More than eight in 10 men in prison suffered childhood adversity
Matt Haig: ‘I wanted to end it all, but surviving and thriving is the lesson I pass on’
“Lastly, in the most serious vein, the trip taught me that being stranded in the desert is not necessarily a death sentence. The heart can re-grow. Evil’s legacy can be turned away. Love is all. I earned the right to say these words.”
Veterans and suicide risk: The warning signs — and how to get help
When I compare my personal experience to the overall statistics, again I can see where it is also kind of all over the place, because it’s individual. In some ways, I’m doing pretty well, in others, not so much. None of us are exactly the same, or living with the same circumstances. So as global as this pandemic is, the effects have been incredibly diverse. That person you are working with on a Zoom call, the medical professional, the person taking your to-go order, that teacher your kid is learning from, or even those kids and their parents are all dealing with any multitude of impacts that we know nothing about, and probably never will. The one thing we do know, is that they are being impacted.Â
We would do well, as a society to take advantage of this very obvious opportunity to learn that we are all impacted in different way by events, and to take the time to listen to how someone who isn’t like us, is impacted. This is a great time to understand the large scale of the world and all of the different experiences within it. Maybe we could at least settle for understanding that our own individual situations, are not representative of everyone. Not even close, in fact.Â
I, frankly, did not realize these statistics about therapists, but if I stop to think much about it, I’m not surprised. According to a 2015 study by the American Psychological Association, 83.6 percent of psychologists are White, while only 14.6 percent combined are Black, Latinx and Asian (and that doesn’t even account for Native Americans and other minority communities). While therapists specialize in a variety of…
We have to face the fact that, as much as we might not openly admit it, we live in a society where kids with mental illness have very little hope, and we don’t care enough to change that. They, their parents, and their siblings are “others” that we’d rather not be bothered with. Societally, we’d rather they went away than be concerned with figuring out ways to help them.
That’s not good enough.
Catching up with all the news recently in a fortnight dominated by the murder of a British soldier in London and the tornado in Oklahoma, and the bank holiday in both countries, one of the biggest stories followed on from a legal court case where Lord McAlpine took Sally Bercow to court. A court ruled…
Most things in life are not that clear. They are ambiguous. I know that when I’m unable to think beyond simplistic right and wrong it is very likely part of my own struggle. I’m falling for the cognitive biases that try to convince me that all the negative things I’ve ever experienced are the truth, and all of the positive things have been a lie.
It’s these cognitive biases that prevent many people from healing. Simply put, you can’t heal when you are unable to believe healing is possible for you.
So people who are grieving do it privately. They barely function through the workday and then go home and grieve by themselves. They are left to process grief without any community and the support that provides. They are left to feel like there is something wrong with them because they still miss their loved ones as if that is somehow not normal.
It is normal, we don’t simply forget the people we lose or the tragedies we experience and then move on. It sticks with you. You feel it again on birthdays and holidays, in places where you are reminded of them when you want to pick up the phone and tell them some exciting news. That doesn’t just go away after a set amount of time.
We should stop pretending that it should and start making sure everyone has some space to grieve, no matter how long it’s been.
