Tips and Tricks on How to Be Sick

We are going to be talking about mental health, why therapy could be helpful to anyone — mental health diagnosis or not — and ways to make therapy more accessible to people with disabilities. For this, the interview will be with a clinical psychologist who, in the interests of full disclosure, I will tell you now has been my closest friend for almost 25 years, Dr. Erica Essary, Psy.D. Please see for a full transcript of this podcast.

In this episode, we are going to be talking about keeping it together. Yes, in the sense of mentally and emotionally weathering life and the world around you, but also (and more specifically) keeping up with all the little changes that happen when a new chronic illness diagnosis or disability happens. You start with problem X, but that leads to some new symptoms that could be problem Y, and so you get sent to a new specialist who sends you for new kinds of tests, or gives you a new medication to try. And then, the medication might have a side effect that you need to control, so that’s more doctors and maybe additional treatments — where does it end? Before you know it, it feels like your life is both a) falling apart and b) completely subsumed by this new diagnosis, like a giant octopus wrapping its tentacles around everything. Please see for a full transcript of this podcast.

In this episode, we are going to be talking about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS. There are many types of EDS, but they are considered to be the same family of disorders because they all stem from the same cause: improperly made collagen in the body. Collagen is a protein that forms the latticework that everything in the body gets built upon, but it’s not all the same. There’s 28 different type of collagen across several different genes, and each one has a different effect if there’s an error in the genetic code, resulting in a wide range of possible symptoms for people with some form of EDS. We'll talk about some of the most common symptoms and our top tips and tricks on coping with them. Please see for a full transcript of this podcast.

In this episode, we are going to be talking about autism, also called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and what it’s like to realize, as an adult, that not only are you non-neurotypical but that you are, in fact, autistic. Includes interviews with an #ActuallyAutistic man diagnosed as an adult, and a clinical therapist who gives some insight into the diagnostic process. Please see for a full transcript of this podcast.

Finding the little ways you can adjust your life to make it easier to cope with new illnesses or disabilities. Please see for a full transcript of this podcast.