I get all manner of comments here and many of them scrape against my bones. Because I know these people. Because I know their brains. Because I am these people. Sometimes people think because I write or advocate or win awards I am not them, but it is precisely because I am them that I can do these things. It is precisely because I feel their desperation that I can truly write about it. One does write what they know, after all.

It's a common misconception among the "normal"--any time a child with a psychiatric illness demonstrates an undesirable behavior, it's surely connected to his diagnosis. Little do they know, mentally ill kids are, at the end of the day...kids.

"Who are you and why are you doing this to me?" Those are the words Sandra Yuen MacKay wrote in block letters across her family's porch when she was 15 years old. She knew someone was spying on her; she could hear voices outside her house, talking about her and commenting on what she was doing.

There are so many morsels of bad relationship advice floating around that I thought it best to address some of the most common relationship myths. People have the tendency to dish out love advice like yesterday’s leftover goulash—it’s well-intentioned, but nobody really wants it. Bridal showers and bachelor parties are breeding grounds for ill advice. Here are a few of my favorites that I’ve heard.

I am a 45-year-old woman on a journey of recovery from anorexia. I also am: a writer, a graduate student studying for my master's degree in English Composition and Communication at Central Michigan University, a wife and mom to my beautiful cat, Aliena, and a very curious person! I write about my recovery from the perspective of someone who developed an eating disorder later in life at the age of 41.

Sometimes you need a temporary solution for problems you're working on in therapy.

Getting sleep has to be a priority if you want to fight anxiety and find relief. It's definitely a matter of quality but studies have shown that quantity plays a big part in that: How well rested we feel after a night's sleep. For optimal health and well-being Labcoats 'R Us will tell you we should all be getting between 7-8 hours sleep a night; A lovely thought dreamed up by people who've clearly never gone 4 days without sleep and found themselves wondering why the walls are slithering. 

Visit any preschool in America today, and the message is universal--be nice to everyone. Unfortunately, that sentiment seems limited to the 5 and under scene. Mental illness stigma, and the hate of anyone too different is a lesson learned earlier than parents like to believe. I shouldn't have to teach my child about mental illness stigma. But I do.

Normally I try to grab the reader's attention in the first few lines of the piece so that you'll want to read the rest. Something snappy, touching or pithy. Normally I try to make sure it's an interesting subject. Usually I try to provide some sort of universal appeal to the piece or at least a good quip. But today, quite frankly, I'm talking about me.

One of the most persistent myths about dissociative identity disorder (DID) is that people with it are schizophrenic. Schizophrenia and DID are generally considered synonymous with each other when, in fact, they're two entirely different disorders. There's no relationship between dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) and schizophrenia at all. People more educated than I could write entire books about the differences between these two chronically misunderstood disorders. I focus on what I see as the dead giveaway: the issue of identity.