One of the most painful and pervasive beliefs people carry—often silently—is “I’m not good enough.”  It sits beneath the surface of daily life, shaping relationships, self-esteem, decision-making, and emotional well-being. For many, this belief didn’t appear overnight. It developed slowly, through repeated experiences of criticism, neglect, comparison, trauma, or emotional invalidation. Over time, the nervous system begins to interpret these experiences as evidence of persona

Elyn Saks’s Story The author and subject of the memoir The Center Cannot Hold , Elyn Saks, was diagnosed with schizophrenia during her first year of law school at Yale University. Despite her overall ability to achieve both academic and professional success over the course of her life, during psychotic episodes her level of functioning within her work, self-care, and relationships was markedly impaired and threatened the integrity of both her self and her endeavors. In the he

Many girls and women are undiagnosed with ADHD, meaning they are also lacking support and treatment for a mental health condition that can have rippling effects in their lives. Women are more likely to be diagnosed in adulthood than as a child, even though ADHD typically onsets by adolescence. This means many women spend years feeling the impacts of ADHD, which often leads to lower self-esteem and other negative emotional effects. On the other hand, men are much more likely t

Non-monosexuality is a term that includes a wide range of identities and refers to experiences of attraction that don’t fall under the categories of exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual attraction, such as bisexuality and asexuality. Non-monosexuality challenges the very categorization of sexuality itself. It subverts the notion that sexuality is fixed and definable—that it’s a stable and reliable point from which to form identity. Both bisexuality and asexualit