January 22, 2010, I left my husband. When I returned the next day after a judge granted me an ex-parte order, the law arrested him and removed him from the house. They handcuffed him in front of our teenage boys. I was left with two grief-stricken and angry boys who didn’t understand what happened. None of us understood what was happening. None of us could have foretold the future we’re living today.

There are times I am strong and focused on recovery from anorexia nervosa. There are other times I feel hopeless. It is at those times I see my life as a dark and endless tunnel. I can only see anorexia in my future, and it looks like a bleak future without hope nor life. I felt that way last week and I could not bring myself to write one word no matter how hard I tried. I was sick at heart, and my strength was totally depleted. However, after much prayer and talk with some wonderful friends, I found myself reclaiming my strength and new hope is growing within me.

Dealing with trauma anniversaries, triggers and the general anxiety that goes along with them is one of the toughest parts of having an anxiety disorder. So today I've got some tips to help you cope with anxiety cues, and heal post traumatic stress.

If you have dissociative identity disorder, dissociation is your primary coping mechanism. As such, it's both adaptive and maladaptive. It allows you to continue functioning despite overwhelming stress. But dissociation is also what prevents you from recognizing that you've fallen off a cliff until you hit the ground. The idea behind taking stock of mental health warning signs is to notice your free fall a little sooner. Ideally, you'd eventually have the awareness to see the edge of the cliff from a distance and avoid it altogether. 

The better you listen, the more you will know. It may sound very simple and it is. Listening takes up more of your waking hours than any other activity. Of your waking hours, 70% of them are spent communicating. Writing takes up 9%, reading 16%, talking is 30% and listening is 45% of communicating hours. THE underrated business tool is good listening.

This week one of my Twitter followers asked me for advice on communicating with her friends and family about her mental illness. She has only recently started telling people of her illness and she wasn’t sure on how to express her needs around her mental illness. This is a great question and one I think every person with a mental illness faces. How do you tell people about your mental illness needs?

Verbal abuse is confusing. I sometimes blame myself for not hearing our conversations for what they were. Conversations is not the right word. A conversation is a flow of words and thoughts, back and forth, between two people - a dialogue. But my ex-husband and I didn't have dialogues, we filled our communications with monologues in which we looked at one another, directed our sometimes screaming voices at one another, but definitely did not converse. 

One of the things I have tried hardest to avoid is having a house divided. Regardless of the differences in our DNA, I wanted our family to function as one cohesive unit. But lately, despite my best efforts, one of the sheep is doing his best to separate himself from the flock. And it's driving me nuts.

A mental illness that saps sufferers of motivation and energy, depression notoriously impedes productivity. For many people living with depression, even basic day-to-day chores seem to take herculean effort. The inability to get things done is frustrating on its own, but even more maddening is the vicious cycle it perpetuates.

I recently went to my obstetrician for a routine check-up and got onto the dreaded scale after the holidays (never a good thing to do, in my opinion). The nurse said, “You must have had a really good Christmas.” I cringed as she told me I gained 10 lbs. I packed on10 lbs. in a month! Even though I am seven and a half months pregnant, this is definitely not a good thing. This got me worried that I’ll have another huge baby (my first one was close to 9 lbs. which is large for someone my size). So the wheels started turning in my head for ideas on how to be healthier—physically, mentally, and emotionally.