Me too! I just wanted to bring up the fact that sometimes it can take a while to find the thing that works - I was seeing a lot of people saying that their first try or two didn't work, so now they just "deal"... that makes me sad, because me just "dealing" with it did not look a lot like functioning...

CBT, meditation and exercise are all good ways to improve anxiety. For me, I had to do a course of medication treatment before I felt comfortable enough to try those things, so you may want to play around and find the thing that works for you.

Mild rant about the hang-wringing nature of the coverage of a "drug dependent nation" ahead:

I am a huge fan of language-based tattoos! It sounds like it's a meaningful one for you, so you should go for it!

Headmasters usually report to the board of directors. You would have had to complain above his head (or, more accurately, you probably could have gotten your parents to, because BoDs at schools are far more likely to listen to parents...) Someone's gotta hire the headmasters, right? So that means someone can fire…

He's doing it for purely political reasons. He's been very clear about his views on the matter in the past, and I'm quite sure that if he thought he could get away with it, he'd make some movement to enact his views. But he knows that it would cause a political uproar, and the thing that Stephen Harper cares most…

My theory is that the repub wonks' thinking on the subject goes along the lines of "they purty. huh huh huh."

As Discord88 mentions, it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. It's hard to expect a for-profit venture to be preoccupied with the gendered depictions of mental illness. I've seen some non-profits doing ad campaigns that are addressing this stigma, which will hopefully work to break down some of this crap.

That's a huge issue in psychiatric treatment. It's hard to find a way to cover the therapy end of mental health treatment. Even in Canada, psychiatrists are essentially drug therapy maintenance systems; they don't have the funding to give everyone the therapy that's required, so it's all stop-gap. Most therapy is done…

Whoo, I just finished that ride. I had to do it that way because the geniuses who make Pristiq (geniuses if what they're aiming for is making stopping the drug damn near impossible) make it in only 2 doses and as extended release capsule; if you cut the capsule in half, you get the dose all at once instead of what is…

However, you may have not meant to, but you have perfectly illustrated the feminist principle that Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.

Yeppers: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/lululemons-ayn-rand-bag-irks-some-others-shrugged/article4200710/

Wilson got his start in Vancouver. There is a lot of fucked up anti-Asian sentiment there, and people seem to think it's okay for them to say because they "live in a global city," they're "just being cosmopolitan" and "it's not like I'm a small town person living somewhere where everyone is white; that makes what I'm…

There are a few SSRIs that are good at managing anxiety on a daily basis - they aren't sedatives, they're working with the serotonin receptors in the brain. Apparently there is some research done into the idea that overly anxious people don't have as many serotonin receptors as the average person, and a few month…

Apparently it's a fairly common thing for women to deal with anxiety issues in their mid-twenties. The talk therapist I'm seeing for the same issues you seem to be dealing with mentioned that it's a fairly common time for women to start seeing anxiety symptoms that impact their lives - I'm like you in that I've always…

I'm not on the autism spectrum, but I am in the education field (with a focus on "special education" - hate that term), so I feel I can speak to your concerns about public school and lowered expectations.

You said everything I was thinking, but far more eloquently than I probably could have. My comment was going to be, "WTF are you forgetting that rape happens?!?!?!?!" So, thank you for being articulate. I would have just raged. I'm replying to help bump your comment up.

Hey, to each their own. I thought he looked so perfect with dark hair, that when I saw him with ginger-ish, I was ready to bitch-slap whatever awful stylist did that thing to his beautiful self. Turns out I wanted to bitch-slap genetics...

LW #3 - Good for you for realizing that this isn't the kind of thing you can help with. If your roommate's family can't/won't help, it's time to start thinking about social services. Without knowing how old everyone in the picture is, the early/mid twenties can be when some mental health stuff starts coming to the…

Poor Benedict. God made that face for dark hair, and then his light, ginger-ish locks just get in there and mess everything up.