Child Abuse and Mental Health Survivors Information - Issue #134
The importance of friendships - revisited.
Last year, around this time, I wrote a post because the topic was not only in the news, but I felt a strong pull towards it.
Friendships Matter Much More than the Value We Place on Them
I was going to toss it down in the “From the Archives” section of the newsletter, but when I reread it, that feeling I had in 2023 came to the surface.
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That feeling could be summed up in this quote from the post:
In short, we need each other. I’m afraid this is something that has gotten lost in our culture. It’s certainly gotten lost in our priorities, and I consider myself as guilty as anyone.
In the year since I wrote that, I’ve seen only more information that convinces me that we need to connect with other people. Not having those connections harms us, yet we are still pretty terrible at prioritizing them. We prioritize everything else, work, romantic relationships, binge-watching Netflix series, etc., and let our friendships wither on the vine.
Yes, I include myself in this.
What will it take to reprioritize friendship and community in our society? What will it take to wake up to its importance in our lives?
New from the Blogs
Sharing - Touch can reduce pain, depression and anxiety, say researchers
The more I see research like this, the more I become convinced that one of the most significant losses many sexual abuse survivors suffer has to do with how complicated touch becomes for us as adults.
Blaming Social Media for Mental Health Issues is a Cop Out to Avoid Harder Decisions
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.
We should be honest about the mental health impacts of layoffs.
Every person you lay off from your business is ten times more likely to try and take their own life.
I don't think senior executives think in those terms. I suspect many are thinking about juicing the bottom line, getting a little stock price bump, maybe making things more efficient, etc. I think large investors think about what is best for their stock values. That's why CEOs announce layoffs of 10% of the workforce and are rewarded with $100 million bonuses.
Shared from Elsewhere
5 Little Ways to Show Up for a Friend Who’s Depressed - I appreciate the emphasis on “little” things we can do that mean a lot because we can’t expect ourselves to fix them.
Loneliness is a massive problem impacting the mental health of millions - Best Strategies for How To Fight Loneliness in Today's Age.
Have you tried this? - Ice Baths for Mental Health Show Promise.
Uncertainty can be a significant problem for some, and we live in uncertain times - Fear of the unknown: are you more sensitive to uncertainty than others?
From the Archives
When You Don’t Know What to Say
When someone discloses abuse to you or discloses their mental health issue to you, they are not asking you to fix it for them. They are not seeking out the magic words that you can say that will make them feel better about what happened. It doesn’t work that way. Just be there. Let them know you care about them and support them. Ask them what they need. Most of all, don’t panic. Just be with them and exist with their story.
Sharing – How to Talk to Kids About Sexual Abuse
Emilia is right about this. I don’t have kids, but I know what things were like as a kid, and honest conversations with my parents around sex, consent, and touch were not part of it.
Talking About Male Sexual Abuse Survivors on the It’s a Wrap Podcast
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Even “well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.24).
Therefore, failing at parenthood can occur as soon as the decision is made to conceive and carry a baby to term.
By this I don’t mean they necessarily are or will be ‘bad’ parents. Rather, it’s that too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development science to parent in a psychologically functional/healthy manner.
They seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
As liberal democracies we cannot or will not prevent anyone from bearing children, even those who recklessly procreate. We can, however, educate young people for this most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless, through mandatory high-school child-development science curriculum.
While it wouldn’t be overly complicated, it would be notably more informational than diaper changing and baby feeding, which often are already covered by home economics [etcetera] curriculum.
If nothing else, such child-development science curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such valuable science-based knowledge?
After all, a mentally as well as physically sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter; a world in which Child Abuse Prevention Month [every April] clearly needs to run 365 days of the year.
The wellbeing of all children needs to be of great importance to us all, regardless of whether we’re doing a great job with our own developing children. But, largely owing to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude (implicit or subconscious) basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support social programs for other people’s troubled families?’
While some people will justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed. And it seems this distinct form of societal penny wisdom but pound foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.
Still, we can resist that selfish OIIIMOBY. If I may quote the late American sociologist Stanley Milgram, of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
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"I remember leaving the hospital thinking, ‘Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies! I don’t have a license to do this. We’re just amateurs’.”
—Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons
“It’s only after children have been discovered to be severely battered that their parents are forced to take a childrearing course as a condition of regaining custody. That’s much like requiring no license or driver’s ed[ucation] to drive a car, then waiting until drivers injure or kill someone before demanding that they learn how to drive.”
—Myriam Miedzian, Ph.D.
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
— Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus
“It has been said that if child abuse and neglect were to disappear today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would shrink to the size of a pamphlet in two generations, and the prisons would empty. Or, as Bernie Siegel, MD, puts it, quite simply, after half a century of practicing medicine, ‘I have become convinced that our number-one public health problem is our childhood’.”
— Childhood Disrupted, pg.228