A Healthy Diet

We are glad to have recently added a page to our “Topics” section that discusses a healthy diet and also reviews some information about nutritional supplements. This is a huge topic, and none of us are dietitians, but it is an important issue and so, with the caveat that we approach the topic from the standpoint of what helps people …

New Home – Redux

This past week, we spent another couple of days trying to figure out why the site was suddenly inaccessible for several long periods of time. Some of you may recall that we only recently moved to a new web hosting service and it was my expectation that this new service, with its dedicated server, would provide us with better responsiveness for the …

Stay Involved

Stay involved! We have been hosting a much more active forum these past couple of weeks. As I replied to some posts and read others, I realized that we have some members of the forum who have not participated in quite a while. I would like to try to ensure that the membership of the forum consists of people who are actively engaged …

Happy Birthday MoodSurfing

Time flies when you are having fun! It is hard to believe, but this site has been up and running for two years. And growing and evolving. Right now we have four active authors. We have a forum where people can receive support, get advice, give advice, and generally talk about the challenges faced when you try to “live creatively …

Welcome Lyndsey to the Site

I am very happy to welcome a new writer to the blog. Her name is Lyndsey, and I will be posting her first entry in a couple of hours. I think that you will find that she adds a unique perspective on what it takes to “live creatively with moods.” Here is what she wrote as an introduction – My …

Spring Means Change – MoodSurfing Update

Spring is in full bloom here in Northern California. Great, sunny, warm days followed by spring storms with clean crisp air and the vibrant greens of new grass and leaves.Perhaps because it is Spring, this has been a wonderful time of growth for the website. We have a record number of visitors. We recently moved the site to a much better server that should be …

Update: We’re Back!

Phew, it has been a busy week… I have spent more quality time with tech support for HostGator (the new hosting company) and GoDaddy (the old hosting company) than I have spent with my family… sigh. However, the good news is that (cross fingers) it looks as though we finally have made the transfer and gotten everything working again. Now …

Apps for MoodSurfing

While you are waiting for the official MoodSurfing app, you might want to check out the recently updated “Links and Apps” page on this blog. There I write about other websites with useful information, but also about apps for Android and iPhone that can help you create calm by adding a mindfulness practice, or track your moods, so that you …

Comments and Connections

The “forum” page seems to be generating renewed interest. This has sparked me to reevaluate how we manage all of the ways that you (the readers) interact with this site. I have never been all that happy with the “Comments” function. At the bottom of each post there is a place where you can post comments (I have to approve …

Blog for Mental Health 2014

One of the benefits of blogging is that you run into interesting people and ideas. If you blog on WordPress you also get regular information about others who are doing the same thing. This past week I learned about a group of bloggers who are all working to reduce stigma and increase understanding of mental health – the Blog for …

Shame and Self-Disclosure

There is a lively discussion in our forum about self-disclosure. A couple of forum members are pushing the boundaries by talking honestly about their bipolar when the topic comes up in conversation. So far their experiences are largely positive. The interchange on the forum reminded me of a book I bought for my son when he was being teased. The …

A Worthwhile Project

A good friend of this blog, and a wonderful woman who has energy, talent and a commitment to making a difference, recently sent me an update on a project that she is working on to develop a film and website to reduce the stigma of bipolar. She and her team have put up “beta” website announcing the project. And she …

Online Resources: Links and Apps Update

The very useful listserve of the Northern California Cognitive Behavioral Therapy association has had a great thread about favorite apps for mental health. We took advantage of the opportunity to update the page entitled “Links and Apps” with some more options. Here is an unedited list of the favorites from that group… note that this list is heavy on iPhone …

Diagnosis

I just finished updating the “Diagnosis” page under our “Topics” section. Of course, there is much more to be said on this subject, but I hope what I was able to convey was a useful overview of the distinction between unipolar and bipolar depression. I would love to get feedback from you. This topic is one that is especially difficult …

A Farewell from Emma Swayze

Hello all, I am sad to say that the time has come for me to say goodbye to creating new posts on the moodsurfing blog, for today is my last day interning for Dr. Forster. I will be studying abroad in Scotland for a semester and then returning to Boston College for my junior year. I am extremely grateful for …

Suzanne Alexandra Black

I am excited to be working with Suzanne Alexandra Black again. Suzanne is a psychologist who is an expert in bipolar moods. She is a brilliant woman who has an active Skype practice with patients on several continents and she divides her time between Paris and New York. Over the course of the next couple of months I hope to have …

Men at Work

I have to apologize for the distribution (to those of you who subscribe to this blog) of several nonsensical posts this morning. Some of you were concerned that somehow this site had been hacked. No worries. What actually happened was much more prosaic. We have hired a couple of programmers to create a better system of indexing our posts so …

Moodsurfing Site Update: NEW Topics Page

The Moodsurfing website is extremely excited about some new developments. This new development is the addition of a new Topics page. The new Topics page is a place for organizing some of the content on this site around topics that are of particular interest and relevance to people who are trying to live creatively with moods. The pages will roughly …