Category: mental health
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Complex PTSD: How a new diagnosis differs from standard PTSD
Your palms sweat. Your heart races. You don’t remember where you are — are you here, now, or back in another, scarier time? This is a flashback. And for many people living with PTSD, it’s a common experience. Faced with a reminder of a traumatic event, someone with PTSD can be jerked back into the…
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My abusive partner promises they’ll change. Will they?
“I promise I’ll change.” These are four words most people in a relationship with an abusive partner have probably heard. Longed-for yet dreaded, the words can offer both hope and disappointment. Hope that things really will get better this time, and disappointment when, inevitably, the abusive behavior—whether emotional, physical, or verbal—begins all over again. We’ve all…
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Is it a normal fight or verbal abuse? Here’s how to tell.
Even the most dynamic of duos has the occasional fight. Whether it begins with “Who forgot to take the dog out?” or “Do I really have to go to your brother’s birthday party?”, having arguments is a common — and healthy — part of any relationship. But in some cases, what we call an “argument” is actually…
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What is second-hand anxiety?
Your friend comes over after a bad day. Huffing and puffing, he brings it all to you: His boss was a jerk, he accidentally deleted his presentation, and spilled coffee on a new white shirt. Suddenly, you find yourself tense, even though you were having a relaxed day. What gives? There’s a name for the phenomenon of stress…
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How Men Can Confront Toxic Masculinity (+ Why It’s Important for Mental Health)
With the #MeToo movement dominating the headlines over the past few months, many of us have had to ask tough questions about our own experiences of gender, power, and relationships. While women have taken the forefront of the movement, it’s also been a moment of reckoning for men. The movement has not only provided an…
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Having Healthy Sex after Sexual Assault
The summer I was nineteen, I researched and wrote a travel guide to Italy, journeying from Venice to the Cinque Terre armed only with a sundress and my handy dandy Macbook. It sounds pretty ideal, and it was—except for the constant, terrifying, enraging sexual harassment. From being groped on the train to being kissed non-consensually…
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How Psychology Stigmatized Female Orgasm (and How We Got It Back)
Read the full article at Talkspace. For most of us, orgasms are, simply, awesome. Yet from the origins of modern psychology in the late nineteenth century, a combination of cultural stereotypes, pseudoscience, and plain old misogyny created an enduring notion that women’s orgasms were a problem to be solved, rather than a normal part of sexual…
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What Ethical Non-monogamy Can Teach us About Healthy Relationships
Find the original article at Talkspace. I’m not so hot on monogamy. It’s always been strange to me that society decides one way of doing romantic relationships: boy meets girl; boy and girl date; boy and girl marry; boy and girl never date or sleep with anyone else ever again. If we’re all unique, why…
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How Mental Health Activists Are Fighting Racism
Find the original article on Talkspace. During the Civil Rights Movement, white psychologists invented a so-called mental illness. Dubbing it “protest psychosis,” these psychologists used the racially-motivated “syndrome” to explain away the reasonable rage of black Americans demanding an end to segregation. Sixty years later, racial disparities in the mental health care system remain, including lack of…
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How Much Effort Do Women Put Into Coping With Sexual Harassment in a Day?
Find the original article at Talkspace. It’s that knot of anxiety in the pit of your stomach when you walk down the street. You step off the train, your bag in front of your breasts, flinching lest the next passerby brush you “accidentally-on-purpose.” It’s never knowing whether your boss is leaning just a little too close. It’s…
Reina Gattuso 