The Psychological Damage of Victim Blaming

I used to get into arguments a lot on my Facebook page that ranged from a myriad of topics, until I finally got rid of these people. The first person I got rid of was one who believed victims of sexual assault should take some responsibility for what happened to them. He said they (primarily women) should take particular care in how they dress, act, where they go, how they interact with men, and so on and so forth. This kind of thinking is damaging because it says men are uncontrollable monsters. This kind of thinking is also damaging because it suggests women shouldn’t have interactions with men period–and that is how I took it. If I even say hello to a guy and decide to interact with him and I am wearing a cute outfit and he decides to take me out and decides to assault me after the date, I suppose I was asking for it because I dared give someone a chance at being a possible partner in my life. (I am engaged, by the way.) 

It isn’t just the court systems that victim blame. It can be people you love and trust who will blame you, even though they will admit that your assailant was wrong for what they did. However, they still blame you because they think you were leading your assailant on in some way, while trying to reconcile within themselves why it happened and also, funny enough, wanting you to not act that way anymore so that doesn’t happen again. They consider it a lesson learned, when it isn’t a lesson that never should have been learned from the start, no matter what you were doing. I don’t care if you were sending nude pictures to your assailant. Once your assailant lays their hands on you and you say no and they won’t stop, you are the victim, no matter what you did before.

Your assailant is often a person you trust, someone you think you feel safe around, someone who is your friend or someone who you are flirting with or someone who may even be your significant other. Heck, your assailant could be someone cheating on their partner, even though you are in no way encouraging the infidelity but are trying to discourage it in your own way; however, you are too afraid to be direct because of the assailant’s history. Someone may be telling you not to tell because of that history of this person while warning you to keep away from your assailant–who won’t stay away, even if you say no. And even if you never say no, silence does not mean ‘yes.’ You may be too scared to say ‘no.’

Victim blaming is arguably just as damaging as the assault itself. While you can tell yourself it wasn’t your fault, those who blame you will shoot darts at everything you did that led up to the assault so that way you are constantly thinking about what exactly happened during the assault and what you could have done. You can have flashbacks, panic attacks, crying spells, and even have suicidal thoughts and plans. If there was already insurmountable stress in your life, like a mental illness episode you’re going through, things are going to be quadrupled in how worse everything is for you. The assault is going to make you more depressed, anxious, and suicidal. The victim blaming is going to intensify your illness to the point where you’re screaming and crying and telling others you want to kill yourself–and they don’t seem to want to take it seriously because they don’t understand. Some will try to protect you, but you know those people can’t always be around to keep you safe from yourself. Sometimes you’re stuck in silence. Oftentimes you have to pretend nothing happened. Others will tell you they hate victim mentalities, but that is another way to blame the victim because there is no set time period in which you should be over what happened to you. The important thing is that you try to let yourself heal from the incident. Yet, if you’re dealing with a mental illness, that’s hard. Really hard. Your mental illness is already deluding you from the beginning, and some people develop mental illnesses after the incident.

Others tell you that you should have fought and should have been angry, but people react to assaults in so many different ways, especially if it’s a person they forgive time and time again and still continue to like. These are the kinds of assaults that don’t hit you until even after a day or two when it happened. Then you realize what happened, it hits you all at once, and you are so overwhelmed that you start having flashbacks as to what occurred. Bits and pieces of your memory are missing. Only the worst things are ingrained in your memory. You’re pretty sure a few other things happened while you were trying to avoid the person trying to force themselves on you, but you can’t remember those things.

Also, sexual assault doesn’t have to be rape or leave marks. Sexual assault is simply someone forcing themselves upon you without your consent, thinking that you wanted it and in fact enjoyed it. Sometimes these victims pretend they don’t care–but they’re still scared. Other times they’ll fight. Yet, each victim will react differently depending on the circumstances and history of the assailant they’re dealing with. Regardless of whether it was rape or there was no violence, assault is assault and is still damaging. Your body was being invaded. You were being manipulated the entire time that led up to the assault. And you were scared.

There are so many stories about victim blaming that have been written already, but I thought I would finally contribute to the discussion since my blog is one that I have made a point to touch upon topics such as this.

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Amber Skye Forbes,  Author of When Stars Die, a YA Paranormal 

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The Madness of Character Voice

The Fault in Our Stars (Photo credit: TheNerdDilettante)

I am about 16,000 words into the revisions of Stolentime. I’ve got self-doubts plaguing my brain, but I know that’s a normal part of revisions because in spite of knowing what needs to be changed, you still wonder if those changes are good enough, or could they be made better. But I’m not going to panic because the next step after this revision will be line edits, then proofreading on a hard copy, then making the changes on this Surface. Novels are malleable, critique is mandatory, so Stolentime has a chance. It will not die. I had these doubts with When Stars Rise, the sequel to When Stars Die, but the freelance editor loved parts of it, regardless. It just de-railed in the middle, but I’m more experienced and outlining can prevent that de-railing.

In any case, one interesting thing I’m noting throughout these revisions is how I keep slipping out of Gene’s voice. I am so used to writing stories that take place in the 19th century, so both narrative and speech are very formal, even for teenagers. Gene is a 21st century boy, self-aware and intelligent, so he doesn’t really slip into slang or does he speak like someone in Pride and Prejudice. For example, from the rough draft of Stolentime:

I was too busy picking at my nails as a tight feeling began blooming in my chest, realizing I hadn’t been out in a while due to my social anxiety.

One thing I realized as I was reading this sentence was that I slip away from Gene’s voice just by using the word ‘blooming.’ I’m not saying boys can’t use the word ‘blooming,’ but it’s not likely. So I had to chop this sentence up with an axe to come up with this:

I’m too busy picking at my nails as a tight feeling begins to expand in my chest over the realization that I haven’t been out in a while due to social anxiety.

Notice the tense shift too because I decided to bring Gene’s anxiety to the present instead of leaving it in the past to bring a more immediate feeling. But Gene is more likely to use expand than bloom. Since I am very much about the art of writing itself too, the sentence is still slightly formal because, well, Gene is intelligent. He’s a freaking smart kid who knows his literature, and so his thoughts and speech are going to be influenced by what he reads in literature. He’s definitely not Hazel from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (which, in my opinion as I’m currently reading it, is trying too hard to be philosophical), but he’s still a bright kid.

So I have to be constantly aware of Gene’s voice since I am so used to writing 19th century voices. It’s a bit difficult too, because there are times when I catch myself being formal, and then other times, when I re-read, I find sentences that are too formal and use words that are perhaps a bit too colorful for a 21st century kid.

Do you guys have any trouble with the voices of your characters?

The Road to Resilience

Cover via Amazon

Today’s guest blogger is Linda! You can find her here.

Thank you Amber for having me as a guest blogger today. I want to  share some thoughts I have about human resilience in the face of loss.  Life is a series of continuous losses. After you take your first breath,  you find your way on the path towards your final one. Our cells constantly  regenerate. In fact, it is known that our bodies completely change every  seven years. Typically people equate death with loss and sometimes use  those terms interchangeably. Yet, loss is pervasive and incredibly universal.  Here are some common losses to consider: loss of health, loss of youth,  loss of innocence, loss of a relationship, loss of teeth, loss of weight,  loss of physical strength, loss of vitality, loss of purpose, loss of   money.  Even if we live in the same home and work at the same building,  our atmosphere is constantly changing. Quantum physics has proven that  your favorite chair is really made up of energy particles that are not  solid matter. Change, loss, regeneration, motion……. change, loss,  regeneration, motion…… This theme is one of the few constants in  the human experience.

So how do we cope when the human ego craves the status quo and desperately  tries to hold on to what is familiar and safe? The first step is always  the same: acceptance. When one grieves a loss, it may take a while  to come to acceptance, but once there, the path to resilience is within  reach. Eckhart Tolle espouses that acceptance of what is will lead to  inner peace. In his book The Power of Now , Tolle  says,

“Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what  is, surrender to the Now.

Let it teach you Being.

Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself,  to be real.

Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living  and dying into a problem.”

The idea of non-resistance has been embraced readily in the East,  but not as much in the Western world. However, the popularity of Tolle’s  work , along with yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices, has made  this concept more palatable across the globe.

A receptive attitude towards life is also essential to the cultivation  of resilience. To be receptive means to be open to new ideas and possibilities,  even in the throes of pain and sadness.  It also includes the ability  to look at situations in a new light and the awareness of a larger worldview.  For example, deciding to move to a new city so that your partner can  accept a new position may leave one feeling conflicted about giving  up their current social connections and comfortable lifestyle. Yet,  with a receptive attitude, one can see how this decision to support  your partner may also bring them into alignment with a fulfilling new  career path, nurturing like-minded friends, and awaken a dormant sense  of adventure and vitality.

It is often much easier to make these behavioral changes in community.  Community can mean biological family, family of creation, spiritual/  religious group, neighborhood circle, social media, or outside support  system. For those who need additional support with the grieving process  or making transitions, a support group or therapy group often can provide  the community and treatment/support necessary to face the crisis in  a healthy manner. I have worked many years as a therapist with people  dealing with acute and chronic mental health challenges. The amount  of loss and trauma many of these individuals carry is close to unimaginable.  Often a history of abuse and/ or trauma is present in those with certain  mental health issues, which can trigger substance abuse through self-medication.  This choice can create more loss and trauma, along with the traumas  inherent that many encounter in the mental health and criminal justice  systems. The Mental Health Recovery Movement that is emerging in the  US and Europe addresses these issues in a proactive, holistic, humane  fashion. My work in a Recovery program gave me the opportunity to create  and facilitate groups that embraces those values. I ran a Grief and  Loss group that  gave the members the space to develop trust, improve  communication, and begin the path to acceptance, forgiveness, and hope.  We often examined ways to re-frame a situation in order to encourage  attitudinal change and healing. We often discussed how we gained something  positive in the wake of a loss. When a commercial began airing with  the slogan ” What will you gain when you lose? ” I  began to wonder if the advertising firm was eavesdropping on our group!

I am not suggesting that resilience is inevitable, some people are  genetically wired to be naturally more resilient than others. So perhaps  there are those among us that experience less setbacks or regroup quicker  from a significant loss. We all can make a huge impact upon our own  destiny by increasing our awareness of when we need some form of treatment/intervention in the face of depression, anxiety, extended grief, trauma,  and difficult life transitions. Relief from suffering and recovery from  loss is possible and there are many wonderful resources available. We  all deserve the best possible life we can create for ourselves. Evidence  of resilience is abundant both in nature and bustling cities, and everywhere  in-between. Take a close look around you and you are bound to discover  it in action.

Resources:

http://www.imhcn.org/

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/

http://www.mentalhealthrecovery.com/

http://ncmhr.org/

https://netforum.avectra.com/eWeb/DynamicPage.aspx?Site=USPRA&WebCode=about

http://raysofhope.blogs.com/my_weblog/2011/04/resources-list-for-grief-loss-trauma-and-transitions.html

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577311523

http://www.amazon.com/Counting-Our-Losses-Reflecting-Bereavement/dp/0415875293

http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X

http://www.amazon.com/Resilience-Things-Bounce-Back-ebook/dp/B006NZ7HQQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370381672&sr=1-1&keywords=resilience

http://www.amazon.com/Resilience-ebook/dp/B009GEY7WI/ref=pd_sim_b_5

The Difficulties of Mental Illness in Young Adult Novels

This is the longest post I will probably ever write, but bare with me.

I think a lot of people can understand that mental illness is real, but I think the misunderstanding of mental illness begins when we start searching for reasons why so-and-so is depressed or why so-and-so struggles with anxiety. We naturally want to seek out reasons for why people feel the way they do. We think that all mental illness has to be completely situational and that at its heart, mental illness must stem from some sort of trauma that would have anybody understanding why so-and-so is so ill.

I’ve just rid myself of that curiosity. Yes, I think it is important to find the root cause of mental illness so the healing can begin, but now I’ve shifted my mindset so that instead of asking mentally ill people why they feel the way they do, I now realize it is more important how they feel and not why they feel that way. It’s traumatizing in itself to feel so depressed you can’t get out of bed, or so suicidal you want to tear yourself apart so you don’t have to deal with yourself.

Yet, some people are not going to share this mindset. Some people are going to fish for reasons and compare one reason to another.

I bring this topic up because now that I am doing a book giveaway of 13 Reasons Why, I want to discuss mental illness in young adult novels and why it’s such a difficult topic to tackle. A lot of reviewers for Jay Asher’s book pointed out that Hannah was being a bit pathetic for committing suicide over the reasons that she did. They lament there are people so much worse off than Hannah and claimed her reasons for wanting to die were stupid. Even MC Clay wants to place the blame on Hannah, which is a natural thing to do. However, Jay Asher does his best to explain the snowball effect, whereby so much stuff just builds up, eventually snowballing and crushing the person under the weight of that snowball. If stress is not reconciled, it’s going to build up and break you. I thought Jay Asher did a marvelous job at explaining this, and when I read it in high school, I understood it. I don’t think there are any good reasons to commit suicide, but I understand why Hannah broke. And Hannah was probably depressed from all the stress, something Jay Asher did not explicitly state but rather implied. What is more tragic than Hannah’s death is that no one saw Hannah coming apart.

But the problem with 13 Reasons Why is that not every teen who reads it is going to understand that–and I am excluding adults from this equation because the book isn’t meant for them. No matter how much Jay Asher stresses the snowball effect, our society wants us to believe that tragic individuals are tragic because of severe trauma.

Mental illness has a root cause, but everyone’s breaking point is different. My breaking point occurred due to a bad time with my fibromyalgia. It is much better now, but it seems to freak out around the fall. I was working, doing ballet, and taking classes, and eventually all the stress piled up to the point where I found myself having to drop ballet in favor of naps because I would be so fatigued from fibro flares, and work wore on me because I’d get flares during work, and eventually I started feeling pathetic because all I did was sleep, sleep, sleep, and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything I loved. So it was work, work, work, and sleep, sleep, sleep, and ouch, ouch, ouch. That snowballed me to the point where I became depressed and suicidal because it didn’t feel like there was going to be an end to the pain. So there wasn’t just one cause, and it never is for mental illness.

Hannah’s breaking point occurred because it’s obvious she was a lonely girl in the first place who struggled with poor self-esteem. So all this stuff happened to her that never got reconciled, built up, and broke her. She likely became depressed and dwelled heavily on these things and blamed herself for everything that happened. Since she is a teenager, she has no wider perspective to realize that high school is not all there is to the world, and so she saw no way out. She never reached out to anyone, and so she felt trapped.

Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is not the fault of 13 Reasons Why but the fault of a society that believes tragic individuals are tragic because of severe trauma, not because of vulnerable personalities shaped by a society that believes hardening individuals to the “cruelties” of life is the best way for them to survive, rather than creating compassionate individuals who help one another out of love and not some desire for something in return. So a lot of criticism in young adult books is aimed at the mental illnesses themselves because people want a reason for why a character is depressed. Frankly, by the time one has reached the stage of depression the syndrome, it no longer matters why that person is depressed. It is the fact that that person is depressed in the first place that matters more than the reasons.

I am worried about how my WIP Stolentime will one day be received. It deals heavily with depression and suicidal ideation. Gene dwells on suicide a lot. It is my hope that my book will help people better understand these dark feelings, but I realize a lot of people won’t. They might perceive him as whiny, that he needs to get over it, but I am going to do my best not to convey him that way and just convey him the way people suffering from suicidal ideation actually are. Most are not whiny. I certainly wasn’t. I was quiet and withdrawn, left to my own thoughts. I want my book to reach out to the ones who are quiet and withdrawn, and I want my book to reach out to those who judge mental illness and help them better understand it. My book isn’t just about a depressed teen, but a depressed teen who understands depression all too well and even mentions that depression is a trauma unto itself, that the reasons for depression don’t matter as much as the illness itself.

The Dancing Writer’s Pointe Shoes and Awards

A compilation of posts for writers and those struggling with mental illness.

This is a compilation of all my best posts, and then at the end, I will be giving away three awards to three different bloggers for each one!

What Depression Feels Like for a Writer Like Me

Braving the Stigma of Mental Illness

My Defense of Self-Publishing

The Maddening Choice of Publication

The Different Ways to Outline a Novel

This Is My Surprise: I Have a Publisher!

Blogging Tips for Fellow Writers

Inner Turmoil Equals My Best Ideas

The Misuse of Twitter

The Madness of Writer’s Block

Now for the awards!

This goes to Legends of Windmere by Charles Yallowitz

The parasite guy

And Random Acts of Writing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next award!

Dorian Dawes

disregard the prologue

And When I Became An Author

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last award!

thebeliefblog

tolerantpeople

And Missing Zero!

Follow all these awesome blogs and keep…

View original post 28 more words

Feeling Left Behind: Graduation Story or Lack Thereof

I am an entire year behind in college. I should be a senior, but I’m still a junior on the cusp of being a senior. I had to drop all of my classes last semester due to being so unstable because of bipolar disorder. I couldn’t handle the stress, the thought of having to play catch-up after my first hospitalization was nauseating, and the med they put me on during my first visit made me evermore unknowingly unstable. So I had to drop all of my classes. Luckily I no longer need two of them.

My second hospitalization confirmed that I shouldn’t take any classes next semester either because I needed to use that time to find med stability. So having to drop last semester and not even doing this semester has put me an entire year behind so that way I may be graduating in 2015 instead of late 2013.

Most of the friends I came into university with graduated today. I’m going to admit I feel left behind. They’re moving on, hopefully finding swanky careers with their polished diplomas, and here I am just trying to register for the fall semester because the education program doesn’t do PIN numbers and I have to wait until late registration to get anything done. It sucks, I’ll totally admit that. I wish I could join them, celebrate with them, be happy about my graduation and being able to hold on to the hope that the future is endless for me.

But nope. Bipolar did a lot of damage and I’ll probably have to end up making new friends come fall semester. Well, school friends, anyway. It’s no fun being a loner on campus, not that I’m much of one anyway. It’s frustrating, too, because part of me wonders if I could have held on. I probably could have, but then my GPA would have suffered, further damaging my already low self-esteem at the time. And being depressed and being expected to stay on top of things is really, really difficult, especially when all you think about is sleep and not wanting to be awake because everything just hurts and you don’t know why and would rather not deal with the ‘why.’

I could choose to be bitter about what bipolar did, what depression did, but looking at what I was able to accomplish makes me realize I may not have been able to accomplish anything had I been in school. I got to do a ballet recital, and that means so much to me, especially because it was a dream come true. I was dying for the chance to finally be able to show my parents and my fiancé what I’d been doing in class. Then I got a contract for my book, When Stars Die, because I finally took a risk. Who knows if I would have taken that risk in school. Who knows if I would have even been thinking about When Stars Die while in school.

So while everyone is celebrating graduation, I am doing pre-release book marketing, solidifying my platform, writing another book, and instead of holding a graduation party, I will be holding a book release party. I would say two dreams come true beats graduation any day.

The Dancing Writer’s Pointe Shoes and Awards

I love my Capezio Glisse.

This is a compilation of all my best posts, and then at the end, I will be giving away three awards to three different bloggers for each one!

What Depression Feels Like for a Writer Like Me

Braving the Stigma of Mental Illness

My Defense of Self-Publishing

The Maddening Choice of Publication

The Different Ways to Outline a Novel

This Is My Surprise: I Have a Publisher!

Blogging Tips for Fellow Writers

Inner Turmoil Equals My Best Ideas

The Misuse of Twitter

The Madness of Writer’s Block

Now for the awards!

This goes to Legends of Windmere by Charles Yallowitz

The parasite guy

And Random Acts of Writing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next award!

Dorian Dawes

disregard the prologue

And When I Became An Author

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last award!

thebeliefblog

tolerantpeople

And Missing Zero!

Follow all these awesome blogs and keep an eye out on their posts! I very much appreciate them! I don’t have time to comment on all of them, but rest assured these are quality bloggers.

What Does It Really Mean for Me to Have a Mental Illness?

I’m not on Lithium, thank goodness.

Sometimes I ponder why the most vulnerable of us often find ourselves afflicted with mental illnesses we don’t deserve. Imagine dealing with the death of a loved one. Your depression starts out as a symptom of grief. Soon you come to terms with the loss of your loved one, but for some reason you can’t shake this deep, aching emptiness within you. You try to tell yourself it’s because you really haven’t gotten over your loved one’s death, but then the pain just persists. You can’t push through it, or move on from it. Something dark has grown in you, and you steadily begin to lose yourself. Your appetite dies, your sleep either becomes too much or too little; out of nowhere you think you’re worthless, unloved, unneeded; you might want to die, you might not want to do anything at all. Your symptom has turned into the syndrome. Not only are you grieving your loved one, but now you’re battling another monster known as mental illness.

My fibromyalgia was already bad enough to deal with and depression is a common symptom of pain, but then when does the symptom become the syndrome? My fibro was getting better, but my mental health was declining, and I couldn’t understand why, when before I valiantly fought through my fibro.

But someone like me can only take so much before she breaks.

I’ve learned, through mental illness, what an incredibly sensitive person I am. I don’t even have to know you and your pain will strike something so deep within me that I’m compelled to tears. While I am better, I am still easily triggered by anything that has to do with death or suicide.

When you’re depressed and suicidal, you don’t think how traumatizing the feelings are. You’re used to them. Your brain has tricked you so well into thinking you want to die that you accept being suicidal without question. You want to die. You crave it. You want to end your pain because your illness doesn’t want you to see a way out.

Now that I am better, I look back on those feelings, and a heavy pang spears through my heart. I could have given into those feelings, and I wouldn’t be right here telling you all this. They’re terrifying feelings. I’m terrified that I felt that way. Sometimes I want to cry just knowing I did because the truth is that I am still vulnerable to feeling that way again. All it would take is for one of my medications to stop working, and I could go from screaming that I don’t want to die to wishing I would the next day.

Bipolar disorder is a traumatizing illness. Mental illnesses in general are traumatizing. You start out with one problem, and then for some reason that problem makes you sick, and you wonder why others don’t get sick from the same problem. My brother went through a traumatic divorce, and while he was depressed, it was just a symptom. He pulled himself together and now he’s better. Me, I just cracked under the weight of stress and the depression spiraled out of control until it became its own monster.

But there is nothing I can do but to accept it. I accept that it makes me a deeply sensitive individual. I accept that I could become sick again. But most of all, I accept that it has given me the power to empathize so deeply with other people that I would do anything to soothe their pain.

Do Not Deny Yourself Help, My Fellow Spoonies

While I am a very sympathetic, sensitive person, I am getting to the point where I have hardened on some things in regards to healing from psychiatric illnesses. Refusing help because you are afraid of stigma is one of the biggest things that rankles my nerves raw.

The stigma is real. I get that. But you’re not helping the stigma by refusing to reach out.

The above quote does not mean you can fix your mental illness through your thinking. It simply means that the way you think about things can help the way you feel about them. I accept my bipolar disorder as any other illness, and because I do, I don’t feel so bad that I have this disorder, which allows me to accept it so that the next time I’m depressed, even severely depressed, I’ll know what I need to do in order to take care of myself.

In any case, by refusing to reach out, you are damning yourself to becoming worse. Close friends and family don’t want to believe in your illness? Seek help elsewhere. This will take work on your part, but you WILL be able to find at least one person willing to listen to you. Even at my severest I found people, people I didn’t know too well, that I was able to talk to and they were able to fuel my thinking about my illness by telling me their stories as well. Hell, go online and reach out through chat groups and allow this reaching out to fuel your thinking.

I know a lot of introverts use the internet as an escape from their illnesses. And that’s great. It’s good to have a blog you can dump your feelings on as a way to find others similar to you. What’s not good is using misery to find misery.

On Tumblr, in the mental illness tags, teens will post incredibly triggering pictures claiming they help them cope. Those pictures are not helping in the least. If they were, you would be getting better. I’m not going to post any of them, but I can tell you triggering pictures are only fueling whatever it is that is going on in your mind that made you post the picture: self-harm, suicidal ideation, anorexia, bulimia, ect…

Pictures like this enrage me because it is almost an active defiance of a refusal to get better. Depression makes you not want to get better because depression doesn’t want you to get better–or mental illness in general–but that is why you have to reach out in a healthy manner. When I was suicidal, I would go to online chat groups with others who were. We wouldn’t even talk about suicide. We would talk about everyday life or how to cope. Heck, what helped me most was helping others who felt on the brink of attempting, and my suicidal feelings would disappear after that. I didn’t let myself stew in those feelings. Why the heck would you want to? They’re terrible.

The point is don’t actively refuse to get help because of your thinking. Stigma be damned. Be one of the ones to help remove stigma from psychiatric illnesses. More and more people are beginning to understand, I can promise you that. People who don’t want to understand aren’t worth it, and you need to realize that.

All Writers Must Rest

I definitely do this for my cat.

Tomorrow I’m taking a break from blogging and social media in general. I’ll probably write an epilogue for When Stars Die, but that is as work-y as things will get. I’m also going to finish a gothic-ish design of When Stars Die’s MC Amelia that I’d love to have on a shirt. The drawing itself sucks, but the paint will totally make it come alive. I’m also hoping to receive a certain item that I can use for a new, better cover design for When Stars Die.

So I’m not exactly taking a break, but I do need one from social media because it can be hectic and trying. Plus, I have 80 followers, so I’ve earned a rest from it. In any case, any kind of art is therapeutic for me and not really work like social media is.

All of us as writers need to rest once in a while and get away from things that start to feel like work to us. Social media is one such thing for me. I don’t want to burn out on it, so I’m disconnecting myself entirely tomorrow. Instead of doing social media during lulls at my job, I’ll be reading or writing. I need to finish a certain book anyway so I can do a review of it and put it here.

Burnout in our line of work is common. Burnout happened to me last summer. It wasn’t just the depression that made me not want to write–it was total burnout. I obsessively write and edit for a long period of time, then go for half a year not doing any kind of writing because I’m so drained from it. My dad is always warning me even our passions can drain us, and he has never lied to me. He’s too right.

Now that I have a contract, it is crucial I don’t experience burnout, so I’m going to allow myself rest. It’s even more imperative considering I’m dealing with fibromyalgia and just got over a bipolar depressive episode. I’m doing my best to learn to not obsess over things. My therapist is helping me too through weekly goals. Not obsessing is one of them. I do find myself obsessing with stats on my website, so I’m pulling myself away and am going to try to train my brain not to worry about stats and just blog and read others’ blogs when I come back Saturday.

I used to be so fast with my life, so set on the future and reaching my goals as fast as possible. If I have learned anything from fibro and depression is that it is okay to slow life down and save the future for another time. So I am slowing down, breathing in, breathing out, and am going to relax with some art tomorrow with no worries about social media: e-mails, my website, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, ect. We all know social media is important, but we all know how draining and trying it can be.

Slow down. Take a break when you feel your nerves becoming frazzled. It’s okay. We’re human and we’re not meant to go, go, go! I’ll see you all Saturday!