Links

Note: These links reflect my personal interests and the resources I have found to be valuable, especially as they pertain to my writing on the blog. In no way are they a comprehensive introduction to any one subject; instead, they may provide a framework for a deeper understanding of the subjects on which I have written.

I. Books

Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws. Kate Bornstein, a transsexual writer, gives us this great guide for anyone who struggles with suicidal thoughts. There are 101 ideas, big and small, for changing your life so you stop wanting to die. This guide is focused on fellow transgender people, but could benefit everyone, especially teenagers. She’s stubbornly clinging to life, as many of us are, and she also has a great sense of humor– making this a really fun and engaging read. I definitely recommend you keep it around as a reference.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. This classic text on trauma and the body is a must-read for everyone who is discovering the depth of their life history. It focuses on science and research rather than personal wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it’s not compelling. The truth may hurt, though, so be sure to take breaks whenever you need to if you pick up this book.

Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. This book is a must-read for anyone affected by interpersonal abuse, especially domestic violence from men. The author has worked with abusive men in carceral contexts and can really explain what an abusive person is thinking and why they do what they do.

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. This short book describes the mindset changes needed to be compassionate towards ourselves when we are struggling with tasks like cleaning.

II. Self Care

You Feel Like Shit. An interactive self care guide set up as a choose-your-own-adventure game. Goes through the basics of self care like hydration, nutrition, etc.

III. Emotions & Feelings

How to Know When You Are Having a Feeling. Dr. Jonice Webb brands herself as the expert on Childhood Emotional Neglect. While the ability to know if you’re having a feeling may seem like a basic survival necessity, many of us actually don’t notice and/or interpret our feelings very well at all. This article focuses on the clues that show us we’re having a feeling as well as how to identify and name them. (She does advertise buying her book to find a feelings list, but you can find those elsewhere on the internet in a variety of forms.)

How Every Feeling You Have Carries a Message and Has a Purpose. This is another article from Dr. Jonice Webb. It follows up on the idea of identifying your feelings by telling you what your feelings mean when they come up, in the form of a simple chart.

A. Emotional Labor

Emotional Labor: What It Is and How To Do It. This article is a primer (especially for men) on how to take on more emotional labor in your relationships and thereby ease the burden on your woman/fem loved ones. It references a key Metafilter thread, in which the idea of emotional labor was introduced to many people for the first time. Full of examples!

B. Relationships

How To Improve Relationships by Knowing Your Attachment Style. This article is an introduction to attachment styles, which form in our childhood and play a significant part in our adult relationships. Broadly, there is secure attachment (in which a child feels safe with their caregiver) and insecure attachment (in which they don’t).

The Forgotten Attachment Style: Disorganized Attachment. A zoomed-in look at disorganized attachment, a type that often gets left out of other resources.

Helping Parents Distinguish Love From Emotional Hunger. This article looks at attachment parenting and the motives behind many of our parenting decisions.

IV. Social Justice

Out of the Attic: Dissociation and Social Justice. This article describes a workshop focused on issues like privilege, violence, and trauma. Long and involved, but has a very good introduction to the concept of dissociation and an extensive list of dissociative symptoms. Useful both to people with dissociative disorders and those trying to best accommodate them.

Community Accountability. A resource list on addressing violence, abuse, and oppression within our communities without relying on the criminal justice system.

A. Racism

Racial Disparities in Psychotic Order Diagnosis. People of color and immigrants are disproportionately diagnosed with the more-stigmatized psychotic disorders. This article reviews the literature on the phenomenon and its possible causes.

White Witchery. Do you ever think about where your crystals come from? How often do we, as witches, look the other way? Click through for this very enlightening article by a native witch on whiteness in the occult. Really, it’s a meditation on PTSD and the intergenerational trauma of colonized peoples.

B. Sex Positivity

Is It Sex Positive or Inappropriate? 10 Questions to Help You Tell the Difference. This handy guide can help you decide when you’re legitimately crossing boundaries when talking about sexual topics some might find uncomfortable. Number five is particularly relevant.

My Desires Are Valid: Finding My (Erotic) Self After Trauma. How do we re-learn how to be sexual after sexual trauma? What do we really want and how do we know? Ultimately, the author comes to realize that our culture ensures that our sexuality cannot be separate from trauma and conditioning. However, our bodies belong to us. (The website’s namesake book is also a must-read!)

I Can Be a Therapist — And Do Porn. A focus on an entrepreneur Jasmine who embraces her sex-positive side and combines that with her more traditional professional roles. Her work is also informed by her identity as a mixed woman who is seen as Black.

C. Anti-Capitalism

Codependency & (Anti-) Capitalism. If you struggle with boundary issues in relation to your activism, this article is an insightful look at how prevalent that is and what we can do about it. These ideas about the necessity of self-sacrifice are one of the ways that capitalism has an insidious grasp on us. Remember that your worth is always inherent and never depends on what you can “do,” even when those actions are for a righteous cause. (Check out the rest of this website for more articles from a still-publishing radical newspaper centered in California’s Bay Area.)

D. Ableism

What is Internalized Ableism and What Can We Do to Overcome It? Some practical steps to take when you find yourself dealing with the belief that you are less-than for being disabled.

Internalized Ableism. This resource includes writing prompts!

V. Trauma

Measuring One’s Unique Experience of Trauma – Measuring Trauma Graphic. This is a very extensive graphic that helps survivors kind of “quantify” their trauma. Obviously, it’s almost impossible to say who has it worse than another survivor, but we need to understand our trauma as we work to heal it. (This website is worth browsing in its entirety!)

A. Interpersonal Abuse

3 Reasons You Wouldn’t Believe My Ex Abused Me – And Why They All Mean You Should. Here is an anonymous essay on why the common “evidence” that a relationship isn’t abusive often doesn’t hold up. “If you were looking to poke holes in my story, you probably could.” The moral of the story: believe survivors!

10 Things I’ve Learned About Gaslighting As An Abuse Tactic. Here’s an intermediate-level text about gaslighting, which is a type of manipulation that occurs when one person tries to make another person feel “crazy” and doubt their reality. This is very helpful for those who have been gaslit. Includes a helpful note about polyamory.

1. Child Abuse

Wounds That Time Won’t Heal: The Neurobiology of Child Abuse. This rather long journal article from 2000 is a little dated in terms of its definitions of psychiatric disorders, but it’s a valuable resource for its insistence that abused people can’t just “get over it.” Also includes a brief history of the recognition of child abuse.

2. Sexual Violence

6 Things to Navigate While Coming Out to Yourself as a Survivor of Sexual Violence. An important point: self-education can be key to contextualizing your experiences.

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture. Some of the most practical and applicable advice I’ve seen on combating rape culture. The author, Nora Samaran, also has a great book and the rest of her blog is very informative.

How politeness conditioning can lead to confusion about sexual assaults. Remember that if this is your experience, you are not alone!

Self Help Guide for Trans Survivors of Violence. This is a 132-page downloadable (free!) book. However, it isn’t dense– it’s very well-written.

Navigating Justice for Sexual Abuse Survivors, When You’re a Prison Abolitionist and Survivor. This is for the social-justice-oriented survivors who struggle with what they want after sexual assault.

Supporting a Survivor of Sexual Assault. Download this short zine about how to support someone else who has been sexually assaulted.

I’ve Talked With Teenage Boys About Sexual Assault for 20 Years: This is What They Still Don’t Know. This article by famed author Laurie Halse Anderson focuses on what young boys aren’t told regarding sexual violence and how we can tip the scales in favor of them not becoming perpetrators.

a. Tonic Immobility

Sexual Consent & Tonic Immobility: When “No” is Not an Option. This is an interesting foray into neurology that helps us understand why we might not “fight or flee” during an assault. It deals extensively with the “tonic immobility” we might encounter, and discusses how to respond if you think someone close to you is exhibiting a freeze response. Includes a short documentary for people who may prefer video, as well as a guide to talking about your sexual trauma.

VI. Recovery and Healing

15 Trauma Healing Goals – Symbolic Representations. This is a set of visuals representing trauma healing goals, which may be a relevant jumping-off point for people trying to set recovery goals.

Healing from Complex Trauma. Here is the homepage of a website dedicated to Complex PTSD and the healing process, written by Lilly Hope Lucario.

5 Reasons Forgiveness is Not a Good Way to Heal articulates why we don’t need to forgive our abusers and why forcing ourselves to forgive too early can impede our recovery.

Pods and Pod Mapping Worksheet. This transformative justice organization’s website deals with accountability surrounding childhood sexual abuse, for “survivors, bystanders, and people who have harmed.” This particular article is about your accountability “pod,” or individuals who you would trust with the partaking in the accountability process.

A. Meditation

Potential Psychological Dangers of Meditation – Especially Relevant for Those with PTSD. This article from the New Synapse blog deals with changes we may experience as negative during meditation, proving that meditation is not a mental illness cure-all.

The Total Lack of Useful Information. A critical look at meditation and why it can sometimes lead us astray.

B. Somatic Experiencing

What I See is New, What I See is Safe – A Look Inside A Somatic Experiencing Therapy Session for PTSD. A play-by-play of a Somatic Experiencing therapy session. “This is safe, this is now.”

VII. Mental Illness

Why I’m Done Being a “Good” Mentally Ill Person. This evocative article explores the differences between being a “good” mentally ill person and a vilified one, often in ways related to functioning labels and other inherently harmful hierarchies.

Recovery Library by Pat Deegan. Pat Deegan’s recovery library is behind a paywall, but it has many resources for mentally ill people and their loved ones. Sponsorships are available for those who cannot afford $5 a month for access.

A. Borderline Personality Disorder

Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder is Often Flawed. Beginning with the story of pioneer Marsha Linehan, this article from Scientific American addresses the stigma surrounding Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

B. Depression

1. Hopelessness

9 Types of Hopelessness and How to Overcome Them. This article summarizes lessons from the book Hope in the Age of Anxiety by Anthony Scioli and Henry Biller, and describes for us the nine types of hopelessness and how to deal with them.

C. PTSD and C-PTSD

New Synapse. This website in its entirety is a great resource for those seeking help with PTSD.

7 PTSD Feedback Loops. This article from New Synapse describes the author’s experiences with feedback loops that deepen the experience of PTSD.

1. Dissociation

What is Dissociation? This article deals with some of the confusion surrounding the concept of dissociation, which can show up as a time-limited experience (an “episode” of dissociation) or as a problem in the fundamental structure of the mind.

2. Hypersexuality

Sex After Trauma: The Psychology Behind My Promiscuity. This article is a true account of the hypersexuality response that can occur after sexual trauma. Also contains some information on how to know that you are having a healthy sexual encounter.

D. Dissociative Disorders

Denial and Doubt in Dissociative Disorders. Being in denial and doubting your dissociative disorder symptoms are part of how the disorder manifests. Note: This resource relies on an understanding of the theory of structural dissociation, which involves ANP (Apparently Normal Parts) and EP (Emotional Parts). I don’t personally find that this theory adequately describes my experience, but your experience may differ.

First Person Plural Factsheets and Articles. A list of resources for systems.

DID/OSDD Self Help Masterlist. An EXTENSIVE resource compiling articles and videos for people with DID/OSDD.

Structural Dissociation. A primer on the theory of structural dissociation.

VIII. Neurodivergence

Laziness Does Not Exist — But Unseen Barriers Do. This article by autistic scholar Devon Price, which became a book of the same name, invites us to look at what holds students (and everyone else) back from success. What you may think of initially as laziness is probably an unseen disability. (Note: I try not to link to Medium as one only gets a certain amount of free articles a month, but this one is very important.)

A. Autism

“But I Work With Real Autistic People Who Can’t Communicate At All!” This article, from an autistic writer, reminds us that behavior is communication and that many of the behaviors we associate with autism are often distress signals.

Conserving Spoons. A discussion surrounding Spoon Theory (with a link to the original if you’re unfamiliar). How can we conserve our spoons, and what is the best strategy to do so? What is truly draining our spoons? Deals specifically with the autistic experience, but can broadly be applied to all disabilities.

IX. Witchcraft

A Critique of Abraham Hicks and the Law of Attraction. This article details the spiritual bypassing inherent in believing that people’s experiences are drawn to them by their own mind.

X. Productivity

How to Prioritize Your Project Ideas. Got too many creative projects on your plate? Read this guide to narrowing them down and devoting yourself to the ones that truly “spark joy.”