Stereotypes. How did you come here?

In the early stages of my career, I felt pretty lonely. Hopefully, some of my colleagues have supported me in my performance model, how to drive and do therapy, and they encouraged me to follow the same line. Despite my consent, systematic transformations are difficult to accomplish while alone. I got an invitation to a Whatsapp group that said two women wanted to open a space to speak between mental health and women, and I approached. We gathered together a number of women and expressed the desire to move forward. We therefore continue to unite and shape the partnership.

What vacuum does Stereotypes fill?

Gender stereotypes continue to be very present in everyday life, from a very young age. And after reaching adulthood, unfortunately, they don't go away. Let's not say mental health. They're deeply rooted. It is true that there are many people working on the subject, but there is no Basque association. We therefore decided to organise it from the first meeting. We have come to fill the gap to speak, reflect and reclaim feminist mental health.

I also studied sexology, and the final career project I did around the menstrual cycle. And menstruating bodies are cyclical in the association. We must feel and listen to our cycles. We believe that we must act with respect for the reality of each person, otherwise we can create very serious situations, without realizing it, from ignorance. Beware of this!

What is your roadmap?

We only have one year of travel. We are very small, but we are very clear that we have to do external and internal work. We have worked hard internally. Many meetings to shape the partnership, but especially to shape the group. We have made many reflections, we have tried to answer many questions. And the second step has been to get out into the street. For example, we have begun to offer workshops to reclaim and work feminist mental health. Because we don't want to work on women's mental health, but mental health from feminism. It's very different. We want to focus on women, with a feminist view. That is what we demand. At the moment we are oriented towards women, we do not work with men, but we also have to talk about them.

How do we see the situation? How do we have mental health?

Mental health, even if it sounds like a lie, is in a good historical moment. More and more people are demonstrating the need or need for therapy, and that is an important step. Recognition of therapy is favorable to mental health.

I see a lot of women in the consultation and at first they feel lonely. Because they believe that the “that” that happens to them happens to them alone. But one of my goals is to explain that it's not. It's also important to politicize mental health.

Now there's a lot of talk about women and neural load.

Yes, and we have to think about it. Some issues that historically happen to women have been considered and treated as biological problems. Many symptoms have been associated with the sexual gender and not so. Fortunately, we've started to change things. What is happening to women is not casual or biological. We have to change that understanding, that fraud imposed. And yes, there's neural load, among other things.

In addition, mental health has always been left in the background. On the contrary, we have a habit of healing or promptly treating any physical injury or pain.

Many of the characteristics of women have been conceived as skills. For example, doing two things at once, and that's not a joke. But these capabilities become responsibility and therefore burden. In addition, the responsibility for solving it has been channelled personally. And no, that's collective, it's society's responsibility. It's in society. It's not individual, it's political. And at Stereotipak we worked on that path.

Do you have international allies?

Nothing like ours, but the issue is on the table. For example, in the feminist movement and in the Mutual Help groups. There's also a movement called Crazy Pride. We would like to approach everyone and, by the way, expand the group. Anyone can belong to it, it is not compulsory to exercise health care. In short, we want to reflect the social reality and diversity in the day-to-day partnership. That will certainly enrich our activity.