvin to my mind.  Curiosity has yet to meet Marvin.  It is, however, meeting a lot of rocks.  It doesn't seem to be enjoying the rocks.

Follow the twitter feed from the Martian Rover here.  (Keep scrolling to the bottom to find the beginning.)  I think Curiosity works better on Prozac Monologues than Bugs -- different chapters from the DSM, you know.  Three days, and it's already into isolation and suicidal ideation...

But if you must, here is NASA's version of events.  Obviously not yet hearing its pain.


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