Annie of Gallatin Campus Icarus Joins Co-Coordinators

Submitted by Icarus Project on Tue, 04/14/2009 - 2:00pm

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Icarus just brought another co-coordinator into the Intergalactic collective, this time to work on the Education and Outreach group out of the New York office and stipended at $250/month. Annie has been a key organizer with Gallatin Campus Icarus at NYU. Check out the Gallatin image gallery, and you can also listen to a great interview with her here. Here are some words of greeting from Annie:

I am thrilled to be stepping into my new role as Education-Outreach
co-coordinator with The Icarus Project. TIP has been near and dear to my heart since I first “discovered” it about two years ago when I got involved in leading the Campus Icarus chapter at Gallatin/NYU. Before that, I led a student mental health organization at Smith College, where I began my higher education. I graduate in May from Gallatin, a school at NYU for Individualized Study where I designed a concentration called “Stories of Self: Realization, Empowerment, and Well-being” which interweaves alternative mental health/post-psychiatry, reproductive health (with a focus on birth), the philosophy of medicine, gender studies, social change, narrative theory, and creative expression.

I am a proud and loud self-proclaimed 3rd wave feminist, brazen bisexual, self-empowerment advocate, anti-establishment activist, and radical paradigm-shaper. In addition to my mental health work, I serve as a birth doula, providing women with continuous emotional and educational support during labor and birth.

I have ample history dealing with extreme psychic and emotional experiences, which serve as a bedrock for my participation with Icarus. I have had an onslaught of diagnoses cast upon me over the past 10 years – generalized anxiety disorder, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, anorexia nervosa, body dysmorphic disorder, post-traumatic-stress disorder (the doctors couldn’t make up their minds!). I have experienced both trauma and triumph from my interactions with the mainstream medical mental health field, and today rely on a nice balance of modalities for wellbeing, including but not limited to traditional therapy,
peer support, acupuncture, and yoga.

Grocery List of Diagnoses

Submitted by Amelia777 on Sun, 05/24/2009 - 9:27pm.

I had the same issue with being diagnosed with everything under the sun for about 10 years as well. My last diagnosis was bi-polar rapid cycling. Although that fits me rather well, adult ADD has VERY similar symptoms! I swear all of these medical illnesses sound so much alike I'm really starting to question why there are labels at all!! It just seems to confuse me and others! (including doctors). Anyone ever felt like they fell into like 5 categories almost perfectly? That makes me think a lot less about the labels! I used to be a psychology major and recently after being off the medication for a while, I decided to take a leap of faith and focus more on embracing the "disorder". I'm new to the group as of a few minutes ago!!! Thanks for letting me hang out here!!! :)