Mental Health Homebase
Insights, tools, answers, and stories with more questions
I haven’t been sneaking for the past week, but I have been considering it. I’ve known how I wanted to start this space for years, but as doing it rolled around again, I got caught up in whether I was sharing the right thing first. I was nervous to start with mental health, not only because it’s vulnerable and every piece of it is laced with a battle I haven’t totally shed the armor from, but also because most of my current readers are my friends and I am definitely under the impression that everyone I know has their shit totally together and will think this is hella boring and I will lose all THIRTY-SIX of my current subscribers! AHHHH and also… thank you all for being here.
I love that little insecure part of me and her silly spirals, I really do.
So after struggling with my ego for a few days and watching some reality tv to avoid my ego for several others, I’m starting with creating this mental health space because…
I want to write about what I’m obsessed with and I am OBSESSED with mental health tools right now — how they’ve changed my life personally and how I think they can change the world.
I want to put the words I needed into the world. And I needed stuff like this.
I think I have to purge these practical and imperative words before I can access the art I want to create.
While I was battling my ego, I already wrote drafts of a bunch of it and we can’t waste all that un-sneaky work now can we!?
So if you’re totally mentally well (what’s that like?) and this is not your jam, just standby as I unburden my chest with all of this practical and emotional goodness that I’m not so secretly hoping will change someone’s life like it did mine.
My primary “thesis” on mental health is that we are not all the same.
End of thesis.
The same things won’t work for all of us. No one therapist or tool or type of therapy or tactic worked for me. While struggling with chronic depression and anxiety, I’ve spent the last 8 years or so gathering expensive therapist insights, tools from instagram, revelations and care from friends. I take the pieces of each thing that work for me. I have my own interpretations. I mix and match. I put it all in a huge very magical top hat that I pull miracle healing rabbits out of every now and then.
Some of this might work for you, some of it might not, and all of it is flexible, and a work in progress, and you can take or leave even the tiniest kernels.
Whenever my coach offers me insights, she always pauses to ask if it resonates. If it doesn’t, we take a different direction. If it does, we keep following that rabbit. I invite you to ask the same question. You’ll know the answer.
Welcome to my Top Hat
I considered launching this all at once, but this is not a book, it’s a substack and sometimes, as my coach says, I need to just turn the dial down a little bit.
So If a topic is underlined, click to read more. If it’s not yet, that piece is COMING SOON!
Subscribe to stay updated or just constantly refresh this page, whatever feels good to you. I plan to drop one per day. I have deleted and retyped that sentence several times, but I guess you can have it.
nervous system regulation
or The Life Hackiest Life Hack There Is
embodiment (get out of your head and into your body)
or What Dogs, Toddlers, and Drunk People Have in Common
internal family systems / parts work
or How I Got Out of Bed (Part 1)
How I Fell in Love with Myself (Part 2) - more practical info!
My Drunk Part (Part 3?)
anxious attachment and other attachment styles I know less about
or Relationships for Dummies (like me)
emotional regulation
or How to Become a God (like me)
compassionate curiosity
or Fucking Tough Love and How it Changed My Life
trauma with a lowercase t and c-ptsd
or Trauma Isn’t Just The Big Stuff
therapy
or You Should Probably Try Therapy
and BONUS: 50 Things I Learned in Therapy
attunement and boundaries for highly sensitive people
or It’s Really Not Your Fault (but It’s Going to Be If You Don’t Set Some Fucking Boundaries)
enneagram
or How I Drank The Start Up KoolAid and WHY ITS ACTUALLY AWESOME
gratitude and surveilling for good
or Yeah, yeah, I know, But It Does Work
holistic approaches to mental health
or Vitamins, Reike, and Wellness retreats, oh my
mental health medication
or Mental Health Medication
gender stuff, intergenerational trauma, and values work
or I’m Just Listing Other Things I Don’t Want To Forget
to be continued…
Is there something you’d like to see here that’s not? Let me know!
And as always, if you are in need of mental or social services check out our resources over at extendpua.org/help. Someday I’ll move them here.