So yes, healing is hard, and it takes time. After all, you didn't get the way you were overnight. It takes everyone their entire childhood, and then some, to become the adults they later are. When that childhood development is robbed from you by abuse, you are simply getting a later start. It can be challenging to learn all the skills that make for a happy adult life and to overcome the fear that plagues us from our previous experiences.

Just because something is a challenge, though, doesn't mean it's impossible or not worth doing.

Trying to take my life was a desperate attempt to escape my pain. It was not well thought out. It was something I hacked together late at night while sitting in my car along the Pacific Ocean, where I only had access to what was in the car with me, which turned out not to include any effective tools to take my own life. When it didn’t work, I started looking for other ways to escape the pain, landed in therapy, and eventually got to a better place.

If there had been a gun in my car that night, there’s a 90% chance these words would not be written.

None of us has the power to fix everything right now, or to even predict what is coming. That uncertainty is hard. But we all have things we can do, so let's focus on the small things we can do today, and maybe even some bigger things we can do going forward, instead of being overwhelmed by what we can't do or don't know.

To put it bluntly, while I don't regret the healing that has taken place in my life and where I am now, I have to also acknowledge that getting here was messy. I'm not the same person I was in this photo. None of us is the same person we were back then, but for survivors, there is a particular challenge that comes with healing. You have to be willing to change, and if I know anything about change, I know it can be messy, too. Change requires us to leave behind things that are not good for us, which just so happen to be the things we've gotten quite comfortable with.

I’m glad she was able to get help. I’m glad she is here and able to give this interview. How many kids aren’t because they didn’t have the option to go 11 hours away to receive the kind of care that would keep them here? Why is treatment for serious mental health issues so limited and hard to find?

It’s easy to talk about supporting mental health, but is it too much to ask that we fund the resources needed to provide that and allow them to exist in our neighborhoods?

It shouldn’t be.

When men display anger, anxiety, and irritation, we tend not to think of it as depression, but it very well can be.

This study taught me something, though. That kind of depression, which we refer to as “masculine,” is not something that only men can display, so we ought to consider how many people across the gender spectrum may be suffering from depression and not recognizing it.

Schools in poor areas where students are likely to be dealing with instability at home and poverty all around them have different mental health needs than kids living in a wealthy suburb. Programs designed to help families in poverty should be part of school mental health programs. As I've said many times, you can't meditate or exercise your way out of poverty. A full-service mental health program would recognize the impact that something like poverty has on kids.

I love the idea that healing can be messy. Most truly human things worth doing are messy and chaotic. We weren't made to only do easy things, but we are made to grow and heal.

Even when there are things in the world I cannot change, I use my own words to remind myself that there are things I CAN do. I can look after the people around me. I can add my voice to support mental health, survivors, and marginalized groups. I can find small ways to contribute to making the world a better place while also encouraging others to do the same.

What we see there is that mental health problems can create debt. When we cannot work, our healthcare costs skyrocket, and we can find ourselves in a poor financial situation. That poor financial situation creates more stress and emotional labor, contributing to mental health issues.

Whether the mental health problem or financial struggle came first doesn’t matter. Once we are in the cycle, it will continue round and round.

This is a fine example of behavior that might make sense to us as individuals, but what happens when everyone engages in this same behavior? How do you find fellow survivors to build a support system or a sense of community with when everyone in that community is waiting for someone else to reach out?

It’s worth considering your friends and recognizing that we need all kinds of friends. We need loose connections, and we need tight connections. We need long-term friends, and we need friends for a season of our lives.

In short, we need each other. I’m afraid this has gotten lost in our culture and priorities, and I consider myself as guilty as anyone.

What I read in this matches what I see in real life. Some people spend a lot of time on social media doing things that are bad for their mental health. (Comparing their lives to the ultra-filtered images they see on social media, filling their feed with information that is bad for their mental health, etc.) while others use social media to connect with an online support network.

Given that, the calls to ban social media use for kids seem odd, but they are based on the idea that it is easy. Blaming big tech will never be unpopular, and some people might be better off using social media less.

It’s also unlikely to make much of a difference for the vast majority of kids.

As long as you are alive, there is hope. Hope in a better tomorrow, hope for healing, hope for happiness. I don't care how horrific the abuse was; if you're alive today, there is hope, because the future hasn't been written yet, and it is up to you.

The pity is that I prioritize this so little in my personal life. I’m constantly trying to “squeeze” in time with friends between work and other interests, and then wondering why my sense of personal community seems so lost. I think what Dr. Murthy talks about is part of it. I don’t think about time in this way. I’m always trying to maximize the time I spend with people, instead of just being with them.

The irony, of course, is how often I write about the best way to help people struggling with healing and mental health issues - just be with them. Yet, I don’t seem to realize how important it is to just be with our people regardless of what’s going on in their lives.

Maybe they've stumbled onto the simplest life hack there is for loneliness - become a regular somewhere. Exist in a space where people expect you to be and then be friendly while you're there.

Obviously, this is true in the world of sports, where any perceived weakness can be the difference between a first-round pick contract and no contract, but it’s also true in many of the industries all of us work in. In tech, do you want to be perceived as someone who might not be able to produce at the same level as everyone else? In law, do you want to be seen as maybe not able to hack the billable-hour requirements?

Whether either of those perceptions is true is not relevant; the risk of being seen that way exists. This risk makes asking for help less safe, which makes it more likely that someone won’t be able to do it.

This makes sense. If you believe that society is ultimately fair, then poverty is a personal shortcoming rather than a failure of the system. If being poor is a personal shortcoming, the mental health impacts of living in poverty must also be your own responsibility to be dealt with, not a source of sympathy.

This, of course, assumes that the distribution of wealth is fair, which it is not. But it sure makes it easier to think that way and to stop worrying about finding solutions to the world's unfairness.

It can be difficult to live in uncertain times. That old phrase, "May you live in interesting times," is really more of a curse than a blessing. We can't change the times we live in, and even if we could, there will always be uncertainty. We can, however, ground ourselves in the knowledge and confidence that we will, regardless, survive it.

So do the things that make you happy. Do the activities that help build you up and give you the energy to go on with your life, no matter what they are or whether people on Instagram will applaud you for them. Please do it for yourself because you deserve it, and you are not required to get anyone else's permission to do things you enjoy.

So, as I think back to my plans to write about how important it is to have something joyful to look forward to as part of our healing, no matter how small it may be, I can't think of a better way to explain it than to share with you the wisdom of my grandmother. Overcoming an abusive childhood is difficult, healing is hard, hard work, full of pain and anguish. If, in the midst of all of that, you can still find a way to have a good time, you are on your way to a great life, no matter how unrealistic that may seem at the moment. Keep at it, and keep enjoying what you can!

Imperfect as our current system is, it manages to keep plenty of people alive who might not otherwise be. Gutting it to cut spending is callous. As I have said many times, solving the mental health issues that plague the US will involve a lot of hard work, difficult conversations, and measured steps to create positive impacts for all of us. Adults need to be adults and have mature discussions about how to help as many suffering people as possible.

Kids who score high for ACEs can get a head start on healing by having more positive experiences where they are safe, loved, and out of vulnerable situations. We should figure out how to help kids have more of that as a society.

So please, just listen. Make the space around you, even if it's virtual, a safe space for your friends and loved ones to tell their stories. Find small ways to help, if you can, but also know that by just listening, just sitting with our stories, you are already helping so much.

I say that because that's how I feel about abuse and trauma. It happened, and I'm still here. I won't promise that I'm always feeling great; I'm definitely not always positive. I have good days and bad days. You won't catch me claiming that my abuse made me something that I'm not, and I most definitely will not be looking for any sort of hero status for surviving abuse. What I did promise then, and continue to promise today, is that I'm here, and you're here, and so we are not alone.

It requires so much more effort to even have basic interactions anymore. We've spent decades designing society this way. It's not just a personal failing; it's the entire system. Changing the system can't be done by one person. But Mandy has some small steps we can take, and if enough people start taking them, maybe we can make some progress and shift the design toward something less lonely.

We shouldn't act surprised when claims of abuse are revealed many years after the act. That's not evidence that the claim is false; it's just the norm.

Do you see the trend? Many of us have gotten more comfortable talking about mental health with people we trust. We do not trust corporate leaders. And, why should we? How many people do you know who’ve been laid off in recent years, not because they weren’t meeting the requirements of the job, or the company was losing money, but because the stock price needed a nudge? It’s impossible for employees to trust that you care about their mental health when you’ve watched them cut staff and make it more difficult on those left behind over and over again.

Supporting your workers’ mental health requires them to feel a sense of safety. That no longer exists in most workplaces.

To put it bluntly, drinking two or three cups of coffee per day may help ward off some mental health issues for some people.

For an individual, it may help, and it may not. It’s important to note that a lower incidence of mental health issues does not mean no mental health incidents. You can exercise, drink two cups of coffee, and get a good night’s sleep every day, and while that is good for you and has benefits, there’s no guarantee that you will not be impacted by mental health issues.

They have proven to me that this is normal and that we can get through this. Simply by talking about how they have.

The stress of financial instability is not something that we can eliminate with positive vibes. Being on the verge of poverty or in poverty is a mental health risk factor unto itself. No self-help apps will provide for you if you're laid off or prevent you from becoming homeless or hungry as the cost of living continues to outpace your income.

The truth is that the ones who survive are likely to suffer from PTSD and/or other mental health issues, and those issues don't always look so pretty. The same is true of abuse survivors. Those innocent children we see in the photos may very well grow up to be troubled teenagers or adults with mental health issues and lacking in social skills. We might well have been a little preoccupied with simply surviving childhood instead of developing at the same rate as other children, so as adults, we may not come across as well.

The amount of courage and effort it took to tell you deserves more than a dismissive comment.

Advocates, if you genuinely want to support survivors, shout to the rooftops about how damaging abuse is and why it should never be tolerated. I support you 100%.

Let’s try to find a way that doesn’t also involve telling survivors that they are irredeemable, alright? We have enough undeserved shame to overcome; don’t add to it.

Not talking about it won’t get us anywhere. But we need to do more than talk; we need to figure out better ways to treat people who need it and make it accessible. That doesn’t happen until all of society understands its importance and is truly educated about it. So, keep talking, but also keep demanding better.

Do I wish I never had to hear another survivor's story? Of course, I do. Not because of my discomfort, but because I wish these stories didn't have to exist. Until there are no more stories, we owe it to survivors not only to hear them, but also to learn from them and take action because of them. Ignoring the truth harms us all and leads to more survivors with stories.

Creative work has therapeutic benefits. Doing the work is the point, not the end result. AI can get you the end result faster, but it takes away the healing power of doing the work ourselves. I do worry that we will lose that in the rush to monetize anything we create, quickly and efficiently.

There are fantastic benefits for our minds in doing the work ourselves. I use AI for many things, but I also know how much I enjoy taking pictures, writing, teaching, etc. Why would I deprive myself of things I enjoy? That’s part of being human.

It's not like we didn't know this would happen. We knew. The industry just didn't care:

I've gotten some grief online for suggesting that murdering people who abuse children isn't what the victim needs. Maybe, if you hear it from an expert, you'll understand what I feel as a survivor who wouldn't have told anyone if I knew it could lead to the death of another person, even my abuser.

This is another reminder that there’s no excuse to dismiss the damage done to human beings when they are abused. Kids do not get over it, or barely remember it. They are impacted in myriad ways well into adulthood. Not doing everything we can to limit trauma, let alone arguing for policies that create more trauma for certain groups of children, cannot be tolerated.

We are not angry enough.

If we consider what has changed for kids over the last couple of decades, the issues are similar. Kids don’t wander around our communities on their own anymore. We’ve decided that was too dangerous. Outside organized sports, there aren’t many places where teens can socialize offline.

Naturally, in a world where they no longer had access to peers outside of school, they turned to the internet. Phones and social media were the fallback for connecting. Now, however, many find that the option has been taken away as well.

Our natural stress and anxiety about the state of our country and our individual futures is not a disorder. It’s our nervous system detecting a clear danger and responding.

The question isn’t always about how to be more resilient; sometimes it’s about how to make it less dangerous for everyone.

As Renée points out, childhood trauma increases the likelihood of a wide range of physical and mental health issues later in life. To the tune of trillions of dollars. The way to address those outcomes is through early interventions for kids. Often, those are available because of grants and government funding. That costs money, but it's a better alternative to all of the costs associated with treating the long-term impacts of trauma.

This is part of the connection we need for our mental health. It's not clear that AI tools can provide this. It's not human. It's the illusion of connection when our humanity deserves the real thing. AI can supplement; it is always available and provides access to a wealth of information, but it can't provide a real human connection.

Here’s the interesting thing. When workplaces have made people ill, we’ve done little to hold them accountable. We have done some things, though. (Asbestos lawsuits, for example.) It hasn’t amounted to much in the broader context, but we do acknowledge that working in an environment that causes health issues is generally frowned upon. We have not reached that point with mental health. We’ve not started thinking about the poor health outcomes for people pushed to the brink and beyond by their managers.

We should, and businesses should be leading the charge, because this is costing them a ton in health insurance premiums.

This month, as survivors, let's strive to do three things in this order. See ourselves as deserving to have our needs met, learning to care for ourselves, and striving to love others by giving them what they need.

Sadly, too many people seem to be looking for the easy answer to ease their discomfort rather than the answers that will bring about real change. We all pay for not teaching people how to be emotionally intelligent enough to do that.

Kathleen’s point is important. We aren’t going to see change when so many people see trafficking, abuse, etc., as something that happens to “those other people.” We need to continue telling our stories so that we remind people that trafficking isn’t something that happens only with immigrants or poor people. It’s the same thing with abuse, sexual assault, and mental health. It happens everywhere, and if you don’t know anyone who was trafficked or survived sexual abuse or assault, it’s probably because you don’t seem like a safe person to talk to about it.

In Louisiana, we are headed into the heart of Mardi Gras season. This is the time to do things just for fun. It might be tradition or a sense of belonging to your krewe, but it's mostly about fun. Life is too short not to make some time for having fun. With all the negativity out there, it might be imperative that we find time in our current world. Without it, we are all fairly miserable. We can take a break from "all of this" and have fun. It's what makes putting up with the rest of it worthwhile.

Confidence is not convincing myself that the things my anxiety is using to scare me couldn’t possibly happen. It’s the knowledge that even if things go horribly wrong. I’ll still be here. I’ve gone through it before, and I’ll do some stupid stuff again, I’m sure, which makes me embarrassed and humiliated.

And I’ll still be here. Trying to do it better the next time.

We should all talk more about our trauma and let the people closest to us know how they can support us. I'd be willing to bet that more of them want to learn how to help than we expect. Maybe not, but not talking about our trauma doesn't help anyone.

Having people in my life who I can talk to has been a massive support in my healing. Being able to tell my story with my voice has been a huge blessing for me.

I’m also acutely aware of the downside when it goes wrong, however. I know too many survivors who’ve been further damaged when trying to share their story as opposed to getting the support they were desperately seeking. Please, be careful with your story and yourself.

Perhaps if we all focused on connecting with individuals and creating for one another, and less on consumption, we wouldn't need to enact laws that prevent people from accessing the opportunities that the internet makes available to us.

Mental health advocates like me can talk all day about the importance of community and the life-saving value of human connection, but who are we if we take that away from anyone?

Think of it this way, we don’t ask trauma survivors to try healing from their trauma when their current situation is unsafe. That would be silly. We get them into a safe situation first, before they can even begin to heal. The same goes here. Kids who are safe and feel secure in their parents’ love and support look forward beyond the trauma.

Kids who are unsafe and not secure in the love and support of parents relive their trauma on a daily basis. It’s no wonder they are slightly more likely to immediately think of it when surveyed.

As I read this, I couldn’t help but compare it to the hundreds of stories where the opposite was true. People are so afraid of saying the wrong thing or so uncomfortable with the idea of mental health issues that they run the other way. They disconnect from someone who so desperately needs connection. Someone they love is feeling all that embarrassment and pain and no longer has anyone to connect to and remind them of their value, their humanness.

Looking back at the Romans, the gladiators, slaves, Jews, Christians, and others who were killed in the arenas simply weren't real people. They might as well have been television characters, for all the typical Roman citizens knew about them or interacted with them. So, since these weren't "people" in the same sense as the people I work with, live with, and interact with, it was easy to start to explain away treating them as less than human.

How we show up for other people matters. We can provide a place of safety in which they can heal and flourish. Too often, we don't, though. We don't know what to do, so we don't show up. We don't understand the importance of showing up, even if it's not perfect, just to let people know they are not alone in difficult situations. Everything is more challenging when you go through it alone, so show up for your people.

The decision to share your story is terribly difficult and very personal. Your choice is who you tell when you tell, and how you tell. This post is about "tough" conversations, one of the toughest you can have. That's why I want you to consider it seriously enough to go in with a plan, be aware of how tough it is on both sides, and let the other person struggle with it. I also want anyone on the receiving end to understand how much effort it took for that survivor to come to you and for you to take their role seriously.

One of the easiest ways to dismiss a survivor is to openly wonder "why it took so long to come forward", without any understanding that coming forward is the exception, not the norm. Many, many victims never come forward at all, and most who do come forward do so well after the fact. That's normal, not immediately rushing to tell someone.

Make no mistake, gutting these programs will cause deaths, and that's acceptable to far too many people in this country who seem to think that this complete antipathy toward killing other human beings will somehow skip them when the time comes.

Update: A day later, HHS reversed course. Apparently, with enough pressure, even they will back down. I don't think they did this because they suddenly care about people dying, though.

The world most people live in doesn't afford them the time or money to keep up with all the self-improvement trends. Why would we shame them for doing what they can within the limitations they live with?

You can see how it’s not simple. Mental health across a generation of individuals defies every attempt at a one-size-fits-all narrative, because we are not all one size. On the other hand, our brains want a simple narrative because what they want more than anything else is a reason to think that this won’t happen to our kids or us. So we run to simple solutions like bees to a hive. Sometimes that causes us to miss a lot of the details.

Let’s hope we continue to see improvements, but understand that there are a host of things we can and should be doing that don’t involve social media at all.

What was obvious to me when reading the list was that most, not all, of the counties without a shortage of mental health resources were relatively suburban. They offer numerous advantages compared to urban and rural areas. Good schools, safe neighborhoods, access to healthcare of all kinds, etc. If you win the zip code lottery and find yourself born into one of these areas, there's a fairly good chance that mental healthcare will be available for you if needed.

This article gathers input from multiple experts and continues for 28 paragraphs without once mentioning the employers’ expectation that we do all the things they tell us not to do.

It’s all well and good to point out that setting boundaries, saying no, ending our work day on time, etc., are good ways to avoid burnout. It’s another thing entirely for many of us to have that option in the first place.

The hard work is in looking at people who are different from us, who live different lives, make different choices, and recognize our common humanity. That’s what Dr. King was talking about. Not being blind to our differences, but being aware that we are all human and deserve respect based on that. So when a black man is lynched, or a prisoner dies from a lack of medical care, or someone struggling dies from suicide without access to mental healthcare, or because their own family won’t accept them for who they are, we fail as a society. We fail to see human life as human life.

Today, I was thinking about healing and overcoming an abusive childhood, and a similar thought occurred to me. If you're working on healing, are you surrounding yourself with people who help you toward that goal, either by being supportive, understanding, or who are simply people who inspire you to reach greater heights? Or, are you surrounding yourself with people who feel comfortable, but feed into all of the behaviors you are trying to unlearn?

I came across this video of Emma Jean Taylor's TED Talk about child abuse the other day and wanted to share it with you. First, because, as the title of the video says, we teach kids to be wary of strangers all the time, but we don't teach them to also be wary of people they know, despite the fact that up to 90% of sexual abuse victims know the abuser.

I think this is interesting. Of course, access to a park or walkable neighborhoods would lead to better mental health outcomes. At least that is what we'd expect. But for some young people, when that park or neighborhood isn't safe, it might turn into yet another place to be hyperalert and anxious about.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of meeting survivors is how many ways this happened to all of us. I've yet to meet a survivor who has said that they tell people about their trauma and are always believed, taken seriously, and encouraged to continue telling their story. It's not that they don't occasionally hear that from an individual, but it is always the exception instead of the rule.

The world is not, has never been, and will never be fair. Suggesting that anyone deserved illness or abuse because bad things happen to bad people is naïve. It’s a childish lie we coddle ourselves with, with no basis in reality. Survivors deserve better support than that.

I work with AI professionally. I use it to get things done and to support research, but I never trust or depend on it. It’s a tool. For mental health, it can also be a tool, and I’m sure many of you are finding it helpful. I would caution all of us to be careful, though. Mental health professionals have serious reservations; I would keep them in mind.

Jeffrey Epstein was making people a lot of money and connecting them to power and influence. Surely whatever might have been happening was secondary to that, no?

That’s why we see more concern for the “friends” who might be hurt by being connected to Epstein than we see for the victims. They aren’t rich and powerful. They don’t matter. They should get over it and put it behind them.

Our fear of being less than perfect isn’t protecting our friends from our imperfections; it’s depriving them of the connections they so desperately need at this time.

It's time to put the truth first, and our agendas second. If the truth is on our side, and in the case of child abuse, I firmly believe that it is, then we have no business peddling falsehoods. If your agenda can't withstand the truth, maybe it's time to rethink it.

So please, if someone comes to you and says how much they are struggling right now, don’t point out how much everyone else is, or that others have it worse. Simply nod and say you understand, maybe offer a hug or some virtual thoughts, and be there.

What I was, however, during this experience, was engrossed in interacting with the animal and learning about it from the keeper. I wasn’t thinking about work, politics, or anything else, just being in the moment with my mind fully engaged in that one thing.

That is what is missing for many of us, and it’s absolutely leading to burnout, stress, and mental health issues.

Can you imagine the double blow it must be to have your spouse struggling with addiction or severe mental illness, and know that your friends are likely avoiding you as well? Is there stigma directed at you for being married to someone with mental health issues?

This feels like a small hand being raised in the corner of a deafening room, trying to point out the obvious. We’re only human. We need a break. That unsettled feeling you get every day at work might not be imposter syndrome or everyday stress, but the sheer exhaustion of knowing that you can never pause and focus on getting work done. The skills and knowledge you have now will be worthless tomorrow.

It took me a long time to be comfortable with what happened. Most of that was internal: the embarrassment of being the guy who had public mental health issues and spent a long time in therapy, and trying to build a new life. Part of it was also watching people be uncomfortable in my presence. I didn’t have a choice about who knew about it, and I learned to embrace it as part of my story. That didn’t happen immediately.

It’s sad, but we all do it. Instead of staying connected to the people we care about, we get busy, and our actions suggest they might not be as important to us. And then, we see the chronic loneliness and mental health struggles and wonder why.

The question we often ask ourselves about being abused is the simplest one to answer, but we’ve gotten it twisted.

Why was I abused? Because someone else decided to abuse me.

You should not feel sorry for me. This post isn’t about me. As I said, I have a condition that millions of people deal with every day. I’ll do the same. It’s about the reality that people around us are living with things that require efforts that we don’t understand. Just showing up for life every day requires effort and dedication from everyone you know. The effort and challenges differ, and they are not distributed equally. You shouldn’t dismiss anyone’s struggles, especially if you’ve not been in those same circumstances yourself.

As a kid, I needed everything to be perfect, not because I was some overachiever. It was because I knew in my heart and body that anything that wasn’t right could create a violent situation. Any detail overlooked, any warning sign missed, or any wrong word could end up with me getting abused. It became a learned behavior like Pavlov’s dogs. Any mistake created anxiety and fear of repercussion.

One problem with blanket rules for everything is that there will always be a situation where the rule harms someone. Parental consent rules are one example. Sure, it’s great when parents are involved in their kids’ care. It’s ideal, even.

That assumes they have good parents, though. When the thing a kid needs protection against is the parent, you can’t demand the parent’s consent for that.

It seems many parents want schools to do more in this space, which makes sense, because mental health issues only get worse when kids grow up without support.

No, the easiest way to break up those circles, as any kid who threw rocks into the water can tell you, is to throw another rock and create new concentric circles starting from a different location.

In my metaphor about the trauma, I wonder what those other rocks could be. Mental health treatment? Care and support from family and friends? The elimination of stigma attached to trauma?

How about instead of ignoring the circles, we start throwing some more useful rocks and disrupting the cycles of trauma that we see repeated over and over again in those circles?

No matter what our leaders want to include or exclude from the official histories, we know these events happened. We may not be successful in getting large-scale claims of abuse into the history books of the future, though we should try, but we can all continue to talk about them. The mainstream may want us to be quiet about the abuse that happens within the family, the church, etc., but we can tell our stories. We have voices, our own online spaces, connections, and the freedom to speak.

Most of all, we can support the people telling those stories. They are preserving our history and reminding all of us that the survivors are out here, we know what was done, and we will not accept the lies. We can ensure the truth is out there for those who want to learn and do everything we can to ensure that history is shared.

As she and her guests shared their stories and the research around how this happens, I kept replacing all of the stories; the pain of giving birth, the struggle to bike up 4,000 feet of incline, and others with trauma and PTSD flashbacks. When we have those kinds of reactions, we become different people. Often, we become the child who was being abused instead of the adult we are, and we act accordingly. We lash out, self-protect in unhealthy ways, or try our best to hide from it.

The exact reactions are not the important thing. We need to know that it happens. When in an extreme emotional state, we can act like a different person. We all do. The problem is that we don’t know that person. We are not good at predicting how we will react. When we are in a calm state, the warm-state version of us makes no sense, and how we think we’ll act turns out not to be what actually happens.

Why would a kid growing up in poverty, without enough food, and without the social support to succeed in school, feel any different about themselves as they enter adulthood? There’s a connection there; good mental health is hard to find when the entire world tells you you’re less-than.

It’s no wonder that people are burning out professionally. Every week, there are new things to learn, changes to deal with, strategies to reconsider, projects on deadlines, etc. We don’t often get a chance to simply do the work, let alone rest.

You Can’t Be Who You Were Before The Abuse

I often say that I was nine when my sexual abuse started, younger than that when I was being physically abused. I can’t go back to being a nine-year-old. That doesn’t make any sense. Even if you were abused at an older age, trying to go back doesn’t make much sense either. How do you take the things you’ve done to survive and all of the new knowledge you have and go backwards from there? Why not embrace the fact that you are moving forward into something new?

As I’ve said many times, I want to teach people that it’s ok to reach out, which means that I also need to advocate for the resources to be available when someone does!

So when you see someone share something on social media about their mental health, and your response is to wonder why they didn’t just talk to you about it, remember how much harder that is. Maybe they aren’t ready yet, or you just haven’t done enough to earn that trust. Consider how many people in your life may be dealing with very difficult things they just haven’t told anyone about yet.

After my breakdown and attempt, the one thing I wanted more than anything from my friends was just to be treated like they did before. As I was reading the article, it occurred to me that what I really wanted was to know that someone — anyone — would notice if I weren’t there. Instead, I got a whole lot of people who seemed relieved that I wasn’t there. My presence anywhere made them uncomfortable. They didn’t want to reach out, for fear of saying the wrong thing or being in an awkward situation. That hurt.

One, Taryn is right. If we look at the various statistics covering child abuse, domestic violence, victims of crime, military service members, sexual assault, etc., we have to conclude that the vast majority of people have experienced trauma and would benefit from being treated with appropriate kindness.

If nothing else, the effects of sleep disruption can wreak havoc on us, and time changes absolutely do.

I know opening social media right now can feel like an open invitation to a never-ending scroll of rage. I’ve been avoiding much of it myself for the last few weeks, busying myself with travel and projects instead for the benefit of my mental health. I know, however, that the internet can be a source of inspiration, fun, community, and happiness. I need to commit to finding that rather than lazily scrolling through algorithmic feeds.

That’s not the society we’ve been building. You can’t “other” whole groups of people and claim to be building community. You can’t post constant hate and outrage online and claim to be connecting. You can’t build community when people are forced to work 60-80 hours per week or two or three jobs to afford rent. We need a commitment to connecting people and building community with everyone. Our current path will only harm all of us.

Think about how that would play out in everyday situations. If the only thing you could see were a wall of water, you’d probably spend every minute of every day simply trying not to drown. For everyone else who can see around the fountain and knows that you are actually standing on solid ground, and that if you just took a step or two to the side, you would see that too, our actions don’t make any sense. That’s true, but depression and abuse rob you of that perspective. We are surrounded by water, the entire world is water, and it is going to engulf us. There is no “seeing around it”; it’s everywhere in our minds.

He recognizes that he is “one guy.” He can’t possibly fix all of it, and trying to would be pointless. So he sees opportunities to make a difference and hopes that more of us will try to “clean the spots” we can, too.

I could not heal until I unlearned that my abuse was something I somehow caused. Unlearning that opened up the possibility of learning something different, namely, that I was abused because someone decided to abuse me. Did that happen overnight? Of course not! Unlearning is a process, and the more closely we identify with a belief, the more difficult it becomes to unlearn it. So many survivors learn at a very early age to keep secrets, that bad things will happen if they tell anyone.

People who’ve never had that belief drilled into their young minds wonder why victims wait decades to come forward and tell their stories. That’s why! That belief is hard to unlearn. Many of us grew up with silence being the thing that prevents the abuse from being worse. Why should we start discussing it? If you tried to tell someone as a child and got shut down, this only gets worse.

She goes on to opine that very few people in the world can actually provide safety. It may seem like a damning statement, but I believe there’s a lot of truth to it as well. How many of us can sit with others’ stories? Honestly sit with it. Let them share it without having an uncomfortable response. Based on my experience, she is correct. There aren’t many people who can do that. I am glad I’ve had some in my life. I also know that makes me lucky. I strive to be that kind of person to others, even as I acknowledge that there are times when I fall short of my goals. I probably fall short more often than not.

I saw this and wanted to share it because the challenge of safely escaping domestic violence is immense. So many have been unable to remove themselves from dangerous situations safely, and we don’t make it easy for victims.

If you think kids are resilient and they’ll be fine, or that by teaching kids mental health and emotional skills, you’re causing them to have mental health issues, you are depriving them of a much-needed source of development that could make the difference between spending years as an adult struggling versus having the skills to navigate the difficulty of adulthood. We recognize that early intervention in mental health is crucial. Why would we not do that?

Today, in connection with World Mental Health Day, I want to tell you that, no matter what you may think, yes, you know someone who is dealing with a mental health issue. In fact, there’s a very good chance that not only do you know someone who’s been treated for depression or some other mental health issue during their lifetime, but there’s a very good chance you know someone with a diagnosable mental disorder right now.

Survivor or not, we each get to choose how we grieve. It’s not something other people get to do for you or decide for you. I’ve always said that about healing, and it’s true in this situation as well. How I healed, how I grieve, how I interact with various family members doesn’t have to be how everyone else does it, and how others do it doesn’t have to be how I do it.

We have to face the fact that, as much as we might not openly admit it, we live in a society where kids with mental illness have very little hope, and we don’t care enough to change that. They, their parents, and their siblings are “others” that we’d rather not be bothered with. Societally, we’d rather they went away than be concerned with figuring out ways to help them.