Years ago, Lindsey brought up how hard it is to read about their own experiences in the stigmatizing and pathologizing language that the DSM provides. Lindsey experiences ‘dermatillomania’ or ‘skin picking’, and there is very little kind or dignifying information available about this experience. We wondered if we could create something better. It took a while to get this ball rolling, but here we are, and we want to invite anyone with shared experience of this or ‘trichotillomania’ / ‘hair pulling’ to join us in this project.
Light writing on a dark green background says “Community conversation about dermatillomania / skin picking & trichotillomania / hair pulling. June 24, 2023 | 1-2:30 pm MST | Zoom. Facilitated by Tiffany Sostar and Lindsey Boyes” Below, inside a purple staticky circle, says, “Troubling the boundary between the self and the world”
On June 24, 2023, we will be hosting an initial community conversation for people who experience skin picking / ‘dermatillomania’ or hair pulling / ‘trichotillomania’ and who want to talk about these experiences in ways that name and challenge stigma and that expand beyond the pathologizing and limited definitions of the DSM.
The reason we want to host this conversation and create a collective document that takes this conversation forward is that the stigma associated with these experiences is intense, and the language used to describe people who have these experiences is often demeaning and pathologizing. There is little meaningful awareness about these experiences, and because skin and hair are often so visible, people can face judgement and intrusive questions from many directions. These experiences can also be difficult to discuss because of the (valid!) fear of judgement and the shame that can accumulate after years of experiencing the effects of stigma and lack of awareness.
We hope that this conversation will create a space to share community stories in an honouring and dignifying way – to reclaim some ‘storytelling rights’ from the overwhelming power of silence and stigma. That this conversation will be an act of resistance and care.
“Resistance is an everyday act. The work of excavating every tiny artifact of the oppressor that lives in you. Your call to be a balm to every self-inflicted wound is the way movements are birthed.”
We also hope that this conversation will result in a collective document that can be shared, that can be a balm that comes from the insider knowledge of community members who know that this experience is more than just pathology, and who know how to respond in skillful and meaningful ways.
This conversation will be facilitated by myself and Lindsey. We invite any community members who have lived experience to join us. The conversation will be recorded and transcribed, but the recording and transcription will not be shared publicly. Participants will be able to choose how (and if) their contributions are included in the final collective document, and how (and if) they are credited by name, by pseudonym, or anonymously.
I’ll be hosting a community conversation, along with my excellent pal Zan, on the topic of how we are trying to avoid misgendering (and why, and what difference it makes).
There is so much hostility directed towards trans and gender diverse communities right now, and the actions we take to care for, welcome, affirm, and acknowledge trans folks can often feel small and invisible in the face of so much hostility. But these actions are not small, and our hope is that this conversation will make them more visible, and that by sharing these stories, we can take a stand, together, against transphobia, and alongside trans community members.
This conversation is open to anyone, of any gender, who wants to talk about how they are trying to avoid misgendering.
This conversation will be taking place on December 11 from 3-4:30 pm mountain time (December 12 from 8:30-10 am Adelaide time). You can register for the conversation here.
We will record and transcribe this conversation, and collect the stories into a collective document (probably a zine!) to share with participants and community members, and on the Dulwich Centre’s website as part of this project.
Stories will be anonymized if you prefer, and the transcription will be shared back with conversation participants but will not be shared publicly.
It’s been a minute since I hosted a conversation like this, and I’m really excited for it. But I also want to acknowledge that this conversation is in response to tragedy and trauma. The actions we take to stand with trans and non-binary folks can be life-saving. The effects of transphobia, homophobia, and refusing to support trans and non-binary folks are horrific.
I want to make something that makes care visible. And I want to be in a space where care is visible. It matters that we make this effort.
Has your experience of relationship exclusivity (monogamy and non-monogamy, but also types of exclusivity within either monogamous or non-monogamous relationships) shifted multiple times?
Would you like to talk about it?
I’m putting together the beginning of a narrative project on this topic, and will be scheduling one group conversation and up to 5 individual conversations between now and November 15.
Depending on how these conversations go and whether there is interest, I will be organizing a six-week narrative practice group where we can explore and re-story our experiences of changing relationship structures. This group will be scheduled for the new year.
My goal is to better understand how people experience fluidity in relationship structure preference over time. I think that within polyamorous spaces there is often the idea that there is an ideal (and linear) trajectory from monogamy to a specific form of polyamory.
I’m interested in talking about this, especially since I think for folks who have a different trajectory (such as returning to exclusivity, or having relationship structure preference expand and then contract, or preferring exclusivity in one area of a relationship even if there is non-exclusivity in another), there can be feelings of shame or failure attached to this.
If this sounds interesting to you, let me know! Email me at sostarselfcare @ gmail, and watch this space for the group conversation information.
Editing to add: The group conversation has been scheduled for November 7 from 11-12:30 mountain time, and will be hosted on Zoom. Contact me for registration info!
The BPD Superpowers group has set our sights on an important new project, and we’re launching it in May for BPD Awareness Month!
We want to create an accessible DBT resource that is informed by our deeply held values of disability justice rather than ableism, decolonization rather than colonialism, collective action rather than individualism, and neurodiversity rather than pathology.
We recognize that DBT has been an incredibly helpful framework and set of skills for so many folks, many of whom identify with borderline personality disorder (and many who don’t!). We also recognize that many of the existing resources and many of the established ways of teaching the skills are ableist, individualist, and expensive, which means it has often been most accessible to white folks with financial privilege. In this project, we hope to honour what is valuable about this set of skills, and stand against what has been harmful.
Does this sound like a project you would like to be involved in?
Have you had experience with DBT resources, either through group or individual therapy, or self-directed using books or other resources?
We would love to hear from you!
Please note: Although this project is going ahead, the scheduled community conversations are going to be postponed. Individual conversations can still be arranged, and community conversations will be rescheduled.
We will be hosting two facilitated community conversations, through Zoom, in May.
If neither of these times work for you and you would like to be involved, email Tiffany to set up an individual conversation.
If you do not have lived experience with accessing DBT resources, but you do want to be involved in our BPD Awareness Month events, you can join us for a webinar on the topic of Distress Tolerance: Stories, Skills, and Strategies for Hard Timeson May 22 from 1-2:30 pm Mountain time. Register for the zoom link, or read more about the webinar here.
Image is a person sitting on a couch, watching tv. On the tv is a stick figure with the quote, “That’s what friends do, they stand by each other when there’s trouble. – Gabrielle.” Beside the tv is the name of the project, Zine: A Warrior Princess. The quote is from the show Xena: Warrior Princess, spoken by the character Gabrielle.
IMPORTANT NOTE! The deadline for submissions has been extended until there are enough to create the zine – hopefully end of July, 2020. The submissions that have come in so far are absolutely gorgeous. Be part of this project! Submissions so far include writing about Final Fantasy, Groot, and the musical episode of Buffy, Once More With Feeling. So good!
I’m ready to start working on my next zine project!
This one has the potential to be a little lighter, a little more playful.
This zine is about how pop culture is getting us through this time.
What is this zine about?
It’s about the lessons we’ve learned from our favourite tv shows, movies, comics, and books. It’s about how pop culture can invite us into an alternate world, and how these worlds have been safe and comforting spaces for us for many years.
It’s about the archetypes in the Princess Bride allowing us to see ourselves in a playful and generous light.
It’s about Buffy surviving a new apocalypse every season, and what hope that might offer for us as we face this particular apocalypse.
It’s about Steven Universe and She-Ra and Aang and Korra and Kipo and The Magicians and Elle Woods and Kamala Khan and Miles Morales and America Chavez and Kimberly Kane and Starbuck and Furiosa and Marge Gunderson and Elastica and Zoe Washburne and Veronica Mars and Minerva McGonagall and River Song and The Doctor and Jane Eyre and Phryne Fisher and Jo March and Alexander Hamilton (and Eliiiiiiiiiiiiiza) and Fem Shep and so many others, and it’s about how these characters, and the worlds they inhabit, the worlds they invite us into, make it more possible for us to get through the pandemic.
It’s also about pop culture personalities and how we navigate our relationships with celebrity (of whatever magnitude) in ways that make it more possible to get through the pandemic.
Prompts to get you started
What shows/books/comics/characters/etc are getting you through?
How?
Are you re-engaging with old favourites or discovering new ones?
What are the gifts of these pop culture offerings? What skills have they taught you? What values have they nurtured in you? What hopes have they sparked? What comfort have they offered?
Where did you discover them? Does appreciation of these characters or worlds or creators connect you to a community?
Do you share these shows, books, characters with others?
What have they made possible in your life?
What have they made possible in your pandemic life?
I think this will be a fun project and I’m really excited about it!
When and how to submit
I’ll be accepting submissions until the end of June, and hoping to share the zine by the end of July.
After writing an update to my patreon supporters yesterday, wondering whether we could do some kind of small collective document or zine, I decided that, yes, I do want to do a little zine about how we are handling covid19.
I haven’t made a zine in a little while, and this is a pretty big issue that has lots of us worried and in our feelings. In my experience, writing and co-creating something can help us alchemize those big and overwhelming feelings into something that feels possible, into paths forward.
I love the comic about how we are basically houseplants with complicated feelings, and it got me thinking about how isolation means we need to be succulents, able to survive and thrive in conditions of scarcity and intensity, and how fear also turns out lives into deserts, and how precarity does the same.
So I thought we could use that metaphor, and make a little zine about what gets us through, and how we get each other through.
What are our skills of survival?
What are our strategies of mutual aid and collective action and care?
How are we keeping ourselves going, and what can we teach each other?
Many of us are in communities with generations-long histories of succulent lives in deserts of ableism, transantagonism, queerphobia, colonialism, white supremacy. Oppressed and targeted communities know the way forward.
If you’d like to write something about how you’re feeling about the news, the health guidelines, the government response, your own experiences of isolation as a result of disability or illness that were not accommodated and how this has given you insider insight into what gets you through… let me know!
I won’t be hosting an in-person narrative conversation about this (because social distancing is what we’re supposed to do!) but I was thinking that maybe we could host an online narrative chat about it, and turn that into part of this collective document.
Let me know if you would be interested in that, too.
Send your submissions to sostarselfcare@gmail.com. Please send your submissions by April 10, 2020.
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