*UPDATE*: We still need another member or two to make this a good interactive group. Registration extended through the weekend!
Four-session closed group
Please contact us soon! ~Registration closes September 6th 7th~
Referral from current therapist required
~OR~
if you don’t have a therapist you may request a brief screening interview (phone or in-person, 1/2 hour)
It’s one thing to disagree with someone online, perhaps even exchange heated tweets or emails. But the form of bullying that essentially uses crowdsourced harassment as a form of entertainment (“for the lulz”) is especially pernicious: sending threats, piling on, doxxing– the function is terrorism: scaring people into “staying in their place.” Just as in offline harassment, online harassment is disproportionately directed at those occupying marginalized statuses, (which others may not even recognize).
Targeted harassment is not simply about disagreement:
“[Harassers] don’t have to listen to me. They could (as I do) use the tools at their disposal to block everything that annoys them, bores them, or angers them. They could make podcasts, blogs, or videos about their beliefs and leave the people they disagree with alone. If this was about defending some ideal, or espousing some particular ideological difference, then that is exactly what we would be seeing happen.”
Once you’ve been a target for internet harassment, it doesn’t just go away. It can pop up again ad infinitum when you least expect it:
“There is no life after being harassed if you’re a marginalized person speaking up on the internet.”
Read Mikki Kendall’s original essay here.
As many as 1.7% of babies are born with intersex characteristics. Surgery performed on intersex children has often been medically and psychologically unnecessary, and aimed primarily at soothing parents’ worries about their child’s normalcy. This has led to lifelong traumatic outcomes in some cases.
Today the California Senate passed the first-ever legislation (resolution SCR-110) acknowledging intersex rights. Read Amy Littlefield’s article (link below):
Therapeutic Artistic Expression: Autumn series ([corrected] session dates 9/21, 10/5, 10/19, 11/2)
Creative expression can help make managing emotions and thoughts easier!
This therapy group is appropriate for those 18+ who are working on issues of:
Written referral from current therapist required OR you may request a screening interview (phone or in-person, 1/2 hour)
Please contact us soon! ~Registration closes September 6th~
Part 2:
Recognize Depression: Depression often creeps up gradually and may affect you for a while before you realize what is happening. What effects do you usually experience? Are your symptoms usually physical, emotional, or cognitive, or a combination? Exhaustion, achiness, overwhelm, lack of motivation, negative thoughts, suicidality? (See Part 1.) If you have a better idea of your own symptom profile, you will be able to catch a depressive episode sooner when it occurs.
It is often a great relief simply to realize why you’ve been feeling bad. Also, it can be encouraging to remember that most depressive episodes remit within two weeks even without intervention!
Accept Depression: Depression can be tricky because we often have a belief that if we recognize what’s going on, we should be able to “snap out of it” by some act of will. While it’s good to try some things you think might help you feel better, the process is healing rather than fixing. You are an organism, not a mechanical device. It may take some time to get through the healing process.
Most people feel impatient about this, because depression interrupts whatever else you’re trying to do with your life. That’s the part most people have a hard time accepting. But depression is a real thing that really affects people on many levels, so work on accepting how your feelings and your functioning are affected. Then you can better decide how to address it.
Beating yourself up for “feeling bad for no reason” or “not getting enough done” will only make things worse! It may be that during some depressive episodes you will feel bad “for no reason” or that you may not get as much done as you want to. That’s what happens during depression. You can do many things to support your healing, but you can’t just decide to not have depression.
Most people experiencing depression–even severe depression–are mostly functional in some life areas, which can lead to denial or minimization. “They must not be very seriously depressed, I just saw them laughing and joking at a party,” or “I can’t have severe depression since I’m able to work 12-hour shifts on a busy floor.”
Functionality varies from situation to situation and from day to day. You can be functional in one or more life area, or appear “okay” to others. That doesn’t mean the depression isn’t real or isn’t serious.
Depression Part 3: Nurturing Yourself Back to Life
Whatever your race, ethnicity, class background, rural or urban: your brilliance is valid! Your dialect, your accent, your ways of expressing are valid (and needed)! You enrich culture and you enrich the world.
Habit-reversal (developing a competing habit) and Acceptance (a method of managing uncomfortable emotions) look to be the best bet for psychological treatment of Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) such as trichotillomania (pulling hairs) and excoriation (picking at skin).
While rates of these disorders are relatively high (2%-5% of population), they are also relatively unresearched until lately.
A brief introduction to race discussion.
Racism needs to be confronted in a useful way. Remember, “you don’t get points for disagreement if that disagreement happens in silence.” – J. Pavlovitz
For concrete, practical, simple approaches for speaking up in many situations, read Southern Poverty Law Center’s Responding to Everyday Bigotry.
It’s very important to know what NOT to say when someone is grieving:
Often just the words “I’m so sorry” are enough.
Via APA Public Interest Directorate:
Moms of color living on low incomes are the most likely to suffer postpartum depression and the least likely to receive proper care. Here’s how implicit bias, societal shame and (reasonable) fear conspire to perpetuate the disparity. [link]
Intersectional Life Counseling and Psychology, LLC 