This is a short list of resources I have found helpful and insightful, organized by topic. If you have resources that have been influential to your life and healing, please do share.
More immediate or crisis resources:
Allegheny County Re:Solve Crisis Network – 1.888.7YOU CAN (1.888.796.8226)
National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, dial or text 988
Center for Victims Crisis line (Pittsburgh) – 1.866.644.2882
Pittsburgh Action Against Rape – 1.866.END.RAPE (1.866.363.7273)
Postpartum Support Warm-line (National) – 1.800.944.4PPD (1.800.944.4773)
Trans Lifeline – 877.565.8860
LGBT National Hotline – 1.888.843.4564
Casa San José (Pittsburgh) – 412.343.3111
JFCS Refugee & Immigration (Pittsburgh) – 412.521.1737
Steel Smiling– black mental health care fund
Pittsburgh Mutual Aid – connection to resources, including funds
Be Well! – Pittsburgh health care guide
A life worth living in a world worth living in…and staying alive in the meantime: care, survival, suicide and grief – the digital version of this resource guide with hyperlinked resources and image descriptors for screen readers. You can download this as a PDF and also print it (choose the ‘booklet’ option to be able to fold it into a little booklet/zine and save paper), it will just have the image descriptors and won’t have the links written out.
Below, for printing, is the actual PDF version without image descriptors and with the links written out. Go below the image and click download to download onto your computer or read it here by scrolling when your mouse is resting on the image. You can type in the page you want to view at the top [ __ of 64]. If using the table of contents, add one to get the correct page this way, since the title page doesn’t count (i.e. you’d type in 5 for safety planning, instead of the 4 it is listed as). When printing, choose the ‘booklet’ option to be able to fold it into a little booklet/zine and save paper.
Here are printable safety plans, again click the download button below to download.
Pandemic:
How To Survive The end Of The World – podcast
WHO Mental Health and COVID-19 page
Advice For Dealing With Uncertainty, From People Who’ve Been There
Climate emotions:
All We Can Save climate emotion resources
Illness, disability, pain:
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha – podcast interview
Bitch Magazine – In Sickness series
Access Intimacy: The Missing Link – Mia Mingus
Spoons – Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone
You feel like shit – An Interaction Self-care guide
Grief and loss: How to honor our losses and not lose ourselves
Chelsea Granger has a fabulous list of death and grief resources
Uncontainable Night: Herbs for grief – Janet Kent
grief is gratitude, fear is intelligence, truth is strategic – Adrienne Maree Brown
Grief and Gratitude – Adrienne Maree Brown
grief is not linear and it is everywhere – Adrienne Maree Brown
lighting candles for orlando, and for all of us – Adrienne Maree Brown
the dark magic of grief – Rae Swersey
What Does it Mean to Hold Space – Heather Plett
Caitlin Doughty on Death Positivity and Rituals
There Are No Five Stages of Grief – Andy Kopsa
Angels By Your Side – tangible, local support while grieving
Attachment:
John Bowlby – the person who first spoke about attachment in the way we know it now. Plus some exploration of the ideas.
How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Relationship – in relation to relationships, models, building.
Hold Me Tight– a book by Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
The Art of Wellbeing – on attachment theory
Your Attachment Style Influences the Success of Your Relationship
How to Change Your Attachment Style
The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture – Nora Samaran
Sue Johnson: Changes in Relationship-Specific Romantic Attachment in EFT
Mind and body, somatics:
The Charming Science of Your Gut – video on how our gut and brain interact, including how our mental health is impacted
A local somatic practitioner’s site, Tender Space Elemental Somatics
Trauma and resiliency:
The art of healing trauma – Heidi Hanson
15 Trauma Healing Goals – Symbolic Representations
Window of Tolerance – Laura Kerr
Trauma Stewardship – This is a book that I have found extremely helpful for people experiencing vicarious/secondary trauma
Radical mental healthcare, healing justice and activism:
Fireweed Collective – formally The Icarus Project
California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)
Healing Justice for the Black Lives Matter Movement – Just Healing
Medical Industrial Complex – Visual – Mia Mingus
The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture– Nora Samaran
Filling the Void – an interview with Bruce K. Alexander On How Our Culture Is Making Us Addicted
Pregnancy, birth and postpartum:
Darkside of Motherhood Therapeutic Group – Pittsburgh’s Post Traumatic Birth Therapeutic Group
Postpartum Pittsburgh – Mental health resources for people who are pregnant or postpartum
Psychedelic use resources:
Zendo Project – psychedelic peer support
Fireside Project – peer support, education, research
Dance Safe – promoting drug use safety in the electronic music community
How to vet your psychedelic guide article
Concrete information on drugs:
Harm reduction/benefit maximization:
National Harm Reduction Coalition
Prevention Point Pittsburgh – “dedicated to providing health empowerment services to people who use drugs.”
Therapy:
A Therapist Walks into a Bar – A podcast that brings therapy to you
Why We Feel Lonely and Odd– short animated video
On Soul, Character and Calling: A Conversation with James Hillman
How Therapy Works – a Deep Eddy Psychotherapy therapist writing about their practice, but with really general and helpful ideas
Parting the Clouds – Interview with psychiatrist Charles Raison on new treatments for depression
Conflict and trauma transformation:
Transforming Historical Harms – Coming to the Table
What isn’t transformative justice – Adrienne Maree Brown
Pods and Pod Mapping Worksheet – by the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective on relationships to turn towards for both support and responsibility
LIZZIE ANDERSON, LCSW, CD(DONA) 