When I left my husband a year ago, his hateful voice didn't stay with him. Instead, the verbal abuse lived in my head, as it had done for our 18 years of marriage. Making it harder to deal with the after-effects of verbal abuse, the voice echoing in my head seemed just true enough to make me think they may be completely true. The after-effects of verbal abuse made me think I'd never heal.

I reached my healthy goal weight weeks ago. I continue to eat well and maintain my weight. I am feeling more alive than I have in years, and I would like to forget I ever had anorexia nervosa and move on to real life. It isn't that easy. Now I need to discover why I developed an eating disorder at the age of 42 and resisted recovery for years until I almost lost everything, including my life.

When you love someone who is being abused, so much of it doesn't make any sense at all! You look at the wonderful human being in front of you, confused and knotted up inside and red-eyed and snotty on the outside, and wonder, "Why? Why are you, my beautiful (daughter, friend, son...) so insanely sad over those lies that idiot feeds you?!" You want to "go over there" and give that so-and-so a piece of your mind, a good whomping, SOMETHING to make them understand that what they're doing to your beloved is NOT RIGHT.

I, like many, no longer work in an office; I work from home. My commute each morning goes something like: bed, to the bathroom, to the kitchen, to the couch, to the desk. Barring a traffic jam between my cats and me over the milk, it’s a pretty quick affair. And while working at home does have many advantages for someone with a mental illness, working from home with bipolar disorder also poses its own challenges.

Sometimes you don't even know if you suffer from the fear of failing. Fear of failing, “atychiphobia” as it is also known, is a fear that stops us from doing things, especially those things that move us forward to reaching our goals. We all have different definitions of what success and failure are. A failure to one person might be a great learning experience to another. Our belief systems, values and standards we live by determine our failure definition. Fear of failing can be immobilizing, it can stop your forward progress in your personal life, business or career. Let's look at what are some of the signs of fear of failure.

"It'll go away, it just needs time, then I won't have to worry anymore... It wasn't a big deal, or if it was it doesn't matter now. It's over. I'm fine, and I have all these anxiety coping skills. What's there to talk about anyway?" I can't count the number of times I've thought that way about my mental health. The message of silence is one that trauma survivors, and those with mental illness receive loud and clear, from society and often very directly from those closest to them. Most internalize it so deeply that it's years before they realize it isn't their voice. That it never was. That it doesn't have to be.

There are some people who just seem to “have it together” – they ease through life with minimal trouble, and seem to have a certain je ne sais quoi about them. They never seem to have problems finding a boyfriend/girlfriend, have good jobs, a great network of friends and are by all standards – successful. I’ve encountered a few of these fine specimens in my lifetime and am always left feeling a little awe-inspired…and inadequate.

I recently made the decision to send Bob, my son with bipolar disorder, back to his last therapist. I don't have high confidence in talk therapy for a variety of reasons, as I have previously discussed. One of those reasons was brought to light after Bob's second session: therapists don't always get the whole story.

Whenever I think I know what I'm doing, that's when I start to worry. It's this river running inside me: anxiety. Like background noise that's so strong and permanent you don't really hear it anymore. It's just there, the same as the air moves or my heart beats. I stop, sometimes. Knowing something has to change but unsure what, where, who, or how. If I'm not anxious, what will I be? How about loved, valued, self-assured.

What if, just for now, you were able to shrink your abuser's voice down to nothing? What would it be like if you stopped imagining that those hurtful words came from a place of love or concern? What would it feel like to know in your heart and mind that what that abuser said had no relevance to your reality, that your abuser was the one in La-La Land, not you? What would it be like to trust your own perceptions, to move about freely without fear of reprisal?