Blocked and Reported Premium: Unshrunk with Laura Delano
Feb 22, 2026
Laura Delano, author and founder of the Inner Compass Initiative who supports people through psychiatric diagnoses and withdrawal. She recounts early psychiatric contact, a quick bipolar diagnosis at 14, and how labels can reshape identity. Conversations cover self-injury, medicalization of distress, limits of biomarkers, and complex causes of psychiatric struggles.
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Fourteen Years Inside The Mental Health System
- Laura Delano recounts a 14-year relationship with the mental health system that began in adolescence and reshaped her life.
- She interweaves personal experiences with historical context and drug information that informed her decision to leave psychiatry behind.
Adolescent Existential Crisis Led To Secret Self Injury
- At 13–14 Laura experienced an existential crisis, acting out through cutting and anger in response to feeling trapped by performance-focused culture.
- She hid self-injury from family, initially mimicking peers and using cutting to release intense anger at social expectations.
Self Injury As A Gendered Social Phenomenon
- Laura links the prevalence of cutting and its contagion to broader patterns of pathologizing women's behavior across history.
- She situates self-injury alongside labels like hysteria and borderline, arguing social conditions and gendered responses shape its spread.
