mental health News | Autostraddle

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So You Want to Try Relational Therapy

The most important aspect of therapy is the relationship that is built between you and your therapist.

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So You Want to Try Creative/Expressive Therapy

There’s no reason why the field of therapy shouldn’t offer alternatives to meet people of all ages where they’re at with regard to verbal communication — which is where expressive therapy comes in.

So You Want to Try Somatic or Movement Therapy

The wisdom of your body is uniquely your own.

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So You Want to Try Trauma Therapy

Trauma takes our power away and makes us feel like we don’t call the shots in our own lives — but we do. Here are some of the trauma therapies that can help, and how to feel out which one(s) might be right for you.

So You Want to Try CBT, DBT or ACT

A quick look at Psychology Today lists dozens of modalities, filled with acronyms and industry jargon. So, to help guide you even more – and to help you feel more secure in interviewing a therapist – here’s the first in a series of breakdowns to help you Choose Your Own (Therapy) Adventure. Today we’ll look at some of the most well-known and popular therapies: CBT, and its offshoots, ACT, and DBT.

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You Need Help: How Can I Help My Partner With COVID Anxiety?

When your anxiety stems from a valid concern about a real and terrifying threat, it’s hard to draw the line between reasonable fear and full-blown panic – here are some concrete tips for managing COVID anxiety.

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Staying Sane While Staying Connected with Pauline Oliveros’s Queer Lineage of Deep Listening

Experimental composer Pauline Oliveros approached her identity as a musician not as a solitary genius but as a collaborator and facilitator. Her Deep Listening practices emphasize the connection between healing and activism, and can teach us how to navigate fear and despair together.

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Unlearning Stigma This Bi+ Week

Stigma isn’t easy to overcome this. To a large extent, we can’t do it alone: we are social creatures, and we depend on developing and maintaining relationships with each other in order to survive. But it is possible.

Some of Your Biggest Questions About Managing Mental Health During Covid, Answered by a Therapist

When are the Shoulds are invading your thought process, and try to be curious about that. What is it The Shoulds are trying
to protect you from? What does doing the “bad” or “wrong” thing mean?

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How to Take Care of Each Other: Community Care In Times Of Crisis

“When we’ve all broken past the fear of being burdens on others, when we as communities learn how to ask for and give help and support, we’ll be able to take care of each other.”

on the left, an elder therapist looks on as right, a younger client examines their genitalia in a handheld mirror, pop culture photo from Broad City

Into the A+ Advice Box #12: Bisexual Marriage Blues, Sexting as a Bottom, and More!

Why does gay male sex turn you on if you’re a lesbian and is it okay? Plus, conflicting ideas about isolating & dating during quarantine, cheering up your partner over long distance, parents and mental health and Covid-19, SO MANY mixed signals from your ex wife who’s in another relationship and…should you fuck your boss?!?!?! Things are a mess out there, but at least we have each other and 26 questions from readers like you!

I Want You to Touch Me: Skin Hunger and Digital Dysphoria in a Pandemic

Chances are, you know someone who is quarantining alone right now. Maybe even you, yourself, are alone, and have been for the past several weeks. If so, it’s important to learn how this extraordinary circumstance might be effecting your mental, emotional, and physical health – and what steps you can take to mitigate and reduce that harm.

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.

Into the A+ Advice Box #11: Meeting the Parents, Department Drama, Friend Breakups and More!

Recovering after being ghosted, dealing with queer tokenism, knowing if you’re a top or a bottom, straight people are STILL not ok, and did that organizer ask you for an organizing coffee or a COFFEE coffee??

A Therapist on What You Need to Know About Your Own Mental Health in the Time of COVID19

We all must do the internal work of unpacking how the harms of our social structure have become internalized, have lived in our bodies, have shown in our relationships. We must allow ourselves to feel the weight of it.

Shira Erlichman’s “Odes to Lithium” Explores Bipolar Disorder and Taking Care

“Many creatives still have reservations and fears around medication as they believe that it will dampen the creative flow, turn off the magic, or make them less able to connect with the emotion they are trying to convey. This misconception is dismantled in Erlichman’s poetry, she’s sharp and precise while illustrating the often untethered emotion that comes with mania or psychosis.”