I am so excited to announce that my story has been published in NAMI! 

Here is a link to the article-

https://nami.org/Personal-Stories/I-Took-Charge-of-my-Mental-Health-to-Live-the-Life-I-Wanted

Please feel free to read or share if you feel called.

I want to go a little deeper with you. 

Despite all that I've been through on this path, I can truly say I now live an unencumbered life. 

In March 2020 when I made the decision to go off medication, the decision was simple: I was done reliving and recounting the pain of my bipolar misdiagnosis. I knew this meant going off Adderall. 

I had grown dependent on Adderall during my time in Chicago- I thought it was the only reason I was good at my job. While I know this is a lie, it definitely helped.

When I told my doctor I never saw myself going off Adderall, she challenged me- "it doesn't make you smarter" she offered. 

At the time, I realized that I didn't care about being smarter, I just wanted to get more done. It was a very hard ...

The relationship between planning and anxiety is complicated. You make plans one minute when you’re feeling great but when the time comes to show up, you get hit with one of those god-awful panic attacks. You want to stick to your word and stay in integrity with what you said you were going to do, but your body has its own plans.

 Choose Carefully and Don’t Over-commit

You know that cancelling plans or backing out on an obligation is going to make you feel badly, so stop saying yes to things you don’t want to do. Stress occurs when your body says no but your mouth says “I’d love to.” Really listen to yourself and how you physically react to the thought of doing something when you can't decide if you want to go or not. 

 Give Yourself Grace

In these moments, it’s important to talk to yourself like you would talk to a child. Imagine a child was supposed to go to a birthday party but threw a tantrum moments before you were supposed to leave and was visibly upset. You’d give the child ...

Anxiety is fear based on the future and planning is the process of mapping out future events. What happens when you have a fear of everything that you have to do? A Plan-ic attack.

 My greatest challenge in life is to keep my anxiety in check. I don’t necessarily fear anything specifically, but that actually causes even more anxiety; feeling so uncomfortable without a logical excuse or explanation is so incredibly difficult. I bring this up because believe me, I get it.

Decorating my planner is a sort of cathartic release for me. Planning out my days ahead of time, not so much. By identifying my own personal shortcomings with planning, I can help you address these same issues and help you build more structure into your day, sans stress.

Don’t Overcommit

We all know what happens when you overpromise and underdeliver; you get an unhappy customer. Be careful with what you say you’re going to do, especially when it comes to timeframes and deadlines. Always error on the side of somethin...