✨ Midnight✨

happy pride! remember that being a transgender is everything but fiction. there are so many real historical figures from every century about whose transgenderism we aren't even aware of

Wanting something requires dopamine signaling, but liking something doesn’t.

If you have a mental illness/disorder that affects dopamine, you might feel that you don’t want to do the things that you like. You do still like them. You will appreciate having done them.

Let your likes guide you.

(If you want to read more, here’s one experimental paper about it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/ This theory called the incentive-sensitization theory was originally created to explain behaviors in addiction but can be applied elsewhere as well)

> accidentally meme your way into creating a hit song made entirely out of slurs

> song gets banned from the dance charts right as its about to chart

> every gay bar in the country immediately adds it to their playlist in protest

“Going to therapy doesn’t mean you are crazy!”, “Not only crazy people go to therapy!” - let’s talk about these phrases. 

They are true, in the sense that people do not only go to therapy when they experience symptoms of psychosis (like hearing voices or seeing something that does not exist outside of their mind). That’s because: 

1. You can be mentally ill and not experience any psychotic symptoms. Depression, anxiety disorder and eating disorders are just some examples for types of mental illness that (usually) do not include hallucinations but still require therapy. 

2. You can benefit from therapy even if you are not mentally ill. For example, you may talk to a therapist because you want to learn how to cope with grief after losing a loved one or want to know how to safely break-up with your abusive partner or want to figure out your gender identity… and so on! 

I do think that it’s important to talk about both of those points. We need to fight the myth that you need to be “sick enough” to see a therapist. And yet, with all that being said: I am not a fan of the phrases I mentioned above.

Going to therapy isn’t shameful, yes. But: being “crazy”, as in experiencing symptoms of psychosis, isn’t shameful either! We shouldn’t uplift people who go to therapy by shaming people with psychotic symptoms. 

So what if you do go to therapy because you are “crazy”?  Going to therapy because of that is also something we should normalize and support. Around 3% of people will experience a psychotic episode at some point in their life. In any 12-month period, around 1 in every 200 adults will experience a psychotic illness (Source). 

Psychosis, depression, grief or any other reason: Going to therapy is never a reason to be ashamed. 

With all my love,