Can You See Me Out Here?
Mental health, bisexuality, and the great outdoors.
mental health
You Need Help: Finding a Therapist for the First Time
Therapy is your place to be all about YOU. It’s your place to be safe, vulnerable, and authentic, in order for your to learn about yourself. It’s never too early to start practicing how to prioritize yourself and your needs.
13 Easy Houseplants for Seasonally Depressed Gays and Their Cats
Will these plants solve real mental health issues? Absolutely not, but they might make you feel more alive for the next few months, and also your cat can gnaw on them to its heart’s content, the asshole.
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.”
“Go The F*ck To Sleep!” 8 Ways to Kick Insomnia’s Ass in 2019
Sleep is the magic pill. Gotta get in on that.
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.
How We Survive This Together
Let’s make radically caring space for each other, OK? Here are some tips and tricks for grounding ourselves and taking care of our communities in times of collective trauma like RIGHT DAMN NOW.
Brown, Queer, Sad, Strange, and a Skilled Practitioner of Each
I found a different self slowly, learned to exist as if with many different goggles on at once. Always speaking from my mother’s kitchen in the Silicon Valley and, at the same time, my grandmother’s crowded living room in Punjab. In these years, I would feel the sharpness of many kinds of difference, marginalization. But when I looked down at myself for signs of why I felt so other, all I would find was the color of my hands.
9 Tips for Surviving Grad School With Mind and Body Intact
It’s easy to get caught up in how difficult grad school is, and to use that difficulty as an excuse to slack off on taking care of yourself, but the skills you build now will follow you into your career. It’s more important than ever to really make time and space for YOU, and I don’t just mean bubble baths.
Beyond Self-Care Bubble Baths Part 2: How to Take Care of Each Other
“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.”
Nervous About A-Camp? Let’s Do Some Grounding
What I’m getting at here is that staying grounded (even though it sounds like an oxymoron) gives you the ability to move.
5 Years Sober (Or, the Meanest Lesbian I Know Punched Me in the Face)
“I knew that somewhere along the way, I stopped being sober for her and had started doing it for me — and that realization hit me harder than my own fist.”
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.
5 Ways To Fight Back Against Seasonal Affective Disorder
I’ve been dealing with SAD all my adult life, and especially since I moved to the northeast where daylight lasts about as long as my lunch break from November to March. I’ve learned a lot about coping, and about making things easier on myself by noticing and addressing my symptoms before I’m in the midst of a full-blown depressive spiral. SAD isn’t fixable for me, but here’s how I’ve learned to fight back against it.
Autostraddle Roundtable: All About Our Mental Health
A lot of the requests from readers for advice and for personal writing are about mental health, so today we thought we’d share with you about our brain situations, what helps, what doesn’t, and what we’re still working on.
“Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” Joins a Growing List of Video Games That Explore Mental Illness
Nothing is straightforward about Senua’s journey.
You Need Help: Your Friend Needs a Therapist, You Don’t Want It to Be You
You’re tired of feeling like your friend’s therapist; how do you opt out of that without just avoiding them forever?
All the Small Things: 5 Simple Self-Care Methods For Your Daily Routine
Sometimes getting out of bed and onto the couch is the biggest thing you will achieve in day, and that is okay.
Thank you, Chester Bennington: The Queer Strength I Found in Linkin Park
“Chester Bennington’s anger was so present and so empathic. It told me it was okay that I had it too— that I wasn’t alone, that my feelings were normal. It replaced my fear, and it helped me survive.”
Beyond Self-Care Bubble Baths: A Vision for Community Care
If I and other people with certain disabilities are going to survive, we need care — and not from ourselves. Because when it gets really bad for me, self-care is literally impossible. In those moments, I need community care.