Hi Anon, 

Your ask warmed my heart. It is so wonderful that you want to support your mentally ill partner no matter what. I think one of the best ways is to inform yourself and research schizophrenia.

Here are some resources that might help you out:

60 Tips for supporting loved ones with schizophrenia spectrum disorders or any other MI

9 things not to say to someone with mental illness

Want to help a friend with a mental illness or disorder? This post provides some great tips.

Schizophrenia: A Masterpost

Schizophrenia & Schizophrenia Spectrum resources

Psychotic experiences: explains psychotic experiences, including possible causes and how you can access treatment and support. Includes tips for helping yourself, and guidance for friends and family.

Occultism Magazine is excited to announce that we are now taking submissions for our April 2020 issue!

Theme: Productivity

Submission Deadline: March 31, 2020

Publication Date: April 30, 2020 

Submission Form: https://forms.gle/znfgXsK4tfXPhVXc6

Please consider submitting your unpublished content as this is a wonderful opportunity to expand the reach that your original content has! If chosen, it will be featured in this issue of Occultism Magazine with full credits alongside other chosen work created by talented and generous individuals. 

As said previously by founder Primrose, we are looking for personal essays, spells and rituals, devotional art and writing, poetry, fiction, informational articles, interviews, community news pieces, and more! As long as the piece primarily focuses on the occult, witchcraft, magic, paganism, philosophy, divination, astrology, and/or metaphysics, we want to see it! Our guidelines are relatively relaxed to allow your natural creativity to flow freely. However, we expect high quality pieces, not first drafts. Please ensure your piece follows the guidelines below before submitting it. Pieces that do not follow these guidelines will NOT be accepted. Please try to keep your submissions related to the theme, but if they are not, feel free to submit it anyways. We might just find a place to utilize it!

Here is a quick reminder of our submission guidelines:

1. You may submit up to three (3) written pieces and/or four (4) art pieces per submission period. Written pieces must be between one and ten pages in length, single spaced. You MUST include your name with your piece.

2. Occultism Magazine is firmly against all forms of bigotry and exclusion. As such, we will not publish any materials that endorse bigotry and/or include hate speech.

3. We fully welcome pieces written by members of closed or initiatory practices, however, we will not publish materials that endorse or include cultural appropriation.

4. If your piece includes potentially triggering content (such as mentions or discussions of blood, death, rape, graphic violence, or sexual content) please provide a content/trigger warning when submitting your piece.

5. Occultism Magazine strives to be an educational resource. As such, if your piece is inspired or informed by any outside sources, please provide a brief bibliography at the end of your piece. Include the title, author, and link (if online) to the sources used.

6. Mistakes can certainly happen, but please ensure that the pieces that you submit are fully edited and proofread. While our editors will happily correct minor errors, we will not accept pieces that are clearly unedited early drafts.

7. We will only publish original writing and art. If you submit a piece that has been created by someone other than you, you will be blacklisted from submitting to Occultism Magazine in the future. Please only submit previously unpublished material; you may publish your piece elsewhere after it has been published to Occultism Magazine.

8. You must be 18+ to submit to Occultism Magazine. We are currently unable to offer monetary compensation for our contributors at this time.

If you have any questions, you can email us at [email protected], message us at @occultism​, or message me at @witchofapollo​! 

Want to read our first issue? You can find our first issue here!

-Aesh, Editor-in-Chief

Here are some things you will find useful!

You Feel Like Shit – An Interactive Self Care Guide is a great place to start if you’re having a bad episode and need help calming down (this is good for troubleshooting your mental health, but it does not contain interpersonal support).

Here are some exercises you can do that helps to keep you in the present: grounding techniques, mental grounding exercises, physical grounding exercises, soothing grounding exercises.

This is a guide on how to make a comfort box.

Safety plan cards are a great idea to keep in your wallet or comfort box which reminds you of your coping mechanisms and people who you can call to be safe.

Pleasant event scheduling is a very simple technique where you do at least 3 pleasant events per week so your life if filled with happy enjoyable moments. Here is also a Pleasant Activities List where you can rate how enjoyable you find an activity. Don’t worry about the scoring – this is just a way to help you gauge which activities to include that will help the most. 

Mood Gym is an interactive website that allows you to learn cognitive behaviour therapy skills for preventing and coping with depression.

This is absolutely normal and I commend you for doing the best thing and keep going! I recommend having something pleasant to do before and after. Be nice to yourself and eventually your body and mind will associate the pleasant thing with your therapy session.

Pleasant event scheduling is a very simple technique where you do at least 3 pleasant events per week so your life if filled with happy enjoyable moments.

Here is also a Pleasant Activities List where you can rate how enjoyable you find an activity. Don’t worry about the scoring – this is just a way to help you gauge which activities to include that will help the most.

This is a guide on how to make a comfort box.

You Feel Like Shit – An Interactive Self Care Guide is a great place to start if you’re having a bad episode and need help calming down (this is good for troubleshooting your mental health, but it does not contain interpersonal support).

Hey there Anon, 

I have BPD and I understand where you are coming from. I know it is hard because you know that having BPD doesn’t excuse you from being toxic but the line of being toxic and not being toxic is blurred. I recommend keeping a journal so that you can go back and analyze your actions from a more detached point of view so that you can better understand what is happening. I also recommend unfollowing or blocking blogs that are spreading that rhetoric about BPD. Seeing that over and over again is hurtful and dangerous. 

Here are our other resources for BPD:

This post lists ten guidelines for families, partners, and friends, of people with BPD.

This is a toolbox with tips and hints for people with personality disorders.

National Education Alliance Borderline Personality Disorder [NEABPD]

PsychCentral – BPD symptoms and general information

BPD Central

NAMI – BPD overview and resources

BPD Demystified

Healing From BPD (contains chatroom)

DailyStrength.org Personality Disorders Support Group

Amazing Powerpoint PDF of all the DBT skill

Hi there!

I want to start that it’s very possible that friend has other stuff going on, and you aren’t necessarily being annoying. Try giving them time.I’m not saying this to make you feel silly or annoying; it’s a 100% valid concern. 

It personally sounds like someone would ignore you for soooo long just for a tiny thing like that, not at least with my personal experience. It is also worth straight up asking them, “Hey, did I do something to upset you for you to not talk to me for months.” Perhaps they will explain what is going on.

If this friend hasn’t talked to you for months and they don’t respond to that, maybe it is time to move on. It’s painful to say, but perhaps they have moved on. Here are some great resources on boundaries:

10 ways to build emotional boundaries

Creating emotional freedom

Healthy personal boundaries

Emotional boundaries

Here are some great relationship (not necessarily romantic) resources:

Communicating Effectively, a collection of useful PDFs on how to communicate efficiently.

All Your Friendship Questions, Answered is a collections of asks, answers, and tips,  about friendship.

How to Deal With Losing a Friend

Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the situation to say whether or not the friend is displaying narcissistic traits.

Hi there!

Here are some great resources on setting up boundaries. They are more to do with current people bothering you, but I feel as if they will still be useful for you:

10 ways to build emotional boundaries

Creating emotional freedom

Healthy personal boundaries

Emotional boundaries

Mental Support Community, a forum to talk about bullying in any form and how it affects your life.

5 strategies to help teens cope with bullying

Here are so general mental health resources to help:

You Feel Like Shit – An Interactive Self Care Guide is a website that will take you through steps to feeling okay during times when you don’t feel well.

Superbetter is an interactive way to focus on recovery from pretty much anything. It was created by a video game designer when she was recovering from a traumatic brain injury and can be used to help with recovering from various mental or physical health issues.

Mood Gym is an interactive website that allows you to learn cognitive behaviour therapy skills for preventing and coping with depression. The techniques can additionally be applied to a range of mental health issues.

Help Guide, a site containing articles to help understand, help numbers,  “tool kits”, and self help.

Mental Help, a site that has basic information, resources, articles, and a list of books that might be helpful.

Annnnd lastly, here are some resources to cope with flashbacks:

Coping with flashbacks

AboutHealth tells you about coping with flashbacks.

Here are some tips and tricks on coping with flashbacks.

Hi Anon!

Getting a therapist is often the first step to helping yourself! In the times that you are questioning yourself, think about what made you reach out for help in the first place. Also, even if it is decided that therapy might not be for you, the therapist won’t be angry or disappointed. They will still point you in the best directions because that is their job.

If you don’t know what to say, write out what is happening. What are the life circumstances at this time? What are stressers? When did it begin? Is there anything that helps or make it worse? Do you see any patterns?

If you do not know what to talk about, tell the therapist, and they will ask you questions!

50 Signs of Good Therapy.

Having issues with therapy? Here are 50 Warning Signs of Questionable Therapy.

21 Tips for getting the most out of each therapy session.

6 Ways to open up to your therapist.

What should happen in a session.

5 Tips on how to talk about yourself in therapy.

7 things to do during your first therapy appointment.

Here is a video demonstrating what a first therapy session may look like made by a mental health professional.