A Colourful Mind focusses on all things mental health and leading a healthy and positive lifestyle to enhance your ongoing recovery with mental illness diagnoses. Anyone is welcome here as this is home to lonely souls who need encouragement, a confessional for free expression, a safe environment with no judgements and a place of knowledge for those of you who wish to feed your cells with information never brought to your attention in the past. Together we can change mental illness into mental wellness.
Why I started the blog
My fears drove me to create this blog. I stumbled across this quote by Ricky Martin “You just have to get rid of fear and confront the world. Look at yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, ‘I love you and nothing will destroy you and you’re not going to fall”. Because of these words, my blog is starting to blossom. I know from experience that the thought of living a healthy, full life as a victim of mental illness may seem but a dream. Through this blog I hope I can change that mentality, not only for you but for myself as well. In our stigmatized society mental illness is misunderstood. I hope for this blog to put you at ease if need be. I hope you find solutions on how to better yourself and manage your condition/s. I hope you feel at home and find a sense of belonging and I hope you always remember that you are not alone.
Meet the author
Mental illness has hindered my abilities and freedom in ways I could never have imagined possible. As a young child “fitting in” resulted in several failed attempts due to my unconventional behavioral mannerism. My battle with mental illness has been an unpleasantly erratic experience for the past 7 years. At the age of 17 my diagnosis of bipolar disorder type-1 among other mental illnesses came to light after having spent 3 weeks in a psychiatric facility.
Although I wasn’t too certain of the impact these diagnoses had on my inner-child until now, it never once occurred to me that perhaps my conditions are spiraling out of control, getting worse by the day, affecting my frontal cortex every time I have an episode which causes my brain size to grow a centimeter or so bigger each time and gets me hospitalized every 3 months or so, getting my medication altered so often all I can think about half the time is….well.
To continue my point, it wasn’t until now that I realized perhaps all the points stated above are quite probably because “You have not accepted that you have bipolar”, said my psychiatrist during yet another consultation which felt rather futile at the time. Incorrect. The truth is that in my way I have accepted my diagnoses. 100%. The part I have difficulty dealing with daily is FEAR. Fear of a possible extreme depressive episode that’ll last 2 years. What kind of mother will I be? Will anyone going through rapid cycling be there to share their experiences when my shrinks fail me? they’ve never been there before though. Will I ever be at ease? Is this really it? I fear my mental illness will take charge of who I am for as long as I live.
The Bigger Picture
As a South African resident I have been in search of a South African Blog that would resonate with my battles for years but I struggled, literally. All I came across were organisational blogs and they were not very helpful. Instead of feeling uplifted and empowered I felt worse off than I was to begin with. The fact of the matter is that there aren’t many South African Mental Health Blogs and this is most likely due to our developmental structures which have heavy density on measures which are not accessed at the present moment as well as those that are still in the process of validation on mental health support and awareness in both upper and lower class categories. A Colourful Mind is a new mental health platform in South Africa to take mental health awareness and education to the next level.
Welcome to the family x
Disclaimer: Please bear in mind that the information on this website is of a pure subjective nature as I am not a qualified medical practitioner, psychologist, or psychiatrist. The information provided in this blog is not intended to substitute professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment that can be received from a professional. All responsibility and risk for the use of information received is concluded and acknowledged by the users of A Colourful Mind.
Any use of the material on A Colourful Mind is prohibited without my consent. Material on A Colourful mind is original and may not be used in any form be it to generate revenue or not. Copyright© 2018 A Colourful Mind, Pontsho Sharon MaKgare
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