Category: Mental Health

Using Numbers When Talking About Your Feelings

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Something that has helped me and the people around me, when talking about feelings, is to use numbers as much as possible.

“I’m a little bit mad at you” can often sound like “I’M SUPER MAD AT YOU AND I HATE YOU” to people who struggle with black and white thinking. Instead, you might say “I am 15% mad.” It puts how mad you are into perspective by quantifying it.

There are a variety of situations in which using numbers can help you describe your emotions more accurately.

Other examples:

  • “I’m sorry I yelled at you about the milk. I’m 1% mad that you left the milk on the counter and 99% hurt that you forgot to pick me up from work.”
  • “You haven’t done anything wrong. You are 100% okay in my book.”
  • “This is 10/10 important to me so I’d like you to keep it in mind.”

How to Help Someone Who’s Mentally Ill

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Many people want to “save” or “rescue” others from their mental illnesses. Unfortunately, no matter how much you may wish for someone to get better or just be different, you can’t make them do that. You can’t force anyone to do anything, even if you feel it’s in their best interest. It’s both immoral and impossible.

What you CAN do, however, is concrete actions to make their lives a little easier. (Having less stress in one’s life overall often leads to improved mental health.)

It may help to imagine that the person you want to help has the flu. They don’t need you to panic, but they probably feel awful and could use a little assistance. Maybe you could cook them a meal that they can reheat, or you could make a dent in the dishes piling up in their sink, or you could take their kids to the park to give them some time to recuperate. In particular, you could help make therapist/doctor visits easier (give them a ride if they need one?) or set up systems to help them remember to take their pills (if that’s a problem).

Note: It may be tempting to give someone a listening ear. This can be VERY helpful, but only if you’re genuinely not trying to save or rescue them. Focus on the practical things you can do to help rather than trying to insist that someone confide in you. If they want to talk to you, they will.

Remember to ask for consent before attempting to help (make sure to respect a “no!”) and also maintain your own boundaries. “You cannot pour from an empty cup,” and trying to take on more than you can handle will harm you as well as the person you’re trying to help.

Exposing Exposure Therapy

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Exposure therapy has become completely misunderstood as it has entered the mainstream, even by some involved in mental health.

Many would expose a person to their trigger, with or without consent, and just hope that they eventually stop freaking out and realize it “isn’t so bad.” This approach often involves a loss of trust and feelings of control over the situation, and usually ends in dissociation and pretending that the trigger is no longer activating.

Instead, exposure therapy must involve a mental and emotional reframing of the trigger, and also must be completely consensual. For example, dead/dying or abused animals were a huge trigger of mine. I’ve been working through that by voluntarily joining a Facebook group that focuses on death and “vulture culture,” including animal bones and preserved wet specimens. By reframing the trigger as fascinating instead of horrifying, I have empowered myself, and I am capable of remaining calm when faced with it.

How to Work on Your Mental Health

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If you are struggling with mental health problems, the obvious answers are therapy and medication. But what if you need more than that? How can you work on your mental health independently?

Here are some habits and ways of thinking that I’ve found to be very helpful in my recovery. Give them a try and see what works for you!

Get in the habit of problem-solving.

Problem-solving is in itself a huge topic, but it’s one of the most important aspects of working on your mental health. How do we problem solve mental health specifically?

  1. Identify a problem. Start small! You’re not going to fix your entire life in one day.
  2. Define the problem in as much detail as possible. Journal about it (see below) or make a note in your phone, whatever works. For example: “I drink too much on the weekends because I feel lonely.”
  3. See if maybe you can find the root cause of the problem, because knowing that might help you find solutions. Delve into the past. “I started drinking in college because I felt it would help me connect with people.”
  4. Define your goals as they relate to the problem. Maybe you already have a list of goals, but you need to be specific to the situation you’ve decided to problem-solve. Working on your mental health is a larger goal, but maybe you want to “drink no more than two beers on weekend days.”
  5. Brainstorm solutions. Come up with whatever fixes you can and write them down. You never have to show anyone this, so if some of them are ridiculous, that’s okay!
  6. Experiment. Test your solutions until you find one that sticks. “If I hang out with friends somewhere other than a bar, I won’t drink as much.” Maybe you went camping…. and drank just as much. Okay, back to the drawing board! Try a different solution and see if that one works. Repeat as many times as you need to.

If you need help problem-solving, don’t be afraid to recruit a friend! Ask someone you trust if they would be willing to help problem-solve your mental health, and then ask for their continued consent each time you have something to problem-solve. Hopefully the two of you together can find fixes that stick!

Journal about your mental health.

For some people, freewriting works wonders. It doesn’t do anything for me. Instead, I journal about my symptoms (emotional and physical) and what I was thinking about each day.

Find the type of journaling that works for you and do it. Not only is it good for you in the moment, but if you make it a habit, you will have lots of data to look back on in future problem-solving endeavors!

Regularly eat reasonably healthy food.

Note: I think a lot about how we treat our bodies is fucked up, so you will NEVER see me recommend a strict diet or intentional weight loss.

Getting quality fuel for your body can make a huge difference to your mental health. However, it’s not nearly as complicated as many would make it out to be. Eat things that nourish your soul as well as your body. For more information, check out Intuitive Eating resources like this one.

I tend to not eat enough— both in frequency and amount— and I don’t fare well when I am not fed. I get dizzy and depressed. Therefore, I do have some food rules. I try to feed myself about every four hours, and strive for a variety of food groups each day. (I use the old-fashioned 90s food pyramid as a guide.) I also make sure to eat some kind of carbs with every meal, because they help you feel full longer, as well as extra protein, because I’m a shitty vegetarian and often vegetarians don’t get enough of that. Of course, I also eat fruits and vegetables whenever I feel like it. That’s it— those are my dietary guidelines!

Spend some time experimenting and see what foods nourish you the best!

Eliminate stress wherever you can.

In college, I prided myself on showing up on time to my classes 15 minutes after waking up, having skipped breakfast and any sort of self-care. That’s no way to live! Ten years later, I wake up two hours before I have to be at work. I drink coffee leisurely (my favorite part of the day) and allocate enough time afterwards to make myself a reasonably quality breakfast. This is just one way I have changed my life to eliminate extra, unnecessary stress.

Reducing stress wherever we find it will take some of the weight off our mental load. Even if the source of stress really isn’t that big a deal, lowering your overall stress levels will do wonders for your mental health.

Obviously, not every source of stress could or should be eliminated. You have to weigh the pros and cons as well as your priorities. Maybe you’ve identified that grocery shopping is a big source of stress for you, so you shell out a few extra bucks to get ingredients delivered by Instacart. That’s probably a worthwhile accommodation. On the other hand, maybe your job is also a source of stress because of the pressure of deadlines, but you also love it! I don’t recommend quitting your job, at least not before you have a better one lined up!

Learn to self-validate.

Mental health is a community effort, and often those with the “worst” mental health have been failed the most by their communities. That said, not relying on others to validate your feelings can be a great improvement.

This is one I’m still working on. I often struggle with feeling like I need other people to validate my emotions. Therefore, as soon as I have any feeling, I will text my loved ones and gauge how I should feel based on their reactions. It proves that I don’t trust myself to know how I feel and what needs to be done. Instead, I’d much rather be able to validate myself, so I am not reliant on other people to process my emotions.

For more information about self-validation, check out this link.

Make time for the things you love and build mastery at them.

Make a list of the things you love the most, and then do them. For example, maybe you’re like me and you really love to write. What kind of writing do you like to do? What subjects do you like to write about? Consider listing both a broad heading (”Writing”) as well as specifics (”writing nature poetry”). Is there anything else you need to make a part of your schedule for this to happen? (Like being out in nature?)

Building mastery is a related DBT skill that involves setting reasonable, reachable goals to build up your confidence as well as your skills. Maybe you could make a goal to write one index card a day, or just take a walk. Make sure that you congratulate yourself for each thing you accomplish!

Rest effectively.

Resting effectively can be tough. It doesn’t count as true rest if you’re laying down but you’re worrying about all the things on your mind. It might help you to have a designated Relaxation Zone— like your bed or a couch in your basement— where you turn off all your worries. Alternatively, or in addition, you could try a guided meditation to help your brain relax.

This is another one I’m working on, because I tend to hold myself to very high standards and feel like I shouldn’t be resting, even when I really need it.

Avoid mind-altering substances.

Everyone has their own opinion and their own comfort level in regards to substance use, and I’m not saying that you have to agree with me in order to truly be dedicated to healing. However, I have found that I am much happier when I am not doing substances. Substances tend to be unpredictable— you might have a good time on one day but a bad time another.

(Hint: you may want to consider replacing any substances you do with the non-inebriating forms of them. I am a big proponent of non-alcoholic beer and CBD cigarettes, and regularly use both of them when I feel like letting loose.)

Obviously, this doesn’t include prescribed medications— those are important, and you should continue to take them. If you don’t want to take them anymore, you should make a plan with your medical professional to taper safely off of them, because withdrawal can be really terrible.

For more information, check out these links:

9 Ways to Actively Take Care of Your Mental Health

Create a Plan to Take Care of Your Mental Health

On Creativity and Healing

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As I have said before, freewriting doesn’t work for my mental health. Instead, I decided a few months ago that I wanted a structured journal to keep track of my moods and symptoms. (I have a separate Bullet Journal, which I use for planning, habit-tracking, and tasks, and then I have my more-recently-started “symptom” journal in a different notebook.)

I highly recommend symptom journaling so that you know where your headspace is at. Tracking your symptoms and/or moods can help you find patterns that you may otherwise miss. Our emotions (especially when we struggle with mental health) can feel gigantic and like they last forever, when in reality they change like the tides and can often be very different from day to day. That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t downward or upward trends! Seeing those trends can help us do damage control (in the form of self care) or even just enjoy good moods while they last. I feel much more in control of my life when I journal briefly about my symptoms.

To do a daily symptom journal, I split two adjacent pages into three sections. Each of the six daily sections in my symptom journal has about five lines devoted to it, which allows me to elaborate a little while still keeping the entry brief enough to be useful at a glance. (I almost never run out of room.)

Things I write about daily:

  1. How I felt that day. Obviously not all my emotions are symptoms, but I write about them all in my symptom journal anyway. Giving myself a little bit of room to be descriptive allows me to record causes of my mood (“had nightmares and woke up very dissociated”) or complexities (“had some anxiety in the afternoon but felt okay for most of the day”).
  2. Any physical symptoms or problems I had. Maybe my knees hurt, I had a stomachache because I ate too much curry, or I slept badly. (Often I write that I forgot to eat. Oops!)
  3. What I did to solve/help any symptoms/problems (physical or mental) and how well my strategy worked. Maybe I took ibuprofen for my knee pain, but it didn’t really do anything. Or maybe I was depressed but I felt a little more energetic after a nap. I don’t always have anything to write in this section, but I think it’s really important to track how your experiments go!
  4. What I thought about that day. This is one of my favorite sections. It’s my chance to write about what was going on in my mind, which (to me) is always interesting! It also gives me a sense that I’m moving forward in my life. For example, maybe I thought about what to write on my blog and came to the conclusion that I should write about journaling, or maybe I thought about what to build with a certain material in Minecraft. Often, I’m thinking about recovery strategies I want to integrate into my life, and when I journal about them, I don’t lose any potentially brilliant ideas!
  5. My happiest or best moment of the day. (It doesn’t have to break through the depression barrier to be the happiest moment of the day, since it’s all relative.) Often, this will be spending time with my boyfriend.
  6. Any information my alters have told me that day. Since it’s hard to keep track of multiple people in the same brain, I have a section devoted to that. For example, [LITTLE] told me the other day he doesn’t like green beans, so as a system we’ve decided to not force ourselves to eat the green beans languishing in the freezer.

Every Sunday, I do a weekly summary for each of the sections. I draw an extra page with my usual six sections, and write about how the week went and my happiest moment!

Some other ideas you may want to try if you pick up a similar journaling habit:

-Gratitude journaling. This was not helpful for me, but many people swear by it.

-Therapy summaries. If you go to therapy, you can write quick summaries of what you talked about at your appointments. You might also record your homework for next session, if that’s something that you and your therapist have decided on.

-Rate your mood out of 10. I really struggle to rate my mood, because it feels so much more complex than a number. Maybe I had a good morning but got depressed in the evening, or I was anxious but hopeful. However, this works for a lot of people, and having quantitative data on your mood can be really helpful when dealing with mental health professionals. (You may want to use color-coding instead!)

How To Use the Grey Rock Method in Your Bad Relationships

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TW: Anti-NPD ableism.

All the resources for the this are astoundingly ableist, so I wanted to make a post about something I’ve found very helpful when dealing with shitty people: the Grey Rock Method.

The term, originally coined in anti-NPD circles, describes a method of dealing with shitty and/or abusive people. The Grey Rock Method, or Grey Rocking, is called that because you act like a wall of plain boring rock. The idea is to be so unreactive that the shitty person gets nothing out of interacting with you.

Of course, the best option for dealing with people who are incurably shitty and/or abusive is to cut them out of your life, but what if that’s not possible for legal or financial reasons? That’s when Grey Rocking comes in.

The original idea revolves around ideas of “narcissistic supply,” which is the vampiric emotional “diet” of a “narcissist,” since they supposedly feel like they need attention to survive. However, it can also be helpful outside of that ableist model, since victims/survivors can reduce the amount of “ammunition” they give shitty people/abusers by reacting to them less.

I discovered Grey Rocking myself by accident a few years ago, after I noticed that every single time I brought up an emotional subject, my parents found a way to make me feel like shit about it— so I stopped talking about ANY emotion, and stuck to “safe” topics and surface-level conversation. It worked! They have no ammunition to use against me, yet our relationship remains civil.

Here are the rules for Grey Rocking:

  • Be as boring as possible. If asked how your life is going, say something like “Nothing exciting is going on. I’ve just been working.” They may say, “How is work going?” “Fine, just busy like usual.”
  • Offer no extra information. Do not pique their interest. Remain polite, but if asked about work, stick to answering the question and don’t offer up conversation about your coworker’s jokes. Are you still wearing masks at work? “Yup.” If it feels like the conversation is lagging, you’re doing it right.
  • Steer clear of topics you have ANY emotions about, positive or negative. Do NOT talk about how stressed you are at work, or a shitty person will make a shitty comparison about how that’s NOTHING compared to their job. Do NOT talk about getting a raise and how proud you are of yourself, because they will tear you down.
  • Don’t interact more than you have to. For example, you might answer a text, but don’t text first. Don’t start a conversation. If there’s some silence, good.
  • Do not cave and do not respond to goading. They might try to get a rise out of you, in which case you need to try to remain as expressionless as possible and say something nonreactive. Do NOT break the rules once you decide to start doing the Grey Rock Method.
  • Hint: saying “mmm” as acknowledgement, but nothing more, will help you a lot.

My own personal addition: Try to interact only when there are witnesses or proof of what the shitty/abusive person said (as in text messages). Many abusers will act better for an audience. However, this is not a sure thing, so definitely continue to keep interaction to a minimum.

Final note: This can be REALLY EXHAUSTING and take a major toll on you. After dealing with your shitty/abusive person, take some time to recharge with people that you can be yourself with. Do not lose sight of your unique, individual spark— just hide it from those who don’t deserve to see it!

Intro to Multiplicity

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When I meet a new person, I often feel anxious about introducing them to the fact that I’m a system. It’s an important part of my life, but not something the average person understands. (You have multiple people in your brain? Like Jekyll and Hyde?) Therefore, I made an approximately one-page introduction to Dissociative Identity Disorder/Other Specified Dissociative Disorder and my own experience with it. You may want to read it to get a better sense of me as a person, but you may also want to use it as a template for your own similar creation! Here it is:

Hi! You are someone that [HOST] cares about and therefore here’s some pertinent information about   his system!

-DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, is when one body has multiple full-fledged people in their head. Sometimes they have noticeably different personalities. They will almost always have amnesia between alters— for example, one alter will go to the grocery store, and the next alter to front will not have memories of doing that and wonder where all the food came from. I have OSDD, which is like a less “severe” form. While my different selves (alters) have names and are separate/different in a very real way, we share a brainspace and don’t have a lot of amnesia between us. That means that if one alter does something, we will all be aware of it. (However, we are very forgetful in general due to dissociation so please be patient with us when this symptom manifests!)

-Being multiple is a result of childhood trauma. Basically, everyone starts out a blob of consciousness that solidifies into a single identity over time during the childhood/teen years. With DID/OSDD, the person undergoes abuse/trauma that, for various reasons, makes them solidify into multiple identities. These identities can shift over time as new alters are created or merged, but the status of being a system or not is generally decided by age 8.

-Part of the point of being multiple/a system is to HIDE the damage that the trauma has done to someone, so often (even for people with “severe” forms of the disorder) switches between alters are undetectable.

-Yes, everyone has different parts of themselves (Google “Internal Family Systems Therapy” for more info) but alters are much more distinct than that. They have personalities that I might describe as moods (ie “this alter is depressed”) but they are different than normal moods or whims. They have names, ages, and a sense of individuality that is hard to describe.

-Just because it’s a trauma disorder, it doesn’t mean it’s bad! My alters help me survive. Together, we are a team. I would rather have not had trauma in my life, but I love my alters.

-Switching isn’t bad either! Switching alters is not analogous to a panic attack or another mental health crisis! If you notice us acting differently, try to just roll with it! It will probably be fun!

-For us, the most externally noticeable feature of our system is that we sometimes act like a child. This means that [LITTLE] is fronting, and while we are just as smart during these times, we often get distracted easily and babble a lot. It’s okay! If he’s out, it means we feel safe around you and we’re having fun. It might also mean that we are physically uncomfortable (like we have a stomach ache for example). He will not (generally) act in ways that are ill-advised or against our own best interest, but he may want to cuddle or play! :3 If he’s affectionate with you, then we all feel that affection!

-We have around 10 alters, but [HOST] and [LITTLE] are the only ones who “front” or take charge. 99% of the time, I am your friend [HOST], but the other alters are often loud inside my head during that time. They influence my thoughts and actions even when I’m undeniably [HOST].

I am definitely open to any questions that you may have, so ask away!

Tiimo App Review

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The scheduling app Tiimo has become popular in neurodivergent circles, so I decided to try it out. Basically, what it does is automate your schedule, which is something that can be particularly helpful for people that need routine. I rate it 10/10, even though I had some trouble figuring out how to use it in the beginning.

Note: Tiimo was designed for families with neurodivergent children, and I am not a parent. I cannot speak to how well it works for children, only how much it helped me as a neurodivergent adult.

Here’s a quick run-down on the pros and cons.

Pros:

  • Keeps you on track and provides you with updates on your progress using notifications.
  • Extremely customizable and flexible.
  • Very visual, including icons, color-coding, and a progress bar for each activity.
  • Not particularly expensive for a subscription app at about $30 for an entire year.
  • Can be synced with a smart watch.

Cons:

  • Requires lots of set up before use.

What is Tiimo?

Tiimo is a scheduling app built specifically for neurodivergent people, especially autistic or ADHD adults or children. Often, neurodivergent people thrive in routine and experience anxiety without it, but have trouble sticking to a schedule. Tiimo automates the process and reduces friction to help you adhere to the schedule you’ve set up and transition between activities more easily.

To use it, you input your activities (like “Go to the grocery store” or “Biology class”) and then assign them to specific times. You can color-code and select icons for each activity. You can also create “routines,” which are activities in a sequence, to speed up setting up your schedule. Add an activity or a routine to a specific day and then decide if and when you want it to repeat.

Once your schedule is set up, Tiimo will notify you before an activity starts to give you some warning and help you transition. During the activity, it shows a progress bar so you know how much time you have left and when to start cleaning up the Legos, for example.

Pros

I absolutely love having a routine. Until Tiimo, my attempts to prioritize and decide on what to do next with my day would often get hijacked by depression and hopelessness, leading me to end up doing nothing. With a routine of my own creation, on the other hand, I don’t have to decide what to do next because it’s the same every day. Even if I don’t follow it exactly (which I never do) Tiimo is still there in my notifications reminding me of my priorities.

Cons

When I first downloaded Tiimo, it took me about two hours to figure out how to use the app and then set up my week. (It took some intense Googling to figure out how to delete an activity. In case you’re wondering too, you slide the activity’s box to the left to reveal a trash can icon.) This may seem like quite an investment, but I have found it to be very worth it!

How I Use Tiimo

What does my day look like? As soon as I started using the app, I input my work schedule, which is the same every week but not the same every day. (Luckily, it’s very easy to choose when events repeat!)

Then I put in my morning schedule, which is absolutely crucial because if I forget my morning meds I will be nonfunctional the rest of the day. It also includes leisurely drinking coffee, which starts my morning off on the right note, as well as eating something because I often forget to eat. This repeats every day, but at different times depending on the rest of my schedule.

After work, I spend two hours (yes, two entire hours!) decompressing and/or taking a nap. Work takes a lot out of me as a disabled person, even though my shifts are only four hours. I find that if I don’t do this, I am super out of spoons by the end of the day. After my nap, I do chores, eat dinner, consume media (like watching TV or reading books), and then journal. (That leaves me another two hours before bedtime to scroll TikTok!)

Finally, non-negotiable stuff (like work) is color-coded in blue. Things that I know that are coming up but are deviations from the usual schedule (like doctors’ appointments) are color-coded red.

Tips & Tricks

As I said above, I almost never stick exactly to my routine. However, I still find it helpful, because it reminds me of my priorities. For example, I may eat dinner before I do chores if I’m particularly hungry, but the app still serves its function by reminding me to devote some time to cleaning the house. Instead of scrolling Facebook for hours like I did pre-Tiimo, I am watching the new Voltron.

Something else that I have found very helpful is building extra time into my schedule. Rather than pack my day with activities, I give each activity at least an hour, and I also give myself about four hours a day of doing nothing in particular. (This could be used “productively” or not! It’s my choice!) Don’t set your expectations unrealistically high or you will disappoint yourself. Instead, make sure to “pad” your schedule, especially for those times when the unexpected crops up.

For more information on how Tiimo’s creators recommend you use it, check out this link.

My abusers wanted me dead.

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(TW: abuse, suicide, sexual assault.) 

Maybe they didn’t know it, but my abusers wanted me dead.

They might not have understood it themselves (or maybe some of them did) but they wanted me gone — to extinguish any part of me that made me ME. They wanted all of my compliance, skills, and entertainment value, with none of needs, inconsistencies, mess, or candor.

They only wanted a walking blow-up doll. They only wanted an unpaid secretary. They only wanted grandchildren. What they didn’t want was my humanity.

And I took that to heart. I tried to kill myself multiple times because I keenly felt that I took up too much room. I genuinely believed I was an abuser for the rare times I stuck up for myself. When I would get motion sick on car trips, I learned to hold it in so I wouldn’t create a problem. There are now parts of ME that want me dead.

This is not a unique situation. Everyone who abuses someone and violates their self-hood is complicit in that person’s disappearance.

I am still digging through my psyche and using what I find to build up a Self that I can live with. I spend all day in bed thinking about the ways they tried to kill me and how I survived. I didn’t survive, in a way. There’s no part of me that wasn’t touched by their stabbing fingers.

I am still learning to breathe.

Co-Regulation and Manipulation

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I read a post the other day that rang true for me. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the source again.) It was about how manipulative people are often seeking out attention that they feel they couldn’t get otherwise. They so desperately need the presence of another individual that they will pull out every trick in the book to make sure someone stays or comes closer.

But why do people need attention so bad that they are willing to manipulate to get it? It’s not just loneliness. I think manipulative behavior is often subconsciously enacted in pursuit of something called co-regulation.

Co-regulation is what caregivers are supposed to do when we are babies and we have big feelings. We’re supposed to be picked up, comforted, validated, mirrored, and soothed. On a chemical level, babies need other people to react to their emotions to understand them with their rapidly growing brains. Eventually, they are supposed to learn how to validate and soothe their own emotions as they grow into adults.

On the other hand, people who are scolded, belittled, or ignored as babies never learn how to self-regulate. Therefore, they continue to have this co-regulating need even as adults, and when they have big emotions they will often do absolutely anything they can to get another person to relieve the pressure. (It’s worth noting that the manipulative methods by which people try to achieve this often knock the other person out of alignment and cause them to never get what they need, making things worse and often starting the cycle over again.)

How do I know this? Because I have done it. I require constant attention and validation because I got none for the first 22 years of my life. I try to go about getting it in a genuine and healthy way (by asking for attention and validation instead of manipulating to get it) but I don’t always succeed in the moment.

This does not mean that we should automatically forgive manipulative adults. People are still responsible for being healthy and assertive in their interactions. But maybe if you feel manipulated in a relationship that you intend on keeping, you can assertively address their behavior and, if they agree to respect you, problem-solve and agree to offer what they need.

For more information about attention and why needing it is not a bad thing, please see this article by Tamar Jacobson.

For more information about co-regulating, check out this article from Howard Bath.