Emotional Struggles

Some people struggle with strong pregnancy fears when there isn’t a pregnancy or hasn’t even been any real risk of pregnancy. What’s that really about, and how can you move forward?

Some helps for the care and keeping of you when you’re stressed, depressed, riddled with anxiety or fear or going through something wretched and trying to come out the other side.

I’m most interested in how you feel now about this, and separate from how you think everyone else would feel. Hopefully, if you haven’t identified your own feelings yet, my answer can give you some help doing that. So, values. Here’s the thing about values: they aren’t universal. They also aren’t…

Once, in a sleepless night of Netflix marathoning, someone said something on a show that stuck with me, despite the rest of the night being an unmemorable haze of insomnia. That was, “What’s so wonderful about being young is that there are no mistakes, only research.” As someone who works with young…

The big emotion that comes through what you’ve written here isn’t love or loyalty. It’s anger. Big, big anger, in giant waves, in what you’re saying and in how you’ve said it. There is so much here – far more, I think, than your boyfriend using porn, or what’s in the porn he’s looking at – that a…

One of the most amazing—and, at times, confusing—things about the world is how there are so many people and also so many different opinions and values that people hold. What seems right and good to one person just may not work for another. There’s no single way of being or one way of thinking that…

As anyone who works in sex education or sexuality can tell you, when it comes to the questions people ask us, variations on the theme of “Am I normal?” reign supreme. I just spent a half hour going through our advice question queue, doing a search on each page for the word “normal.” At the moment…

There’s a lot I want to say, but I need to get a hugely important piece out there as soon as possible. If you are thinking about self-injury, suicide, or hurting someone else there is immediate help available. I want you to stay safe so we can talk more about what is going on with you, so if you are…

Recognizing that you have negative beliefs about sex and sexuality is a huge step in clarifying what you think to be true and the value system you want to follow. That is a major task of growing up, and not just related to sexuality. As we move through youth, adolescence, and young adulthood we are…

Risk-taking is a very, very normal (I’m going to say it again in case you missed it: VERY normal) part of adolescent and young adult – and overall human – development. When the risks we’re taking are sound risks to BE taking, which involve the possibility of real benefits, that not only isn’t a…