Trauma, COVID-19, and Cutting Yourself Some Slack

Are you failing to build your abs while social distancing?
Or learn that new language?
Or clean out that closet (you know which one)?

Are you utterly exhausted while getting nothing done and beating yourself up for it?

STOP. Just stop.
And read on.

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.

The End of Miracles - A Review

What is it like to have depression with psychotic features?

What is a day like inside a psych ward?

What is the psychiatrist thinking?

Sometimes the best way to explore questions like these is in a story. So here is Prozac Monologues' first review of a novel.

Monica Starkman is a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan whose expertise includes psychosomatic disorders, stress, and women's issues around fertility, miscarriage, and obstetrics. In her debut novel, The End of Miracles, she turns her clinical experience to the story of one woman, Margo Kerber, a long-infertile woman who finally conceives, tragically miscarries, and then... unravels.

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.

Major Depression and World Bipolar Day

Your diagnosis is major depression. So what does World Bipolar Day have to do with you?

I mean, what a relief to just have major depression, right? Isn't bipolar another level of crazy? Well. . .

First, a reality check. Whatever level of crazy you are now, you can call it whatever you want, your mental health struggles will not get worse if your diagnosis changes. Actually, you might get better. I'll get back to that.

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.)

Normal/Not Normal at Prozac Monologues

How are you all doing?

Me, I am trying to imagine that at least some things will be sorted by the end of summer in time for publication of Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge. So here I am, working in my New Normal Coffee Shop to meet my next deadline, a deadline that COVID-19 has not erased.

This stage is called "first pages." In the photo I have in front of me a printout of the design people's first version of the book pages, the interior of the book. I am working at the dining room table, my current coffee shop in the new normal, because my office doesn't have a table.