Is it motherhood or mental illness that makes me so anxious about my child? My daughter is two and a half, and I'm learning that oftentimes toddlers can be more difficult to deal with than infants. She's very mobile and vocal, and I worry all the time. I know it's natural for parents to worry, but how much anxiety is normal? Just about any thought involving the future makes me nervous. I don't know if every mother feels the same, or if my mental illness intensifies my fears. Maybe you can help me decide if my fears are those of motherhood or mental illness.

Knowing how to give mental health first aid for suicide prevention is important for everyone, but we often don't know how to do it. After graduating from a community college in 2014, I accepted a position as a peer support specialist at a local mental health agency. Prior to this job, I worked at a group home, and the training was very similar -- first aid, CPR, and nonviolent crisis intervention. However, my new position also required Mental Health First Aid, a formal eight-hour course on how to respond to someone in crisis. The Mental Health First Aid intervention can be crucial in suicide prevention and getting someone the appropriate help they need.

Asking for mental health help is hard. Making the decision to move back home and get eating disorder treatment was difficult for me, even though I had known for a long time that something was wrong. I wasn't okay and I finally surrendered. I felt like it was my only choice. I've always been ambitious, and I needed to get my life back on track. At that moment, I wasn't able to do anything. Asking for mental health help was the best thing I could have done.

Pushing the limits of my mental health lets me live an ambitious life, but it comes with a cost. There's so much I want to do, but overloading my schedule sometimes means sacrificing my mental health. I don't mean having a full-on episode of my mental illness, but rather, dealing with breakthrough symptoms that sometimes occur when I'm feeling overwhelmed. I feel like I have to choose between living symptom-free or pursuing my ambitions, so I often find myself pushing the limits of my mental health.

Living with a mental illness leaves me with some painful and embarrassing memories I would rather not revisit. At the same time, they are a part of me I can’t escape. I want my daughter to know about all the twists and turns in my life that brought to where I am today as her mother, so I'll have to tell her some of my embarrassing memories in the future.

I want to share five things I do when I want to get out of a funk. By funk I don’t mean serious depression; I mean a really bad day, recent setback, or maybe even the monotonous routine of everyday life. It’s important to take care of yourself and feel good, especially in mental illness recovery. Here are simple things I do to cheer up and feel refreshed when I need to get out of a funk.

In the past few years, I've developed a crippling fear of driving, way beyond driving anxiety. People who know me now find it hard to believe that I used to drive every day in Los Angeles traffic. When I was younger, I was fearless. In my early 20s, I lived in Los Angeles, which now feels like a different planet compared to my present-day home in Toledo. I never had a fear of driving when I was younger and I'm hoping that my motivations to succeed in business will continue to help me overcome this specific phobia.

Is crying therapeutic for mental illness recovery? Crying can be used as an expressive mechanism to release inner turmoil. It can also be a sign of trauma and holding on to negative emotions. There are a variety of feelings and experiences associated with mental illness, and crying can be therapeutic. But, just like with anything, balance and awareness are two essential features that can help you decide how much crying is therapeutic for you.

The motivation for recovery from mental illness depends on the individual, so it is important to find reasons in your life to stay motivated. Recovery can be a long and bumpy road, but those reasons will give your journey purpose. Setting goals can give you something to look forward to and keep your life moving forward. Here are some of the reasons I stay motivated in recovery from mental illness.

Your identity with mental illness can hurt your recovery. Many people identify with suffering from a mental illness and it becomes a part of who they are. This identity with their mental illness can hurt their recovery as they become so attached to the mental health label they do not know who they are without it. Being depressed, anxious, or mentally unwell in any capacity is how they know and see themselves. They cannot fully recover because they are carrying this part of themselves so close, they cannot or don’t know how to let it go.