Similar Posts
Sharing – New study shows the top healthcare issue in rural America is mental health and addiction
There have been some efforts to make health care more accessible in rural areas, but I’m not sure that we’ve done nearly as much when it comes to mental health and addiction treatment. I’ve read too many stories of people needing to travel 100 miles or more to see a therapist, or get a prescription for medication, let alone finding a rehab clinic with an opening. Throw in a system that too often forgets that they exist, or uses them as pawns in power grabs instead of trying to meet the needs of these communities, and it’s no wonder that many would be feeling helpless in the face of addiction and mental health issues.
Sharing – Why Most Efforts to Address Mental Health Stigma Miss the Mark
We’ve done a lot of work to eliminate stigma over the years. It’s nearly impossible to argue that there is a significant number of people in the US who don’t know about mental health, or understand that it’s not uncommon. And yet, we still have a stigma problem:
Sharing – Red Flags of child sex abusers from an ex-child abuse detective
We’ve spent so much time looking at lists like this one, looking for the bad people, and that is absolutely part of abuse prevention. Still, we’ve missed the boat on what might be the most significant tool in our prevention toolkit, taking the target off kids by connecting with them as parents and with other trusted adults—helping them be less vulnerable.
Kids who don’t have secrets make terrible targets for abusers. Kids with support and secure relationships aren’t easily manipulated and aren’t too eager to please adults.
We need our kids to be more of that, starting with having close relationships with the safe adults in their lives.
Sharing – Healthy Boundaries for Adult Children of Toxic Parents
There is some good advice in the article about how to create, and maintain, healthy boundaries with a variety of toxic parent “types”, but I will always fall back on one fact of life as a survivor of childhood abuse, we came out of childhood with no idea of what a boundary is, let alone why we would create one. We were never given the opportunity to learn or practice this skill.
It’s OK if it takes us a minute to figure it out before we get it right.
Sharing – 5 Powerful Self-Care Tips for Abuse and Trauma Survivors
This was written on the website for the Domestic Violence hotline, but the tips are relevant to anyone who has been abused or gone through trauma. This, for example, is similar to many things I’ve written about child abuse too:
“Throughout this journey of healing from trauma and abuse, make sure that you are being compassionate towards yourself. A great deal of trauma survivors suffer from toxic shame and self-blame. It’s important that we are gentle towards ourselves during this journey, that we acknowledge that we are doing our very best, and that we ask ourselves every day, “What would be the most loving thing I can do for myself in this moment?” in any circumstance. There is no time limit to learning and healing, there is only the power of transforming our adversity into victory, one small step at a time.”
Check out the article below to read more about how, exactly, to be gentle towards ourselves while still taking those small steps.
