Reading – The Most Damaging Aspect of Abuse

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

“It isn’t what you think.  The most damaging aspect of child sexual abuse isn’t the abuse.  It’s what the abuse does to you emotionally and psychologically.  It’s the hidden burden you had to carry for too long.  It’s that shameful secret.

Here’s how it works.  My stepfather was a great guy.  He was nice to me and to other people.  He was charismatic and outgoing.  Everyone enjoyed hanging out with him.  I did, too.  But I didn’t like what he was doing to me.  I didn’t understand why it kept happening or what it meant.  None of it made sense.  It left me feeling alone, disconnected, and confused.”

As an adult survivor, it’s the things we learned as a child that keep us from being healthy. I know this is true. I wasn’t being abused as an adult, but the things I believed about myself, and the world, and my inability to connect to anyone around me, prevented me from truly living. Those things take time to unlearn.

The Most Damaging Aspect of Abuse

Similar Posts

Sharing – The impact of Facebook and Instagram on teens isn’t so clear
|

Sharing – The impact of Facebook and Instagram on teens isn’t so clear

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

In the end, here’s the thing. You, and your kids, are not a study. You are all individuals, who may be negatively impacted by social media, or not. You may need to consider not using it, you may need to consider changing up who you’re following to get stuff that is good for your mental health into your feeds, or you may be perfectly fine using it the way you are. It might even be helping you and having a positive impact on your lives.

Only you can truly judge that. If it’s harming you, I hope you’ll consider making changes. Follow the social media accounts for this blog if you want to start getting more information like this, or just stop using it altogether. If it’s helping you feel supported and less alone in the world, then enjoy that and I hope you’ll continue to share that within your social media circles.

As I have said many times – do what works for you.

Sharing – On TikTok, mental health creators are confused for therapists. That’s a serious problem.

Sharing – On TikTok, mental health creators are confused for therapists. That’s a serious problem.

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

But, if you had a broken arm, you wouldn’t hop online and talk to your life coach. You’d go see a professional to have it treated. There’s a reason for that, just as there should be a reason why, when someone needs mental health advice, they should get it from professionals, and not random people on the internet.

Sharing – Better Mental Health May Not Mean Exactly What You Think It Does

Sharing – Better Mental Health May Not Mean Exactly What You Think It Does

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

I will say that his discussion around what people come into therapy for in terms of defining good mental health is often an issue. When I started therapy I wanted to not dissociate, because the dissociative states were proving to be more and more dangerous. But, it wasn’t like we could sit and discuss plans to simply stop, we had to dig into what happens right before I dissociate and learn better ways of dealing with that. (In my case, stress)

Even then, the desire to simply feel less stress is not always possible. It would have solved the immediate reason why I was in therapy, less stress would make me less likely to dissociate, right? But it also wasn’t sustainable because at some point life is going to be stressful. The key was not to avoid stress but to learn how to recognize it, acknowledge it, feel it, and deal with it in a healthier way.

So yes, I agree our definition of good mental health needs to incorporate much, much more than “not feeling sad, anxious, depressed, etc.” because we will feel those things again at some point. They are unavoidable, but succumbing to them without a proper response is not. We can, and should, learn how to do that.

Sharing – One in 100 deaths is by suicide

Sharing – One in 100 deaths is by suicide

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

I want abuse survivors to know that healing is possible. I want people dealing with mental health issues to have hope that they can get better. I work hard to get that message out, but those 700,000 people who died by suicide in 2019 won’t ever get to read what you just read. They aren’t here.

I’m tired of that. These numbers are so much more than numbers.

Link – Relatively Speaking, It Isn’t Absolutely True

Link – Relatively Speaking, It Isn’t Absolutely True

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

I enjoyed this article because it highlights not just how irresponsible some of the media reporting around health studies, specifically mental health studies is, but how it happens because, IMHO, people don’t actually understand statistics. Let me provide a completely made-up example to demonstrate this as simply as I can. Let’s say that right now,…

Sharing – Healthy Boundaries for Adult Children of Toxic Parents

Sharing – Healthy Boundaries for Adult Children of Toxic Parents

ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

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.

23 Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.