Hey, long time no see! For those of y’all who are not also following me on other sites/social media apps, I had taken a writing break because life got real. After 2020 and the 1st half of 2021, I was feeling stagnant in my clinical work. Basically, I reached a plateau and realized that I needed to shed some skin like a snake and grow from a professional perspective. I re-focused my clinical interests and goals: focusing on trauma work, helping folks re-parent themselves, and modeling what a healthy relationship can be like so my clients can find what they need to heal on a personal, interpersonal, and community level. In the time, since I last wrote, I have become trained in EMDR and continued my study of polyvagal theory and systems theories which perfectly fit the client-centered, narrative, solution-focused, and dialectical-behavioral approach I had before. I now consider myself to be a somatic therapist and the quality of work I bring to my clients is now, in my opinion, light-years  beyond what I was doing before.

And then one day, I was posting on Twitter and I realized that my actual clinical understanding has evolved past what I have already posted on here and it was time for this site to evolve the way my clinical practice has. Even though y’all are not my clients (unless you literally, literally are), my clinical work in some ways mirrors my work online: specifically the kinds of information I share and the goals and intentions I have in sharing with y’all.  So I am writing this post, to lay out the next (intentionally somatic) chapter of the Queering Psychology blog and to explain how I will be also using videos on the QueeringPsych and MHC4OC accounts on TikTok (which will also be reposted on Instagram and my Youtube Channel) to make sure this somatic therapy-based information is accessible to as many people who need it as possible.

The information I share moving forward will be based in somatic theories with the goal of helping people become more attuned to their bodies/their relationships with themselves and to have more options in regulating their emotions and being in healthier community with others. These pandemic years have been especially traumatic for us all and I can see the effects in people’s actions and reactions online and offline every day. This is part of doing my part. So the plan is to start teaching the basics of somatic theory, specifically Polyvagal theory, some somatic exercises, and how to apply them creatively in different situations in real life. For example, I want to help people learn how to develop more ways to attend to themselves and receive genuine community support in order to make decisions/choices from a more grounded place instead of a place of reactive anger or fear. This will include posts and videos about recognizing different emotions and how they manifest physically in the body and recognizing when to stand up, log off, etc. These are not going to be rigid, 1 size fits all kinds of posts and videos because humans are more complicated than that. Instead, I will be providing information to encourage you to go on your own journeys to connect with yourself and others on a deeper level. For the people who follow me on TikTok or IG, the QueeringPsych account will have the videos that focus on demystifying psych theory and somatic therapy and using those theories to speak about society and mental health from a trauma-focused, systemic aware perspective in addition to updating older blog posts and the MHC4OC account will have the videos focusing on real life applications. The QueeringPsychology YouTube channel will have all the videos in 1 place.

When I first started this blog 5 years ago, I did not imagine that I’d be making videos to match these posts, but here we are, right? Like I mentioned before my next set of blog posts and videos are going to be about basic psych theory on the nervous system and somatic therapy. Then I plan to show y’all some somatic exercises, many of them are going to be familiar to anyone who has been in any kind of psychotherapy, support group, or nonprofit job. What I want to focus on is, not just the exercises themselves, but also discussing the neurobiological and psychological reasons WHY these exercises work if done in an intentional way. I’m going to spend a lot of videos and blog posts on how these same exercises can be creatively applied in real life to help you regulate your own nervous system and be in good community with others. Then I want to circle back and update certain older posts like the self care piece, the safety plan piece, de-escalation at work, etc. with the newer somatic and trauma work clinical knowledge I have now. And THEN I have ideas for newer pieces that I don’t want to write without this somatic foundation. There’s so much ahead of us and I’m really excited to share this with you.

I have some social media-specific updates! Everyone who supports the practice on Patreon will also have access to first-looks of planned blog posts and videos at least a week in advance. To make sure this is clear, the QueeringPsychology blog will always be free. Period. I am using the donations from Patreon etc, to fund my private practice where I’m providing free therapy for Black people. I will also be posting micro-blog version of these blog posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr (and will add more apps sustainably in the future).

Thank you to every single person who has read any part of this website and everyone who has shared this site with someone they knew. It’s so wild to me that it’s been 5 years since I published the very first piece. So many of y’all have reached out over the years to let me know that my work here and on social media has been helpful in your own lives. And the love that y’all continue to show and the warmth of being seen by y’all helps to keep this fire steadily going. I am proud of what I’ve done over these years and I am honored to be in a place where I can share what I know with you. I am so excited for this next chapter and this opportunity to continue to do my part.

The next post and video will cover an introduction to the autonomic nervous system as our 1st step into somatic therapy!

If you appreciate the work I have done on here and on social media, please feel free to donate to my free private practice MHC4OC.

Here is the video version of this post on my Youtube Channel!