Hi there.
You may call me Bunnie. I am a 23 year old female who is recently married. While I am completely happy and content with my life, I still carry a lot of baggage on a daily basis and need somewhere to go to write and vent. My mother is believed to have extreme narcissistic personality disorder and has been diagnosed multiple times with bipolar disorder. However, because of her narcissism, any treatment is slapped away. She cannot maintain a stable lifestyle, a job, and refuses to pay rent. She recently got arrested for exactly that and any other information regarding her is simply my grandparents and I digging around trying to find something out.

My sister, half sister to be exact, is a 19 year old "mother" of two who recently had her children taken from her by DCS and relocated to a loving family trying their best to deal with the cases appropriately and cooperate with her while she gets her life together. However, her priorities and terrible attitude is questionable regardless of what she claims. She has been told to do numerous things all of which she either ignores or makes sure she does the minimum. I would have dismissed all of this a long time ago and moved on with my life if I didn't care so much. I want the best because our mother never provided anything for her. I want my nephews to have a good life and to have their mother. It is these reasons that I have tried to be the appropriate rock, but her attitude and my limited affect on this situation, legally, makes it that much harder.

Every day I struggle with my role in all of this. I want the best for everyone. I want them to get the help they need. But the stress of it all effects my life on a daily basis. My life is great. I have a stable job and my husband and I are starting our own business. I am a photographer and he is a videographer/producer. If we continue on the path that we are on, we will be highly successful.

Which is why I had to find somewhere to turn to vent and give me direction. I need to deal with this appropriately and help who I can where I can without causing more damage than I am helping.

I have had blogs over the years but none that I felt comfortable truly venting in. Nowhere that gave me proper feedback or guidance. I came here because I feel like this is where I can find that. Because I definitely need it.

-HMD

i am CONSTANTLY picking off scabs and pimples on my face and even more so on my back. it's so embarrassing because i have tons of scars on my back and luckily on my face it isn't so bad. but whenever a new pimple or scab appears i pick it right away. i don't know why i do it. i don't even think about it when i am doing it. i don't have any disorders so i don't know if this is one and i want to know if i may have something that needs to be checked out.

My mom wants me to get rid of my scars...But i find i really don't want too. I don't not want to wake up and not see them there on my left shoulder, on my left wrist and my right hip bone. Sick? Very, i know. My own mom looked at me like i was crazy when i told her, which i probably am. No healthy person cuts themselves, that's obvious. Or at least in my case, used too.

I stopped cutting maybe a couple of months before high school graduation but it wasn't due to my mother finding me out. Instead my boyfriend did and made me promise to never do it again, cutting my mother to the punch line. My mom found out a month after him, i believe. She didn't believe me when i told her i stopped, so i gave her the scissors i used to hurt myself. That was my second step to stopping i guess. My third had to be when she got me medicine to take away the scars...but now on the fourth step, actually putting the stuff on, i'm stuck.

I've put it on once or twice but not religiously. I hate the idea of them not being there. They give me comfort and make me feel better. Am i wrong in wanting them there?

I'm not sure what I should do, I had a dream and my therapist was in my dream, by the way the dream was NOT sexual. I am wondering if I should tell him about my dream or not????

Usually people who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse or other forms of addictive behaviors come from a background of abuse or neglect or have experienced some kind of trauma when they were younger. Being in these situations, a child and/or a young person can experience various painful feelings such as fear, helplessness, shame, guilt, sadness and eventually hopelessness. Becoming overwhelmed by these emotions and not having anybody to help them and validate their feelings may lead to them learning to run away and avoid such feelings to protect against pain or become consumed by those feelings and act upon them impulsively. Later in life, they may use substances or engage in addictive and destructive activities to numb those painful feelings. Despite their effort in avoiding these emotions, they are stored implicitly in a deeper level of the brain and will be triggered more often than they may have expected.

These emotions that have been stored in a less conscious part of the brain may not be accessible verbally, but can be found symbolically in images that the person creates. Therefore, the goal of art therapy is to access these hidden and avoided emotions that once had the purpose of protecting the individual, but either have been denied or exaggerated and lost its purpose to rediscover their adaptive qualities.

Images in an art therapy session can simply be composed of a few lines, colors or pictures from a magazine to more elaborate drawings, clay sculptures and other forms of creativity. These images will give an expert art therapist the opportunity to help the recovering person uncover meanings behind the symbolic images, discover more information about oneself than just talking and open many deep thoughts and emotions. Participants in art therapy don’t need to have any skills in art.

Talking about feelings can be very frightening and painful for a person who has been avoiding them for a long time. This person may not even be able to verbally express him/herself, but may be able to express thoughts and feelings about past and present events and situations non=verbally through lines, shapes and pictures. Creating them can become a new form of communication which is less threatening and safer for the recovering person.

Individuals struggling with addiction are usually very judgmental of themselves and are flooded with shame and guilt. Creating art can give them a tangible, concrete perception of their feelings and thoughts and give them the opportunity to observe themselves from a distance which can help them gain a new, less judgmental and more compassionate understanding of self.

Recovering individuals may engage in a simple art project whenever they feel overwhelmed or have an urge to take drugs/alcohol or engage in an addictive activity to distract and sooth themselves. Creating can give them a sense of control over the situation and a tool to accept and manage overwhelming feelings. Using their hands while using art materials such as colored pencils, markers, crayons, clay, paper and scissors can help them release some of their avoided feelings such as anger and lower its intensity, and to sooth and calm themselves when they are anxious.

In general, in art therapy sessions, the recovering person will be given permission and opportunity to experience and express those feelings that he/she has been running away from and avoiding for a long time in a safe and supporting atmosphere, with the presence of an empathic professional psychotherapist /art therapist who will help him/her understand and make sense of those painful feelings, acknowledge and accept them with compassion, reduce their intensity and tolerate them, and finally use them effectively to fulfill their needs and goals.