A typical mental health journey goes like this. You are aware you are struggling for a long time. Maybe since childhood because you had a bunch of traumatizing and adverse experiences. Maybe since your teens, you had that sort of typical nerdy adolescent "OMG I kinda want to die" phase. Or maybe it cropped up later in life when all that adulting, the career, the relationships, and all those struggles hit you. Whatever the origins, the first step is often some sort of catalyst moment where you are thrown into therapy because you are really unwell and you need to get help.

For some, that is where the story ends. We break down one time, and then we get some help. Maybe some therapy and medication off and on over the years. We struggle, but generally, with the help we got and the things we learned in therapy, things are okay. We get better.

This is the narrative that we all love. It is the narrative lots of people tell you exists. Mental health professionals root for this result. Friends will tell you how "The Body Keeps the Score" saved their life. Or how "omg you gotta just try mindfulness". Or "ACT therapy changed everything!"

I was going to end my life in 2013. I wasn't suicidal in a depressed way. I was suicidal in a "done" way. I was going to quietly exit from this world. But like most depressive, overly intellectual humans, I couldn't go out without that perfect suicide note. I didn't intend for it to go viral. I intended for it to have enough of a record so people wondering where the fuck I went wouldn't go digging up things and outing me to a family. When someone is geniunely really dangerous to themselves they often don't tell anyone. I hoped my little note would inspire shock in a few friends and acquaintances and they would be like "wow what a loser". Then I'd have some extra motivation for death.

Imagine the awkwardness when 250,000 people read your suicide note and thousands of people are like "dude you are not such a piece of shit". Now suddenly you feel that life is not just worth trying but also that you have an obligation to. So you jump into therapy and you start reading books. You think "What can it take to fix this? Like five minutes probably. This is a problem and I'm smart and good at problems."

I have spent the better part of a decade since then working very hard on my mental health. I have been to a lot of therapy. I have read a lot of books. And my initial journey into therapy was like a lot of people's. You get into therapy expecting to be fixed and cured of being a terrible depressed loser. But then you get a shock that like holy shit there are a lot of issues here. You mean not every step-dad does that? THAT WAS TRAUMA?!

Mental health care takes practice and practice takes time and repetition.

Too often, what gets ignored in mental health is how incredibly difficult it is. Existence in late-stage capitalism is extremely challenging. Many people are profoundly traumatized, and their first true mental health struggles are often just symptoms of deeper problems they have gone years or decades without help for. Many therapists are profoundly aware of this. Many therapists are not at all. And where are the unempathetic, oblivious-to-effects-of-late-stage-capitalism therapists found in abundance? In the free therapy and crisis pipelines. Your sliding-fee-scale therapist isn't there to help you; they are there to make you not a problem for a system you are burdening.

More often than not the people that most need quality mental health care are given the worst therapy. The biggest reasons I have wanted to die have been mental health professionals. The most positive and most negative impacts on my life have come from receiving mental health care. I would not be here today without some strength to survive bad therapy. It shouldn't be this way but it absolutely is.

Improving your mental health is a long and arduous process. It is full of ups and downs. Often, the resources that are supposed to help you will actually harm you. The statistics vary, but upwards of 70% of autistic people will experience suicidal ideation, and upwards of 90% will have received some form of mental health care.

Therapy both fails people and saves them. We love stories about both. Narratives that tell us we are only a reach away from getting better. And we love stories about newfound therapies and new studies that upend all the previous stuff. Many of us spend our lives chasing that next perfect therapy or study that will fix us. Many of us have adopted belief systems where the entire world of psychology fits into our conception of how brains work or our favorite theory of consciousness. The cycle of this is as old as psychiatry and psychology itself. We inhabit complex systems, and mental health care is a complex system.

Throughout my journey, what I desperately needed was a guidebook to this complex system. Few therapy books will tell you how to navigate your therapy journey. It often isn't more than a workbook or some exercises to do on your own. No one tells you how to quit a therapist or how to pick one. No one tells you how to navigate therapy without ending up with more issues. And more often than not, no one teaches you how to deal with the dark, bad stuff. We will cover the bad stuff here. The things you learned to stop putting on intake forms because you'd get on another waiting list or be rejected with "we aren't equipped to help you here".

You want to die? So what. We will cover how to not kill yourself (even when life is hell). You can't seem to handle, regulate, or heal because you are stuck in your parents' basement at 25, and it keeps triggering all your trauma? Homeless at 40 and you don't know how you will keep going, and you hate yourself because somehow all that CBT and DBT hasn't fixed you yet? Disabled and unable to hold onto a job because you seem to be just too autistic for capitalism? Terrified of going back to therapy because you were a hikikomori and they were terrible towards you? Suffering in late-stage capitalism and burnt out being told you are the problem, but desperate for some help yet don't know how to find a therapist that won't add on more trauma? Feel like you are broken and useless? Spent decades in therapy and constantly overintellectualize and share studies in comments on Reddit or HN posts? This is a resource for you.

This resource is part reference, part therapy book, part guidebook, part narrative journey, and part guide to surviving late-stage capitalism without killing yourself. It is for people for whom mental health has been an epic and painful journey. It is for people who thought they had healed, only to find their trauma derailing their lives. It is for people who discovered they were disabled after landing on a PIP for the third job in a row. It is for the people trying who want to keep trying.