It's Not Just In Your Head

Harriet and Max interview two therapists who also act as "shop stewards" with the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) - Jackie Schalit LMFT and Elizabeth White LCSW. Both talk about what got them involved in union organizing within the mental health field, and why the labor movement still matters more today than ever. Why was there a "civil war" within Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and why did it lead to the formation of NUHW? Why should mental health workers unionize? How can unions improve the lives of everyday people? Listen to this episode to find out! To learn more about NUHW go to nuhw.org Email us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com Support us at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead Also check out Capitalism Hits Home, Harriet's program with Julianna Forlano at democracyatwork.info/capitalismhitshome 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.

"We are a cooperatively-run mental health practice located in Bushwick, Brooklyn" - from the Alliance Psychological Services website which also reads "Seeking Licensed Clinical Social Worker to Join Radical Psychotherapy Practice." Meet worker-owners Juliet, Kara, and Billy - who run this cooperative. What makes a worker cooperative different from regular business enterprises? Are co-ops inherently "revolutionary"? How do they make money? Why is the mental health field mostly disconnected and uninformed about workplace democracy and worker-owners? Why are therapists and social workers often considered professionals and not workers?  If you're an LCSW in NYC wanting to join Alliance: http://www.alliancepsych.nyc/joinus Learn more about Alliance here: http://www.alliancepsych.nyc If you're a mental health therapist or social worker wanting to start a worker cooperative, or have other questions/comments for them, email them at info@alliancepsych.nyc Learn more about worker cooperatives here: https://institute.coop/what-worker-cooperative Support us at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead Email us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com 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.

We try to answer Patron questions as often as we can. In this recording, we answer Jake's question about how to avoid harming relationships with your politics (a summary of his question). If you haven't check out Harriet's program with Julianna Forlano called Capitalism Hits Home: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPJpiw1WYdTNYvke-gNRdml1Z2lwz0iEH 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.

Will a Joe Biden presidency be better for our collective mental health? Harriet thinks having a neoliberal president is better than a fascist president, Max mostly agrees. Both therapists encourage listeners to stay (or to get) active, because Biden likely won't unilaterally do much to improve healthcare, education, housing, workers rights, fight climate change (etc) without being pushed "from the bottom." Max and Harriet question whether Biden will follow through on any single campaign promise or platform bullet point from his website, with some attention to mental health policy concerning veterans, the opioid crisis, and suicide. Email us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com. Support us at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead. -- Resources from this episode: No Honeymoon For Joe Biden, Ben Burgis https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/joe-biden-administration-opposition-push-left -- There Was Actually a Lot of Good News for the Left on Election Day, Liza Featherstone https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/downballot-socialist-elected-election-day-dsa -- Mental Health U.S. Interviews Biden On Mental Health Policy: https://www.mentalhealthforus.net/candidate/joe-biden/ 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 episode we interview leftist civil engineer Justin Roczniak (aka "donoteat01" on YouTube) to better understand the history of single family homes, suburbs, the real estate industry, and try to figure out better ways the built environment can facilitate mental and social wellness among those who... live somewhere. We wanted to talk with Justin about this because in our last episode on the nuclear family, we realized that the history and set of policies around the construction of middle class suburbs was one important puzzle piece related to the decline of cohesive marriages and families. Are single family homes bad? Why is public housing associated with poverty? Does homeownership make people politically right wing? What's a community land trust? Will Biden build me a house with 2.6 dogs? JUSTIN, GIVE US ANSWERS! Justin's referenced video on gentrification: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdeirDrinWk Justin's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxHg4192hLDpTI2w7F9rPg patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com 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 describes the invention  of the nuclear family as part of the transition from European feudalism to capitalism, with attention to the function of the patriarch as the familial feudal lord, and children as chattel. Max shares his initial reaction to the idea of the nuclear family being flawed or unnatural, asking: what came before, what alternatives are there, and what options to people have? Both therapists explore what it means for the nuclear family to be a social construct and question why entering into a nuclear family appears to a dice roll which can lead to happiness, love, and prosperity - or isolation, violence, and despair. Co-hosts touch on the bizarre urban design concept of single family homes and suburbs, and put a call out to anyone living within more traditional extended families, within housing cooperatives and co-housing communities, or progressive urban planners, to join in a future podcast to look beyond the nuclear family at what's possible.   Contact us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com 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.

Thanks to helpfully critical feedback we received on our W.A.P. episode, we were lucky to make contact with guests Gemma Paradise and Dr. Heather Berg. Gemma is a full service sex worker (which she says many know better as "escort" or "prostitute") and Marxist sex worker organizer. Dr. Heather Berg is a feminist scholar who teaches Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. In this episode we talk about struggles facing sex workers seeking mental health services; whether sex work should be considered an especially exploitative form of wage labor under capitalism or just another form of wage labor; the political weaponization of sex trafficking laws and survivor narratives used against sex workers; why some men feel more comfortable hiring sex workers "for therapy" than actually seeing a therapist...and a lot more! Resources referenced in the episode: Marxist reading group for current sex workers: https://twitter.com/who_revolution Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3039-revolting-prostitutes We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival: https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/we-too Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism https://bookshop.org/books/porn-work-sex-labor-and-late-capitalism-9781469661926/9781469661926 Heather's website: drheatherberg.com More information on the EARN IT Act: surviveearnit.com 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 episode we interview Christian minister and anti-capitalist psychotherapist Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, whose deep and calming voice happens to be an FDA approved anti-anxiety medicine.  One of Bruce's students emailed to inform us about his writings, and we discovered there is yet another therapist in the U.S. who openly believes capitalism is bad for our mental health. Bruce is associate professor of pastoral theology and counseling at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and author of Caring For Souls in a Neoliberal Age, and an ordained minister. Harriet, Bruce, and Max, explore the nuanced reasons for why the Christian Left has been repressed and popularly replaced by the Christian Right in the last half century. Harriet and Max make a new friend, and Bruce and Max almost cry a few times. Find out more about Bruce here: https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/bruce-rogers-vaughn Contact us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com Support us on 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.

We answer four questions from our Patreon community Support us at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead   Contact us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com     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. 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) -- Harriet points out that despite pop feminism's celebration of W.A.P. being some kind of symbol of peak female empowerment, that it signals the now widely accepted pornification of sex as something that has to do with body parts and humilitation fetishes minus relational context. The 3rd wave liberal feminist embrace of hypersexualization in popular media came along with it minimal to no effort to push for improved sex education in US public schools, with focus not just on anatomy but the social and emotional skills and complexities leading to mutual sexual consent. Lack of comprehensive sex education in the US has meant that Cardi B and similar entertainers have become the sex educators for the next generation. Since 1 in 4 children in the US are being raised by single mothers with multiple jobs thanks to neoliberalism, youth turn to their incessant relationships to the internet to learn social norms related to sex, sexuality, and relationships. Consumers of videos like W.A.P. may get the impression that sex work is glamorous, and sex workers become so rich that they own mansions. But most sex workers in the US are lower class, working multiple low wage jobs, lack healthcare, are in serious debt, and find that sex work is just another way to barely make ends meet.   Harriet and Max share different views on whether the video celebrates sexist and racist stereotypes, or if certain stereotypes are being reclaimed similarly to how the LGBT community reclaimed the term "queer." Max focuses on Cardi B's videos and lyrics as a result of the shock driven attention economy which transforms every minute of our time online into profits of whoever owns the websites. Cardi B, Ben Shapiro, feminist bloggers, and even the two of us, are actively generating billions of dollars for internet mass media companies by reacting and counter-reacting to W.A.P., everyone participating in the attention economy thinks they're making conscious choices related to what they consume. How much of this is human nature, and how much is Late Stage Capitalism and the dying breaths of an economic system that eats up and spits out the very people it requires to keep the system intact? Support us at patreon.com/itsnotjustinyourhead   Contact us at itsnotjustinyourhead@gmail.com   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. 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.