What our communities carry, and how we can look out for one another, when we have been told to bury it down. September is National Suicide Prevention Month. For a lot of us, this is not an easy subject to bring up at the dinner table or at all. In many Latino households, we were raised to aguantarse, to push through, to keep the taboo things private, and sometimes told that they didn't exist. But silence has a cost, and we are not going to be silent for their sake. This month is a reminder that checking in on each other, and on ourselves, is one of the most protective things we can do. I want to be honest about where I am writing this from. I have never been suicidal. I have lived with depression, and I understand how heavy it can get, how the constant weight of it can start to feel unbearable. That experience is part of why I care about this. When you have felt even the edges of that darkness, you understand why someone might want it to stop. This is written with empathy, not distance. The numbers, and what they actually tell us It is easy to look at the topline data and assume our communities are not affected, along with the comments from our households. In 2022, Hispanic and Latino Americans were about 43% less likely to die by suicide than the U.S. population overall. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), the largest private funder of suicide prevention research, there were 48,824 suicide deaths in the U.S. in 2024, at a rate of 13.7 per 100,000 people. And while suicide rates declined slightly for the non-Hispanic community between 2023 and 2024, they stayed unchanged for the Hispanic population. The longer trend is more concerning. Between 2018 and 2023, CDC data show suicide rates increased among Hispanic and Latino people, even as they decreased among white people. So the risk in our communities is not going down. It is rising. And the deaths are only part of the picture. In 2024, an estimated 14.3 million U.S. adults seriously thought about suicide, 4.6 million made a plan, and 2.2 million attempted. A few figures impacting the Latino community: Young Latinas are especially at risk. In 2023, Hispanic and Latina female high school students were 17% more likely than other U.S. female students to report attempting suicide in the past year. Latino men die at far higher rates. In 2020, the suicide death rate for Hispanic males was 4.4 times the rate for Hispanic women, a gap tied to the pressure to stay silent and self-reliant. Depression is a major driver. Latina women report depression at higher rates than Latino men, and depression is one of the conditions most associated with suicide risk. Why our households hide it Mental illness has long been treated as something to conceal in Latino families. It gets framed as weakness, as drama, as something you pray away or simply do not talk about. That stigma is not just cultural habit. It is reinforced by real barriers to getting help. The care gap is stark. In 2023, Hispanic adults were 60% less likely to have received mental health treatment than non-Hispanic white adults. In 2024, Hispanic and Latino adults were 28% less likely than U.S. adults overall to have received treatment in the past year. The problem is not that our communities struggle less. It is that we are far less likely to get help. The reasons stack on top of each other: language barriers and a shortage of Spanish-speaking providers, lack of health insurance, the cost of care, and a deep mistrust of institutions. When help does get sought, research shows Latinos are more likely to turn to religion, a primary care doctor, or a community organization than to a mental health professional. Immigrant families and the first generation Immigration adds its own layer. There is a well-documented pattern researchers call the immigrant paradox: foreign-born Latinos often have fewer mental health disorders than their U.S.-born children. As families become more acculturated, mental health can actually decline, as later generations navigate discrimination, loss of cultural identity, and the strain of living between two worlds. This shows up in suicide risk directly. Among Latino, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Black youth, those born in the U.S. have a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors than first-generation immigrants. In other words, the pressure our parents carried does not disappear. It changes shape and lands on us. For mixed-status and undocumented families, the stress compounds. Everyday tasks like finding work, housing, and medical care carry uncertainty and risk. Fear of deportation keeps people from seeking care or from being fully honest about what they are going through. Family separation leaves lasting trauma, especially in children. These are not small stressors. They are chronic, and they wear people down. This crosses cultures This is not only a Latino story. The same forces of stigma, access, and disparity show up across minority communities, often in even sharper form. Native communities carry the heaviest burden. Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native people have consistently had the highest suicide rates of any group in the U.S. Rates are rising among Black Americans. Like Latino communities, Black Americans saw suicide rates increase between 2018 and 2023. The steepest recent climb is among Pacific Islanders. The suicide rate for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander males nearly doubled between 2018 and 2023. The through line is the same everywhere: where stigma is high and access is low, people suffer in silence and are less likely to survive it. Prevention works, and it is not complicated Here is the hopeful part. Suicide is preventable, and the things that help are within reach. AFSP, which was founded in 1987 by survivors of suicide loss and researchers, puts it simply: connection makes a difference. Getting help early is the single most important protective factor. Depression and anxiety are treatable. Therapy works. Medication works for many people. And connection itself is protective. What actually reduces risk: Treatment and early intervention. The sooner someone talks to a professional, the better the outcome. You do not have to be in crisis to reach out. Culturally rooted, bilingual care. Care that speaks your language and understands your background makes people far more likely to stay in it. Community and belonging. Our cultural values of familismo and confianza, family and trust, are protective when we let them include mental health. Reducing access to means and knowing the warning signs. Withdrawal, giving things away, sudden calm after a low period, talking about being a burden. Take these seriously. How to actually be there for someone A lot of people stay quiet because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Here is the truth: you do not need the perfect words, and you do not have to bring up suicide to help someone. Caring by simply being present is what matters most. Some ways to reach out: Just show up. Sit with them when they are not feeling good. You do not have to fix anything or even talk about it. Your presence tells them they are not alone. Ask simple, real questions. How are you, really? I have noticed you have seemed off, and I am here. Then listen without rushing to solve it. Do not minimize. Skip you have so much to live for or others have it worse. Try that sounds really heavy, and I am glad you told me. Offer something concrete. Bring food. Go on a walk. Sit and watch a movie. Small, steady gestures carry weight. Keep checking in. One text is good. A pattern of texts is better. Consistency says you matter to me, over and over. If you are worried they are in danger, ask directly and stay with them. Asking someone if they are thinking about suicide does not plant the idea. It gives them permission to be honest, and it helps them connect to support. If you are the one carrying it If you are reading this and you are the one who is struggling, you are not weak. You are not a burden. What you are feeling is real, and it can get better with support. Reaching out is not failure. It is one of the bravest and hardest things a person can do. Resources If you or someone you love is struggling, help is available, and much of it is free and confidential. You do not need insurance or a diagnosis to reach out. National 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988, 24/7. For Spanish, call 988 and press 2, or text AYUDA to 988. Crisis Text Line: Text TALK to 741741 (or AYUDA al 741741 en español). American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: afsp.org offers resources for those at risk, survivors of suicide loss, and anyone supporting a loved one. NAMI HelpLine: Call 1-800-950-6264, or text 62640, for information and referrals (not a crisis line). Trevor Project (LGBTQ+ youth): Call 1-866-488-7386, or text START to 678-678, 24/7. Los Angeles County LA County Dept. of Mental Health Help Line: 1-800-854-7771, 24/7, in more than a dozen languages, for crisis support, screening, and referrals to services. Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center: 1-877-727-4747, 24/7 crisis support (LA and Orange Counties). 211 LA County: Dial 2-1-1 for referrals to health, housing, and social services. Riverside and San Bernardino Counties (Inland Empire) Inland SoCal Crisis and Suicide Helpline: 951-686-HELP (4357), 24/7, free and confidential, bilingual, serving Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Riverside County CARES Line: Call for screening and referrals to mental health and substance use services in English and Spanish. Riverside County also runs 24/7 Mental Health Urgent Care with no appointment needed, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. San Bernardino County Behavioral Health Access Unit: 1-888-743-1478, 24/7 crisis referrals. Crisis Walk-In Centers provide urgent mental health care to county residents. 211 / Inland SoCal United Way: Dial 2-1-1 for local resource referrals across the Inland Empire. Finding a therapist Getting into therapy can feel like the hardest step, so I have pulled together a list of therapists and mental health resources for LA County and the Riverside and San Bernardino area right here on the Educated Chola blog. It includes options for how to actually get started, whether you have insurance, Medi-Cal, or are paying out of pocket. Head to the page to find a provider near you. This September, checking in on each other is an act of amistad. Sanar en comunidad. We take care of our own by making space for the hard conversations, and sometimes just by sitting beside someone in the quiet. You are not alone. Sources American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), Suicide Statistics, afsp.org/suicide-statistics (2024 data). U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Suicide Data and Statistics; MMWR, Differences in Suicide Rates by Race and Ethnicity, 2018-2023. HHS Office of Minority Health, Mental and Behavioral Health - Hispanics/Latinos. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. NAMI, Hispanic/Latinx Immigrants and First-Generation Americans; scoping review on acculturation and suicide risk in minoritized youth (NCBI, PMC10366293). LA County Department of Mental Health; Riverside University Health System - Behavioral Health; San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health; Inland SoCal United Way.

This is me walking/ standing by leasing office of my apartment complex (see IG Reel). That's it. That's the whole video. No workout, no rush, just a normal walk in some workout clothes and by only having had walked there for a minute or two, and then waiting another minute - I'm dripping. Sweat running down my face like I just finished a class at the gym. It's been brutal out here; highs of 105 to 107 degrees, the kind of heat that makes the air feel thick, its humid, but also dry and even accounting for that, something about how much I've been sweating lately hasn't felt normal. It felt like too much, too fast, for a walk that short. I'm almost a month into taking Zoloft (sertraline) I think?, and its Hot AF! Okay, so is it the heat or is it the meds? Probably both, feeding off each other. But the research backs up what I suspected; SSRIs like Zoloft genuinely do mess with how your body sweats, independent of the weather. Antidepressant-induced sweating is common enough that it has its own name in the medical literature: drug-induced hyperhidrosis. The numbers from Zoloft's own FDA prescribing information: the actual data from the clinical trials used to get it approved, pooled across more than 5,000 patients, show hyperhidrosis in 7% of people on sertraline versus 3% on placebo, and nausea in 26% versus 12% on placebo. So both of these are real, measurable, more-than-double-placebo effects, not just a coincidence of a hot summer. So since I’ve been on SSRI’s or a version of them every summer since, I’ve been aware of this type of excess sweating. I've been on Prozac and Lexapro before, and this one, Zoloft, feels like it's made me sweat so much more than either of those did. The good thing is that it turns out that's not just in my head. A 2017 meta-analysis published in the journal Depression and Anxiety (Beyer et al.) specifically found that sertraline and paroxetine carry a higher risk of hyperhidrosis compared to other antidepressants like fluvoxamine and bupropion, and that a medication's affinity for the dopamine transporter is correlated with higher sweating risk. Nobody fully understands the exact mechanism, it's often described as "likely idiopathic," which is doctor-speak for "we see it happen, we're not 100% sure why", but the leading theory is that SSRIs interfere with the hypothalamus, which is the part of your brain that regulates body temperature and tells your sweat glands what to do. Why the heat makes it so much worse Kinda scarily, SSRIs and other antidepressants can actually impair your body's ability to regulate temperature at all, not just make you sweat more. That can look like hyperhidrosis (too much sweat) in some people, but in others it can flip to the opposite — not being able to sweat enough to cool down, which is even more dangerous in extreme heat. Healthline notes that this thermoregulation disruption can let core body temperature climb dangerously high, and combined with 105+ degree days, that raises real risk for heat exhaustion and heatstroke — not just discomfort. This is how I've been feeling. All I want to do is lay down. I'm drinking more water than normal, and I've had to seriously up my electrolyte intake because I can tell I'm sweating them out faster than I can replace them with water alone. I’ve had other health issues, that I think have happened as a result that are too TMI to share, but just use your imagination. If you're on an SSRI during a heatwave like this one, electrolytes, are not just a good idea, it's basically necessary — your body is working overtime to cool itself and losing salt and minerals along with all that water. If any of this sounds like you, talk to your doctor about it, especially with heat like this. There are real medical options — things like adjusting dosage, switching medications, or even a low-dose add-on medication to specifically manage the sweating — so you don't have to just white-knuckle it through summer. For me, I’ve decided that I will continue to take the Zoloft, just like I did the Prozac and the Lexapro before they crapped out on me. Yes, this blows, and yes I feel like poo. But my brain has never felt so much less like poo, than when I’ve taken my medication and I am not willing to trade that over this side effect. I’m sure if I had side effects that were intolerable I would reconsider but i’ll take the sweat for now. The other stuff nobody warns you about Sweating aside, a month in, I've been paying attention to everything else this medication is doing, and some of it lines up exactly with what the research says. The nausea — I had it hard for the first two weeks, and then it just kind of disappeared. That goes with what the FDA trial data above (26% vs. 12% on placebo), and clinically, nausea is consistently described as the single most common early Zoloft side effect, one that tends to fade within the first one to two weeks as your body adjusts. Honestly, it's one of the only side effects from any medication that's ever really gotten to me, and I still love this medication, so make of that what you will. The jaw and mouth clenching — this one's tricky for me to fully judge because I already clench my jaw regardless of medication, so I can't say for sure how much is the Zoloft versus how much is just me. It is documented, but the evidence is thin on it: the main source I found on sertraline specifically is a single case report in the Journal of Medical Case Reports, meaning it's one patient, not a large study, which found that sertraline was the most frequently flagged antidepressant for jaw clenching in a global drug-safety database, even though older research had suggested it was less associated with this than other SSRIs. So treat this one as "documented but not settled." The working theory is that boosting serotonin can indirectly suppress dopamine activity in a way that shows up as involuntary jaw movement. Again, for myself I do clench my jaw, but then again I take other medications that I know are also potentially not helping the situation, sooo we don’t know. Next. The vivid dreams — not wild, not scary, just vivid. Like actual conversations I can remember in detail, the kind where I could tell you what was said the next day like it really happened. That's textbook SSRI behavior. A 2001 sleep-lab study published in the Journal of Sleep Research (Pace-Schott et al.) found that SSRIs actually suppress how often people recall dreams, but when a dream does get remembered, it comes back more subjectively vivid and intense than dreams on no medication. That lines up almost exactly with what you're describing; not more dreams, just sharper ones. The mechanism is thought to be REM sleep suppression: SSRIs delay REM sleep, so when it finally happens it lands closer to when you wake up, which is when dreams are freshest and easiest to remember in detail. The crying thing — this is the one I find most interesting about myself right now. I can still cry, I'm not numb, but it feels more controlled than it used to, less like it's taking over me. That's a mild version of something called emotional blunting, and it's actually really common. A 2023 double-blind, placebo-controlled study out of Cambridge and Copenhagen, published in Neuropsychopharmacology (Langley et al.), found that healthy volunteers on escitalopram (a close cousin of sertraline) became less responsive to both positive and negative feedback after three weeks, and Cambridge's own research summary puts the real-world rate at 40–60% of people on SSRIs experiencing some degree of blunting. The theory isn't that the medication numbs you exactly, but that it dampens how strongly your brain responds to emotional ups and downs — both the good and the bad hit a little softer. For me, at this stage, that's actually felt more like relief than loss. Where I'm at Almost a month in, and between the sweating, the nausea that came and went, the jaw thing I can't fully separate from my own habits, the vivid dreams, and crying a little more on my own terms, it's a lot to hold at once. But I can genuinely feel like it's working, and that matters more to me than any of the rest of it. I feel calm, stable, and I feel like my anxiety, which anxiety is supposed to be a part of everyone, is at that ‘normal’ version I should have, then I will take it. If you're on an SSRI this summer and you've been feeling like you're sweating for no reason, or like the heat is hitting you harder than everyone around you, it's not just you and it's not just in your head, but also you have my empathy since I'm down for the count too. It's a real, documented thing, and it's worth a real conversation with your doctor — especially while it's still triple digits out here. I I promise it's just me walking to the mailbox and coming back looking like I ran a mile. This post shares my personal experience and general research and is not medical advice. If you're on an SSRI and struggling with side effects, especially heat-related ones, talk to your prescriber before making any changes. Sources Primary sources — FDA data and peer-reviewed studies: Zoloft (sertraline) FDA prescribing information — official clinical trial data, the strongest source in this post Beyer C, Cappetta K, Johnson JA, Bloch MH. Meta-analysis: Risk of hyperhidrosis with second-generation antidepressants. Depression and Anxiety, 2017. Pace-Schott EF, et al. SSRI treatment suppresses dream recall frequency but increases subjective dream intensity in normal subjects. Journal of Sleep Research, 2001. Langley C, et al. Chronic escitalopram in healthy volunteers has specific effects on reinforcement sensitivity. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2023. Case report: sertraline-induced bruxism — Journal of Medical Case Reports (peer-reviewed, but a single-patient case report, the weakest form of clinical evidence) Context and plain-language explainers — medically reviewed health sites, useful for background but not primary evidence: Scientists explain emotional 'blunting' caused by common antidepressants — University of Cambridge Antidepressants and Heat Intolerance — Healthline Managing psychotropic-induced hyperhidrosis — MDedge (a clinical news outlet for physicians, reporting on the Beyer study above) Consequence of Taking Antidepressants: Excessive Sweating — International Hyperhidrosis Society Zoloft (Sertraline) Side Effects to Expect in the First Week — Choosing Therapy SSRI Side Effects: Dealing with Vivid Dreams — Sleep.com

Real talk on finding a therapist who actually gets you: plus a bilingual guide to affordable online therapy, a la culturally relevant. Okay so this has happened to me more than once. And no; they didn't really leave me. I know that. But it always feels like it when I really like one. If you've ever gotten that email or that "I'm transitioning out of this practice" talk from a therapist you finally clicked with, you already know the specific little heartbreak I'm talking about. You did the work. You got comfortable. You said the hard stuff out loud. And now you have to start over with a stranger? Ugh. So let's talk about it, what to do now, how I search for a therapist, and the actual research I did this time around (with prices), because my deductible is not cute and maybe yours isn't either. First, let me take you back I had my first therapist when I came back from UC Santa Cruz. I basically dropped out, okay, withdrew, let's be technical, but hey, I still had a 3.5 GPA, so yay. Depressed but still did good. That was me. High Functioning Anxiety because that's how I do things. I was clearly not in a good state. I'd lost some weight and wasn't really eating, and when I did, it was mostly fruit just to stay alive. My lovely roommate at the time, Meagan, this little white girl from San Diego, would take me to the dining hall with her so we could go eat together. She was, and is, the best. We're not in contact anymore; things just drift apart. But I will never forget her. My first-ever roommate. Together we were the SoCal girls, totally different from each other, but we took care of each other. Anyway, I got back to LA after that and immediately started researching what I had to do to get back into the university system, all while still depressed. I enrolled at ELAC,[1] the local community college, and got into the EOPS program,[2] which helped me with financial aid and other resources. I'm pretty sure they're the ones who pointed me toward the therapist's office. I honestly can't fully recall but either way, I started seeing a therapist there. She was this little old Asian lady. I don't think she really understood me. But back in 2007–2008, when I was still scared of medication, the moment I heard her suggest it, I was suddenly "cured". I got my motivation right back, worked my way up, and eventually got into UCSD. (And yes, it was "free." I'm sure the government or the college was footing the bill somehow, but I wasn't paying out of pocket.) I'm laughing about it now, but honestly, that fear-based "motivation" was just survival mode. Whatever it took to keep moving. The one thing I've always asked for From then on, I kept going to therapy. My providers have mostly been white, and here's the one thing I have always requested: at least a woman. This applies to my medical providers too. Mind you, I didn't get to choose as a kid; my childhood doctor was a man, because that's what was available locally on Medi-Cal. But as an adult? It is so odd to me to have a male therapist. There isn't an ounce of me that wants to talk to a man about my issues, at least not a cis-gender straight man, let's be clear. Anything outside of that, I'm probably open to. But not that. And over the years, my list got longer and more specific. Now I also look for a therapist who understands: The first-gen experience: being the child of immigrants, carrying things our parents may not have had the language for.[3] The immigrant experience: my parents went through, not necessarily to have lived it, but to at least be able to reference and understand it.[4] The dynamics of a Latino household: or honestly any culturally rooted household. So much of it overlaps with Asian communities, or even Italian families, because of that shared Catholic upbringing and those same family qualities.[5] And while it's not always necessary, I think I just get lucky, they often end up speaking Spanish too. Why you need a list (Yes, YOU!) Here's what I wish someone had told me at the start: make a list of what you want in a provider. I never had this all written down when I first started. I figured it out the hard way, over years. I do this for my medical providers too: I request women, I read their backgrounds, what they practice, their family life, how they work. I just want to make sure what they're about sits right with me. Aim for a good provider, not just whoever's available. Like a male Ob/Gyn, heck no. No, thanks! Not for me. And I've been lucky in that. I haven't had to switch many of my providers or therapists. But I've had one or two I did switch, and that brings me to the other reason you might leave a provider (besides them leaving the practice): Sometimes they just... suck. I say this with love, but it's true. And this is exactly why I believe those of us who are people of color or anyone who carries a sense of a culture that's complex, need to have a list of what we want and actually request it. I remind myself all the time: the worst thing they can say, if it's the insurance, is NO. For any thing really, all that can be said is no. That's it. No is survivable. Ask anyway. The psychiatrist I left (and why) Let me tell you about the one I switched, because it's a good example of leaving for the right reason. I went in with an open mind, assuming this older white woman would know what she was doing. And at first, it was great. My Lexapro wasn't working as well anymore, so we needed something else. We landed on Wellbutrin. Now, funny thing I learned afterward, Wellbutrin isn't typically the go-to for people with anxiety.[6] But it worked fine for me. Still, I told her: hey, I feel like there's just this lingering anxiety. So she also gave me Buspar to take "as needed" when the anxiety hit. But here's the thing, for me, anxiety isn't an as-needed thing. It's just... there. It doesn't wait around for some big moment to show up. It's there in the background all day. So she increased my dose. And here's what I didn't know then but know now: different side effects can show up at different doses.[7] This turned out to be the first time I ever had a really bad reaction. From that Monday to Friday, I developed full-blown depression. By Thursday I decided to stop taking it entirely. It was that bad. When I finally met with her again, all she said was: "Okay, just take the Buspar as needed." And I just did not feel heard. Because, why would I take something multiple times a day if the anxiety is there all the time? It didn't make sense to me. Turns out my confusion was completely valid: Buspar (buspirone) genuinely isn't an as-needed medication. It has to be taken consistently, on a schedule, and it takes weeks of regular dosing to even start working, it does nothing for anxiety in the moment.[8] So my gut instinct of this doesn't make sense, was right the whole time. So I left. I felt some guilt, but I had to remind myself: this happens, and it's okay. And to be clear, I didn't leave because I had a bad side effect. I left because I didn't feel heard. Maybe another white woman provider could help me in the future, sure. But if I can, I'll reach for a culturally competent Latina woman first. That's that. Okay, now the actual research (with prices!) So here's where I'm at now. My deductible for Kaiser is so high that I'd probably meet it eventually just from paying for these therapy sessions, but it's not a normal little copay. It's $150 per session, not the $30 you hear "normal" people talk about. Sooooo. Since my therapist is leaving, I took it as an opportunity to research other platforms: including BetterHelp, which I'd actually used before and loved my therapist on. Unlike a lot of people's experiences, I had a great one. Again, it all depends on how and what you search for. So here's a bilingual guide to what's out there. Please still do your own research in case any info has changed: I'll do my best to keep it updated. But if you're like me and either can't afford it with insurance, or don't have insurance at all, here's what I found: 💗 What I found, platform by platform Rula — This is where my therapist is heading. It's $150 per session right now as self-pay. The pricing supposedly drops eventually, but I couldn't swing that initial intake session or the first several sessions it would take to get there. Not for me right now. Open Path Collective — Seems great! I did a search and the filters are good, the price is decent (one-time $65 membership, then roughly $40–70 a session). But personally, I didn't spot a provider I felt would be a great match for me, and I didn't see that many Latino options. Still worth a look for you. Sentio Counseling Center — I got excited on their site, then got sad: there's a waiting list that opens up in a few months. Amazing sliding-scale option (as low as $15), just not available to me right this second. BetterHelp — Where I've decided to go back to. My same therapist was still assigned and still active (!), and it's $120 a month for 2 video sessions, so about $60 a session, which works great for me affordability-wise. They have other options too (4-session plans and more) also at good prices. Talkspace — Different in that its packages include the ability to text your therapist. So if you've ever thought "I wish I could just message them" and you have an ongoing issue that might call for that, it could be a great fit. Pricing isn't awful: around $73/week for messaging, and about $115/week for video + messaging + workshops. Brightside — I did their assessment. Without insurance, it came out to $229/month for my anxiety, therapy only. That plan includes a personalized treatment plan, 1:1 video sessions, interactive lessons and practice, anytime messaging, and progress tracking. The one monthly subscription fee includes 4 therapy sessions. (With insurance, you're responsible for your copay/coinsurance/deductible and insurance covers the rest.) Therapy for Latinx & Latinx Therapy (directories) — I looked through both and found amazing therapists. Unfortunately, the cheapest ones without insurance were around $100. If I had affordable insurance, I would 1,000% reach out to any of them, that cultural awareness is everything. And here's a tip: they might be in your network when you look them up, so start here in case they take your insurance. And filter! Grow Therapy — Also loved it. Loved the providers, culturally competent, and I appreciated the cash-vs-insurance option. I think I found one as low as $75, which honestly isn't bad. But for now, I'm sticking with the therapist I found through BetterHelp, since she's Latina and affordable for me. 📄 Want the full side-by-side comparison? I put together a bilingual guide with every platform, out-of-pocket vs. insurance pricing, and the pros and cons of each. Here's a PDF guide, with these comparisons. Hope it helps! The takeaway Your therapist leaving isn't the end of the world, even if it feels like it in the moment. And sometimes you're the one who leaves, because you didn't feel heard, that's okay too. Either way, you get through it. So make your list. Figure out what you actually need in a provider and ask for it, out loud, every time. The worst they can say (if it's the insurance) is no, and no just means you keep looking. You deserve someone who gets you! Your culture, your language, where you come from, all of it. That isn't too much to ask for. That's just wanting to be understood, which honestly, shouldn't be that much to ask. 🌶️ Speaking of owning it... This blog is tied to our carefully-thought-out (and new to y'all!) "LOCA" papel picado sticker/print! 💐 Because let's be honest! Who hasn't been called a LOCA? Especially if you're on here reading this. 😉 We're taking the word back and wearing it proud, papel-picado style. 👉 Check out the shop / click here to grab your own LOCA sticker and own your LOCA-ness. With your Salud Mental in mind. 💗 — Educated Chola 📚 Notes & Sources The following back up the medical points mentioned above. This blog is a personal account, not medical advice — always talk to a licensed provider about your own treatment. Platform prices are current as of 2026, based on my own research, and subject to change — confirm directly with each platform before booking. 1. ELAC is East Los Angeles College, a public community college in Monterey Park serving the East LA area — one of the largest community colleges in California and part of the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD). Community colleges like ELAC are a common (and affordable) re-entry point for students transferring into the UC and CSU systems. 2. EOPS stands for Extended Opportunity Programs and Services — a state-funded program offered at all California community colleges. It's designed to help low-income and educationally disadvantaged students enroll, stay enrolled, and transfer, by providing "over and above" support: academic, career, and personal counseling, priority registration, book vouchers, tutoring, transfer assistance, and transfer application fee waivers, among other resources. Students who are single parents receiving public assistance can also access the linked CARE (Cooperative Agencies Resources for Education) program. Eligibility generally requires California residency (or AB540/Dream Act status), full-time enrollment, qualifying for the California College Promise Grant, and meeting an educational-disadvantage criterion such as being a first-generation college student. The personal-counseling piece is very likely how I got connected to therapy back then. Sources: California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office; icangotocollege.com; LACC EOPS. 3. On the first-gen experience and mental health: Research backs up how real this weight is. A systematic review of 62 studies found that first-generation college students experience heightened anxiety, depression, and stress — especially when the demands of school conflict with the interdependent, family-first values they were raised with (Journal of American College Health, 2025). A large national study using Healthy Minds data (192,202 students) found that even when first-gen students have the same level of symptoms as their peers, they use mental health services at significantly lower rates — pointing to real barriers like stigma, cost, and access (Kim et al., Journal of First-generation Student Success, 2023). Researchers also describe "family achievement guilt" — the specific guilt of moving beyond where your family started — as something first-gen students carry disproportionately. 4. On the immigrant/second-gen experience: The concept researchers use here is acculturative stress — the strain of navigating between your family's home culture and the culture you're growing up in. Meta-analytic research has linked acculturative stress to both depression and anxiety, and studies of the children of immigrants specifically connect it to depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and family dynamics (see the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study analyses, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2024). A 2025 qualitative study focused directly on the intersection of first-year, first-generation, and second-generation immigrant identities, finding these overlapping identities compound mental-health challenges (Horne & Chukwuere, Healthcare, 2025). 5. On Latino household dynamics — and why they overlap with other cultures: The cultural value researchers most often study here is familismo (familism) — placing the family unit and its priorities above the individual. A systematic review found familismo generally acts as a protective factor against depression, suicide, and internalizing symptoms — a source of resilience (Valdivieso-Mora et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2016). But it's complex: the same closeness can also produce parentification (kids taking on adult family roles) and guilt, which are linked to distress. And your instinct that it overlaps with Asian and Italian/Catholic families is well-founded — researchers frame these as interdependent or collectivist cultural orientations, a category that spans many immigrant and religious communities, not Latinos alone. That's exactly why a therapist doesn't have to be from your specific culture to "get it" — but they do need to understand interdependent family systems. Sources: Frontiers in Psychology (2016); Salud America; Journal of Child and Family Studies (2022). 6. Wellbutrin (bupropion) is FDA-approved primarily for depression, seasonal affective disorder, and smoking cessation — it is not typically a first-line treatment for anxiety, and some people experience increased anxiety as a side effect, especially early on or after a dose increase. That said, newer research is more mixed: a large comparative study found bupropion reduced anxiety about as well as SSRIs, so some providers do prescribe it when depression and anxiety occur together. Sources: Neuro Wellness Spa; Acibadem Health Library; Talkiatry; Medical News Today. 7. The likelihood of anxiety as a bupropion side effect increases at higher doses — patients on the maximum dose report anxiety more often than those on lower doses — which is why clinicians often start low and titrate slowly. Sources: Elevate Psychiatry; Ubie Health; Interborough. 8. Buspirone (Buspar) is not an "as-needed" medication. It must be taken consistently, usually 2–3 times a day, and typically requires 2–4 weeks (sometimes up to 4–6) of regular dosing before it works. It is not effective for acute anxiety or panic in the moment — unlike fast-acting medications. Missing doses reduces its effectiveness. Sources: Drugs.com; DrOracle; Ubie Health; Blossom Health; Philadelphia Integrative Psychiatry.

Let's talk about the system, the deductible, and why we should be allowed to submit a PowerPoint to our therapist. So here's the thing about trying to take care of your mental health when you're a person who has to actually think about money: it's a whole process. And not in a cute, "journey to healing" kind of way. More like a "multi-step bureaucratic nightmare disguised as self-care" kind of way. It started simple enough. I needed a referral — either to adjust my medication or just get a check-in with someone who could actually sign off on things. Okay, fine. I make the appointment. I show up. I do the thing. And then I get referred out to a third-party provider through Kaiser, because of course I do. Here's my insurance situation: I have one option through my nonprofit job. One. And it comes with a high deductible. A very high deductible. Like, "this number should not be attached to the word healthcare" high. So I'm already bracing myself. And then the call comes. "Hi, your bill for that session is over $100." Cool. And that's not a one-time thing. That's every session until I hit my $3,000 deductible. Which — and this is the part that really sent me — resets in August. AUGUST. It's not even close to December. I will not meet that deductible. We both know it. The insurance company knows it. The universe knows it. So let me paint you a picture: I needed therapy. I did the work to get the referral. I finally got the appointment. And now I'm being told that getting mental health support will cost me over a hundred dollars a session out of pocket because of a deductible I will never realistically meet before it resets. And THAT is what caused the menty b. Before therapy. Because of the process of trying to get therapy. The irony is not lost on me. And I want to name something, because I think it matters in the context of who I am and who a lot of you reading this are: this isn't just my individual struggle with a broken system. According to SAMHSA data, two in nine Latinos in the US face mental health challenges — and more than half of them never receive treatment.⁵ More than half. The barriers are a whole list: no insurance, cost, not enough Spanish-speaking providers, stigma, not knowing where to even start. And all of that is before you factor in the bureaucratic loops I just described. So when I say the system isn't built for us, I mean that literally. The data says it too. And before anyone says "well what about Medi-Cal" — I've been there too. It's not pretty either. There was a point in my life where navigating Medi-Cal for mental health services was actually manageable. I got through it, found a provider, got seen. But years later, when I was trying to help a friend look into it, the whole landscape had shifted. You couldn't just call a provider directly anymore. You had to go through 211 first, get routed to some intermediary organization, and then hopefully end up somewhere useful. The direct line was gone. Another layer added between a person who needs help and the actual help. And the people who most need it — and have the least bandwidth to jump through hoops — are exactly the ones most likely to give up before they ever get seen. So no, this isn't just a private insurance problem. It's the whole system. If you haven't seen my instagram crash out video but more so where I'm just cleaning my face from crying/trying to stop crying after the session go do that. Now, here's the part I really want to talk about — because I think this is a cultural thing, a trauma thing, and honestly just a design flaw in how therapy works: When you finally sit down in that room (or on that video call), you are expected to just... start talking. About everything. The childhood stuff. The family dynamics. The things you've already cried about a hundred times but somehow have to explain again from the beginning because this is a new provider and they don't have your full file of lived experience. And it hits different every time. It doesn't matter how many times you've said it out loud — the moment you start recalling certain things, the emotions come right back like they never left. Full body. Instant tears. I hate it. And here's the thing — I already know. I know exactly what's going to come up. I know what the triggers are. I know what qualifies as "traumatic" in therapy speak. I know what I have to tell them because in theory, they can't help you if you don't. So I walk in already aware of what's about to happen to me emotionally, and it still happens every time. There's no building up immunity to your own story. You can intellectualize it all you want and you're still going to cry in front of a stranger you just met. This time, I didn't cry before the session. The crash out came before — the menty b was the insurance call, the bill, the whole situation leading up to it. But the crying? That happened during the session. Right on schedule. I knew it was coming. I could feel it building the second I started talking. And still — still — when it actually happened, it caught me. Not by surprise exactly, more like... I knew the wave was coming and it still knocked me over. This is not my first time starting over. Every time I've gone back to therapy — regardless of where I left off with the last provider — I cry in the first session. Every single time. I've come to expect it. I even brace for it. But expecting it doesn't make it easier. Crying is exhausting no matter how prepared you think you are. You still leave feeling wrung out, a little raw, and like you need a nap and something sweet. Which is why I am formally proposing: therapists should accept PowerPoints. Not joking. A nice little slide deck. Organized sections. Key bullet points. A "here's what we've already covered in previous therapy" slide. A "current triggers" slide. Maybe a timeline. Possibly a pie chart. If I can put together a presentation for a quarterly board meeting, I can absolutely put together one for my mental health provider. And I would. Gladly. It would save us time, help me process before I'm in the room, and mean I don't have to say the hard thing out loud and then watch someone take notes while I'm still actively crying about it. And all of this — all of it — was just to try and lower my medication dosage for half the month. That's it. That was the ask. A small adjustment. And somehow that required a full therapy session, a referral, a third-party provider, a $100+ bill, and an impromptu emotional unraveling. Sigh. Here's the thing though: I did know I needed to go back. I'd felt it for a while. I had actually graduated from therapy not too long ago — which is a real thing, and I was proud of it. My therapist and I had done the work, and at some point she assessed that I had the tools to cope on my own. The insurance company agreed. And according to them, "successfully coping on your own" is the finish line. But life had other plans. Without getting into names or specifics, certain individuals tied to a previous job situation had me increasing my dosage not long after I graduated. Possibly even while I was still in therapy. And I had all the tools. I really did. I just also had a situation that was actively working against me, and tools only do so much when the environment is relentless. The thing I've always believed — and that this experience brought back up for me — is that therapy shouldn't have to be a crisis response. A once-a-month maintenance check-in should just be normal. And there's actually research that backs this up: once someone has done the initial intensive work and developed solid coping skills, monthly sessions are considered a totally appropriate and effective maintenance schedule. Not a step backward — a step forward. The kind of preventive care that keeps you from having to start over again every few years. But once my therapist decided I could cope on my own, the insurance said we were done. Even if there were still things to work through. Even if life was still happening. Apparently the bar is "functional enough to not be covered anymore" — not "supported enough to stay that way." Coming back to therapy now, I realized how much I had actually needed that one cathartic cry. Not because I don't cry on my own — I do. But therapy is different. It's the space where I let it all the way out. I don't share the big feelings with a lot of people in my life. Not because I don't trust them, but because it's genuinely a lot to put on someone else. I want my friends around for the good and the bad — I want them to show up, I want to celebrate with them, I want them to lift me up when I'm down. But I don't want every conversation to feel like a session, because eventually that becomes its own problem. Friendship is not therapy, and it's not fair to either person when it starts to feel that way. And I want to be clear about something: if I tell you I'm open to listening, I mean it. I will not offer that if I'm not actually in the space to hold it. I want you to feel like you have a safe space too, and I will always encourage anyone reading this to find a therapist — because what I can offer is love, and what a therapist can offer is a whole different level of skill and structure. I'm also really lucky, and I know it, to have my fiancé through all of this. He is genuinely a huge reason I haven't had more menty b moments this whole stretch — and the ones I have had, he's been right there. He is the reasonable brain in this household. Mine can be reasonable too, but sometimes it likes to take a detour, and he knows exactly how to help me find my way back to the ground. He makes me laugh when I'm spiraling. He reminds me not to take things so seriously when I need to hear it. More than he probably knows, he's kept me stable. Now back to the money part. Because we have to go back to the money part. As much as I genuinely love my job — and I do. I have a supervisor who trusts my decisions and my perspective, especially when it comes to fundraising. I have real autonomy. I am not micromanaged, and I cannot overstate how much that matters to me because it has not always been the case. I love the work. I love the mission. I love the people. But nonprofit life has a double-edged sword, and it is the pay. And I say that understanding it's a structural, organizational challenge, not a personal one. It's the reality of the sector. The hard part of loving your work is that loving it doesn't cover your bills. So now I'm navigating: the $3,000 deductible I won't meet before August. The car payment. High insurance rates because I'm a newer driver. Half of rent. Wanting to actually be able to help a friend when they need something. All of it adding up while I'm also trying to take care of my mental health — which, again, costs over a hundred dollars a session. I had to ask my therapist to move to biweekly sessions. I don't know for how long. That's something we need to talk through at my next appointment. I love her and want to keep working with her, but I also have to be honest about what's realistic right now. And right now, weekly sessions at $100+ a session is not it. I may need to pause entirely until something changes — a new job, a change in coverage, something. I don't know yet. What I do know is that I shouldn't have to choose between mental health care and my car payment. But here we are. After that first session — after all the crying and the recapping of things I didn't want to recap, and the crash out that happened before I even got there — you know what we did? We got a McDonald's ice cream cone. Hopped in the car we have to pay for — a small nod to a Metric song, iykyk — and went and got something sweet and cheap and good. Because sometimes that's the move. Sometimes you cry everything out and then you go get a soft serve for a dollar and you sit with it and you breathe. And honestly? It helped. Here's what I want you to take from all of this, if anything: Crying in therapy is normal. Crashing out on the first session back is normal — it happens to me every time, and I know going in that it will. It doesn't get less exhausting, but it does get less scary once you accept that it's just part of the process. Monthly maintenance therapy is a real and valid thing. You don't have to be in crisis to deserve support. You don't have to justify needing a check-in. The idea that you "graduate" and then you're done is a framework built around what insurance will cover, not what actually sustains people. And if you're working through something and money is the barrier — biweekly sessions, sliding scale providers, community mental health centers, even free support groups — these are all real options worth looking into. You deserve care that fits your actual life. Go to therapy if you can. And when you leave your first session crying, go get yourself something small and sweet. You earned it. If you're in LA County or Riverside County and need support, here are real free resources — no insurance required: Los Angeles County LA County 24/7 Mental Health Helpline: (800) 854-7771 — the main entry point for mental health and substance use services, available around the clock 211 LA: Dial 2-1-1 — connects you to health and social services across Southern California, including mental health referrals NAMI Urban Los Angeles: (323) 294-7814 or namiurbanla.org — support groups, education, and advocacy for individuals and families 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988, available 24/7 in English and Spanish Riverside County Riverside County Crisis Helpline: (951) 686-HELP (4357) — free, confidential, bilingual (English/Spanish), available 24/7; they can also connect you to other local mental health services CARES Line (Community Access, Referral, Evaluation & Support): Available 24/7 for Medi-Cal and Riverside County Health Plan members seeking mental health or substance use services — call 2-1-1 to be connected Riverside County 24/7 Mental Health Urgent Care: Walk-in locations in Riverside, Palm Springs, and Perris — open to everyone regardless of insurance or ability to pay TakemyHand.co: Live peer chat with people who have real lived experience with mental health challenges What's Up Safehouse Text Line: Text SHHELP to 844-204-0880 for free, anonymous, 24/7 crisis support from a licensed mental health professional 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988, available 24/7 in English and Spanish More resources/information to come... ANNOTATIONS ¹ Research published in clinical psychology literature supports monthly maintenance therapy as an effective schedule for people who have completed initial intensive treatment and developed solid coping skills. A peer-reviewed study found that maintenance therapy was similarly effective at weekly, fortnightly, and monthly intervals for patients whose symptoms had remitted. (Frank et al., 2007, via Taylor & Francis / Journal of Psychotherapy Research) ² The insurance industry's standard for ending mental health coverage is tied to "functional improvement" — meaning the moment you show progress, coverage often stops, regardless of whether you've reached actual stability or just bare minimum functioning. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled against insurance companies for this exact practice, finding that cutting coverage upon improvement violates federal mental health parity law. (ProPublica, "Her Mental Health Treatment Was Helping. That's Why Insurance Cut Off Her Coverage." 2025) ³ Mental health care is 5.4 times more likely to be out-of-network than primary care — 17.2% of mental health visits versus 3.2% of primary care visits. (Milliman analysis of 37 million people, via Solace Health) ⁴ According to an analysis of 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health data, 23% of US adults with moderate to severe anxiety or depression who were not receiving treatment skipped or delayed therapy due to cost. (National Institutes of Health / PubMed Central, "Impact of insurance type on outpatient mental health treatment of US adults") ⁵ According to a 2018 report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), two in nine Americans who identify as Hispanic/Latino face mental health challenges, yet more than half do not receive treatment. Reported barriers include lack of health insurance, cost, cultural stigma, language barriers, and limited access to culturally competent providers. (SAMHSA, 2018, via Charlie Health / Hispanic Research Center)

Loving the entire album. "The Cure" by Olivia Rodrigo, if you don't know already, is about realizing that the thing you thought would fix everything was never going to be the fix. And that's exactly where I am right now, but with a little green and white capsule instead of a situationship. A generic version of it, since we can't afford the brand name. I finally had my appointment with my new psychiatrist, and I walked out of there having to accept something I wasn't ready to hear, or just didn't think was going to be what I heard: my Prozac stopped working. Not recently. A while ago. And I genuinely had no idea. I had convinced myself it was still working, and I'm really good at convincing myself about things. I Thought It Was Still Working I wasn't actively or consistently panicking. I have been pretty stable the past couple of months. I was getting up and going to my new job every day without that feeling of wanting to cry in the parking lot, without dreading walking in, without that gross pit in my stomach. I was functional. And for a long time, I told myself that being functional was enough. I have very low standards I guess of what I need to be functional, since I have seen myself at my worst, so anything above that is great to me. Ha! But I know I deserve to be more than "that type of fine." We deserve more than that type of fine. Functional is not the same as well. And apparently, what I was calling stability was actually me white-knuckling it while my medication quietly clocked out. Those menty-b's that were happening that I probably told you all about, or the random crash outs I posted about, the times I didn't want to work on this business? Looking back, I'm wondering if the Prozac's ineffectiveness led to all of that, or at least made me more prone to it. I still had the motivation, the ideas in my head to draw out, but I was not executing. There's a name for it stopping working on me, by the way. It's called antidepressant tachyphylaxis, or as the internet lovingly calls it, "Prozac poop-out." It's when a medication that once worked for you gradually loses its effectiveness over time, and research shows it happens to a significant number of people on long-term antidepressants.[1] I am not broken. I am not doing it wrong. My brain chemistry just changed the terms of the agreement without telling me. Not cool. With my previous psychiatrist we went up on my dose, then I suggested bringing it back down, and we both felt that it was helping my anxiety and my PMDD. SSRIs like Prozac are literally a first-line treatment for PMDD,[2] so if it's not touching those symptoms, that's a conversation worth having. We had part of that conversation, but once we went back down on the dose, the anxiety piece got left behind since it didn’t feel like it was as bad as when I was at the higher dose. I can't say Prozac losing its magic is fully to blame for my lack of posting or my low energy these past couple of months. But I also can't say it's a coincidence. I hope I get some of my spark back, because I still get excited at the ideas I have and the things I want to draw and create products for. Gracias, Prozac. This Isn't Goodbye Forever. Here's something my new psychiatrist told me that you might not know, and if you do, consider this your reminder: stepping away from a medication doesn't mean you can never go back. People take breaks from Prozac, from Lexapro, from all of these, and return to them later, and they can work again.[3] For a minute I thought we were going to try Lexapro again, and I might someday. But for now, we're trying Zoloft. Yes, Zoloft. The little bouncing egg from the commercial that I specifically remember watching on TV. I know it's an antidepressant, but like most mental health medications, they cross-treat. Sertraline is actually FDA-approved for panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, PTSD, and OCD on top of depression, and doctors prescribe it off-label for generalized anxiety all the time.[7] It's also approved for PMDD, same as Prozac was supposed to be doing for me.[8] So this isn't a random swap. And to Prozac: thank you for the time you gave me. You got me through a lot, more than I'm probably aware of. This is a "see you later," not a funeral. One thing my new therapist asked me (yes, new therapist too, it's been a whole reset) was whether I wanted to go without medication entirely. I said I would, but I am not in a position where I can just try herbal supplements, or go without stress, or handle my anxiety with coping mechanisms and diet restrictions alone. I know how my anxiety is untreated and it's not fun. For now we'll continue this way, until insurance decides we can try treatments like brain stimulation that reduce the need for medication. But they don't, because they want you to try medications first. Another healthcare and profit fight. Day One I want to be honest about the actual switch, because nobody tells you what these first days feel like. I was told I could just stop the Prozac, no taper, so I did. That ended up being two days before the Zoloft was actually dispensed. I wasn't feeling particularly stressed at the time, so I wasn't worried about the gap, and it turns out the gap doesn't matter much anyway, because Prozac does not just leave when you stop taking it. Fluoxetine has one of the longest half-lives of any SSRI, and between it and its active metabolite (norfluoxetine), the drug can linger in your system for roughly five to six weeks after your last dose.[9] So I knew there would be overlap between the Prozac still hanging around and the new Zoloft coming in. My psychiatrist was not too worried about it, and that reassurance mattered. Still, my body didn't love it. I had a headache at night, right before my first dose of Zoloft, so before I had even taken a single pill, and it parked itself there all night. Then day one arrived with the nausea. I ate breakfast, but the feeling was less "stomach pain" and more like a low, dull cramp, honestly a lot like the ache you get with your menstrual cycle, if that makes sense. It came and went all day. At one point I had to lie down and take a nap. Today? So much better. If there's any nausea at all, it's way milder. I generally tolerate medications well, so it should be good from here on out. We hope. And to be clear, I'm doing every bit of this with my new psychiatrist's guidance. I Insisted on a Latina Psychiatrist, and It Paid Off I want to talk about this part because it matters. I did my research and I specifically requested a Latina psychiatrist. I usually let my doctors know what I need, but this time I went in with the ask already made, and let me tell you: she was great. I felt listened to. I felt cared for. I felt like I could come back. She asked me a few questions, we reassessed, and she was genuinely happy that I came in instead of continuing to push through. That feeling is not in my head, by the way. Research shows that when patients and providers share racial or ethnic backgrounds, communication and patient experience improve.[4] For us, for our comunidad, being able to sit across from someone who gets it without explanation is not a luxury. It's care. She also told me something that apparently a lot of people don't do, and I truly do not understand why: if the new medication isn't working, call the office. Don't wait for your next appointment. If it's making you feel worse, if it's making you more depressed, if something feels off, call. She will adjust the dosage. You should not have to suffer until next month because that's when your appointment is.[5] I hear this all the time: "I don't see my doctor until next month, so I guess I'll just deal." No. That has never stopped me from reaching out to my provider, and it shouldn't stop you either. They work for you. Advocate for yourself like you'd advocate for your best friend, your sister, your mom. Does This Stuff Even Work Differently for Us? Of course I went looking for whether there's a medication that works better on women, on men, on Latinas specifically. There is a decent amount of research suggesting women may respond a little better to SSRIs (the family Prozac and Zoloft belong to), while men have historically responded better to older antidepressants called tricyclics.[10] Some studies point to sertraline in particular showing strong results for women, especially younger, premenopausal women, possibly because our hormones interact with how these medications work.[11] It's not a hard rule, and plenty of studies find no difference at all,[12] so nobody can promise you anything based on your gender. But it did make me feel a little less random about landing on Zoloft. Now for the part that frustrated me. When I looked for research on how antidepressants work specifically for Latinas, or Latinos in general? There's not much. A 2025 systematic review found that the studies used to build these medications, and the fancy new genetic tools meant to personalize them, massively overrepresent White and Asian participants and substantially underrepresent Black, Hispanic, and Latino people.[13] We are the largest minority in this country and we are barely in the data. That matters because our bodies can process these medications differently, and there's real research showing many of us carry worries and stigma about antidepressants that go unaddressed by providers who don't share our background.[14] Which is exactly why I fought for a Latina psychiatrist in the first place. When the science hasn't shown up for you, the person sitting across from you matters that much more. There Is No Cure, and We Actually Need Anxiety Here's my honest truth: I don't take medication as a cure. I wish there was one. There isn't. Anxiety is not a glitch to be deleted. It's part of being human. It evolved to protect us, to keep us alert, to get us out of danger.[6] The goal was never to erase it. The goal is to turn the volume down enough that it stops running my life. For the longest time, I really did think Prozac was kind of my cure, or the closest thing to it, and I have genuine appreciation for it. It wasn't. Nothing is. And weirdly, accepting that feels like its own kind of healing. So here's to new chapters, little bouncing eggs, Latina psychiatrists who listen, and knowing the difference between surviving and living. Healing, but make it cute. 💊🎀 P.S. In addition to my medication, I take a few supplements. In the reel I'm drinking a vitamin C drink from Trader Joe's, recommended by @thegutbabe_ in her "power of vitamin C" post. Her focus is on anxiety and using food to manage it, and she stresses it's not medical advice, that it's just what works for her. Same here. I'm trying it out and seeing if it does anything for my anxiety. I also added creatine powder to my juice, hence the spoon, because it's gritty and kind of gross in plain water. I'm using it to help maintain muscle while I work out. Quick context on creatine since I looked it up: women store only about 70 to 80 percent of the creatine men do and tend to eat less of it in food, which is part of why it gets recommended for us.[15] Creatine monohydrate is the most researched form and has a decades-long safety record.[16] The evidence is strongest for muscle maintenance when you're also doing resistance training, though results in women are more mixed than in men.[17] Also apparently you should give it about two months before deciding if it's doing anything.[16] Ask your doctor. This is just what I'm trying, and I don't even know if I'll stick with it. This post is my personal experience, not medical advice. If you're thinking about starting, stopping, or changing a medication, please talk to your provider first. Never stop a psychiatric medication without medical guidance. Sources Targum, S. D. (2014). Identification and treatment of antidepressant tachyphylaxis. Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, 11(3–4), 24–28. Marjoribanks, J., Brown, J., O'Brien, P. M. S., & Wyatt, K. (2013). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for premenstrual syndrome. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 6. Amsterdam, J. D., & Shults, J. (2009). Does tachyphylaxis occur after repeated antidepressant exposure in patients with Major Depressive Disorder? Journal of Affective Disorders, 113(3), 191–199. Shen, M. J., Peterson, E. B., Costas-Muñiz, R., et al. (2018). The effects of race and racial concordance on patient-physician communication: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 5(1), 117–140. National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Managing your mental health medications: Communicating with your prescriber about side effects and effectiveness. Nesse, R. M. (2019). Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry. Dutton. Pfizer. Zoloft (sertraline hydrochloride) prescribing information, Indications and Usage. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sertraline approved indications, including premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Eli Lilly and Company. Prozac (fluoxetine) prescribing information, Clinical Pharmacology: Accumulation and slow elimination. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sramek, J. J., Murphy, M. F., & Cutler, N. R. (2016). Sex differences in the psychopharmacological treatment of depression. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 18(4), 447–457. Kornstein, S. G., Schatzberg, A. F., Thase, M. E., et al. (2000). Gender differences in treatment response to sertraline versus imipramine in chronic depression. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(9), 1445–1452. Thiels, C., Linden, M., Grieger, F., & Leonard, J. (2005). Gender differences in routine treatment of depressed outpatients with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor sertraline. International Clinical Psychopharmacology, 20(1), 1–7. Jackson, D., et al. (2025). Quantifying sample representation in global pharmacogenomic studies of major depressive disorder: A systematic review. Clinical and Translational Science, 18(7). Cabassa, L. J., Molina, G. B., & Baron, M. (2012). Depression fotonovela and Hispanic patient engagement in treatment. See also Unger, J. B., et al. (2013) on antidepressant stigma and early discontinuation among Latino patients. Smith-Ryan, A. E., Cabre, H. E., Eckerson, J. M., & Candow, D. G. (2021). Creatine supplementation in women's health: A lifespan perspective. Nutrients, 13(3), 877. Kreider, R. B., Kalman, D. S., Antonio, J., et al. (2017). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: Safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14, 18. Candow, D. G., Chilibeck, P. D., & Forbes, S. C. (2019). Creatine supplementation and aging musculoskeletal health. Endocrine, 63(3), 431–441.

(I got my license at 36 with anxiety — and I think that's why I'm actually a good driver) I finally got my license at 36 years old. At the DMV — not for the first time, not even for the second — and it only took me I think 4 written tests because I let one or two expire, and 2 driving because I didn't pass the first one, because I swear that old man that gave me the test was on a failing-everyone streak that day. And I have no shame about that. If anything, I think the anxiety, the overthinking, the years of watching other people drive while I catalogued every possible thing that could go wrong; all of it made me the cautious, aware, genuinely good driver I am today or the good driver I feel that I am. Society always made me feel like I had to have it, and people all around me, including relatives, close friends, acquaintances, employers, and just nosy people would tell me to get my license, that it meant independence. This blog is for everyone who got the side-eye at the DMV or the well-meaning nudge from a family member or the 'you still don't drive??' at a party. We know. We always knew. We just needed a little more time, a little more of the feeling of safety, and sometimes; a little more money, because driving lessons are not free and cars are not free and nobody talks about that. The Journey (Yes, There Were Multiple Attempts) Round One The first time I went for my license, I actually did pretty well behind the wheel. My instructor was a good teacher. She was supportive, she was honest, and she told me I would be fine if I kept practicing. I believed her. But the DMV examiner? Not it. He was the kind of man who had probably failed people for sport. He failed the person in front of me. He failed me too; citing an unsafe turn. Was it unsafe? Honestly, I'm not sure I agree, but that's neither here nor there. The real problem was that I didn't have a car. Without a car, there's no practice. Without practice, there's no confidence. And without confidence, I put it off. And off. And off. Round Two I tried again later with a Peruvian instructor who conducted most of her lessons in Spanish, which, fine, I'm bilingual, that's not the issue. The issue is she gave me anxiety; and not the productive kind. Her teaching style didn't click for me, the feedback wasn't clear, and instead of building me up, our sessions left me feeling more rattled than when I started. I quit before we even got to the actual test. And then I let more time pass. Because sometimes that's what you do when something feels too big and too scary and the anxiety just gets too high. This is how I ended up talking myself into just continuing to work the job I had right after I graduated from my undergraduate, and went on through my Master's Degree program at NYU, and if we know one thing about NYU, it's that it was in New York City, and I wouldn't need a car… or at least need to know how to drive. Round Three — The One That Counted This past time, I was 36. And I want to be honest about something: I hated the written test. Not because I don't know how to study; I have a Master's degree, I think I can handle a multiple choice exam. I hated it because anxiety turns everything into a life-or-death overthinking spiral. Every question felt like a trap. My brain was running laps. But here's what I eventually told myself, in the least insulting way I can say it: there are genuinely bad drivers on this road every single day. People who have never thought once about what they're doing. People who blow through stop signs on autopilot. People who text. And those people passed their test. So I, with a Master's degree, with anxiety that makes me hyperaware of literally everything around me, should be able to do this. Still, up until a few months before I got my license, people kept at it: you should get your license, just for emergencies, you can do it, you need to have it — like, ok I get it, but shut up. It's so tiring to hear, especially when you are overwhelmed and overstimulated and anxious about life. Luckily I was able to leave a toxic job soon after, and then after my vacation, I got to work and took my driving classes, and I got my license in July. I started actually driving in September. And now, several months in, I have something I did not expect: confidence. To Everyone Who Keeps Reminding People to Get Their License A gentle but firm note: please STOP. People know. They know they need a license. They know it would be helpful in an emergency. They know it opens up job opportunities and independence and all of it. They don't need the reminder at the family dinner or the group chat or the random Tuesday. What they might need, and what nobody asks about, is money. Driving lessons cost real money. Cars cost real money. Insurance costs real money. Access to a patient, willing person to practice with costs social currency that not everyone has. Not everyone grew up in a household where teaching you to drive was part of the deal. So before you say it again, ask yourself if what you're offering is actually help, or just a reminder that they're behind on a timeline they never agreed to. And if you genuinely want to help, really, truly help, feel free to contribute to their driving lesson fund. Venmo them. Offer to split the cost of a class. That is helpful. That is something that will actually move the needle. I promise they will remember it. At this point in my life, I was lucky enough that I didn't have to pay for my lessons, my fiancé truly came through for me, and helped me. Again, I am 36 and can't drive. He wanted me to really learn and he didn't want to teach me, he wanted to get me real lessons and learn from a teacher properly. And I am forever grateful because as inexpensive as they were in comparison to other courses, they weren't cheap. He is the best. Why I Think Anxious People Are Actually Better Drivers Okay, I'm going to say the thing: I think my anxiety makes me a good driver. And there's actually research to back this up, kind of. People with anxiety tend to be hypervigilant; constantly scanning for threats, anticipating what could go wrong, monitoring their environment in a way that most people don't bother to do. According to the Cleveland Clinic, hypervigilance is a heightened state of awareness rooted in the brain's threat-detection system. [1] Behind the wheel, that means I am always looking. Always checking mirrors. Always aware of the car three lanes over that's been drifting. Always noticing that the truck in front of me has unsecured things in its bed and I should move over now, thank you, Final Destination did not leave me without lessons. Research published in Applied Ergonomics found that anxiety and driving experience interact in complex ways; experienced anxious drivers tend to compensate for their anxiety by increasing attentional effort, which can actually result in more focused, deliberate driving behavior. [2] A separate study found that people with higher anxiety scores tended to engage in what researchers call exaggerated safety behaviors; checking mirrors more often, leaving more space, driving more deliberately. [3] Taken too far, yes, that becomes its own issue. But at a moderate level? That is just being a responsible, aware driver. Even the research that flags anxious driving as a concern tends to focus on drivers who developed anxiety after a traumatic accident, not people who have generalized anxiety and have simply always driven carefully. There is a meaningful difference. [4] Your overthinking, your fear of crashing, your constant scanning of what every car around you is doing, that is what will make you a great driver. It keeps you present. It keeps you focused. It keeps you alive. This is the reason for the 'Stop It. Overthinking.' sticker, which, yes, is also the name of this blog. Because sometimes you need a little reminder to yourself to tell the same brain that is keeping you hyperaware and safe to also please calm down a little. We are many things. Let's Be Real: What Driving with Anxiety Actually Feels Like The Tense Hands Thing I grip the steering wheel way too tight sometimes. I have done this since day one, and eight months in, I still catch myself doing it. My hands tense up around the wheel like I am holding on for dear life, and I have to consciously remind myself: loosen up, and breathe, bitch. This is incredibly common for anxious drivers. Muscle tension is a core physical anxiety response, your body bracing for an impact that isn't coming. [5] The fix, as far as I can tell, is just noticing it. You cannot stop what you don't catch. So now I check in with my hands the same way I check my mirrors: regularly, as a habit. The Zoning Out Thing Here's the thing they don't tell you: zoning out while driving is not actually as scary as it sounds, because your brain is not fully checked out. It's operating on a kind of autopilot that still keeps you in the lane, still hits the brakes, still follows the flow of traffic. Researchers call this automaticity; the brain's ability to handle familiar tasks without full conscious engagement. [6] But when you have anxiety, you tend to snap back to full attention faster. Something shifts in traffic, a car brakes suddenly, someone cuts over — and I am immediately, fully present. That combination of background awareness plus rapid reactivation is actually useful. That said, I do make an effort to stay present. I actively look around. I check my mirrors. I try not to go fully internal when I'm on the road because of the anxiety, haha! I will say, I definitely did this as well when I was in NYC taking the subway — I would somehow end up at my destination without realizing the name of the subway station. It was wild. The Radio Is Not a Distraction; It's a Regulation Tool I listen to the radio when I drive. Always. And I used to feel slightly guilty about this, like maybe I should be in pure silence and total focus mode. But then I found the research and felt very vindicated. A study from the University of Groningen found that background music actually helps drivers concentrate, particularly in monotonous traffic conditions. [7] Importantly, when driving demands increased; like during a tricky maneuver or heavy traffic, drivers naturally tuned out the music and focused on the road. Your brain prioritizes. Safety wins. Another study found that calming music can reduce respiration rate and overall stress levels while driving, making drivers less reactive and more steady. [8] So yes, the radio calms me down. No, it is not distracting me. My brain knows when to set it aside, and so does yours. Give Yourself Space: The Car Length Rule and the Tires Trick One of the most important things I've learned: always give yourself at least one full car length of space between you and the car in front of you while moving — and at a red light or full stop, leave enough room that you can see the rear tires of the car ahead touching the pavement. If you can see their tires, you have enough space to maneuver out if you need to. This is not just a Rosa rule; it's backed by the California DMV and safety organizations. [9] The standard recommendation is the three-second rule: when the car ahead passes a fixed point, you should be able to count three full seconds before you reach that same spot. In bad weather, increase that to four or five seconds. On the highway going over 45 mph, four seconds is the safer baseline. [10] Tailgating is one of the leading causes of rear-end collisions, and if you are anxious about crashing, the single easiest thing you can do is give yourself more room to react. Space is time. Time is safety. Merging Lanes: The Thing I Planned Three Miles Ahead, Seriously! If I know I need to exit or switch lanes, I start working toward that lane early. Not at the last second. Not in a panic. I try to position myself about one to three miles ahead so that I have time, space, and options. This is not weakness. This is strategy. The people who cut across four lanes at the last possible second because they almost missed their exit are not confident drivers, they are chaotic drivers. Well, maybe they feel confident, but they are still chaotic. There is a difference. I would rather be the person who planned ahead than the person who caused an incident because they weren't paying attention. We are not at the last-minute-lane-change level yet. And that is perfectly fine. I also have a sticker that says 'Bestie, please let me merge before I start crying', found it on Etsy and it found me at the right time. It is the most accurate thing I have ever put on my vehicle, well the only thing I've put on it. If you are in traffic next to someone who needs to merge, just let them in. Be the person you needed when you were learning. And I always leave enough space that people feel like they can merge so I am aware that it is a possibility. The Trucks I have a complicated relationship with trucks. Specifically the big metal ones whose beds are full of loose materials that absolutely could become projectiles at highway speed. I see those trucks and I immediately think about every road debris accident I have ever seen footage of, and I move over. Non-negotiable. But here is what I have learned: trucks can also be your friend in traffic. A big truck clearing the path ahead of you? It is like having a very large, very slow escort. Just give yourself enough space to not be tailgating them, because their stopping distance is very different from yours, and you need room to react. The ones that really stress me out are the ones carrying things that are only partially secured. If I can see something shifting in that truck bed, I am getting out of that lane immediately. Final Destination was a documentary. People Who Don't Signal You will learn quickly that most people do not use their turn signals. They will switch lanes with absolutely no warning and you will have to anticipate it anyway, because you were watching them and noticed the drift before the move happened. This will be annoying. You will develop a quiet, very private vocabulary for these moments. Mine involves saying 'fucker' under my breath, softly, and then moving on. It is a healthy coping mechanism and I stand by it. I do not have road rage, and for the most part I forget to honk at people when they do this, or when they almost cause me to hit or almost hit me. Let Them Pass If someone wants to go faster than you and you are already at the speed limit, let them pass. Move over, let them go, and continue at your pace. You are not responsible for enforcing the speed limit. That is not your job. Drive the speed limit. Don't go under it unless conditions require it — rain, fog, construction, everyone slowing. But don't feel pressured to exceed it to make someone behind you comfortable. Their comfort is not your problem. And drive at the speed of traffic when required, that will make sense once you are driving and you read the manual. Taking Professional Lessons: Do It If you are learning to drive, please take professional lessons. I mean this sincerely. Learning from a family member or friend sounds free, but it comes with costs that don't show up on a receipt: the tension, the fear of making a mistake in front of someone who knows you, the way their anxiety becomes your anxiety, the dynamic that makes it hard to learn because you're also managing the relationship. A professional instructor does not have a personal stake in your performance beyond actually teaching you. They are patient. They know how to explain the real rules; not the 'well I've always done it this way' rules. They have dual controls. And they will not yell at you. I learned to drive around the Koreatown/LA area, and this was my instructor. Kabir! He is great! You are able to pay extra to use his car for your driving exam. He is flexible, and you can see all the rates on his site. I highly recommend him, and tell him I have a car, and aren't as scared of the highway as much. And Los Angeles… Also I have yet to drive to LA! LA is scary, because people can be extremely impatient, and rude. I visit LA now from Riverside. I haven't driven there because I see the drivers there while walking around and they give me more anxiety with the lack of safety or precautions people are not taking. I have not convinced myself to drive there yet. I will someday, but for now we take the Metrolink to visit friends and any business related needs. I have driven to Irvine and a majority of the Inland Empire. Where I Am Now I kind of hate driving. I want to be honest about that too. It is not my favorite activity. It is still a little scary. Merging onto the highway still makes me a bit anxious, especially when you have to merge from one lane to two other ones like when it's 3 highways turning to one. But I am good at it. I did not expect to feel this way, and yet here I am: a good, safe, careful driver who is more confident every single week. I do not feel like I am going to crash the way I used to. Not because I think nothing can happen, but because I trust myself to respond well if something does. The fear that used to feel paralyzing now just keeps me sharp. I have prevented many crashes/accidents from happening, not because I was going to cause the accident but because they were driving into me as I was having the right of way into an unprotected left turn, or they didn't signal at merging, etc. It's the being proactive while driving that has kept me alive, the hyperawareness. I got my license at 36. I started driving at 36. And I am out here every day, actively looking around, checking my mirrors, giving trucks space, leaving room to see the tires in front of me, letting speeders pass, and saying 'fucker' quietly to myself when someone cuts me off without a signal. We got here. Slowly, carefully, and on our own timeline. That counts. I hope this helps to encourage anyone that is still trying or wanting to get their license to get it or start to think about it, now that you have some insight from a fellow anxious worrier. If you have any further questions or think of something that worries your mind, feel free to send me a DM, I'd be happy to chat about it. Made with love and your salud mental in mind. — Educated Chola If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. For Spanish-language support, press 2. Sources [1] Cleveland Clinic. Always on Alert: Causes and Examples of Hypervigilance (2023). https://health.clevelandclinic.org/hypervigilance [2] Gotardi, G.C. et al. Adverse effects of anxiety on attentional control differ as a function of experience: A simulated driving study. Applied Ergonomics, Vol. 74 (2019). https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/adverse-effects-of-anxiety-on-attentional-control-differ-as-a-fun/ [3] Baker, A. et al. Anxiety and depression in relation to anxious driving and driver behaviors. PMC (2025). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12228188/ [4] Clapp, J.D. et al. Properties of the Driving Behavior Survey Among Individuals with Motor Vehicle Accident-Related PTSD. PMC (2014). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4026290/ [5] Charlie Health. Therapist-Approved Ways to Manage Driving Anxiety (2026). https://www.charliehealth.com/post/driving-anxiety [6] Gotardi, G.C. et al. Adverse effects of anxiety on attentional control differ as a function of experience. Applied Ergonomics, Vol. 74 (2019). https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/publications/adverse-effects-of-anxiety-on-attentional-control-differ-as-a-fun/ [7] Unal, A.B. et al. University of Groningen — Listening to music while driving has very little effect on driving performance. ScienceDaily (2013). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130606101550.htm [8] Dibben, N. & Williamson, V.J. The influence of music on mood and performance while driving. Ergonomics, 55(1) (2012). Via: Driving Fear Help. https://drivingfearhelp.com/how-listening-to-music-while-driving-impacts-your-driving-anxiety/ [9] California DMV. Section 8: Safe Driving — Following Distance. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/california-driver-handbook/safe-driving/ | Arash Law. Safe Distance to Stop from the Car in Front of You at a Light (2026). https://arashlaw.com/what-is-a-safe-distance-to-stop-from-the-car-in-front-of-you-at-a-light/ [10] Travelers Insurance. 3-Second Rule for Safe Following Distance. https://www.travelers.com/resources/auto/travel/3-second-rule-for-safe-following-distance | National Safety Council: Three seconds is the minimum; five seconds is even better.

(And the System That Makes It All Worse) I saw this trend and knew I had to do it and I don't normally say that, ha! But it applied so well. The real horror begins when you try to ask for help. Not the kind with jump scares and haunted houses. The kind that shows up in waiting rooms, insurance denials, and someone at Thanksgiving telling you to just pray about it. This post is for every Latina, every person of color, every low-income community member who has had to fight just to access basic mental health care. I see you. And we're naming what the system would rather keep quiet. Here are my top 5 real ones; plus some honorable mentions that deserve their own spotlight. Horror #1: "Have You Tried Just... Fixing It Naturally?" Someone who has never sat in a therapist's office, never filled a prescription, never had to explain to HR why they need a mental health day (also, NEVER do this — HR is not your friend, nor is your boss; I seldom tell supervisors and I'd recommend you refrain from it too, but that's another story) — telling you to stop taking your medication. Because they read something online. Or because they're "worried about what it does to your body." This is one of the most common and damaging forms of mental health stigma in Latino communities. It often comes wrapped in love, which makes it harder to push back on. But here's what the research says: psychiatric medications, when properly prescribed and monitored, are evidence-based, life-saving tools. According to the American Psychiatric Association, untreated mental illness can worsen over time and lead to serious impairment. Stopping medication abruptly without medical guidance can be genuinely dangerous. If someone in your life is managing their mental health with medication, the most loving thing you can do is trust them and their doctor — not your Google search from 2019 or your TikTok, even if I post this there or on IG, hehe. And with that: this is not medical advice. Please connect with your doctor if you'd like to pursue any form of treatment you see or hear about here or anywhere else that intrigues you. I will also say this: the first line of treatment before pursuing medication should always be therapy. I never took medication for my anxiety before doing therapy first. If you know me, you know I didn't even seriously consider medication until I was out of my graduate program and even then, it took me a few more years until I was 30 to finally give in. That is another story, tied directly to the stigma of medication in communities of color, and I'll tell it later. Anyways, let me take my meds. My brain was tired for 30 years, and it has finally quieted down and gotten some peace. It hasn't dimmed my lights. I'm still high functioning and I'm still me. Horror #2: Diagnosed but Making It Everyone Else's Problem This one is nuanced because we are not shaming anyone for having a diagnosis. Living with a mental health condition is HARD. But there is a real difference between struggling and using your diagnosis as a reason not to do any work. When someone refuses therapy, goes on and off their medication, refuses any form of management of it, and then expects everyone around them to absorb the fallout, that is not okay. That is harm transfer. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) emphasizes that recovery is not linear, but it does require effort and support. Community matters and so does accountability within that community. Getting support for yourself is not a betrayal of anyone. It is how you protect the people you love. Personally, in the workplace and in life, I have dealt with individuals who went on and off their meds, were diagnosed but didn't pursue therapy or any treatment, and lacked self-awareness — and that directly impacted my safety at times. This chronic stress caused my own anxiety to worsen and, at one point, led to an increase in my own medication dosage just to manage day-to-day. Coping skills can only go so far when the environment itself is the source of harm. A study published in Frontiers in Public Health found that high-stress workplace environments are significantly associated with the onset and worsening of anxiety and depression. Separately, research on secondary traumatic stress; the psychological impact of prolonged exposure to others' distress or harmful behavior, shows it can produce symptoms including anxiety, sleep disturbances, and emotional exhaustion, even without direct trauma exposure. [1] Horror #3: "Just Pray About It" Faith is powerful. For many Latinas, spirituality is woven into how we understand ourselves, how our families have been brought up, and our healing. We are not here to dismantle that — well, not right now at least, bahaha. But when prayer is used as a substitute for professional care, especially in communities where mental health stigma runs deep and therapy is seen as "para los locos", it becomes a barrier. It becomes a reason not to seek help that could genuinely change or save a life. Research published in Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology has consistently documented that Latino communities face unique stigma around mental health help-seeking, shaped by cultural values like familismo and personalismo, as well as distrust of medical systems rooted in historical exclusion. [2] And it's not just our community. A landmark study on mental health stigma across Black, Latino, and Asian American communities found that all three groups exhibited stronger mental illness stigma than the general U.S. public including viewing mental illness as less serious, less treatable, and perceiving greater social distance from those who have it. [3] In Asian American communities specifically, research shows that mental health is often treated as a taboo topic tied to shame and family honor and that Asian Americans are 50% less likely than other racial groups to seek mental health services. [4] In Black communities, deep and historically justified distrust of the medical system plays a significant role in treatment avoidance, on top of stigma that frames mental illness as personal weakness. [5] You can pray and go to therapy. You can light a candle and take your medication. Faith and mental health care are not opposites. They can coexist. I myself combine multiple practices in my own care because they work for me, and I don't care if you don't like it. Horror #4: Losing Your Meds on Medi-Cal or VA Coverage — and Being Treated Like a Criminal You finally have coverage. You finally have a provider. You finally have a prescription that works. And then the formulary changes and if you don't know what that is, it's basically the list of medications your plan will cover, and it can change with little warning or your plan switches, or there's a prior authorization that takes six weeks, or your pharmacy doesn't have it in stock. Suddenly you're back at zero. Sometimes worse. For veterans and Medi-Cal patients especially, navigating medication access can feel like punishment. The bureaucratic hoops, the judgment at the pharmacy counter/provider’s office, the assumption that anyone asking for certain medications must be seeking them for the wrong reasons i.e., addiction, abuse, it is dehumanizing. A 2022 report from the California Health Care Foundation found significant gaps in behavioral health access for Medi-Cal enrollees, with low-income communities of color bearing the greatest burden of those gaps. And there's documented evidence that communities of color, particularly Black and Latino patients are routinely undertreated and over-scrutinized when it comes to medication. A study published in PNAS found that false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white patients continue to shape pain assessment and treatment decisions. Research from the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that Black and Hispanic patients consistently receive lower opioid doses than white patients for the same conditions across 90% of health systems studied. [6] And a study on inpatient psychiatric settings found that Black patients were 58% more likely to receive antipsychotic PRN medications compared to white patients raising serious questions about racial bias in psychiatric treatment decisions. [7] Here's something specific that matters: if you lose a controlled substance prescription like an ADHD stimulant such as Adderall or Ritalin, which are Schedule II under California law, you cannot get an emergency refill. Schedule II medications have no refills at all; each one requires a new authorization from your provider. [8] Non-controlled medications like Prozac are significantly easier to navigate in an emergency. This system, while designed to prevent abuse, disproportionately punishes people who are already struggling to access care and who are disproportionately low-income and people of color. You are not a criminal for needing medication. You are a human being who deserves dignified care. Horror #5: Finding a Bilingual, Culturally Competent Therapist on Medi-Cal… This is one of the most documented and persistent failures of the mental health system when it comes to communities of color. Bilingual therapists are in critically short supply. Culturally competent care meaning a provider who understands the weight of generational trauma, immigration, code-switching, racism, and family obligation is even rarer. A landmark study by Vega et al. published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that despite higher rates of certain mental health stressors, U.S.-born Latinos had limited access to culturally appropriate services and significantly underutilized mental health care. The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity identified systemic barriers including language access, workforce diversity, and cultural mistrust as key drivers of health disparities for communities of color. For Asian American communities, the barriers are just as stark and often compounded by the model minority myth, which obscures real suffering. Research published in Psychiatric Services found that cost, language barriers, and lack of culturally matched providers are among the most prohibitive barriers to mental health care for Asian Americans. [4] A review published in PMC found that Asian Americans tend to underreport mental illness, are less likely to participate in mental health studies, and face significant stigma tied to shame and family expectations. [9] For Black communities, distrust of the healthcare system rooted in a documented history of medical experimentation, exploitation, and neglect, remains one of the most significant barriers to seeking mental health care. The American Psychiatric Association explicitly names this historical distrust as a driver of disparities. [5] For immigrant communities broadly, the fear of documentation status, language barriers, and lack of providers who understand transnational identity and acculturation stress creates layers of obstacles that can feel insurmountable. Finding a therapist who gets it, who doesn't make you explain your entire culture before you can even get to what's wrong, should not be a luxury. But right now, for too many of us, it is. If you're trying to find one, try Latinx Therapy and search their database, I’ve used them before to find a Latinx therapist, I haven't used Therapy for Latinx but they are also a database, BetterHelp gets a bad rap but I ended up finding one when I was in need and couldn’t afford one with insurance and ended up loving my Latina therapist I found. And here are some others on IG that I follow, some Latina, some not, but I follow their content or have worked with some on collabs, so they are worth checking out: Araceli Vidales, Jacqueline Garcia, Lupita Martínez, Carla Avalos, Irene Velasquez, Cyndi Gallego, Jessica Medina, Naomi Tapia, Daisy Gómez, or Psychology Today's therapist finder. Use every filter available — gender, specialty, language, areas of expertise like generational trauma, immigration, and cultural identity. You deserve a provider who is built for you. Note: I am not affiliated or paid by any of these individuals or companies, just sharing resources I've encountered. Honorable Mentions: The Treatments We Deserve Access To These didn't make the top 5, but they deserve their own spotlight because the access gap is real, documented, and deeply tied to race and income. TMS and Ketamine Therapy Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and ketamine-assisted therapy have shown remarkable results for treatment-resistant depression and anxiety conditions that disproportionately affect communities that have faced chronic stress, trauma, and systemic racism. A 2019 meta-analysis in the Journal of Affective Disorders found TMS to be significantly effective for major depressive disorder. Ketamine has been shown in multiple NIMH-funded studies to produce rapid antidepressant effects, sometimes within hours. The problem? A single TMS treatment course can cost between $6,000–$12,000. Ketamine infusions run $400–$800 per session. Insurance coverage is inconsistent at best, and Medi-Cal coverage is limited. These treatments exist. They work. And most of our communities will never access them not because we don't need them, but because the system wasn't designed with us in mind. I've been trying to access these through insurance and so far have had no luck, but maybe one day I will and the dream of those who tell me to get off my meds will finally come true ✨ Acupuncture, Cupping, and Eastern Medicine For many Latinas, healing has always included practices that Western medicine doesn't fully recognize: sobadas, herbal remedies, prayer and yes, for many of us who've discovered them, acupuncture and cupping. The National Institutes of Health acknowledges acupuncture as having evidence-based benefits for pain, anxiety, and stress. Research published in JAMA Internal Medicine found acupuncture significantly effective for chronic pain conditions. Yet most insurance plans, including Medi-Cal, offer little to no coverage for these modalities. The assumption embedded in U.S. healthcare is that only Western, pharmaceutical-based care is "real" medicine. And that assumption has a documented racial and colonial history. A 2022 article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal examining race and colonialism in medicine found that Indigenous and traditional medicines were historically rejected by Western powers as part of an intentional ideological strategy of assimilation, what they called "civilizing." [10] A review published in PLOS One further documented that self-determined traditional healing options remain largely excluded from Western healthcare institutions. [11] This isn't coincidence. It's policy rooted in who gets to define what healing looks like. Our ancestors knew how to heal. It's time our insurance plans caught up. The Scariest Part? The System Wasn't Built for Us. Everything on this list; the stigma, the access barriers, the medication gatekeeping, the shortage of bilingual providers, the dismissal of non-Western medicine is not accidental. It is the result of a healthcare and mental health system that was built without communities of color at the table. The American Psychological Association's 2017 Multicultural Guidelines explicitly acknowledge the role of racism, historical trauma, and systemic inequity in shaping mental health disparities. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has documented persistent gaps in behavioral health equity for racial and ethnic minority communities for decades. Knowing this doesn't make it hurt less. But it does mean it's not in your head. It's not weakness. It's not a personal failure. It is a structural one. And we're here, building community, sharing resources, and refusing to stay quiet because our mental health matters too. Made with love and your salud mental in mind. — Educated Chola If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. For Spanish-language support, press 2. Sources [1] Guo, Y.F. et al. Secondary traumatic stress: Risk factors, consequences, and coping strategies. Frontiers in Psychology (2023). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10011627/ | Kim, T. et al. Research for association and correlation between stress at workplace and individual mental health. Frontiers in Public Health (2024). https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1439542/full [2] Ayers, S.L. & Kronenfeld, J.J. Chronic illness and health-seeking information on the Internet. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal. | See also: Organista, K.C. Solving Latino psychosocial and health problems. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley (2007). Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/cdp [3] Michaels, E.K. et al. Mental Illness Stigma in Black, Latina/o, and Asian Americans. PMC (2025). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12574314/ [4] UCLA Health. Confronting mental health barriers in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community (2023). https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/confronting-mental-health-barriers-asian-american-and-2 | Ye, J. et al. Disparities in Mental Health Care Utilization Among Asian Americans. Psychiatric Services (2020). https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201900126 [5] American Psychiatric Association. Stigma, Prejudice and Discrimination Against People with Mental Illness. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/stigma-and-discrimination [6] Morden, N.E. et al. Racial Inequality in Prescription Opioid Receipt — Role of Individual Health Systems. New England Journal of Medicine (2021). https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa2034159 | Hoffman, K.M. et al. Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations. PNAS (2016). https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1516047113 [7] Ngan, E. et al. Racial disparities with PRN medication usage in inpatient psychiatric treatment. PMC (2024). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11016118/ [8] California Health and Safety Code HSC 11200. Controlled Substance Refill Laws. LegalClarity (2026). https://legalclarity.org/california-controlled-substance-refill-laws/ | Medical Board of California. CURES Prescribing Rules. https://www.mbc.ca.gov/Resources/Medical-Resources/CURES/Prescribing-Rules.aspx [9] Leung, P. et al. Further Reduction in Help-Seeking Behaviors Amidst Additional Barriers to Mental Health Treatment in Asian Populations. PMC (2020). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733772/ [10] Kirmayer, L.J. et al. The past, present and future of race and colonialism in medicine. Canadian Medical Association Journal (2022). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9188792/ [11] Rowan, M. et al. Traditional Indigenous medicine in North America: A scoping review. PLOS One (2020). https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0237531

If you are here, you have probably seen me face down on a table, little needles in my upper back, cups on the rest of my back, and a heat lamp warming me from above. And I want to tell you: it is the best!!!! I am not fully asleep, and not fully out, but in that good place where your brain stops its little anxiety marathon and just... rests. That is what acupuncture and cupping do for me. And if you have been curious, a little scared, or your family says "¿para qué?" every time you bring it up or calls you weird, this one is for you. Let's Talk About the Stigma If you have been following me, by now you know that in Latino culture we do not really talk about mental health. We push through, we pray, we make caldo, or at least we are told to do so. And while there is beauty in all of that, there is also a gap, especially when it comes to actually treating what is going on inside. The stigma around alternative therapies is not just a Latinx thing either. Western medicine has been slow to embrace practices like acupuncture and cupping, even though they have been around for thousands of years across Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Egyptian cultures. The Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest medical texts ever found from 1550 B.C., documents cupping as a legitimate treatment.[1] Thousands of years, and we are still out here acting like it is weird. The pushback comes from both sides, from families who side-eye anything that is not a prescription, and from Western medicine that has been slow to fund research on these practices. But the research is growing, and what it is showing is worth knowing about. Insurance now approves acupuncture for the most part, even with Medi-Cal or Medicaid, depending on what you call it in your state. What the Research Says I am not going to oversell this. The research is still growing, partly because these practices are hard to study in the traditional double-blind way, and partly because funding for this kind of research has always been limited. But here is what we do know: On acupuncture: A 2024 study found that adding acupuncture to a mental health treatment plan led to a 78.4% drop in depression symptoms, a 41.1% decline in anxiety, and a 53.1% improvement in sleep quality.[2] Acupuncture also helps increase serotonin production in the brain, yes, your favorite mood regulator, which is why it can help with both anxiety and depression. A 2025 review on generalized anxiety disorder found that acupuncture, alone or combined with medication, may actually work better than medication by itself, with fewer side effects.[3] On cupping: Cupping activates the parasympathetic nervous system, your "rest and digest" mode, fighting that fight-or-flight response that is basically the engine of an anxiety spiral.[4] It helps with inflammation, improves circulation, and has been linked to increased dopamine and serotonin levels.[5] Research on fibromyalgia found that cupping significantly reduced pain and improved quality of life compared to standard care.[6] In Reality: More studies are still needed, and most guidelines classify these as complementary therapies, meaning they work alongside other treatment. Which is exactly how I use them. My Situation I "graduated" from my therapist a while back. And I mean that literally. I did the work, got to a good place, and we both agreed it was time. My insurance would also agree, since my anxiety had improved enough that they no longer considered continued sessions necessary. I agree to disagree on that one, but that is another story. Managing anxiety does not stop just because therapy does. It is ongoing. Some stretches are harder than others, and what works for me is a combination of things: exercise, acupuncture, cupping, and daily medication. I have new insurance now, Kaiser Permanente, in the Inland Empire, and we will see how that goes. My history with Kaiser Permanente, LA's mental health department was not great, long wait times, staff strikes, the whole thing. So for now, what I know works is showing up to my acupuncturist's table and letting my nervous system breathe. What It Actually Feels Like You have tattoos, so you should not mind it, right?! I mean, I do not, but I know a lot of people who do not particularly enjoy getting their blood drawn for funzies. But that is the difference: it is a tiny poke, well, a couple of them. If you have a good acupuncturist, you really will not feel most of them. Once the heat lamp goes over my back, I honestly do not feel much at all. The only things I notice are the initial cupping placement, which has a little pinch when the suction grabs, and occasionally when a needle gets pressed to stimulate a specific point. But that is always a conversation you have with your acupuncturist beforehand. Nothing should catch you off guard. It is less scary medical procedure and more accidental nap with health benefits. Should You Try It? Yes. Especially if you are managing anxiety or depression and want complementary support, if you have been curious but nervous, or if you feel like something is still missing even after trying what your doctor recommended. The physical and emotional sides of stress are not separate, and it helps to treat them together. Consult your doctor before adding anything new to your routine, especially if you are on medication. I have tried acupuncture many times before and have never had an issue, so adding it back into my routine was not a question for me. Find someone you actually trust, that part matters more than anything else. Search Google reviews, Yelp, etc. That is my strategy when looking for a therapist, psychiatrist, or any kind of doctor. I also have personal preferences around gender, ethnicity, and other factors, and that is completely okay too. Come See My Acupuncturist You can also just take a recommendation from a friend, like mine! If you trust me and know me, I will point you in the right direction, among the many other things that I have information on. If you are in the Riverside area, go see my acupuncturist, Dr. Yu,at: Healing Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Clinic 4193 Flat Rock Rd, Riverside, CA 92505 (626) 662-5365 If you caught the video on my Instagram, I hope it made it feel a little less intimidating. We do not have to be scared of the things that help us heal, whether that is therapy, medication, cupping, acupuncture, a good ugly cry, or all of the above. Healing is hard enough. It might as well feel good too. — Educated Chola 🧠 Made with love and your salud mental in mind. Sources [1] Hometown Chiropractic. History of Cupping Therapy. https://hometownchiropracticnc.com/history-of-cupping/ | Britannica. Ebers Papyrus. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ebers-papyrus | ResearchGate. History of Cupping (Hijama): A Narrative Review of Literature. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317064060_History_of_cupping_Hijama_a_narrative_review_of_literature [2] Lu, M. et al. (2024). Effectiveness of acupuncture in treating patients with pain and mental health concerns: the results of the Alberta Complementary Health Integration Project. Frontiers in Neurology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11333307/ [3] Annals of General Psychiatry (2025). Efficacy of acupuncture for generalized anxiety disorder: a systematic review. Springer Nature. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12991-025-00614-5 [4] SOHMA Integrative Medicine. Can Cupping Help with Anxiety? https://www.sohma.org/therapy/cupping-therapy/can-cupping-help-with-anxiety/ [5] Cupping Warehouse. Cupping Therapy, Hormones and Neurotransmitters. https://cuppingwarehouse.com/blogs/library-and-articles/cupping-therapy-hormones-and-neurotransmitters [6] Lauche, R. et al. (2016). Efficacy of cupping therapy in patients with the fibromyalgia syndrome: a randomised placebo controlled trial. Scientific Reports. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5112514/

Why You Need a Night Guard Like, Ayer First things first, a customized night guard  is an absolute must if you’re dealing with teeth grinding or jaw clenching. Wearing a night guard creates a protective barrier between your upper and lower teeth, preventing further damage, which can range from tiny cracks in your teeth, cracking your teeth, full-on jaw pain, and/or headaches. It’s like putting on armor before you go to bed—because even though your mind may be on some stressful stuff, your teeth don’t need to suffer for it. Unlike those cheap, one-size-fits-all ones you might grab from the drugstore, a custom-fitted night guard (from your dentist) is molded to your teeth, so it’s comfier and does its job more effectively. You wouldn’t wear shoes that don’t fit, so why let your teeth grind against something that isn’t made for them? Trust me, this is a game-changer! While I did get my first night guard from my dentist, it was not cheap! It was not cheap and I made a crack in it, 3 to 4 months into having it. About a few months later, like now I just received my two new night guards via a small business company that is way cheaper, that I researched and I am happy with. I am not sponsored by them but happy with the results of my night guards. The company is called Remi. Mental Health & Bruxism: The Real Connection So what’s up with this connection between your mental health and your jaw acting like it’s bench-pressing in your sleep? Stress, anxiety, and unresolved tension  are major players. When we’re stressed, we tend to carry that tension in our bodies, and for a lot of us, it’s in our jaws. That tightness often doesn’t go away just because we’re sleeping. Here's the deal: our mind is powerful. Even when we’re unconscious, it can keep working through emotions and anxieties, which manifests physically—hola, clenched jaw! Some studies even suggest that people who suffer from anxiety or depression are more likely to deal with bruxism. If you’re out here grinding your teeth like there’s no tomorrow, it’s your body’s way of saying, “Hey, we need to deal with this stress!” How To Deal With It: Protect Your Mental & Dental Health Now that we know mental health can have your teeth grinding away at night, what can you do about it? Here are some tips to help you protect those pearly whites and  address the underlying causes. 1. Get a Custom Night Guard (Yes, I’m Saying It Again) We already covered this, but seriously—don’t sleep on this step. It’s the first line of defense and can prevent long-term damage while you work on managing stress. And again, I just got mine at the age of 35 because I didn't know I had this issue... 2. Consider Muscle Relaxers Sometimes, your muscles just need a little help to chill out. If your jaw feels tense or you’re waking up with headaches, your doctor may suggest a muscle relaxer  before bed. These can help loosen up those tight jaw muscles, so you’re not clenching in your sleep. But remember, consult with your doctor first to make sure it’s the right move for you. I personally only use these sparingly, as they can be addicting, so I leave them for when I really need them, again, consult your primary care doctor. 3. Stress Management Techniques Because the root of bruxism is often psychological, addressing your mental health is key. Here are a few ideas: Meditation and Deep Breathing:  Practicing mindfulness before bed can help ease the anxiety that might be causing you to grind. Exercise:  Physical movement is a proven stress-buster, and getting those endorphins flowing can help take the edge off your anxiety. Journaling:  If your mind is racing, try writing down what’s stressing you out before bed. Sometimes just getting it on paper helps your brain stop obsessing over it. 4. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) For people dealing with chronic stress or anxiety, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)  can be incredibly helpful. It’s a type of therapy that helps you identify and manage negative thought patterns that might be contributing to your stress (and jaw tension). It’s like mental exercise to retrain your brain into handling stress differently. 5. Check Your Diet Certain substances can make bruxism worse. Things like caffeine, alcohol, and sugar  can keep your nervous system activated, making it harder for your body to relax—yes, even when you’re asleep. Try reducing these, especially before bed, and see if that makes a difference. 6. Create a Calming Bedtime Routine Creating a chill vibe before you hit the sheets is a good way to prep your mind and body for restful sleep. Essential oils  like lavender, a warm bath, or some light stretching can all help release that pent-up tension. The goal is to make bedtime the ultimate relaxation zone, so your jaw doesn’t feel the need to join a grind-off. I personally don't care for lavender, I use eucalyptus, if lavernder doesn't work try eucalyptus, give it a shot. Final Thoughts: Addressing the Mind-Body Connection Grinding your teeth or clenching your jaw while you sleep might seem like just a dental issue, but it’s often a signal that something else is going on—something deeper that’s linked to your mental health. While a night guard  is an excellent first step in protecting your teeth, don’t forget to explore ways to manage stress, whether that’s through muscle relaxers, therapy, or lifestyle changes. Your mental health and your physical health are intertwined, and sometimes your body sends you signals in unexpected ways—like turning your jaw into a workout machine overnight. So take care of yourself, inside and out! Feel free to drop any questions in the comments or share what’s helped you manage bruxism! Gracias

On being medicated, the stigma of it as a POC and how I got there. I am pretty sure that anyone that is reading this already has assumed that I take medication for my mental health issues. I would think so since I do have pill capsule earrings that are supposed to represent ‘Prozac’ and ‘Lithium’. What I won’t mention is exactly what type of medication I do take or have taken. But really, I wouldn’t even be able to take either one of those medications mentioned because it would literally be too much ‘serotonin’ and yes, you can OD on too much serotonin. I’ll dedicate another blog to discuss, ‘serotonin syndrome’. Questions you may have: Do you take medication? Yes Have you always taken medication? No When did you start taking medication? In college, I was having a hard time one particular semester and I was balling tears so much I took myself to my on-campus doctor (yay! for student medical insurance). After going to him once, he told me about Xanax and I still declined it. I had another situation where I was uncontrollably crying, and finally said, I need to take this. And that’s how I got Xanax for the first time. Aren’t you afraid you’ll become addicted? No, as discussed with my psychiatrist, they have and do inform me, of when a specific medication can lead to addiction. Some medications like Xanax can be addicting. Xanax was first prescribed to me with the doctor at the time mentioning that, he didn’t see me as someone to abuse the medication and that I practiced many self-care methods that he knew I was trying to ‘fix’ myself in positive ways. Just to clarify, Xanax is typically not prescribed as a daily medication, but more so when one is having an anxiety attack or some kind of episode, that despite maybe the person’s daily medication routine, they need a little extra help. At the moment, they are unable to or weren’t able to manage it, whatever the reason may be. Do I have to tell anyone? While you may feel like you are lying, you really aren’t. Your personal business is no one’s to know unless you want them to. For myself, my immediate family were the only ones that knew up until now, because of my personal rule of it being on a need-to-know basis. What happens when you don’t take your medication? Nothing really unless I realize it. I may end up having a bad day, or end up worrying the entire time if I did take it or not, but usually, nothing awful happens. It’s usually just thoughts of not being sure if I took it, and if I should take it? Just in case, I didn’t. This does impact my day when I am at work(physically) and forget to take it, so if I can, I will run back home. If I can’t go back home, I will try and take my day one step at a time and try to acknowledge triggers if possible. Do you regret taking medication? A big fat ‘NO’ I genuinely believe it has been the best decision of my life. I do regret having waited so long. So here is the rest of the blog explaining my journey about getting on medication. Continuing from above… I finally decided to get a daily medication prescribed to me about 3 or so years ago. I had what I call some type of breakdown. I couldn’t and didn’t want to do anything for myself, I just wanted to cry, and while I mainly suffer from anxiety, my anxiety at times does lead to depression. At this point in my life, I had just finished a difficult summer at work, and I was burnt out. In addition to being burnt out, I also knew my relationship, with the person I refer to as, cough* cough* ‘Trash’, was soon to end, had made me change my plans to go seem my favorite band, Arcade Fire in Berkeley because he wanted to go to Laughlin for a weekend trip -_-. I ended up purchasing two tickets to the show in Berkeley, and two plane tickets, as well as booked an AirBNB. After this, we eventually broke up. but before that happened, he told me he couldn’t make it, he paid off his portion to me of all the expenses, and I went alone because you can have fun on your own. No regrets! Amazing show. But what most didn’t see of the trip on my Instagram, was the crying I was doing whenever I was back at my AirBNB. I managed to get myself back to L.A. in one piece but knew something was off. When it’s this bad, I know, something is off. I took myself to the ER, spoke with my acupuncturist that day because I had an appointment, and she agreed with me that I needed help. Trash, never once checked in on me when I took myself into the ER, nor did he bother to ask. Hence, why he is still ‘Trash’, and these are only two of the many other things he didn’t do as a partner for me. But back to the me. I feel lucky, to never have had any suicidal tendencies/attempts. Even with medication at times stating it’s a side effect, it’s not likely for me. With this, I will say that having experienced the physical and mental pain that comes with depression; I fully understand why people would choose to end their lives. The pain is so great, it’s unexplainable unless you’ve gone through it. This is not to encourage it, but just to say I understand. Once I got out of the ER, my mom was wonderful and came to stay with me for a while as I waited to get my psychiatrist appointment and tried to function up until then. This came with spurts of random crying, not wanting to eat, not sleeping well, and overall depression. When I finally got to see my psychiatrist, I was so relieved. Not only was she kind, but she was a woman of color, in a typically white-dominated field. She listened and never pushed anything on me. I told her my concerns, including addiction, and how I had never taken medication, so I wanted to start on something simple and a small dose. We went ahead with that plan, and the moment I started to take the medication; I was pretty numb to anything that would have caused me any type of mental hurt. I honestly felt wonderful, even if I was having no feelings. Nothing could hurt me. It was amazing! But I was ok with that momentary absence of feeling because as I’ve probably have stated to friends and family, I feel and think too much sometimes, and it was nice for it to stop for once. That non-feeling feeling, lasted about two weeks. If it had gone on for longer, I would’ve mentioned it to my doctor. This was just the adjustment my body was doing, and from there on I felt, ‘normal’, and even this normal, was something I had never felt before. My brain was quiet, I would still think of things that would typically worry me, but I would not go into the unnecessary rabbit holes that I was typically on. All of this to say, I was no longer too stressed out, I was able to focus and not freak out about a specific comment someone made that I would overanalyze throughout the day, and I was no longer as tired/fatigued. Fast-forward to now, that medication stopped working. I was told it just had worn off, which is fair after the amount of time I had taken it. I only realized this after I had a similar episode to the one above, except I didn’t take myself to the ER, rather I just laid at home crying knowing I needed to talk to a psychiatrist. Now I have a different medication and dose. Being on medication can be tricky, as they can wear off over time, they may not even work for you, you have to try a variety of them to get your dosage right, and it’s usually helpful when it’s partnered with therapy. But yes, you may wonder, why the heck did you wait so long to get on medication?! It took me long because I really didn’t know what was going on. In high school, I only knew about depression, with no idea of what anxiety was, and only knowing that I had been depressed momentarily at some point in high school. On top of this, the reason for the creation of ‘Educated Chola’ is to help and bring awareness into Latinx homes about mental health, its symptoms, and how you can try and manage it. But we can’t do any of that, without removing the stigma of mental health and medication. Coming from a Latinx household, and at the time in the culture, mental health was seen as a disgrace, that you were ‘crazy’, there’s something wrong with you. (This was the 90’s). While that was never really the case in my household, what was happening is that no one really knew what mental health was all about. I have always had a supportive mother, but we just didn't have the resources to access mental health help nor knew about it. My personal reason why I didn’t take or ask for medication up until college has been because I didn’t want the stigma. I was afraid of what people would say, if I had to tell people, that I was weak, they would treat me differently, etc. After acknowledging the fact that up until going to college and then graduate school, without taking medication on a daily basis, I finally felt comfortable taking it. I realized how much ‘easier’ my life would have been if I had done this earlier. By ‘easier’ meaning, I would not have had to struggle so much mentally from all the stress and pressure put on myself as a Latinx woman, trying to be the best, and overworking herself to get even close to her white and male counterparts in society. Also ‘easier’, by not having to overthink all the time, cause me to have headaches, not sleep, not eat because I was too sad to eat, ending relationships and being ok, and not distraught, and many other things that may sound simple but aren’t to me. I do want to point out that even deciding to go to Graduate school was stressful because I knew how stressed and anxious Undergrad had been, that I didn’t want to experience that again. But my high functioning side said, ‘No, if other people can do it, you can too’ and the fact that the deferment for NYU was $1,000, I said here I come! Regardless of all the amazing friends I made, that are still friends and supporting me in the Educated Chola journey, like many of them too can relate, Grad school was MISERABLE! even if you don’t have a mental health issue, you were MISERABLE. I don’t know exactly what it is, definitely, a good portion for me was the pressure I always put on myself, but everyone was either drinking, working and studying, or crying somewhere or about to break down out of the stress. I don’t regret it, but as I said, I could’ve made it ‘easier’. A part of normalizing to myself that it was ok to take medication was this logic: if others like diabetics, people with kidney disease, heart disease, cancer, etc. all can take medication for their health, I can take medication for my health. They clearly need it to continue living, and that’s what I want to do. With that, I hope that you gain something from my story and if you feel like you need help or would like to try medication to cope with your mental health issue, reach out to a psychiatrist to discuss. Abrazos, Your Educated Chola

On being medicated, the stigma of it as a POC and how I got there. I am pretty sure that anyone that is reading this already has assumed that I take medication for my mental health issues. I would think so since I do have pill capsule earrings that are supposed to represent ‘Prozac’ and ‘Lithium’. What I won’t mention is exactly what type of medication I do take or have taken. But really, I wouldn’t even be able to take either one of those medications mentioned because it would literally be too much ‘serotonin’ and yes, you can OD on too much serotonin. I’ll dedicate another blog to discuss, ‘serotonin syndrome’. Questions you may have: Do you take medication? Yes Have you always taken medication? No When did you start taking medication? In college, I was having a hard time one particular semester and I was balling tears so much I took myself to my on-campus doctor (yay! for student medical insurance). After going to him once, he told me about Xanax and I still declined it. I had another situation where I was uncontrollably crying, and finally said, I need to take this. And that’s how I got Xanax for the first time. Aren’t you afraid you’ll become addicted? No, as discussed with my psychiatrist, they have and do inform me, of when a specific medication can lead to addiction. Some medications like Xanax can be addicting. Xanax was first prescribed to me with the doctor at the time mentioning that, he didn’t see me as someone to abuse the medication and that I practiced many self-care methods that he knew I was trying to ‘fix’ myself in positive ways. Just to clarify, Xanax is typically not prescribed as a daily medication, but more so when one is having an anxiety attack or some kind of episode, that despite maybe the person’s daily medication routine, they need a little extra help. At the moment, they are unable to or weren’t able to manage it, whatever the reason may be. Do I have to tell anyone? While you may feel like you are lying, you really aren’t. Your personal business is no one’s to know unless you want them to. For myself, my immediate family were the only ones that knew up until now, because of my personal rule of it being on a need-to-know basis. What happens when you don’t take your medication? Nothing really unless I realize it. I may end up having a bad day, or end up worrying the entire time if I did take it or not, but usually, nothing awful happens. It’s usually just thoughts of not being sure if I took it, and if I should take it? Just in case, I didn’t. This does impact my day when I am at work(physically) and forget to take it, so if I can, I will run back home. If I can’t go back home, I will try and take my day one step at a time and try to acknowledge triggers if possible. Do you regret taking medication? A big fat ‘NO’ I genuinely believe it has been the best decision of my life. I do regret having waited so long. So here is the rest of the blog explaining my journey about getting on medication. Continuing from above… I finally decided to get a daily medication prescribed to me about 3 or so years ago. I had what I call some type of breakdown. I couldn’t and didn’t want to do anything for myself, I just wanted to cry, and while I mainly suffer from anxiety, my anxiety at times does lead to depression. At this point in my life, I had just finished a difficult summer at work, and I was burnt out. In addition to being burnt out, I also knew my relationship, with the person I refer to as, cough* cough* ‘Trash’, was soon to end, had made me change my plans to go seem my favorite band, Arcade Fire in Berkeley because he wanted to go to Laughlin for a weekend trip -_-. I ended up purchasing two tickets to the show in Berkeley, and two plane tickets, as well as booked an AirBNB. After this, we eventually broke up. but before that happened, he told me he couldn’t make it, he paid off his portion to me of all the expenses, and I went alone because you can have fun on your own. No regrets! Amazing show. But what most didn’t see of the trip on my Instagram, was the crying I was doing whenever I was back at my AirBNB. I managed to get myself back to L.A. in one piece but knew something was off. When it’s this bad, I know, something is off. I took myself to the ER, spoke with my acupuncturist that day because I had an appointment, and she agreed with me that I needed help. Trash, never once checked in on me when I took myself into the ER, nor did he bother to ask. Hence, why he is still ‘Trash’, and these are only two of the many other things he didn’t do as a partner for me. But back to the me. I feel lucky, to never have had any suicidal tendencies/attempts. Even with medication at times stating it’s a side effect, it’s not likely for me. With this, I will say that having experienced the physical and mental pain that comes with depression; I fully understand why people would choose to end their lives. The pain is so great, it’s unexplainable unless you’ve gone through it. This is not to encourage it, but just to say I understand. Once I got out of the ER, my mom was wonderful and came to stay with me for a while as I waited to get my psychiatrist appointment and tried to function up until then. This came with spurts of random crying, not wanting to eat, not sleeping well, and overall depression. When I finally got to see my psychiatrist, I was so relieved. Not only was she kind, but she was a woman of color, in a typically white-dominated field. She listened and never pushed anything on me. I told her my concerns, including addiction, and how I had never taken medication, so I wanted to start on something simple and a small dose. We went ahead with that plan, and the moment I started to take the medication; I was pretty numb to anything that would have caused me any type of mental hurt. I honestly felt wonderful, even if I was having no feelings. Nothing could hurt me. It was amazing! But I was ok with that momentary absence of feeling because as I’ve probably have stated to friends and family, I feel and think too much sometimes, and it was nice for it to stop for once. That non-feeling feeling, lasted about two weeks. If it had gone on for longer, I would’ve mentioned it to my doctor. This was just the adjustment my body was doing, and from there on I felt, ‘normal’, and even this normal, was something I had never felt before. My brain was quiet, I would still think of things that would typically worry me, but I would not go into the unnecessary rabbit holes that I was typically on. All of this to say, I was no longer too stressed out, I was able to focus and not freak out about a specific comment someone made that I would overanalyze throughout the day, and I was no longer as tired/fatigued. Fast-forward to now, that medication stopped working. I was told it just had worn off, which is fair after the amount of time I had taken it. I only realized this after I had a similar episode to the one above, except I didn’t take myself to the ER, rather I just laid at home crying knowing I needed to talk to a psychiatrist. Now I have a different medication and dose. Being on medication can be tricky, as they can wear off over time, they may not even work for you, you have to try a variety of them to get your dosage right, and it’s usually helpful when it’s partnered with therapy. But yes, you may wonder, why the heck did you wait so long to get on medication?! It took me long because I really didn’t know what was going on. In high school, I only knew about depression, with no idea of what anxiety was, and only knowing that I had been depressed momentarily at some point in high school. On top of this, the reason for the creation of ‘Educated Chola’ is to help and bring awareness into Latinx homes about mental health, its symptoms, and how you can try and manage it. But we can’t do any of that, without removing the stigma of mental health and medication. Coming from a Latinx household, and at the time in the culture, mental health was seen as a disgrace, that you were ‘crazy’, there’s something wrong with you. (This was the 90’s). While that was never really the case in my household, what was happening is that no one really knew what mental health was all about. I have always had a supportive mother, but we just didn't have the resources to access mental health help nor knew about it. My personal reason why I didn’t take or ask for medication up until college has been because I didn’t want the stigma. I was afraid of what people would say, if I had to tell people, that I was weak, they would treat me differently, etc. After acknowledging the fact that up until going to college and then graduate school, without taking medication on a daily basis, I finally felt comfortable taking it. I realized how much ‘easier’ my life would have been if I had done this earlier. By ‘easier’ meaning, I would not have had to struggle so much mentally from all the stress and pressure put on myself as a Latinx woman, trying to be the best, and overworking herself to get even close to her white and male counterparts in society. Also ‘easier’, by not having to overthink all the time, cause me to have headaches, not sleep, not eat because I was too sad to eat, ending relationships and being ok, and not distraught, and many other things that may sound simple but aren’t to me. I do want to point out that even deciding to go to Graduate school was stressful because I knew how stressed and anxious Undergrad had been, that I didn’t want to experience that again. But my high functioning side said, ‘No, if other people can do it, you can too’ and the fact that the deferment for NYU was $1,000, I said here I come! Regardless of all the amazing friends I made, that are still friends and supporting me in the Educated Chola journey, like many of them too can relate, Grad school was MISERABLE! even if you don’t have a mental health issue, you were MISERABLE. I don’t know exactly what it is, definitely, a good portion for me was the pressure I always put on myself, but everyone was either drinking, working and studying, or crying somewhere or about to break down out of the stress. I don’t regret it, but as I said, I could’ve made it ‘easier’. A part of normalizing to myself that it was ok to take medication was this logic: if others like diabetics, people with kidney disease, heart disease, cancer, etc. all can take medication for their health, I can take medication for my health. They clearly need it to continue living, and that’s what I want to do. With that, I hope that you gain something from my story and if you feel like you need help or would like to try medication to cope with your mental health issue, reach out to a psychiatrist to discuss. Abrazos, Your Educated Chola Share This Post Stay Connected

I LOVE crying/llorando. It's literally the one thing that I know will make me feel better afterward. Without a doubt, every time I have cried, I always feel better. The other thing that happens after a good cry is: I get exhausted, get a headache, and need a nap/I get tired and get really hungry. There is definitely something leading up to a good cry, that I may be eating less inadvertently. Crying is a whole physical response. I am wiped. I try not to hold things in, or even get overwhelmed so much that the thing I wasn't thinking about. In doing this, I push down all the feelings, and now they need to burst out of you. One part about crying that I don't like is that it can happen ANYWHERE. Whether it's a tone that sounds mean to me, or that makes me think something illogical, I can pretty much be made to cry at any time. I may have tried to work out, not dwell on something, drink my agua, avoid caffeine, but it can all just build up regardless. Because of this, I've cried at: work, the New York Subway, at the corner of the Sprinkles Cupcakes in New York, other random spots in the city, the L.A. Metro rail, walking around L.A., picking up my açaí bowl, at events where I should have been happy (Arcade Fire concert), in-person therapy/virtual therapy. It's all fair game to my emotions and anxiety. The main difference between New York and L.A. public crying is that in New York, people will for the most part leave you alone. People in L.A. may come up to you and ask you what's wrong, and I don't really want them to. But I'm here to say that it's ok to cry, and for others to just let you cry. It's the best thing to do when you haven't been able to release all of your built-up feelings. Check these two links belwo to get a better understanding of all the benefits of crying. You can literally cry the stress out of you, so don't hold back and be a 'chillona, y que?!' - Crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system and restores the body to a state of balance. Crying is good for you.