Similar Posts
Shared Links (weekly) Jan. 12, 2025
For more like this, subscribe to the newsletter and get everything I’ve been sharing in your email.
Sharing – The Pandemic Finally Killed the Self-Care Myth
If we take anything away from this pandemic in terms of our self-care regiment, I hope that it is a recognition that many of our “suggestions” for how to practice self-care are completely unreachable to many folks without things like available childcare, stable incomes, some semblance of work-life balance, and the support of others. We can’t just toss another thing on the list of their responsibilities without making it possible for them to do.
Link – No Quick Fixes: Evidence-Based Treatment for Trauma and PTSD
This is a hard truth for many survivors, but a truth nonetheless. “Talk therapy” is hard work, for person in therapy and therapist alike, but it remains the most evidence-based and effective treatment in the long term for mental health conditions, from anxiety to trauma and back again. I cannot stress enough, that healing is…
Sharing – People Aren’t ‘Addicted’ to Wearing Masks, They’re Traumatized
‘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.
Are Active Shooter Drills Harming Kids Mental Health?
But what is the least harmful way to deal with that? What is the least harmful way to inform kids of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza? What is the least harmful way to prepare kids for the natural disasters that seem only to get worse each year?
I don’t know. What I do know is that dealing with all of this is hard and only part of the causes of increased needs for youth mental health. Our current mental health system failed many people for years when the need wasn’t this high. What we are doing isn’t working. Continuing to do the same thing won’t work. Fighting against increased funding and availability of resources won’t work. Hiding our heads in the sand and saying, “not my kid,” won’t work. This is a society-wide problem that will require societal change. I am not sure we are willing to make those changes, but an entire generation of kids will pay the price for that unwillingness.
