Inspired by work people have done on madness maps and mental health first aid kits, I decided to make a checklist/flowchart to use when I am having a particularly hard time or am in crisis. It was a good process for me to make because it helped me to really think about what has helped me or caused me trouble in the past. I really like that we can make these sorts of tools for ourselves instead of relying on more general (often judgmental) dos and don’ts or advice from people who never know us as well as we know ourselves.

Tags: anxiety, art, BDSM, beauty, body, checklists, comfort, counseling, crisis, crisis checklist, depression, eating, emotions, enjoyment, exercise, fear, flowcharts, friends, games, hormones, hunger, hypnotic, illness, injury, insomnia, isolation, journaling, laundry, loneliness, madness map, madness maps, manageability, massage, medication, meditation, mental health, mental health first aid kits, messy apartments, misanthropy, museums, music, pain, painkillers, panic, parks, pets, projects, psych meds, psychiatrists, QueerMentalHealth.org, responsibility, rest, restlessness, self-fear, self-harm, self-help, self-help books, sex, showering, sleep, sleeping environment, snacks, social activities, stair climbing, stress, supplements, support groups, symptoms, task management, tea, The Icarus Project, therapists, therapy, tools, vulnerability, withdrawal, yoga

Seven years ago I got tired of living my life the way I was. I couldn’t stop drinking, smoking, eating or doing drugs. I was sick constantly. I was living in harmful situations with toxic people, and each and every day was exactly the same. My only respite was to go out and get loaded again.

Tags: 12 steps, 12-step groups, 12-step meetings, 16 Steps for Discovery and Empowerment, 16-step program, AA, abuse, addiction, addiction physiology, alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, anxiety, avoidance, binge eating, bottoming out, challenges, Charlotte Kasl, clarity, Co-Depenant's Anonymous, CoDA, concurrent disorders, counseling, counselors, debt, detox, drug addiction, emotional pain, employees, employers, empowerment groups, family, fears, friends, getting loaded, grief, healing, healthy relationships, hope, isolation, mistreatment, NA, Narcotics Anonymous, neglect, online meetings, outside issues, overeating, pain, partners, partying, quitting smoking, recovery, recovery house, recovery meetings, recreational drugs, relapse prevention, relapses, relationships, resources, safehouses, self-care, SMART, smoking, sobriety, street drugs, structure, support, the program, toxic people, trauma, treatment centres

Trigger warnings for description of sexual assault, description of self-harm and suicide methods. PTSD. Four letters that mean so much. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s quite a misunderstood illness. I’ve heard many people ask, “can’t you only get that if you’ve been fighting in a war?” Most people don’t know what the symptoms are, other than [...]

Tags: anger, anxiety, avoidance, bipolar disorder, counseling, depersonalization, depression, dissociation, emotional memory, emotions, fear, flashbacks, grounding, hallucinations, homophobia, hypervigilance, insomnia, marijuana, melatonin, moving on, nightmares, panic attacks, paranoia, pot, PTSD, relapses, self-harm, self-injury, shame, sleep, startle reflex, suicidal thoughts, therapy, threats, transphobia, triggers, verbal abuse, violence

This video is based on intake I did with a therapist at the Institute for Human Identity a few years ago. Another trans person had a good experience with a therapist there, but I got assigned to someone else and it didn’t go so well. A lot of the dialogue from the therapist is verbatim what I remember him saying to me. Only some of my responses are accurate to life, though. I didn’t actually tell him he was a jerk, for example, but I found it rather satisfying to do so in this video.

Tags: art, bodies, body politics, counseling, prejudice, therapists, trans men, transphobia, video, vulnerability