Mental Illness Memoirs

As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over 20 years. It Didn't Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms.

A case study of millennial addiction that challenges society, values, rules and norms regarding relationships, sex, drugs and alcohol. Lock in and listen while generational stories are told to understand the onset of mental illness and the struggle of defending against addiction while trying to find purpose. From the top of potential to rock bottom reality, experience the highs and lows of recovery as surrender is accepted and a soul is found.

Carrie Cantwell grew up with an unstable father who suffered from manic depression. His emotional absence left her wounded and yearning for his affection. To make matters worse, she struggled with inexplicable mood swings of her own. As a child, she was hyperactive and attention-seeking. By her twenties she was engaging in reckless behavior to quiet her inner demons. When Carrie was 24, her father died by suicide, and she was hit with her first major depressive episode. When she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, her heart sank. It felt like a death sentence. At age 38 and in a failing, ...

When her husband, Alan, is injured in a speedboat accident, Cathy Crimmins reluctantly assumes the role of caregiver and learns to cope with the person he has become. No longer the man who loved obscure Japanese cinema and wry humor, Crimmins’ husband has emerged from the accident a childlike and unpredictable replica of his former self with a short attention span and a penchant for inane cartoons. Where Is the Mango Princess? is a breathtaking account that explores the very nature of personality - and the complexities of the heart.

Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things.

In her stirring, vulnerable new memoir, Karena Dawn reveals what it was like to grow up with a mother suffering from severe mental health issues, and how, during her teenage years, she desperately tried to escape her own inner demons. Addicted to pain-numbing drugs and crippled by severe depression, Karena learned how to use grief as a teacher, releasing herself from guilt and shame and finding the inner strength to go from abandonment to forgiveness, from hopelessness to healing.

The Bahamas is a 700-island nation off the coast of Florida, home to 400,000 inhabitants. I grew up there and lived a charmed life: we had a mansion on an acre of land with 270-degree ocean views, a maid, a gardener and a boat. I went to the best school on the island of Nassau, was skippering sunfish boats from the age of 7 and had a happy circle of friends. But I also had early signs of a mood disorder. When the offshore banking crisis of the late 1980s pushed us out of our idyllic paradise, my family and I relocated to Florida, a move that exacerbated my mood disorder at the start of high...

I've been kidnapped by aliens dressed as cops. They moved me from their prison to a simulated hospital. I can leave any time, but they won't let me. If I don't escape, they'll keep me here forever. If I use the telephone, the phone company will sell my innermost secrets to the government. If I take the medicine they give me, my brain will be replaced with cotton. So yeah. I'm a few sandwiches short of a picnic. 5150: A Transfer Is Duncan MacLeod's debut novel. Fast-paced, frenetic, and unapologetically blunt, the novel takes the hero through a bout with psychosis that lasts for several ...

When Robert Hine's daughter, Elene, first showed signs of unhappiness as a little girl, no one dreamed she would grow up to have a serious personality disorder. As an early baby boomer, Elene reached adolescence and young womanhood in the midst of the counterculture years. Her father, a respected professor of American history at the University of California, shares the story of his family's struggle to keep Elene on track and functional, to see her through her troubles with delusions and medication, and eventually to help her raise her own children.

The inspiration for the major motion picture Priscilla directed by Sofia Coppola, this New York Times best seller reveals the intimate story of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, told by the woman who lived it.

As a research neuroscientist, Lise Eliot has made the study of the human brain her life's work. But it wasn't until she was pregnant with her first child that she became intrigued with the study of brain development. She wanted to know precisely how the baby's brain is formed, and when and how each sense, skill, and cognitive ability is developed. And most importantly, she was interested in finding out how her role as a nurturer can affect this complex process.

With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Jenkins takes you inside the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. She is a born storyteller who lived an incredible story, from blackmail by an ex-boyfriend to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer, and her telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit. But the true surprise is her path to recovery. Tiffany breaks through the stigma and silence to offer hope and inspiration to anyone battling the disease - whether it’s a loved one or themselves.

An essential resource designed to help partners of people with bipolar disorder mend strained relationships, negotiate episodic crises, survive the turbulence manic behavior may cause, and more.

Spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer explores the question of human identity and shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and achieve happiness and self-realization.

Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.

Letters to Carol were written to make it easier for me to face my abusers and to move on with my life. Glenda Bixler is indeed right. This book is a non-fiction memoir, a true-life story of one woman's harrowing abuse. In elementary school, during the late 1960s, classmates called me "The Blob." My mother made fun of me. She imitated my looks for my siblings while she disassociated me from my real name. With the early loss of my beloved grandmother, I had no protection from my brother's abuse, which hurt me primarily on multiple levels. One day, inside my bedroom closet, I developed ...

In Insecure in Love, you'll learn how to overcome attachment anxiety using compassionate self-awareness, a technique that can help you recognize your negative thoughts or unhealthy behavior patterns and respond to them in a nurturing way - rather than beating yourself up. You'll also learn how insecurity can negatively affect healthy dialog between you and your partner (or potential partners) and develop the skills needed to stop you from reverting back to old patterns of neediness and possessiveness.

Following the death of her husband, Hilda Mahaney Tucker begins a lifelong battle with mental illness. Her son. only fifteen-years-old when he first witnesses the onset of his mother's paranoia, tells the story of her rollercoaster life of isolation, electroshock therapy and psychopharmacology, laced with periods of peace and tranquility.

The author describes in detail all the insanity, disturbing behaviors, oppressive symptoms, and various feeling associated with the mental battles within her own mind. The author suffers from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder. She struggles with suicidal thoughts and attempts, self-mutilating behaviors, mania, paranoia, anxiety, and psychosis with intense hallucinations of all five of her senses, and multiple delusions, including the belief that she is the "second-coming of Christ".

Serious in part, yet at times humorous, Gently Dented chronicles what it is like living with a severe mental disorder. Each chapter explores the various trials of living with an abnormal mind. With absolute truth and conviction, Meaghan Hilary attempts to meet, head on, the challenges of describing the personal and social experiences of being a bipolar schizophrenic. Gently Dented is Meaghan Hilary's written account of living with hallucinations, paranoia, grand delusions, mixed episodes, mania, and depression. It is a peek into the mind of a bipolar schizophrenic. Now with a new afterword ...