Child Abuse and Mental Health Survivors Information - Issue #135
Bunch of links about friendship
Last week, I revisited the importance of friendship and what I had written a year ago on the topic.
This week, Refind, one of the services I used to bring interesting articles to my email, used its AI tool to email me about friendship. It makes a great reading list, so I’m sharing their email.
I present to you:
The Art of Friendship
Are your friendships getting the attention they deserve? We've curated ten pieces for you to learn the importance of friendships and how to manage them effectively.
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.
How to Have Meaningful Relationships in an Increasingly Digital World →
Our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with technology in both good and harmful ways. And that is not going to change. Nor should it—we just need to learn how to use technology for good before…
Read Next
How to Make Better Friends at Work
Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center
How to Make Friends as an Adult
Friendship or Romance: We All Need to Belong
The Case for Actively Ending That Situationship or Fizzling Friendship—And How To Do It With Grace →
You might think you're being nice by keeping things ambiguous, but in the long-term, not being fully honest doesn't serve their—or your—best interests.
There’s more than one way to feel lonely →
Here’s how to interpret your own feelings. Despite having a network of friends and acquaintances, Rohit Singla, an MD-PhD student in Vancouver, knows no other existence than one of loneliness.
What If Your Best Friend Is Your Soulmate? →
Paywall possible
In her new book, The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen imagines how life would be different if we centered it on friends.
The Importance of Lingering in a Friendship →
Lingering in friendship interactions provides an opportunity for the relationship to deepen. To linger, we must cultivate "time affluence," which is the perception of having ample time to do something. Lingering allows "the intimacy of…
85 Deep Questions To Ask Friends That Will Make Your Connections Feel Way Tighter →
These expert-backed conversation starters will take your friendships to the next level.
New from the Blogs
Sharing - How to take a good mental health day
What we need as individuals and what we need on a given day can vary. If we know ourselves, though, we can use the mental health tools we have, including a day off, to our best advantage.
Sharing - Suicides make up majority of gun deaths, but remain overlooked in gun violence debate.
When I think about the gun control debate, this is what I think about. I think about how many people are no longer here because there was a gun available to them in their lowest moments. This has to be part of the discussion.
Linked - Mental Health at Work: Managers and Money
When management harms the mental health of our employees, we typically respond by offering them yoga or meditation spaces or maybe a lunchtime session on stress management. We never look at the system. We offer them ways to better cope with the broken system, but we never take responsibility for what the workplace is doing to their mental health.
Shared from Elsewhere
Speaking of taking a mental health day - Blurt’s Guide To Taking Time Off Without Feeling Guilty
As layoffs continue around the tech world, this might be timely for you - Six Tips For Dealing With Job Loss.
I’ve had some experience with people who meant well but didn’t know what to do, so let’s take a minute to read this - How to Comfort Someone Who's Grieving, Sick or Struggling: Experts Share Best Ways to Be Present in Times of Need.
What are the things that stress out teens? - Emerging issues that could trouble teens.
What books would you share under this same heading? - Books that got me through my Depression
I’ve heard many folks who’ve been taking care of elderly parents while also raising kids are dealing with it. - Caregiver burnout happens, and it should be taken seriously.
From the Archives
Heal Without Judging How Others Heal
Healing is hard. Those who are trying to heal from trauma deserve our respect and encouragement. They don’t need a ton of judgment about how they are healing. Stop making it harder with your judgment.
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.
Thanks for reading. If you find this newsletter informative and helpful, spread the word. That’s the best way to say thank you for my weekly effort.
If survived, early-life child abuse left unhindered typically causes the brain to improperly develop. It can readily be the starting point of a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in otherwise non-stressful daily routines.
It can amount to non-physical-impact brain-damage abuse: It has been described as a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly you will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires.
The lasting emotional/psychological pain throughout one's life from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one's head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated.
Still, 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 selfishly recklessly procreate with disastrous outcomes. 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.
For example, contemporary research reveals that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.123).
Also known is that it's the non-predictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
If nothing else, such a 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.”