Everything in my life has always been to the max!  I want sauce on my pasta, it’s gonna be sauce, with some pasta.  If I’m gonna work out, I’m gonna run five miles in the blazing hot sun.  Everything has always been to the utmost extreme and I’ve never been able to temper it.

I even moved to England for a semester abroad in college to a secluded area in the woods to try and “change.”  I was determined to find moderation and thought uprooting myself from New York City to a calm rural atmosphere I’d learn moderation.  Not…so…much.  I was isolated and bored out of my mind.  I came back the same: still an extremist, still walking hard and talking fast, still overdoing everything, still the same.

Co-dependency crosses all lines of relationships.  Whether it is family, friends or lovers, co-dependency can be really scary as the vicious cyclical nature of it freezes an individual’s ability to move forward in life which disallows personal growth and independence.  When you become dependent on another person, or you get caught in-between total autonomy and co-dependency, that routine of dependency disallows you to break away and stand on your own two feet.  Let’s take a look at one relationship in particular:

Parent & Child

A lot of parents struggle with finding a balance to support their child, or cut them off.  When is it time to let go?  Do you stop financially supporting your child when he or she turns 18 years old and goes to college, or when they graduate college, or when they move out of the house?  What if they move back in the house; do you financially help them if they can’t find a job?  A lot of families are dealing with a generation of children that are moving back home.  For whatever reason that causes this occurrence, it presents itself a difficult situation for both the child and the parent.

Case in point, things get sticky when your child is mentally ill. 

Stuart Smalley: “You’re good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like you…?” Ah… not always.

No matter what industry you are in, you are bound to come across office politics.  The word “politics” in and of itself connots a level of malarkey.  So, when you find yourself caught up in the BS of office politics here are three things to consider to rid yourself from potential strife:

1. Self Preservation

Try your best to stay away from people at work that give you a bad vibe.  If a co-worker doesn’t like you, you will feel it, either with passive aggressive tendencies or flat out rude behavior.  You don’t need to deal with someone else’s issues so don’t make them yours and do your best to physically and mentally ignore them and stay away as much as you can.

Every holiday season I find myself becoming more and more isolative.  And every holiday I know it is coming and do my best to manage it. 

Sometimes the challenge is to force myself to go to the holiday parties with a happy face and find a way to get through it.  You can’t miss Thanksgiving dinner, and even if you don’t want to go, you don’t want people to think you are depressed or not doing well.  When you are the person in the family with a mental illness, every now and then you feel the pressure to appear fine, when really inside you are not fine.  So, here are a few tips on how to handle those dreaded Holiday Parties:

The Holiday Party Survival Guide

Whether it is an office party or family function sometimes you have to force yourself to go to be politically correct or to avoid being a red flag and appear like you are in a depressed state.  Try and make things easy on yourself.  Here goes…

Don’t dip your pen in the company ink?  A well known cautionary tale to warn people not to engage in an office romance, however, there are a lot of people having office romances that turn into long term healthy relationships.  But we also hear or experience the horror stories as well.

So, where do you weigh in on the does and don’t of engaging in an office romance.  Some points to consider…