Revue newsletter for Child Abuse Survivor - Issue #15
Happy Friday friends. Lots of links that I think you'll enjoy, with some special emphasis on surviving the holidays, which I know can be tough for survivors, not to mention a great interview with Rachel Thompson on healing. If you find this newsletter useful, please consider sharing it with a friend, or your own social network!
New From the Blogs
Sharing - Kindness Is Action — www.childabusesurvivor.net Kindness matters, and kids who see kindness not just directed at them, but acts of kindness that they witness second-hand, have fewer signs of anxiety and other issues. But, as in most things, some groups are much more likely to see kindness and support directed at them, while others, especially minority and LGBTQ kids generally don't see kindness around them as often. Seems to me that is a simple fix for this. Work at being kind to everyone. It clearly matters to kids, and even though this study doesn't show it, I would bet it matters to adults as well!
Some Concrete Ways You Can Support Someone Struggling With Their Mental Health — www.childabusesurvivor.net But, I will ask challenge you to go read the article because whether you give a coupon or not, the ideas are solid examples of the kinds of things you can do for someone you care about who is struggling. Often we avoid someone who we know is struggling because we are uncomfortable, not knowing what to do to help them. Well, here you go. Here are 21 things you can do. If you're in proximity to the person, you can help them with necessary chores like laundry or grocery shopping, or simply accompany them on a walk. If you are maintaining contact with them at a distance, you can still have coffee together, offer a safe place to vent, or assist them with medicine copays. There are plenty of other ideas in the coupons and maybe just thinking about some of these examples will inspire some ideas of your own that would be appreciated by the folks you know. What else? What can you do for the folks who need someone to simply be there and offer to help do something? Anything. Or, what was something that someone did for you when you were struggling? What do you wish someone had done? Feel free to share your own ideas.
Sharing - Looking for support during the holidays? Check out these free resources — www.childabusesurvivor.net Mental Health America put together some resources in one place that might prove helpful for anyone just looking to talk, whether it be through a Warmline, a peer-to-peer chat, or if need be, a crisis line. As you go through the holidays, whatever that might look like for you, it might not hurt to keep this link handy so that you can easily find a place to help feel a little less alone in what you are dealing with.
Shared From Elsewhere
Healing from Childhood Abuse with Rachel Thompson — www.youtube.com Connect with PollyAnnamazing at https://buriedpleasures.com/
Surviving Mental Health Stigma Is a Literal Act of Survival | HealthyPlace — www.healthyplace.com Have you ever thought of dealing with mental health stigma as a literal act of survival? Stigma can fuel suicidal thoughts. Learn what that looks like at HealthyPlace.
10 Realistic Ways To Set Boundaries With Others During The Holidays | HuffPost Life — www.huffpost.com Give yourself the gift of "no" this year. Your mental health will thank you for it.
Mental Health Care is Hard to Come By, Especially If You’re Poor - CounterPunch.org — www.counterpunch.org During the first wave of the pandemic in April 2020, my boyfriend asked, not unkindly, if I’ve ever been diagnosed with anything besides generalized
Behavioral Scientist’s Notable Books of 2021 - By Antonia Violante, Heather Graci, & Evan Nesterak - Behavioral Scientist — behavioralscientist.org Summer isn’t the same without a good reading list. Here are our behavioral science picks for summer 2021.
How to Handle the Holidays as a Survivor | The Younique Foundation — youniquefoundation.org The holidays can be a challenging time for a survivor of child sexual abuse. Learn how to better handle the holiday season or support a survivor you love.
From the Archives
Sharing - Conspiracy theories are a mental health crisis — www.childabusesurvivor.net As a society, we have, rightfully, tried to move away from doing those things, but we haven't really gotten better at helping people build resiliency. Is it any wonder that we had an epidemic of anxiety, even before COVID-19? We've kind of left people with an uncertain world, in which anything can just randomly happen to anyone, while leaving intact our belief systems that teach us that the world is fair. It's not. It's not even close, and yes part of the reason it isn't fair is that there are bad people in power doing bad things, but even if we could rid ourselves of that as much as possible, (and we should), the world would still be a random place where random things happen, for no good reason. There would still be natural disasters, accidents, and yes, even abuse and crime. There would still be people with disabilities, mental and psychical, and there would still be victims. Because we're human, and being human is kind of messy and random. That's not going anywhere. The challenge is to find the resiliency to live our lives anyway. This is where we've failed too many people, and where we have failed ourselves, finding comfort in false "explanations" instead of facing the hard truths.
Sharing - 5 Amazing Benefits of Blogging about Mental Health — www.childabusesurvivor.net I've had people refer to me as someone who is surprisingly self-aware. I don't really think of myself that way, but what I do know is that reading and writing about mental health topics, as well as my own experience in therapy, provides me with constant reminders about the importance of mental health, and how that information either resonates with me, or doesn't, and why. I don't think our current culture really encourages that kind of behavior. We are encouraged to be busy, productive, constantly hustling and then showing it off on social media. Self-reflection? Ha! No time for that. But there should be time for that. Without knowing ourselves, how can we even start to care for our own mental health?
Link - Does Your Family Know Your Mental Health Care Preferences? — www.childabusesurvivor.net This is good advice if you think it may be possible that you’ll be in a position where you, or a loved one, may be unable to advocate for yourself. More than half of the U.S. states recognize psychiatric advance directives, legal documents that detail instructions for mental health care when a person is not...
Lauren Book on Fight, Flight, or Freeze — www.childabusesurvivor.net Somehow, even though this is from 2016, I hadn’t seen it until last night. It’s a TEDx talk by survivor, and advocate Lauren Book. (https://laurenskids.org) In it. she shares her own story, and some words about going from victim, to advocate and how we can all advocate for children, but the part that really caught my attention was the beginning, and no not just because she uses an air horn. It’s the description of our responses to trauma, and how they are just part of us, mostly outside of our control, especially as children. Lauren’s freeze response wasn’t just a one-time event either, it went on for years, and was tied to thinking that all of it was her own fault. If this sound familiar, that’s because it is really common. We just don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about sexual abuse at all, and if we do, this kind of response is usually met with some nasty comments about why we waited to say anything. Those comments simply communicate that the person saying them, knows nothing about the brain and trauma response. Don’t be that person. Watch and learn a thing or two.
Sharing - When Scrolling Through Social, Keep Your Mental Health in Mind — www.childabusesurvivor.net This is an older post from the Mental Health First Aid site, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and being much more purposeful in who I follow, and what kinds of things I want in my feeds. I think it’s something to consider, because using social media is not, in and of itself,...