Recovery Diaries In Depth
Welcome to Recovery Diaries In Depth; a mental health podcast that creates a warm, empathic, and engaging space for discussions around mental health, empowerment, and change. Executive Director and podcast host Gabe Nathan brings a unique combination of lived experience with mental health challenges, years of independent mental health and suicide awareness advocacy, and an understanding of the inpatient psychiatric millieu as a former staff member at a psychiatric hospital. This extensive background helps him navigate complex and nuanced conversations with a diverse array of guests, all of whom are vulnerable and engaged; doing their utmost to eradicate mental health stigma through advocacy, storytelling, and open conversation.
Guests who have previously contributed a mental health personal essay read their essays aloud during the podcast and then chat with Gabe about what has changed in their lives since their essays were published on the site. By engaging in deep discussions with people living with mental health challenges like bipolar disorder, trauma histories, addiction issues, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive or eating disorders, Recovery Diaries in Depth further carries out Recovery Diaries' mission to #buststigma by showing people that they are not alone, instead of just telling them. This mental health podcast features guests from all over the world and, while their own personal experiences are unique, the human experience is what unites, inspires, and connects. Subscribe, like, share, and enjoy!
Recovery Diaries In Depth is supported in full by the van Ameringen Foundation.
Episodes
44 episodes
Bipolar Disorder, Love, and Breathless Creativity; Casey Cannizzaro | RDID 220
Casey Cannizzaro is a mental health and addictions clinician and three-time Recovery Diaries author, but he's far, far more than that. Casey's writing on our site-- we encourage you to voraciously devour each of his essays, findable via the lin...
An OCD Therapist (Almost) Missed Her Own OCD; Natalia Aiza's Orthorexia-by-Proxy RDID; 219
Natalia Aiza, LPC, is the founder of Kairos Wellness Collective in Boulder, Colorado. She is educated, well-informed, articulate, empathic, and aware. She's just the kind of person you'd think would be perfectly well-suited to quickly identify ...
All the Pain We Cannot See; Giovanna Errore's Invisible Illness | RDID; 218
They thought she was "just an anxious kid" growing up-- that, other than that, there was nothing really "wrong" with her. But writer and translator Giovanna Errore was suffering in silence; trying like hell to be a functional teenager and then ...
A Fashion Designer with C-PTSD Wears Her Recovery Well; Lilah Velez | RDID; 217
A film is a snapshot in time. When we first met this extraordinary young woman, it was eight years ago. Back then, she was Lilah James, an extraordinarily talented fashion and conceptual designer creating a bold, beautiful collection for her fi...
A Screenwriter with Bipolar Disorder Rewrites His Recovery; Coli Sylla | RDID; 216
Someone once turned to our guest, Coli Sylla, and said to him, “Keep that mental health crap to yourself.” Thankfully, that bullshit didn't fly.Award-winning screenwriter and director Coli Sylla talks about what happens when creativity,...
A Musician Gives Up Alcohol and Finds Himself: Paul Curreri | RDID; 215
It's hard to imagine what you'd do if you're a touring musician whose primary instrument is the guitar, and you start to lose the use of your hands. It may seem like an incongruous ...
Until There’s a Cure for Mental Illness, There’s NAMI-Man: Nick Emeigh | RDID; 214
Recovery Diaries in Depth guest Nick Emeigh and our show's host Gabe Nathan are old friends, both of whom live with mental health challenges. They're both passionate, compassionate, vulnerable, and unafraid (while simultaneously being afraid of...
Anxiety, OCD, and a Brain That Tries to Protect: Kayla Ackelson | RDID; 213
Today, Kayla Ackelson lives, breathes, and thrives through independent expressive, mixed media artistry. But it wasn't always that way. For years, she struggled with incessant worries-- about everything, from swimming to sleepovers, movies, the...
From Wanting to Die to Yearning to Live; in Conversation with Levi Mericle | RDID; 212
From ages 13-19, Levi Mericle wanted to die, pretty much every day. There was reckless, impulsive behavior, suicide attempts, hospital stays, agonizing torment for Levi and assuredly endless nights of the most intense anxiety possible for his d...
A Black Woman's Experience with Mental Health; Jacquese Armstrong | RDID; 211
For decades, Jacquese Armstrong let others write her story. She was labeled, marginalized, medicated, and was essentially given a life sentence by physicians who spent no more time with her than you spend with the clerk at a 7-Eleven. She was t...
Excuse Her While She Obsesses; Unpacking OCD with Manndi Maphies | RDID; 210
Manndi Maphies lives with obsessive compulsive disorder. It was undoubtedly present in her childhood, where she exhibited behaviors that could be perhaps described as "quirky" but her OCD caught fire following a miscarriage, followed by a new p...
Refusing to Disappear: Life with Schizoaffective Disorder with Sarah An Myers | RDID; 209
“If I don’t communicate, I feel like I’m disappearing.” This is a bedrock principle that guides Sarah An Myers in her advocacy for schizoaffective disorder, her writing, an...
Bipolar, Books, Breakdown; in conversation with Erika Nichols-Frazer | RDID; 208
Erika Nichols-Frazer joins us today as our guest. She's an old friend of Recovery Diaries, having published three essays with us; Lies Mania Has Told Me,
Manning Up Means Getting Help with Suicidal Thoughts: Chris Russell | RDID; 207
Today, Chris Russell is a grounded, hopeful human being who helps others navigate suicidal ideation as a volunteer for the Suicide/Crisis Lifeline. He definitely still has his struggles...
From Hiding To Helping - Schizophrenia Advocate Rebecca Chamaa | RDID; 206
At a recent conference for health advocates from all across the country, our Executive Director and show host, Gabriel Nathan, was reunited with an extraordinary woman and schizophrenia advocate, Rebecca Chamaa. Years earlier, in around 2015, R...
Surviving Suicidality in a Wonderful World: Javier Ortega-Araiza | RDID; 205
Javier Ortega Ariza is a compassionate, sensitive writer who has published two essays with Recovery Diaries, including his moving and powerful essay “
Living & Thriving with Illogical and Irrational Anxiety: Nicci Attfield | RDID; 204
We are so lucky here at Recovery Diaries to have an international community of special, sparkly people coming to us to share their mental health recovery stories. Today's guest on the show is Nicci...
A Black Mental Health Advocate & Survivor Speaks: Jasmin Pierre | RDID; 203
Jasmin Pierre is the creator of The Safe Place, an award-winning app that offers free and affordable resources centering on Black mental health. Jasmin created The Safe Place for so many reasons-- because, when police respond to psychiatric eme...
Police Officer Trauma & PTSD: Officer James Jefferson | RDID; 202
Officer James Jefferson, an 18-year police service veteran and wellness coordinator in Canada, is done with the "blue wall of silence." He speaks openly, candidly, honestly, and earnestly about mental health issues in law enforcement, and the s...
From Squalor and Fear to Thriving and Helping; an Interview with Psychotherapist Sheri Heller | RDID; 201
Sheri Heller is many things. She is a psychotherapist, a coach, an interfaith minister, and a supremely talented writer. She is also a trauma survivor, having been raised in the chaos and pain of a home where her mother was suffering from chron...
Mental Health On The High Seas: A Conversation with Writer/Filmmaker Stephen O'Shea | RDID; 124
The most dangerous period for a veteran isn't during during enlistment, but that first year after leaving the military; and the danger almost exclusively comes from the self; a severely elevated risk for suicide. In fact, the suicide rate for n...
A Vibrant Voice with DID Explores Trauma through Writing | RDID; 123
Elizabeth Ann Devine is a non-binary author living with ADHD, PTSD, OCD, and dissociative identity disorder. They have been twice published on Recovery Diaries, and we were delighted to welcome them onto Recovery Diaries in Depth to share their...
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Burnout, Bravery, Breakthrough: A Conversation with Artist-Scholar Shumaila Hemani | RDID; 122
From her earliest memories growing up in Pakistan—where her dream of pursuing music seemed impossible for a woman—to the hallowed halls of Harvard University where overwhelming expectations led to debilitating burnout, Dr. Shumaila Hemani revea...
Hoarding, Helping, Hoping: An Interview with psychologist Deborah Derrickson Kossmann, author of "Lost, Found, Kept: A Memoir" | RDID; 121
"Love is what gives us the strength to balance the anger."It seems improbable that a human being who has shouldered the weight of so much trauma, so many secrets, so much shame could come to this conclusion, but this is part of what make...
How a Chance Encounter Led to a 30-Year Therapeutic Journey; in Conversation with Brian Marshall | RDID; 120
NAMI asserts that the average length of time between onset of mental health symptoms and reaching out for help is eleven years. That is an excruciatingly long time to be living with mental health challenges without professional help, and the re...
