Hi, my name is (also) Olivia and I’m here to talk about college and my freshman year experience. My first semester of college was cut short by a week because of a trip to the Crisis Response Center at Pennsylvania Hospital - that’s like the emergency room for mental health. Luckily, I was not hospitalized… Continue reading The College Process
Sorry for the hiatus, folks, and a million thanks to Katie for lending her talents to the site in the meantime. If you haven’t read what she wrote a few days ago, go here to check it out before reading this. Truth be told, the hate comments got to me a little more than they… Continue reading Consensus
When the real world is too much to handle and I find myself needing to soothe an onslaught of anxieties, or if I’m simply in need of some familiar background noise, I escape to a special place in my heart called Stars Hollow. It, of course, is not a real place, but the fictional town… Continue reading A Safe Haven Called Stars Hollow
UPDATE: She responded! I won't bother showing them, they're petty. I do want to thank everyone for making this my most successfully viewed article on the blog, since its inception. It's really important that we shed light on harassing behavior. I'm not going to write any more about this subject, but I appreciate all of… Continue reading My hate comments (UPDATED)
For my whole life, I’ve been the mom friend. Lots of people describe themselves this way. I’ve long been the good influence friend, the alcohol and drug free one who obeyed all traffic signs and only crossed at the crosswalk. It’s said that with every mental disorder, there is a degree of sensibility, and the… Continue reading I’m So OCD: Inflated Sense of Responsibility
Anyone who knows me knows, too, that aside from my parents’ apartments in the Connecticut suburbs, I call a few acres in the middle of the lush woods of Vesuvius, Virginia, home. In a similar manner, I call the mental hospital I’ve spent the most time at my home, too. I was inspired to make… Continue reading Nature and Therapy
I’ve recently been diagnosed with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It’s somewhat common in its form of PMS, but more severe. In my case, I only experience one kind of premenstrual symptom. No cramps or irritability for me. Instead, I am intensely, cripplingly hopeless and desperate for a week. It’s a pattern I’ve been noticing for a… Continue reading I’m So OCD: Powerlessness
Boy, am I lucky. I’ve been privy to some of the most elite treatment centers in the country. My family may not be particularly well off, but I happen to live in a geographic area that allows for my placement in the best programs. When I was sent to the emergency room, on three occasions… Continue reading Wealth and Mental Health
Have you ever thrown some food up while sick and been, later in life, unable to stomach that food? Every time you are near that food, you feel nauseous. One pre-middle school summer, I ate hundreds of raspberries from the bushes around my local pool, and upon throwing them up one day, I was henceforth… Continue reading Trauma, Associative Loss, and Harry Potter
I knew a family, once, in which both of the parents came from privileged financial backgrounds and met at Harvard. Fast forward to today, they bask in unimaginable and wasteful wealth. Oblivious to the privilege they bear, they have a personal driver on call and a room in their mansion that can’t even be entered,… Continue reading College Admissions and Mental Illness