Have you been feeling flat for a while now? Like life is just one long to-do list? Maybe you’ve lost motivation, things don’t feel fun anymore, and you’re not really interested in much. And yet, on the outside, you’re still doing it all: showing up to work, going to meetings, paying the bills, keeping everything moving. But inside, it feels heavy, like you’re dragging yourself through every day.

If this rings true, you might be dealing with something called High-functioning depression.

Get curious about your therapist’s Bi+ clinical competency
and your unique Bi+ challenges and mental health risks. 

Being on the Bisexual Spectrum (Bi+) is still fraught. The strange thing is that it seems like it shouldn’t be. Aren’t we way past Bisexuality being an issue for anyone by now? This belief is actually part of the problem: the struggles Bi+ people grapple with continue to be dismissed, under-studied, and minimized, and we are cast as whiny, confused, and attention-seeking. This very dismissal prevents the struggles the Bi+ population’s experiences from being appropriately heard, understood, acknowledged, validated, and therefore addressed. Continuing to bring up the difficulties we face as Bi+ community members is framed as exactly the whiny, attention-seeking we are accused of. It is a catch-22-type trap! If we bring it up, we are dismissed; if we don’t bring it up, the harm existing in the status quo continues.

As a therapist, you can imagine that I am a big proponent of the role therapy can play in one’s life. It is such a great tool when we have the opportunity to engage in it. But I'm also a big proponent of taking charge of our own healing and growth! Therefore, when I come across evidence-based actions that people can take into their own hands, I am thrilled! And am motivated to share with you. Therapeutic writing fits the bill: it is an activity you can do on your own, with zero financial cost, and is well supported by research.

This article, What Your Bi+ Clients Need You To Know, about guiding and educating Registered Clinical Counsellors on important information about counselling clients who fall on the Bisexual spectrum. Insights magazine is the publication serving the members of the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC), which means that every RCC receives this magazine in the mail.

I know what you’re thinking. How can practicing being grateful not be flaky, fluffy, or fuzzy? It sounds like something a feel-gooder, cheeseball will encourage us to do right after waving incense sticks around, and right before selling you their homemade gratitude memory bowl for $89. (This probably exists.)

Bisexuality is highly misrepresented, misunderstood, understudied, and an often quite highly maligned sexual orientation. It has become increasingly clear to me that bisexuality needs to be talked about much more than it is!

In my role as a Registered Clinical Counsellor, I am in the extremely privileged position of being allowed — no — required, to ask some fairly (let’s face it) invasive questions, like: how do you define your sexual orientation? How do you describe your sexuality? As a result, I get to see something the research has told us, but live and in-person: that there are so many more people who identify as and live on the bisexual+ spectrum than most of us realize!

Every therapist will probably eventually encourage you to try some grounding activities. Grounding is that helpful. It is that universally needed. It is that important.

I appreciate this book because Hari is telling his own story of realization as an insider whom has relied on medication and psychiatrists for much of his life. He brings a journalist's research skills and writing, which he then marries with the vulnerability of a person struggling with depression and trying to understand his struggles with mental illness, the medical system, and the pharmaceuticals he has depended upon.

I recently pulled something in my shoulder and suddenly had a bout of acute pain that lasted for many days. Like most of us, I’ve had my share of injuries and pain, but this issue was so sudden and affected so much of my day to day life that it really threw me off my game.