The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

I Will Accomplish a GREAT THING or Die Trying
Thursday - Entry 32: I have finished the research part of my blog book. This is important because I foolishly stated in March that I would not cut my hair until I finished my book. I had received a particularly bad haircut at that time and wished I had gone to my regular hair stylist. Unfortunately, she was a bit more expensive than I could afford after three months of illness, so I thought I’d give myself an incentive. Then I got into a car accident which totaled my minivan, scrambled my brains, and gave me some prolapsed disks in my back & neck. Three months later, the only thing I had accomplished with this nobl...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - July 5, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Journaling Writing Source Type: blogs

Asking Siri for Help with Suicide
Recently Apple has made changes to Siri to address the problem of suicide. Let’s take a look at those changes and see if they will be effective.Using Siri can be fun and even useful, but one of the downsides to Siri is that everything you ask her is sent to a server out across the Internet through the wires, switches, and tubes where your question is parsed by Apple’s servers before an answer is sent back to you. This is a downside because the “conversation” is often a stilted one like those you have on walkie-talkies. You need to keep your query simple so Siri won’t be confused, and you have to wait for her to g...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - June 21, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Depression Source Type: blogs

ADHD: Do You Like to Read While You Walk?
I may have been kidding in the above video, but I do like to walk & read at the same time. I especially like to do it when I feel bored and antsy late at night. It's a trick I learned from an ADHD advisor in college. He had found he concentrated best when he was in motion (hence our mutual ADHD love for pacing while talking on the phone), so he would grab his text books and go out to the track and walk around it while studying. I've achieved the same result on treadmills—an activity usually so boring I'd rather have my ears pulled off with dental floss than do even five minutes of it. I found, though, that when equip...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - June 5, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Coping ADHD Source Type: blogs

Fighting Depression: Take a Walk
Monday - Entry 31:Spring has finally arrived like a snail crossing the highway. There have been quite a few near misses, a casualty or two, some serious setbacks, and weeks where I never thought it would make the journey across at all. Fortunately, the snail persevered and I'm typing this on my balcony with comfortable 70°F weather and a cool breeze. Life is good. Unfortunately, I have Depression and life is not always so good. The black mood settles in like a stain and can often require serious scrubbing to remove it. Depression can be treated without medications, but sometimes it requires a lot of work. Then there are...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - May 27, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Coping Journaling Depression Source Type: blogs

ADHD & Depression: Distraction As Therapy
I have the comorbid conditions of ADHD and Depression. And may I say that I despise the word "comorbid". What a gruesome, ghoulish word to hang around people's necks. Leave it to psychologists to come up with terminology that depresses depressives. Because "coinciding" and "overlapping" weren't descriptive enough. But I digress…which is the point of this quick post after all. I have often found my ADHD to be very helpful in treating my Depression. This is because sometimes I can forget I am depressed if the distraction is engrossing enough. In fact, when I discover that I am depressed, I will seek out distractions as ...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - April 18, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Coping Depression ADHD Source Type: blogs

When Were You Diagnosed with ADHD?
Last week Rock Center with Brian Williams had a segment on a mother who was only diagnosed with ADHD after her daughter was discovered to have ADHD. The mother was 42. You can see a clip of the segment here. I'm wondering how common this is with others. I was diagnosed very early. At 3 weeks old my doctor decided I had "hyperkinesis". That could be because I rarely slept and would stand when people held my fingers. My head was too heavy to support, and I flopped it around, but I was standing. The year was 1967. Fifteen years later the term was Attention Deficit Disorder, but I was lucky. I was diagnosed very early. There w...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - April 13, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: ADHD Source Type: blogs

Pitching In for a Good Cause. David Farland Needs Your Help.
I have decided that April is the month I finish my Depression book. I've been working on it long enough, and now that my health is returning to me I would like to make a big push to make up for lost time. I'll still post here throughout the month, but the articles will be shorter than usual. I ask for your patience and support. You can follow my progress on Twitter or Path. Today's post is a departure for me. Somebody I know needs your help, but it's help that might benefit you. An associate of mine, author David Farland, has suffered a family tragedy lately. His son, Ben, had a very severe sports accident that nearly ...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - April 10, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Writing Spinning ADHD Source Type: blogs

I Pushed Through the Stupor of My Brain
Saturday - Entry 30: It may be 6:15am, but I am very pleased with myself. I pushed through the stupor my brain has been under since the accident and finished my freelance assignments. It is such a good feeling. Not only did I complete my freelance work despite my addled mind, but I significantly increased my rate of output. Considering that the first two articles took over three days to complete, getting my output back to less than 30 minutes per article was reason to celebrate. I rewarded myself with an episode of Elementary since I was too wired to sleep. I also did sit-ups, folded laundry, got another load going, ...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - April 7, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Coping Journaling Writing ADHD Source Type: blogs

March Goes Out Lame
Friday - Entry 29: Where to begin? It is Day93. My energy levels seem to be returning, though the deep cough lingers. My lungs still burn as if I had just come down with bronchitis. I am still physically inactive, which is difficult as March goes out like a lamb with warm breezes and sunny days. I hope to go to church this Sunday and brave exposure to friendly, smiling people. If only I wasn't also suffering from a really bad haircut. I must admit. It was a truly bad haircut. Each day I struggle with it to look halfway decent, but it seems to have been cut to enhance all of my cowlicks in the most unflattering ways po...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - March 30, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Journaling Family Source Type: blogs

Can God Help You Go Beyond Blue?
I wanted to share with you a blog that I have been aware of for years. It is called Beyond Blue and is written by author Therese Borchard. I find Therese's exploration of the intersection of faith and depression very interesting even if I don't share the same faith as her. I used to comment there years ago, but found myself drawn into fights with her readers, some of who branded me as "the Secret guy"—named after that once popular book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne—because of my belief that depression can be overcome with positive thinking and recognizing your triggers. Since I am still hypersensitive to psychotrop...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - March 29, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Depression Source Type: blogs

Too Many ADHD Voices in My Head
This article today isn't about juggling multiple assignments, but it is about the downsides of Multi-Irons Syndrome. I discovered I wasn't working with my ADHD, but against it. Because of that, my writing voices were cross-pollinating. How was I working against my AD/HD?My blogs are cheeky yet concise. My novels are whimsical & descriptive. My technical writing is fact filled and sales-speaky. My journals are often pretentious. And my social media writing mood is all over the map. Writers refer to this as voice. Each type of writing has a style, and within that style each author has his or her own unique voice—the so...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - March 29, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Coping Writing ADHD Source Type: blogs

300,000 Unique Readers!
Visitor Map from a Small Slice of a March Day I just wanted to take a moment to mark this event. Today my blog crossed over the 300,000 unique visitor line. Three Hundred Thousand Unique Visitors! I don't count page loads because many of you find my blog then dig through the archives for a while. I'm counting unique individuals from all over the world who have come by to read what I have to say. It's humbling. When I crossed 50,000 in 2007, I thought that was a big deal. When I crossed 100,000 in 2008 I thought that was a big deal, too. Now I don't know what to think. 300,000. Wow. I want to thank all of you for...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - March 28, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Spinning Source Type: blogs

Can an iPhone App Cure Depression?
I was contacted recently by a group taking research data on Depression and turning it into an app. The research was by Harvard scientist, Diego Pizzagalli. Using MRIs and EEGs, he noticed certain parts of the brain light up in response to antidepressants and psychotherapy. If those parts of the brain weren't lighting up, then the treatment wasn't working. So he asked himself, "Is there another way to light up those parts of the brain?" He and a group of app developers formed BrainTracer and created MoodTune, an app that, if played for 15 minutes a day, will replace medical treatments for some people. You can read more abo...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - March 22, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Depression Source Type: blogs

ADHD: Taking Your Nervous Energy Out for a Walk
Never mind that I already went out for a 2 mile walk tonight. My nervous system feels positively oppressed. I need to feel the wind on my face and the ground moving under my feet. The stars fight to be seen above the city lights, but I just tonight found a place to lie down and watch the stars in private. I remember how cool the grass was on my hot skin after my brisk walk, and I look forward to getting worked up like that again. Then I can rest in my new spot, let my eyes adjust to the semi-darkness, and see the stars pop out one by one from the gray sky. But not for long. Soon I'll need to leave stargazing behind and w...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - March 20, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Coping ADHD Source Type: blogs

When Life Tosses a Surprise at Me
Tuesday - Entry 28: The sudden sound of a freight train with rusty wheels filled my living room. I put down my edits and ran to the balcony to see what was making such a loud racket at 3am. I live by a lumberyard complete with train tracks, but have never seen any trains use them in the year and a half I've been here. I assumed they were long abandoned for flatbed trucks—along with the rusted grain silo and weather worn buildings. But there it was backing into the lumberyard. A train! I ran outside to get a better look. Like a little boy I was thrilled to see the train so close to my apartment complex—right on the o...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - March 12, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Tags: Journaling Writing Source Type: blogs