Why is it so hard to be kind to ourselves—gentle, caring, compassionate—when inside and recovering from an episode? Because we are not who we grew up wanting to be, thinking we’d become. In that sense, we are failures. Because we are reminded every morning with that first pill that something is wrong with us, will always be wrong with us. Because we were taught to be strong women and men. We were taught that if we worked hard enough, were smart enough, we could do anything . Solve the problem! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! “Pure Horatio Alger,” says Hunter Thompson, which should be our first clue if not our forty-seventh. It’s hard to be kind, gentle, compassionate, when our brains are incessantly tearing us down, trying to get us to give up, give all the way up. It’s hard not to believe your own brain. But we have to believe we deserve kindness and compassion from ourselves. It takes work. I’m certainly still working on it. It takes mindfulness and self-remembering...