It's Not Just In Your Head

Meet Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, an anti-capitalist psychotherapist and Christian minister. Full episode will be released soon!

We answer four questions from our Patreon community

ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

(Note from the future: thanks to helpfully critical feedback we received for this  episode, we recorded a follow up one with sex worker Gemma Paradise and  feminist studies scholar Dr. Heather Berg, who helped us better  understand the world of sex work and the various societal nuances within  that world. Go here to listen to that follow up episode:

https://anchor.fm/itsnotjustinyourhead/episodes/018-Interviewing-Sex-Worker-Gemma-Paradise-and-Feminist-Studies-Scholar-Dr--Heather-Berg-ekid33)

Support us at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead  

ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Check out Harriet's program Capitalism Hits Home at https://www.democracyatwork.info/chh_episode_list_s2, or at harrietfraad.com. Also be sure to get to know Democracy At Work better at their website democracyatwork.info.

Harriet and Max interview one of their listeners for this episode and cover a wide variety of topics from immigration to gender and cross-cultural expectations, to discrimination and colorism and European colonialism within Africa, to the strengths and limitations of the Black Lives Matter movement -- and, of course, whether these three should start a band called Marxists From Mars. Our guest Russel Ndip walks us through having immigrated to the US from Cameroon in Central Africa at the age of 8, and reflects on what it's like to occupy numerous positions of culture as sometimes both an insider and outsider (ie, African, immigrant, Black, woman, and so on). Max fumbles around trying to figure out where in Europe his family is from while trying to summarize the book "Racecraft." The trio explore some of the economic factors leading to the myth and partial reality of the resilient Black matriarch and the suicide paradox (white males have highest suicide rate, Black women the lowest), why Black Lives Matter is validating for African immigrants, how nobody can speak for a whole group, and the problem with focusing on race without understanding it in the context of class. Also, why has Walmart embraced "anti-racism" so quickly?

ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

USA National Suicide hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Max does a solo episode on the topic of suicide (Harriet will be back next week!). Topics he explores include the correlation between higher suicide rates and lower minimum wage, as well as the "suicide paradox" of white men having the highest suicide rate and black women have the lowest. Max looks at suicide from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) perspective, framing the issue as one rooted in emotional and cognitive "dysregulation" which occurs on a physiological level, caused or exacerbated by a chronically "socially invalidating environment." He uses his own past suicidal ideation to walk listeners through "what it's like," and explores some of the causal factors and influences within his own personal history that led to his own past suicidality followed by some brief clinical examples. His message to anyone who is currently suicidal is a) I've been there and feel free to email us about what you're going through, b) a better world is possible and we can't get there without you. [email protected] patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead

ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

In this solo episode, Max explains how to form a tenant's union, from inside his car. He gives an overview of what the benefits are of tenants uniting to collectively bargain with landlords, why this can be empowering and good for mental health, and what some of the first steps are to getting this done. He points out that property management companies and landlords tend to belong to "associations" which concentrate their power, which makes tenant's associations a reasonable and necessary balancing mechanism. Through such associations, Max argues that tenants can problem solve common issues in a practical way while even functioning at times as an emotionally focused support group (Max has a specific story about this near the end). He shares how he and tenants throughout Santa Barbara rapidly formed the SB Tenants Council when the pandemic started (facebook.com/sbtenantscouncil) by simply sending an email to a landlord as part of a small disability justice campaign, which eventually led to serious support and empowerment for numerous tenants.

Contact us at [email protected]

ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Harriet and Max interview Dawn Belkin Martinez about the Liberation Health Model, which she and other social workers developed 20 years ago to move toward a more holistic "mental health" approach that conceptualizes people's problems within economic, political, cultural, and historical contexts. She gives an overview of "the triangle" method, centering people's problems in the center of the triangle, and the three points of the triangle -- the personal, the cultural, the institutional -- contributing to those problems. Within this model, practitioners such as Dawn help individuals, families, and communities, develop action plans to change the conditions in their lives that cause their distress. This is a radical departure from the dominant mental health model which says most of our life problems stem from whatever is going on inside our heads.

We have a Patreon now! To support us go to Patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead.

The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/02/modern-dating-odds-economy-apps-tinder-math/606982/

How Tinder Became The McDonalds Of Love

https://medium.com/@petekennedy/romance-2-0-how-tinder-became-the-mcdonalds-of-love-d89f40735a5a

Tinder, Destroyer of Cities—When Capital Abandons Sex

ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.

Harriet and Max chat with biomolecular engineering grad student Rachel Mendelson about her experience participating in the historic Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) campaign that started at UC Santa Cruz in September, 2019, then spread to every UC campus in California. We explore what kinds of conditions typically lead to workers going on strike, and how those conditions can be mapped into the individualistic mental health model as symptoms of depression and anxiety (ie, a sense of dread, feeling helpless and powerless, self-blame, etc). Rachel shares with us the mental health benefits she experienced from joining the wildcat strike along with thousands of other grad students risking their careers (and some being injured by police) in hopes of achieving a better quality of life for themselves as well as everyone else.

Support us by becoming a Patron at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead

ATTENTION! This is a Boring Dystopia/Obligatory 'don't sue us' message:  This podcast provides numerous different perspectives and criticisms of  the mental health space, however, it should not be considered medical  advice. Please consult your medical professional with regards to any  health decisions or management.