Check it out: The Man Enough Podcast with guest Alok Vaid-Menon

By Rikki Clos, LCSW (they/them)

One of the cornerstones that our culture stands upon is the male-female gender binary. This is what men look, act, and feel like. This is what women look, act and feel like. They are supposedly mutually exclusive, and any transgression against those norms is treasonous, leaving anyone who is considered gender non-conforming or transgender to be ridiculed, harassed, and worse. The negative effects of the gender binary have been widely studied with a focus on its effects on people who aren’t cisgender, but in their book Beyond the Gender Binary (2020) and as they explain in an episode of The Man Enough Podcast, Alok Vaid-Menon asserts that the gender binary hurts everyone, not just those of us who fall under the gender non-conforming umbrella.

Alok (they/them) is an Indian-American writer, author, poet, and performance artist who is gender non-conforming (GNC) and transfeminine. They authored the book Beyond the Gender Binary wherein they expound upon the damaging nature of the gender binary. They also guested on The Man Enough podcast, where Justin Baldoni, Liz Plank, and Jamey Heath explore facets of gender and manhood. The episode is certainly worth a listen to hear from Alok themself the points they expand upon in their own experience of gender in America both personally and scholarly, but I’ll touch on some of the highlights that I found prominent.

In the episode, Alok emphasizes how our culture focuses on comprehension of gender over compassion, and how this is problematic.The focus in conversation about gender that I have found with cisgender (cis) people both personally and in my work as a therapist is usually on whether or not they understand a GNC identity. This puts the weight of explanation onto the GNC person to explain their experience in such a way that someone will understand from their cisgender (and typically binary) perspective the experience of being gender expansive or transgender, which can be very painful and frustrating for the GNC person and typically unsatisfying for the cis person. This divests the cis person from holding compassion as the focus of conversations and making space for themself and others to grow as individuals rather than as members of a rigid group (e.g. “men” or “women”). As Alok said, “There’s enough room for all of us.”

But not only does the binary damage GNC and trans folks, it damages everyone. The gender binary certainly punishes people for transgressing against it and tries to disappear those people, but it also creates painfully rigid limits on every single person. It teaches all of us that anything outside of the binary is bad and worth hating, but the truth is very few people fall entirely within the rigid labels of “man” or “woman” without nuance or complexity. Because of this, people learn to hate those parts of themself that fall outside the binary. Alok argues that for the focus to shift to compassion, everyone must begin to love themselves, including those complex parts, in order to begin loving GNC and trans folks too. In this way, we as a culture need to deconstruct the gender binary in order to achieve self-love.

The gender binary is a model of scarcity, as if there isn’t enough gender to go around. And in order for scarcity to exist, there must be those with and those without. Thus, deconstructing the binary is scary for some because it feels like loss, but in reality, as Alok explains, there are as many genders as there are people on Earth because no one person’s experience with gender is identical to another’s. And that’s not bad, that’s beautiful. Gender is socially constructed, meaning that we as a society have defined what gender means and created the gender binary rather than it being biologically-determined as some believe (Hyde, Bigler, Joel, Tate, & van Anders, 2019). So if we have the space and compassion for one another, why not let gender be a playground, a place of fun and playfulness, rather than a rigid binary which only serves to hurt?

It is part of our mission here at Umbrella Collective to give clients the space to be curious and explore all things gender and find their own unique understanding of themselves. If you or someone you love is interested in exploring their relationship to gender, submit an Eligibility Questionnaire to start therapy with us.

Umbrella Collective Eligibility Questionnaire: https://www.umbrellacollective.org/eligibility

The Man Enough Podcast: https://manenough.com/podcast/

The episode of The Man Enough Podcast starring Alok Vaid-Menon: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1SovB8DUniC7EwCg3hRgCM?si=2ead81ba7df74423

More about Alok’s work and to buy their book Beyond the Gender Binary: https://www.alokvmenon.com/

Hyde, J. S., Bigler, R. S., Joel, D., Tate, C. C., & van Anders, S. M. (2019). The future of sex and gender in psychology: Five challenges to the gender binary. American Psychologist, 74(2), 171–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000307

What is Liberation Health?

by Eva Jones

Have you ever noticed yourself feeling exhausted, stressed, sad, or anxious, for seemingly “no reason”? Have you ever shamed or blamed yourself for feeling any of the above unpleasant feelings, while thinking, “nothing in particular has happened to make me feel this way, and I have a lot to be grateful for, so I just need to get over it”? If you have, you’re not alone. We all go through times of struggle while noticing “nothing in particular” happening at the tip of the iceberg of life, but how often do we look beneath the surface? 

Therapists like me, who use a Liberation Health approach in their work, prioritize exploring beneath the surface to name the systems impacting our personal experiences. Co-creator of the Liberation Health Model, Dawn Belkin Martinez, defines this model as, “...a theory of human behavior that conceptualizes the problems of individuals and families that cannot be understood in isolation from the economic, political, cultural, and historical conditions which give rise to them. It is also a method of practice that helps individuals, families, and communities understand the personal, cultural, and institutional factors that contribute to their problem and act to change these conditions; to liberate themselves from both internal and external oppressions”. 

It’s with this perspective in mind, that I often say to clients, “you didn’t just pop out of a box feeling this way”. You were and are, your family was and is, and your ancestors were, impacted by not just personal factors like your unique physical health, brain chemistry, and life responsibilities, but also by cultural factors like the ideologies of white supremacy, sexism, heteropatriarchy, and neoliberalism, which drive sociopolitical inequalities and create our experiences with chronic and traumatic stress, western “bootstraps” individualism which perpetuates stigma against asking for support, and lack of community resources to support us when we do ask. We, and the generations before us, are also impacted by institutional factors that have been woven into our social, political, and economic fabric by the above named ideologies. Institutional factors include systems like healthcare, education, incarceration, welfare, and capitalism. The Liberation Health Model offers us a framework to take stock of these cultural and institutional impacts on our lives, and put blame where blame belongs, toward the goal of creating individual and collective change to these ideologies and systems that are destroying our bodies, our communities, and our ecosystems. 

One of the most powerful outcomes of this approach is the potential for it to disrupt shame. How often do we blame ourselves, or assume some “badness” or “weakness” on our part, because we just can’t seem to shake our grief and anxiety and exhaustion? On behalf of Liberation Health practitioners and radical social workers everywhere, I say to you: Hello! And welcome to this current historical moment of deep social crisis! Of course you’re feeling unpleasant things like fear, pain, and scarcity. Of course your nervous system is chronically activated, and of course you’re struggling- these are normal and appropriate reactions to the literal and metaphorical five-alarm fires that are created by systems that value exploitation over life. 

It’s not your fault. 

And you are not alone. 

The more we talk about this stuff, the more we shed light on the many personal, cultural, and institutional factors impacting our experiences. The more light we shed, the less darkness there is for shame and isolation to thrive in. 

You might be thinking, “yeah sure, disrupting shame is great, but once I name all these factors, what do I do about them?” In Liberation Health Model language, the “what do I do about it” part is called the “action steps”. If you’re anything like me, you might first assume that “action steps” have to look like you going out and rallying the people to overthrow these harmful systems and create positive change. While large-scale, collective action is invaluable for community-building and change-making, and can certainly be in your action steps, action steps can also include everyday things that might feel more manageable. Mahlet Meshesha, a school social worker and member of Boston Liberation Health Group, calls these manageable action steps “life jackets”. In her article, “Drowning Without a Life Jacket: A therapist uses a Liberation Health approach to look at all the factors and develop an action plan”, Meshesha brainstorms her client’s potential action steps when she writes, “...is there a neighbor who could help with errands? Could she ask her brother for help? Is there a source of free masks in the community? Are her co-workers experiencing similar struggles, and could they organize together to approach their employer about making changes? Is there a local immigrant organization that could advocate for better interpretation services? Many of these “life jackets” are a reminder to look to our community for help when possible.” 

By reminding us to look to our support systems and communities for help when possible, the Liberation Health Model provides an opportunity to not just account for the harm that is being done by harmful systems, but also to account for the care that is being done by caring systems. We need only to look up and out to see that we are interconnected, that all of us have needs for support, and all of us have support to offer each other.

If we find liberation, it will be together, and it will be from the tender places of care in our families, in our communities, and inside each of us. In this way, health means liberation and liberation means health. As Audre Lorde once wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”. 

For more resources on the Liberation Health Model, check out:

• Boston Liberation Health

• Social Justice in Clinical Practice: a liberation health framework for social work edited by Dawn Belkin Martinez and Ann Fleck-Henderson

• “Drowning Without a Life Jacket; A therapist uses a Liberation Health approach to look at all the factors and develop an action plan” by Mahlet Meshesha

Difficulties of Parenting During and After the Marshall Fire

We here at Umbrella Collective had a few members of our team impacted by the fire. This article struck a cord with us and want to pass it along as a significant read on the perspective of parents specifically during this devastating event. First they fled, now they grieve: How parents are surviving the Colorado wildfires.

If you are experiencing mental distress and are seeking assistance, our eligibility page is open and we are accepting new clients. We also have a more short term, immediate appointments with our program, The Point.

LGBTQ+ therapy in boulder available for families, children, and adults.

Tetris and the Treatment of C-PTSD Flashbacks

By Rikki Clos

With a number of my clients, we process the way that video games and roleplaying games can be used as coping mechanisms for stress, anxiety, and depression. It is also my firm belief that roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons have clinical application because they offer opportunities to regain power and control over our story, even if our character is a half-orc paladin and we’re just people. The application of games is endless, which is why I found an article in Science Daily about use of Tetris to reduce Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) flashbacks to be very interesting. 

In 2018, Kessler et al. studied the effects of playing the puzzle video game Tetris in reducing C-PTSD flashbacks. This was a small study done on twenty people currently in six to eight week long inpatient mental health stays, all of whom were diagnosed with C-PTSD and had identified flashbacks as a symptom. The researchers applied this intervention alongside normal group and individual therapy in an inpatient setting. 

The researchers had participants write down a description of a traumatic memory they had flashbacks to on a piece of paper, and rip it up without discussing the material. Immediately afterward, participants would play Tetris for twenty-five minutes. For participants, targeted flashback contents decreased in the days and weeks following the intervention, but not for untargeted flashback contents. Overall, targeted flashback contents were reduced by 64 percent, with 16 of the 20 tested participants experiencing the effect. 

The theorized mechanism of this intervention is that both visualization of stressful memories in great detail and playing Tetris activate the same visuospatial processing parts of the brain simultaneously, and cause interference with one another. Thus, when a client remembers a stressful memory in detail and the brain goes to store the memory again along the neural pathway, called a memory trace, the act of playing Tetris weakens the memory trace, making storing the memory more difficult, resulting in fewer flashbacks. 

While this is fascinating findings and hypothesis, much further testing is necessitated before implementation in more vast clinical settings. Additionally, though the findings are encouraging, delving into work on trauma like C-PTSD is best done with professional guidance and supervision, so make sure to talk to your individual therapist before trying this on your own. If you don’t have a therapist yet, consider submitting an eligibility form to see one of our qualified psychotherapists at Umbrella Collective. 

Nevertheless, this is encouraging research into the far-reaching capabilities of video games applied to the realm of psychotherapy and mental health. 

Reclaiming our Alarm Systems

By Stef Gentuso

When I work with folks, I feel like we’ve all got something in common. Well, many things really, but there’s one I’m thinking of right now. It’s how pretty much everyone’s healing journey starts with a desire to get rid of something. Depression, anger, anxiety, traumatic memories, dysphoria…you name it, we want to get rid of it. And of course we do! These feeling are intolerable if they stay around too long. Or if they keep coming back.

Sometimes it might feel like there’s something wrong with us. Like there’s a car alarm going off in our brain every time we try something. Or maybe we feel buried under a pile of fire-retardant foam all day long. I like using this kind of “alarm system” language because that’s what’s really going on—our alarm systems are out of whack! Like smoke detectors that go off when we’re trying to cook.

Thinking of our big feelings (anxiety, dysphoria, etc.) as alarm systems to be reclaimed can help build self-compassion. I say this because I know it’s hard to feel compassion towards these feelings. My clients and I often explore the self-aggression or self-annoyance that comes up when something like depression “gets in the way again.”

Another way to build self-compassion is saying: “Oh, there’s that alarm again. That’s ok.” Even if it doesn’t feel ok, saying so can help quiet alarms over time. And when we’ve built enough self-compassion towards them, when our alarms have quieted enough, they can give us good information again! Our depression can become sadness or loneliness, something to gently attend to. Our dysphoria or anger can become reasons to say “no,” reasons to make changes.

We so often start our journey trying to get rid of something. My clients and I keep finding that reclaiming is what it’s really about. 

Check Out "The Trans Allyship Workbook: Building Skills to Support Trans People in Our Lives" by Davey Shlasko

By Suzanne Pearson, LCSW

Davey Shlasko’s Trans Allyship Workbook: Building Skills to Support Trans People in Our Lives is an accessible guide for any cis-person looking to be a better ally to the trans community, and/or any trans person who is looking to be a better ally to other trans folks with differing experiences. This book is approachable, regardless of your prior knowledge and experience, as it is written clearly for all to understand. Shlasko does a great job of balancing the understanding of where readers are coming from, while pushing them to be better allies. It stimulates curiosity, and reads like a conversation between the author and reader.

This book packs a lot of tools and information into its 100 or so pages. It contains exercises that invite reflection on gender, the systems we live in, the beliefs we hold, the impact we have on others, as well as exercises for practicing skills to support trans people in our lives. Shlasko shares many concrete actions individuals can take to be a better ally to the trans community. Specific support and information is given for professionals, educators, healthcare providers, therapists, human services providers, and parents of trans children to reflect on. I believe that it is a truly useful book for anyone to read. 

Furthermore, the book is full of additional resources for continued learning and to help put alllyship into action. 

Davey Shlasko is an educator, author, and consultant, who uses education as a way to encourage change for social justice. Learn more about Davey Shlasko at: https://www.thinkagaintraining.com/about-us/our-team/

You can purchase a hardcopy or a digital copy of Trans Allyship Workbook: Building Skills to Support Trans People in Our Lives here: https://www.thinkagaintraining.com/shop/

If you need more one-on-one support in navigating your own relationship to your gender and/or supporting others in your life, we are accepting referrals now: https://www.umbrellacollective.org/appointments

Our Mentorship Program

Now offering Mentorship and Self-Care/Home Management Training 

by Brooke Rundle

The Umbrella Collective is thrilled to announce that we are now offering Self-Care/Home Management Training, aka Mentorship. Our LGBTQ+ affirming mentorship program is designed to provide guidance and support in a wide variety of activities of daily living (ADL’s). Whether you are struggling to manage your busy schedule, complete a specific task that feels overwhelming, or just don’t even know how to start the process, your mentor will come along side you to provide customized and confidential one-on-one support. 

The mentorship program is available to all current Umbrella Collective clients. The program is not intended to replace your regular therapy sessions, instead it is designed to complement counseling by providing additional support to help you achieve your personal and therapeutic goals. Activities of daily living that our mentorship program can help with include:

• Strategies for organization and executive functioning,

• Applications for housing, school, or employment,

• Setting up a safe home environment,

• Resume writing,

• Medical care coordination,

• Changes to legal name and gender marker,

• Nature walks to get your body moving, 

• Help achieving specific goals.

Interested but still unsure if our mentorship program is right for you? Check out the answers to our frequently asked questions below.

What can I expect in the first session? In you first mentorship session you can expect to identify your goals and create a strategy to work together. Remember, all mentorship sessions are completely customized to your personal needs and timeline. 

How do I know if I am a good candidate for the program? If you feel like you can benefit from extra support, then we believe you and are here to help. There are no additional hoops to jump through, and no extra paperwork is required.

Typically, how long are the sessions? The length of the sessions depends on your needs. Most sessions typically last 60 minutes, however longer sessions are available based upon your goals and deadlines.

Are the mentorship sessions remote or in person? LGBTQ+ inclusive mentorship is available remotely to any active clients currently residing in Colorado, and in person for clients within Denver and Boulder County. All in person visits require clients to wear a mask and provide proof of Covid-19 vaccination.

Is mentorship covered by Medicaid? Yes! More good news. Medicaid covers Self-Care/Home Management Training, so you do not have to worry about payment or additional paperwork. We will handle it. 

How much does mentorship cost if I don't have Medicaid? Between $125 and $145 per hour, depending on if you purchase a mentorship package or not.

How do I enroll in the program? Simply tell your therapist that you want to enroll in the Mentorship program, and you will get contacted by our Mentorship program provider within 48-hours. 

When can I start? Right now! We are currently accepting clients into our Mentorship program on a first come, first serve basis. So what are you waiting for? We look forward to working with you! 

Grey's Transition Story

One of our newer therapists to our team, Vivi, shares a video interview with her son, Grey. Together they have a bilingual conversation in Spanish and English, about gender roles, Grey’s upbringing & experiences, and his story around his experience finding and being a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Vivi shares deep, personal insights on her conflict regarding a primarily catholic community upbringing, where tradition is far more heavily focused on than the individual. She shares her shift in mindset from being afraid of peoples reaction to her son’s identity, to taking pride in her family. Grey shares his experiences with depression and dysphoria, and how growing up feeling unsure of himself was hard to navigate. Throughout the conversation there’s a lot of wholesome beauty in this family’s experiences in acceptance, self-love, and comfort.

Viví, una de las nuevas terapeutas en nuestro equipo, comparte una entrevista por video con su hijo Grey. Juntos ellos tienen una conversación en español y en inglés sobre los géneros, el crecimiento de Grey y su experiencia de haber encontrado y ser parte de una comunidad LGBTQ+. Viví comparte su experiencia de manera profunda con respecto a su conflicto interno, ya que fue criada en una comunidad católica donde la tradición y el honor de la familia eran mucho más importante qué la libertad del individuo. Ella comparte sobre cómo este proceso la ayudó a ampliar su manera de pensar y a entender que la libertad del individuo también tiene que ser incluida, ya que es una parte importante de la felicidad. Grey comparte sus experiencias de depresión y disforia, y como en su niñez se sintió muy inseguro sobre sí mismo, y qué tan difícil fue vivir con ese sentimiento. A través de la conversación hay una hermosa expresión de un amor intacto que condujo a esta familia a la aceptación, amor propio, y paz interior.