Laura Enridge Zera's Blog, page 5
September 16, 2014
Depression as a Dinner Table Topic
This week, I’m using my airplane-exit-row hands to direct you over to Matthew Peter’s blog. A fellow mental health services consumer and wellness advocate, Matt has been an important voice in the conversation and education around dual diagnosis (which he wrote about on my website back in June). I’m grateful that he’s created space for …
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September 9, 2014
Travel: Marble Canyon, British Columbia
We often hear that the journey is as important as the destination. That adage proved itself truer than ever last week while driving from Calgary, Alberta to Fairmont Hot Springs, British Columbia and we killed the ignition for a spell at Marble Canyon. From the road, it’s as inauspicious as a regular rest stop, but …
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August 26, 2014
Tips and Tools for the Sensory Defensive, Part I
A few weeks ago, I wrote about what it means to be sensory defensive. The basic definition, as provided by Dr. Sharon Heller in Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight, is this: “sensory defensiveness is a condition that encompasses a constellation of symptoms, including tension, anxiety, avoidance, stress, anger, and even violence, that result …
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August 12, 2014
Travel: Leavenworth, Bavaria’s Cutesy American Cousin
When bored urban planning committees “seek to revitalize,” places like Leavenworth are born. What this means for the easily distracted is that all we have to do is drive two hours northeast of Seattle, and gesundheit, we’ve hit Bavaria-land, a place where beer and sausages reign supreme. It’s where even the banks, gas stations and …
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July 29, 2014
PNWA 2014 Writers’ Conference: When Zen Sets In
This July’s PNWA Writers’ Conference marked my third go, and while I learned six cups of coffee, three glasses of wine, a gallon of water, two Advil and a 90-minute “recovery” massage worth of stuff, the most important bit of enlightenment from it all was this: I’m still in it. What I mean by those …
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July 15, 2014
Mental Health: What Is Sensory Defensiveness?
I’m currently reading a book called Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight by Sharon Heller. Sounds like erotica, I know, but it’s actually about what it’s like to be a sensory defensive person in the world, and how to cope. My coach recommended it a few weeks ago after I told her how spending …
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July 1, 2014
Female Solo Travel in the Digital Age: Just Flipping Go
While the Internet can be given credit for revolutionizing oh-so-many things, one of the biggies is travel. How the heck did we do it, back in the old days? When we relied on outdated, five-pound printed guide books? And made international calls from telephone booth pay phones? (Or, maybe like me, you just “disappeared” for …
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June 16, 2014
Mental Health: Dual Diagnosis and Effective Treatment
The comorbid existence of a mental illness and a substance abuse problem is called “dual diagnosis.” Until recently, I hadn’t read or heard too much about it, beyond its basic definition, but was interested to learn that the condition brings about its own set of treatment considerations. Today, Matthew Peters is here to share his personal experience …
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June 2, 2014
Memoir That Isn’t Memnoir: Tragedy and Levity
Many a memoir covers topics and events of tragedy and trauma; they are about real life, after all, and almost anybody who has ever engaged in a relationship with another two-legged creature is going to have some T&T filed away on their hard drive. (Hopefully they don’t need anything bigger than 500 gigabytes.) Some of …
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May 19, 2014
Travel: TSA Precheck in a Nutshell
Whenever I’m in an airport or about to cross a border, my collectivist cultural outlook goes out the car, plane or train window. Elite status? Yes, please. Fast-pass lane? I’m there. Step on some children’s hands in the process of queue jumping? If I must. (Oh, come on, they’re children, they heal quickly.) There are …
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