Links I’m Sharing (weekly)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Sharing – How to Respond When Mental Health Advice Feels Like Judgment
Look, I get it, you tried something and it helped you, or you’ve seen it help someone else. Clearly, you are excited about the possibility of helping others, but you’re forgetting something. You’re forgetting that the person you are sharing this advice with, isn’t you.
When you come walking into a conversation with friends, or especially into online communities with statements like the ones above, the message you are actually sending is “Gee, fixing this is easy, you’re just doing it wrong”.
Imagine using those actual words towards someone you barely know. You wouldn’t, would you? At least if you’re a decent human being, you wouldn’t. But you are totally willing to take your beliefs, your own experience, and completely railroad another person’s current reality with it, you are doing something awfully similar. In a moment of emotional vulnerability, you have come in, guns blazing, with the suggestion that all of this pain they are in, and all of this struggling they are going through, should have been easy to avoid.
Sharing – Toxic Childhood? 10 Lessons You Must Unlearn in Adulthood
I found this entire article to be really interesting, because what child abuse survivor doesn’t struggle with this exact thing in one form or another? “The hardest part of recovering from a toxic childhood isn’t just coping with the fact that your emotional needs weren’t met or that you were actively neglected or even marginalized,…
Insights from While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence.
As I read the rest of her insights, I realized this is where it all starts. We don’t have a mental health care system. If we had some semblance of a system the other four insights would go without saying. We’d see mental health patients as human beings, we would listen to them about their lived experiences, we’d have support systems for families, and we’d understand that despite all the effort and love put in, some people would still lose the battle, just like we do with cancer and every other illness.
Link – Mental Health Hospitalization Stigma: Remember Your Worth
Frankly, I’m sharing Megan’s article because I think there’s a good chance you, or someone you know, needs to hear exactly what she says here: “My husband is one hundred percent worth the struggles we face. Right now, he doesn’t feel like he is worth anything. He feels more like a burden than an asset…
