Conflict is meant to happen. Relationships are strengthened by conflict. What are our capacities to engage with conflict in a way that doesn’t destroy us, but help us better understand each other?
Your therapist will probably never tell you the intricate personal details of what their work with you sets off in them, but please don’t doubt that we learn just as much about what it means to be a human by working with you.
Close your eyes. You’re walking through a shady wooded glen. Wait, weren’t all the bees dying like, a year ago? Did we all just move on from that?
What would it feel like to move forward with curiosity, rather than relying on the comforting familiarity of self-doubt?
We sometimes wish our therapists had insight from actual queer people and not just theory about how to treat us more effectively – and we’re sure they do too, they want to help! That said, here’s our real-life insight and tips about how to help us get better better.
After trudging through years of roommates leaving their dildos on the dish rack, I was finally living alone. I hated it, and I didn’t know why.
What kinda of things are okay to expect from therapy? Should I switch therapists?
Mental health, bisexuality, and the great outdoors.
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.
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.
“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.”
Sleep is the magic pill. Gotta get in on that.
The first time someone described Casey as having “stalkerish” tendencies, I defended her. For the most part though, I didn’t talk about it.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
What I’m getting at here is that staying grounded (even though it sounds like an oxymoron) gives you the ability to move.
“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.”
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.
