Prince William says celebrities shunned mental health charity – During the debate, the audience was asked whether they or anyone they knew had suffered from a mental illness. Nearly everyone in the room raised a hand.
Mental illness ‘is not a problem that we can arrest ourselves out of’
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The author of Many Faces of PTSD, Susan Stocker, was kind enough to send me a free copy of her book. I have to admit that I was a little ambivalent about reviewing it, simply because I’ve never really had an official PTSD diagnosis, or any specific PTSD therapy. Being a child abuse survivor, I’ve…
Radio station WUWF put together a handful of short stories and interviews on what it looks like when a child abuse claim is made, in terms of the investigation, the courtroom process, and what family counseling looks like. Some of the information may be specific to the location and to a specific resource, but if…
“PTSD not only affects one’s mental health but it can negatively affect one’s marriage as well. The symptoms of PTSD can create problems with trust, closeness, intimacy, communication, decision-making, and problem-solving, often giving rise to the destruction of relationships. The loss of interest in social activities, hobbies, or sex can lead to one’s partner feeling…
‘ve been describing it to friends and coworkers as “the inability to just turn off the fear of other people and their germs”. Because, in some ways, that’s exactly what it was. I’ve spent a year plus barely leaving my house. Sure, I worked from home even before the pandemic, but it’s an extreme sport now, going into the back yard is an adventure into a strange and exotic place, let alone being around other people.
Yesterday, however, I did manage to get out and meet up with a friend and former coworker. I won’t say it wasn’t awkward. But, it wasn’t as awkward as my anxiety had built it up in my head, mostly because I think we both knew it was awkward, and went out of our way to figure out what we were comfortable with. We met in the office building where she works, wearing masks. She asked if I wanted to keep being masked walking to lunch, and we agreed to not, and to sit outside to be safer. And she asked before giving me a hug after lunch.
It was an important lesson to me, that we need to navigate this together with the people we care about, and meet them at the level where they are comfortable. It’s not about racing to be the most “normal” group, it’s about making sure everyone comes along, and is comfortable, because we’ve all dealt with various levels of trauma over the last 14-15 months, trauma that will show up in a variety of ways. There’s nothing wrong with people who are slower to feel comfortable, they are just doing what they can. I’d rather meet them where they are, and where I am, than not see them at all anymore, or shame them about their own hesitation. It’s not a race.
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.
It’s not just British courts that hand out life sentences on Fridays. The kidnappers of Jaycee Lee Dugard had their widely reported sentences of 431 years (to “life”) for Philip Garrido and 36 years for his wife formalised overnight (this morning to UK readers). Dugard’s victim impact statement was read by her mother, with further…
