Results for: you need help
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Here’s What I Learned By Choosing to Step Away from Productivity For a Whole Day
I did nothing “productive” for a whole day: no email, no phone calls, no work, no cleaning, nothing that fuels my inherent Capricorn desire to win at Capitalism. Here’s what happened.
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How to Quit Smoking
Tell yourself that you’re not like one of those chain smokers, that you can stop whenever you want. Start smoking American Spirits, so it’s like, not even that bad for you because it’s natural, or organic, or something. You forget.
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Bipolar Disorder, Trans Dykes, and Celestial Catastrophe
One patient in the study “Observation of Trends in Manic-Depressive Psychosis” by O. Spurgeon English recounted that living with bipolar disorder “is like opening all my pores on a cold day and subjecting myself to catastrophe.”
I too have felt like a catastrophe of a person, a catastrophe of a star, a catastrophe of emotions. -
How My Cat’s Anxiety Helped Me Be Gentler With Myself About My Own
“Why would I be gentle with myself when I was very clearly doing this thing — like so many other things in my life — wrong? No, I didn’t need gentleness. I needed more self-discipline, more conviction, more toughness. I needed to get my fucking shit together.”
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A Birthday Party No One Else Was Invited To
The first time someone described Casey as having “stalkerish” tendencies, I defended her. For the most part though, I didn’t talk about it.
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Sad Enough Songs: On Julien Baker and Depression
Depression is not forever because it always ends, and depression is forever because it always comes back. It won’t work if I only want to stay on the days when my brain breaks through the muck. Turn Out The Lights is a meditation on wanting to stay on the very worst days.
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I Never Meant for My Hair to Be the Way Back to the Lighthouse
“I thought changing something on the outside would change the wrecked ruin of me on the inside. I thought somehow the inside would get a memo from my outside and get into shape. It didn’t, but my hair is the first way I was able to gain autonomy over my body.”
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Feelings Rookie: Hopping Off the Plane at L.A.X. With a Dream and a Cardigan
Fitting into Los Angeles wasn’t going to happen for me. Or so I thought, until I stopped trying.
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When Community Complicates Healthcare for Sex Workers
“It became a running joke between my partners and I, that I was both too stigmatized and too famous to get my needs met.”
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Trump Won, So I Finally Got Out of Bed
When the election results came in, it had already been a month since I gave up on trying to fix my own mental health issues. And so it turned out that the worst day of our generation collided with my own personal low.
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Feelings Rookie: A Tribute to Love
When the world feels dark, we have to find the light where we can and hold onto it. This is a story about a bright, shining spot of goodness: My Granny.
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Grandma’s House on Memory Lane
“As an adult, I wrestle with the stupid irony of having watched my grandmother live out her Alzheimer’s and not remembering anything about it.”
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Melancholia In The Sunshine
“It isn’t until the summer, when the frost melts and the icee man comes calling and the pool is open and the yard (however ridden with stubborn weeds) starts to incubate natural life, that you realize the source of your woes isn’t dependent on the weather. It’s you. “
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The Vagaries of Love: How Poetry and Queer Movements Give Each Other Names
For National Poetry Month, an ode to the queer poets who talk about their love, fight for justice, and helped me save myself.
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Panic and Parenthood: Having A Baby, Being Torn Apart, and Putting Myself Back Together
“In one of my college psych courses we had to try to use conditioning to get rid of bad habits. My classmates tried to stop biting their nails. I tried to stop panicking during sex.”
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Me, Piper Chapman, the Psych Ward, and the Incarcerated 2.2 Million
“Real human change requires space to be honest with yourself, honest with others; a space that doesn’t exist when you’re trapped by necessity behind a fortress of self-protection. As the inmate Poussey in Orange replies when a correctional officer pressures her to speak openly during a group therapy session: “Does it ever occur to you that actually feeling our feelings might make it impossible to survive in here?”
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To Be Queer, Black, and “Sick”
My family used to joke that only white people need therapy. Meanwhile, white academics told me that African-Americans merely fabricated ungrounded stigma around psychiatric help. No one ever tells you that the healthcare system is sick.
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The Ersatz Emancipation of Femininity: On Being a Bulimic, Brown Lesbian
“When I was thirteen years old I began starving myself. I did so, in short, because I wanted so desperately to be thin. And by thin, I mainly meant white.”
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The Second to Last Woman I Loved
“The truth is always messy. I told myself I could be gay and I wouldn’t ever be hurt again. I needed to never be hurt again.”
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Schecter 3:16 (Or How Jenny Schecter Saved My Life)
“I was angry. Really fucking angry. Angry because Jenny Schecter was right.”