Vanessa Porter

If you have ever felt yourself tense up before entering a room, edited what you say to keep yourself safe, or carried a level of stress that other people do not seem to notice, you may already know minority stress — even if you have never used that phrase for it. The term comes from research showing that people from marginalised communities can experience an additional layer of stress because of stigma, prejudice, discrimination, concealment, and the expectation of rejection. At Be/Here, this...

Why inclusive mental health care needs to hold the whole person. There’s something I come back to often in my work. People don’t experience their identity in separate boxes. You’re not autistic in one part of your life, and LGBTQIA+ in another, and struggling with your mental health somewhere else entirely. It’s all connected. And yet, the way support is often designed doesn’t reflect that. The overlap between autism and LGBTQIA+ identity There is a strong and well-recognised overlap between...

There are moments where stress feels obvious. Deadlines, big life changes, something going wrong — the kind of things we’re expected to feel stressed about. If you’re wondering how to manage stress in everyday life, especially when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. But what I see a lot in my work — and in my own life — is a quieter kind of stress. The kind that builds slowly. It looks like being tired all the time, even when you’ve slept. Snapping at small things and then feeling...