Revue newsletter for Child Abuse Survivor - Issue #26
New From the Blogs
Sharing - My Husband Took His Life After Hiding Years of Sexual Abuse — www.childabusesurvivor.net Lenore's story is sad and tragic, but her message is important. We lose so many survivors, men, and women, who just never find a way to share their pain and look for help. People who live without hope because they feel shame about something that was never their fault. I encourage you to read what she has to say about her hope in sharing her husband's story. I also encourage you to consider how many survivors we lose in the same way who we don't even know were abused as children because they never felt safe enough to tell anyone. I guarantee there are many more people like that than we would like to think about.
New Raising Joy Podcast Covers Kids Mental Health — www.childabusesurvivor.net Cook Children's Health Care System in Texas has started a new podcast about kids' mental health as part of their Joy Campaign which is a suicide prevention communication initiative.
Australian "Boys Do Cry" Mental Health Campaign We haven't been brought up to talk, especially when things are difficult. We've been encouraged to "man up" instead. I'm all for having strength, but not talking when it's necessary is killing too many men for us to continue. That's true everywhere, and even though I'm not in Australia, I know it's true there as well. Let's hope this resource reaches plenty of them.
Sharing - When You Have a Lifelong Struggle With PTSD and Depression — www.childabusesurvivor.net It can be a struggle when so many of our friends and even professionals want to help us overcome abuse to "get back to" ourselves when there is no previous version of ourselves to use as a target. I don't think this should be the goal anyway. The goal for any child abuse victim should not be to go back to being a younger version of themselves before the abuse, the goal should be to build a life after abuse. I didn't find much healing in trying to remember my early childhood, but I found a ton of healing in having someone help me design the life I wanted to have as an adult and helping me feel worthy and capable of having that.
Shared from Elsewhere
The Danger in Invalidating Someone’s Mental Health Experience | The Mighty — themighty.com Mike explores how people can be dismissive or invalidating of others' struggles with mental illness.
U.S. mental health care needs an overhaul, argues former NIMH director Tom Insel : Shots - Health News : NPR — www.npr.org People in mental health crisis need more than emergency response, argues a leader in the field. They need a continuum of long-term care to put them on the path to recovery.
Why People Dismiss Their Past Abuse and Trauma (and How to Stop) | The Mighty — themighty.com Annie Wright, LMFT, breaks down why people dismiss or diminish their abuse, the harm in these psychological defense mechanisms, and how to stop.
Why We Need Mental Health Care Integration | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness The goal of integrated care is treating the whole person to optimize their overall health.
How Black men are making space for their own mental wellness — www.mic.com Fostering conversations about our emotions is crucial. But, I wondered, what does that look like in 2022?
From the Archives
Trauma Upon Trauma - Reading about Lauren Book's Experience with Stolen Images — www.childabusesurvivor.net As you might imagine these sorts of activities are severely traumatizing, and Lauren's response in the article I linked makes that clear. I also want to address the more subtle trauma here though. That trauma comes from those of you who will read this story and immediately respond "well she shouldn't have been taking those photos". I want to be very clear here. That statement is 100% blaming the victim. This is the same exact thing as saying a woman shouldn't have walked alone at night, or had a drink, or a child shouldn't have been so friendly with strangers, etc. Lauren didn't do anything wrong. What she and her husband do inside of their marriage is none of our business, no laws were broken, nothing untoward was going on. She was just a wife living her life and she was hacked. The person who stole these photos was the one breaking the law. The people sharing and selling those photos were breaking the law. Save your moral outrage for them and the people requesting to have these photos used to create fake rape videos because she was a rape victim. Anyone who can read the entire story and walk away indignant more at her for having taken photos that were perfectly legal and a personal choice instead of the people who have violated her are simply violating her again.
Sharing - 5 Tiktok Accounts For Your Mental Health — www.childabusesurvivor.net I joined TikTok with similar thoughts to what I do on other social platforms as well. But, it turns out creating video content is a little harder for me, so it hasn't been as active as I'd like it to be. Maybe I just need to follow this advice, find helpful and insightful content and let myself be inspired by it? Check out the ones they suggest, and let us know if you have any favorite TikTok accounts related to mental health that you'd recommend?
Algorithms and Rabbit Holes in Social Media — www.childabusesurvivor.net It was just a couple of years ago that I was writing about how the social media algorithms could be shaping what we think, by giving us more of anything