Interesting look at survivors of sexual abuse, and the things they can do in their college years, to start their healing process.
Sexual abuse survivors often begin the healing process during college years
Thanks to the author for dropping me an email about it!
Margie McKinnon, the founder of Lamplighters, and author of Repair your Life sent me an email today about getting the site added to the resource section of this site. As it turns out, I’m thinking seriously about “retiring” that page, and using this blog as the ultimate resource and recommended reading section instead, so rather…
As the article explains, there is no federal law against this in the US. There are some state laws, but they’re not very effective. The problem is that we’ve always treated sexual abuse materials as criminal because, as the saying goes, behind every photo is a child being abused. With deepfakes, though, the abuse isn’t happening. So when a teen girl is the subject of deepfake porn, she was never sexually assaulted, so there’s no crime.
There’s a lot of harm, though. In the case of a celebrity, it might be reputational harm. In the case of teenagers, that fake can turn into blackmail, bullying, and all the mental health issues that go along with that. (The same is true of adults, but we know how vulnerable teens are to this and how this too often ends.)
But then I got to thinking. I’ve talked about being a sexual abuse survivor and how it was a male who abused me. What I haven’t talked about and haven’t considered for myself because the incidents are overshadowed by the years of sexual abuse are the occasions when I was sexually victimized without my consent by women.
The name of this particular survivor memoir is in reference to tiny people made out of toilet paper, who the author created, and made up personalities and lives for. These people became her friends, and a source of support, while she was living a childhood of horror, terror and physical abuse at the hands of…
We have to address societal issues that cause harm. Politicians who don’t address both the lack of mental health resources and the various political issues that actively harm the mental health of all of us don’t deserve our vote. If you consider yourself a mental health advocate, consider how your representatives have voted and where they stand on these issues. Have they cut mental health funding, opposed mental health support in schools, or supported laws that cause active mental harm to some segments of the population?
Consider that before you go to the voting booth this year.
I caught an interesting, short podcast episode on this topic recently. The host, Dave Fraser is joined by Psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb to discuss the question of whether we can overcome our childhoods.
It’s an interesting episode, and I think many of you might learn a thing or two about how the stories we’ve been told about ourselves in childhood can be rewritten and how a good therapist might assist in that. You can get the links and notes from the show here:
