March 2023 Newsletter: Psychedelics, new therapists and intersectional healing. (Read on!)

Hello there!

We're probably the last organisation to be sending out Happy New Year emails, but... happy new year!

To explain our tardiness - we've been working behind the scenes to clarify, simplify and organise (that's our motto for 2023😅) all of our processes, so that we can take care of ourselves as we work to support our community this year.

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One thing that we've changed is this newsletter - instead of random emails from me every so often, you'll now hear from us once at the start of every month.

👉In each newsletter, you'll find mental health tips from us, introductions to therapists from our Asian Australian mental health practitioner list, as well as all the latest that's been happening in mental health across academia, the arts and in the news too. 

We hope you enjoy these monthly roundups... let's dive into the first one EVER!

❤️Asami

🦉 Some interesting mental health info:

📚 Academia: There's evidence that highlights that in many East Asian immigrant groups, people often prefer to seek support from family, religious leaders or self-help techniques such as exercise or talking to friends, over seeing a professional. (For copyright reasons, reply to this email if you'd like us to send you the full article!)

🎨 The arts: If you're interested in intersectional mental health and healing, be sure to check out Mimi Zhu's book, Be Not Afraid of Love. You'll also find Shapes and Sounds mentioned in their list of resources too😉

📺 The news: Did you know that Australia is the first country to recognise psychedelics as treatment in mental health care? 🍄Read more HERE or via the TGA announcement HERE.

🔎 Searching for a therapist?

Connect with our new practitioners below, or forward this email on to someone who may need this!

🎤 Therapist spotlight.

Get to know clinical psychologist, Dr Megha Rupa via our interview:

✨Thank you for reading so far!

We rely heavily on your generous support to provide ongoing and free mental health resources to Asian communities in Australia. If you're in a position to be able to support us, please do so via this link HERE!

🌱 A mental health tip for March:

Over the summer, I've been going on lots of runs and as my distances have started to increase, I've noticed that I'm starting to remember a lot of old memories... and some of them are quite painful memories too.

This experience has reminded me of the common experience of feeling worse when we start going to therapy, or when we start engaging in some kind of health-promoting activity.

While often alarming, it's important to remember that sometimes memories resurface when we feel safe enough to process them. For me, perhaps the strength that I've been building in my physical body is signalling to me that I'm feeling stronger to deal with such memories, and in the case of therapy, that safety created in the therapeutic relationship, might be giving you the space to bring up and start processing some of the stuff that's been lurking under the surface for a while.

If you're finding yourself in a similar situation, make sure you communicate this with your therapist so that they can support you through such processing!

🐌 And last but not least:

Recently in social media land,

This post about the Asian diaspora experience struck a chord with 22k people🙃 Click to connect back in with our instagram this year!