Child Abuse and Mental Health Survivors Information - Issue #154
Thanksgiving
This is the long Thanksgiving weekend for those in the US. That means a short work week and a chance to have some time to practice self-care for some, happy family gatherings for others, and a stressful family situation for others. There are wide-ranging feelings about the holidays for survivors, and I won’t pretend to be an expert on all of them.
Thank you for reading the Child Abuse and Mental Health Survivors newsletter. Each week, I share new blog posts and other resources that aim to help survivors of childhood abuse and those who are struggling with mental health issues feel less alone as we discuss the issues surrounding our issues.
For more information about me and why this newsletter exists, visit the website - Child Abuse Survivor.
What I will share is the same thing I wrote on the blog about this holiday in 2013:
I just wanted to take a minute to say that I’m thankful for you, the readers of this site. I’m thankful that you take the time to read, comment, send me links, share posts from here with your social networks, and sometimes even let me know when something that has been written on the site has had a positive influence on you. Knowing that someone, somewhere, is getting something out of this site makes all of the time and effort worthwhile.
Beyond all of that, though, I’m also glad you’re here in a more existential sense. I’m glad you’re still working to move forward in healing. I’m glad you haven’t let the abuse take more than it already has and that you are doing whatever you can to heal and support others who are trying to heal as well. It may not always look that appealing, and it might be the toughest thing you’ve ever done, but as long as you’re here, there’s, at the very least, hope for healing and joy to come to your life.
Thank you for being here.
New from the Blogs
Sharing - When a Sibling Causes Harm
That's why we need to talk about it. Keeping that kind of abuse hidden makes it more difficult for families to figure out the best way to navigate an abusive situation between siblings, and I know there are many survivors out there who have struggled with exactly this situation.
Sharing - Kafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection
Instead of trying to fix our friends and loved ones struggling with anxiety and depression because of what they believe about themselves, maybe we should understand that by staying in their lives, we are already providing the argument against those beliefs through our actions.
History Survives When We Talk About It
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 in 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, we have our own spaces online, we have connections, and we have 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.
Sharing - Not all children realise they are being abused.
The sexual abuse of children was something that happened when dudes in vans kidnapped children. No one mentioned that you could be sexually abused in your own home. If you asked me as a kid if I was being abused, I would have said no, even as every definition of that word applied to me. There was no education, no awareness programs, and no discussion about sexual abuse anywhere in the public sphere, so I didn't know until I met someone in my early twenties who talked about being the victim of sexual abuse.
Sharing - Easy Ways to Generate Hope
I was a little disappointed that there wasn't much acknowledgment of situations we are powerless to change and thus have no reason to feel hope about. That aside, the advice in this article is pretty good. The first two bits of advice have helped me in times when everything has seemed overwhelming and hopeless.
Get specific and break down what seems like an overwhelming problem into tasks I can realistically do one at a time. Then, do the next task.
Ask for help because many things seem less overwhelming when we know someone else is there. They don't have to improve everything; it just helps to have hope when we are not alone.
Shared from Elsewhere
What if we put as much effort into preventing trauma as we do treating it?
There may not be easy answers for preventing trauma, but I’m in support of working at it.
This is a topic I’ve written about before - Let's Talk About Friendship.
So many self-help articles offer advice that doesn’t help - How to Do Self-Care the Right Way.
This may be a day late for some of you - but there are more holidays coming up:
Our Guide to Modeling Healthy Boundaries this Holiday Season
Making a difference:
This couple is helping bring to light the mental health struggles in the veterinary field
The Carter Center continues to champion Rosalynn Carter’s mental health priorities
Dua Lipa named The Trevor Project's Mental Health Champion of the Year
Commanders announce Inaugural Raise Awareness for Mental Health pregame panel
From the Archives
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 started throwing some more useful rocks and disrupting the cycles of trauma that we see repeated over and over again in those circles?
When Triggered Some of Us Become Different People
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.
Self Love Is a Struggle Because We Know Our Own Faults
We never get to see other people's thoughts if they choose not to share them. We see ALL of our thoughts, however. That puts us at a disadvantage when deciding what we "deserve" compared to others. We might do well to assume that everyone has the same kind of thoughts that we do at times because we all do. We just don't talk about them and share them with the world. (Most of us, anyway)
And we all deserve self-care.
Thanks for reading. If you find this newsletter informative and helpful, please spread the word. That’s the best way to thank me for my weekly effort.
Thank you. We are in a massive DARVO abuse hurricane flooding every sector of our world. Mutual survival is really critical right now.