Polyamory on Purpose Archive

Category: Mental Health

  • Depressive Disorders and Polyamory

    Apologies for the late post. I had this typed up and ready to go yesterday, and then the internet gremlins ate it. Took me until this morning to be able to rewrite it. This post and others discussing specific mental disorders will reference the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Psychiatry and Psychology, Edition Five (DSM-V).…

  • Poly Advice for the Mentally Ill: “Be With Your Emotions”

    Sorry for the late post today. I thought I had a draft saved for the next poly fiction list, but apparently not. Depression messing with my head, I guess. So, today I’m finally going to take a look at some of the standard poly advice and how it applies (or more often doesn’t) to those…

  • Polyamory and Mental Illness Blog Series

    Polyamory and Mental Illness (Guest post by Clementine Morgan) Facts About Mental Illness for Poly Partners Opening Up About Mental Illness How Can I Support my Mentally Ill Poly Partner? (Part 1) How Can I Support my Mentally Ill Poly Partner? (Part 2) A Rant: “I Know I am Being Irrational Right Now” When Polyamory…

  • Living with Depression

    I hadn’t meant to start introducing the different mental illnesses yet. I hadn’t meant to write this post this week. But for reasons that will hopefully be obvious it is the only post I could write. Here then is a look at depression from the inside. Depression is hell. Depression is a different hell for…

  • When Mental Illness and Polyamory Collide (Part 1)

    The Complexity of Mental Illness and Polyamory In some ways, mental illness and polyamory actually go very well together. The larger support network can be a huge benefit for someone dealing with mental illness, while the increase in available support also means that no one person gets overwhelmed trying to support the mentally ill partner…

  • A Rant: “I Know I am Being Irrational Right Now”

    Some 7 years ago (give or take) I was sitting in a room with three other people in my poly network. My PTSD and anxiety had been severely triggered, I was not thinking clearly, I was feeling jealous and persecuted. Long experience with my own mental illnesses allowed me to recognize that what I was…

  • How Can I Support my Mentally Ill Poly Partner? (Part 2)

    Part 1 Learn Our Cues When my anxiety gets bad I start rocking in my seat. Just moving forward and back, forward and back, while I type or read, eat or chat with friends. It’s a little idiosyncrasy that can tell you a lot about my mental state. After six years living with him, I…

  • How Can I Support my Mentally Ill Poly Partner? (Part 1)

    Watching someone you love suffer sucks, and if we are being totally honest, in a lot of ways it sucks even more when that suffering spills over and messes with your own life, which mental illness has a bad tendency to do. Even worse, with mental illness there so often seems to be nothing you…

  • Opening Up About Mental Illness

    This week we’re going to look at the whens and hows of telling poly partners about mental illness. If you don’t have mental illness yourself, stick around because we are also going to be talking about the best ways to respond when a partner tells you about their mental illness. Opening Up About Mental Illness…

  • Facts About Mental Illness for Polyamorous Partners

    Before we get into the intersection of mental illness and polyamory I want to take a look at a few facts about mental illness. This post is primarily written for the poly partners of people dealing with mental illness, but will be generally useful to anyone interested in the basics of mental illness. What is…