How Is Your Mental Health?

Image from Art Therapy Blog

According to the World Health Organisation more than 450 million people in the world suffer from mental disorders and 80% of this number remain untreated.  The numbers are quite astonishing, however, how would we recognise our own behavioural signs that all is not well and how would we determine if a loved one had a mental health problem or simply a strong/eccentric personality?

These Spiritual Window Shoppers

Thank Rumi It’s Friday.

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? “Nowhere.”
What did you have to eat? “Nothing much.”

Even if you don’t know what you want,
buy _something,_ to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

Love, Marriage and Tales of Regret

We’re often told by wiser and successful people to never regret anything.  However, do our regrets make us human?  Does living by someone else’s mantra damage us psychologically?  Whilst I can’t think of any regrets in my life so far I often do wonder at the life I might have had if I had gone down a certain path…If I hadn’t ended a relationship, if I had studied another subject at university and so on.

Heaven And Other Fairytales

Professor Stephen Hawking declared that heaven was a fairytale for people who are afraid of the dark and there is no such thing.  In an interview with The Guardian he also told us what we should do with ourselves

Look For Me In Rainbows

Dear Diary,

Coping with the death of a parent is one of the most difficult things to come to terms with in life. Yesterday, I attended a funeral where two teenage children buried their mother. Every now and again the fragility of life hits you and this was one of those days.

Clash of the Titans

Recently, I have been listening to peers talk about their ill fated relationships with their mother-in-laws. In each circumstance, I am speaking to modern, educated brides who have quite traditional mother-in-laws. Their worlds are clashing and they are struggling to keep hold of and impart their values.

Women Who Run With The Wolves

One of my best friends gave me this wonderful book by Clarissa Pinkola- Estes and it is a book that I dip in an out of every year.

Self help would be an unjust description of Women Who Run With The Wolves but that’s where you’ll find it in the bookshops.  The objective of the book is to reaffirm the trust relationship