I work on a telephone support line at a psych hospital as a volunteer once a week, and most of the callers have mental health Dx. The vast majority of our callers are so consumed by their illness and wrapped up in it, that they have no life. I think it's all too easy to get wrapped up in a mental health diagnosis and become defined by it. This is something I try to avoid personally. Yeah, most of my volunteer activities are MH related but I enjoy them, and they're about helping people, not about me. I'm also studying music pretty seriously and I've taken up knitting as a hobby. I'm unemployed at the moment which is driving me nuts, but I'm job hunting and hope to be working by Sept.

But it's a balancing act - I have to be conscious of my own needs and self care to keep my MH healthy, which involves meds and therapy and my alcoholism in my remission which involves more treatment. Plus I'm in a CBT group for social anxiety at the moment. Sometimes it feels like my life revolves around therapy, but I know that that's a temporary state.

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