The ReStory Blog
Understanding the Symptoms of Depression
Shana lost her son, Owen, to suicide two weeks after his fifteenth birthday. According to his friends, Owen was extremely kind, social, funny, and well-liked. So when he started manifesting changes in his behavior, Shana simply attributed it to a rebellious teenage phase. But before Shana could ask her son herself, young Owen had already taken his life. This is Shana's story, and it isn't a pleasant one. Unfortunately, many others are going through what Owen went through, which is why it's essential that we educate ourselves about mental health conditions, such as depression.
Permission to Feel Conflicted: 4 Ways to Honor the Need to Connect Part 3
Rather than telling you to FaceTime your friends and family or to spend yet another hour on Zoom, I want to share with you other ways to access connection that are accessible wherever you are. Additionally, your need for connection doesn’t solely have to be met through interacting with others (see the previous article about the need to protect). While human connection is deeply meaningful and necessary, you can also access connection through God, Creation, and strangely enough, with yourself. Check out these ideas
Permission to Feel Conflicted Part 2: Honoring the Need to Protect
Last week, we named the neediness of the human condition, the collective prolonged state of distress we are in, and some of the ways you might find yourself responding as a result of the chronic stress. Today, I’d like to explore further one of the responses you might be experiencing: the need to protect.
Permission to Feel Conflicted: The Need to Connect vs Protect and How to Still Stay Present Part 1
Today, I’d like to invite you to receive permission for any and all responses you’ve noticed in yourself- particularly as 2020 continues on. Maybe you’re desperate for human connection, but fearful of reaching out and feeling burdensome. Maybe you’re longing for meaningful time with others, but are so burnt out that you’ve shut yourself off from others in honor of self-preservation and protection. Physiologically, the body can only handle so much prolonged stress, anxiety, and fear before it literally shuts down, taking the form of numbness, feeling detached from your body, emotions, and others, and/or feeling disconnected from your life.
The Campaign for Being Needy: 4 Ways to Find True Relationship
All nine months of 2020 thus far have put our sanity and hearts to the test in untenable and unprecedented ways. Isolation, loneliness, depression, loss and crisis are woven into the fabric of our days with a bigger presence than we know how to wrap our minds around. If there has ever been a time where we have needed each other more, we don’t know of it.
Grievously, finding comfort, connection, and the kind of intimacy that heals doesn’t always feel easy on a good day, never mind during global upheaval.
We live in an individualistic American culture that has weaponized and vilified the state of being in great need, the idea of being needy. Certainly, against own ourselves and also at times judgmentally towards each other.
How Mental Illness Affects Family Members: A Personal Journey
His body was braced for attack and perched in a squatting position, it’s weight supported from behind by a closet door. His green eyes were wild and searching for invisible attackers until they finally focused on me. I knew he had access to a gun, just inside the closet door he was guarding.