Shared Links (weekly) June 1, 2025
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Sharing – Books focusing on men’s mental health
As we roll into November, and many men are taking part in a Movember activity, we like to take a moment to note that the whole movement is focused on men’s health, including mental health.
The folks at Second Step in the UK have book recommendations on the topic.
Link – Helping People Build Healing Relationships After Trauma
Robyn provides some good information. This is something I know many survivors struggle with – Well-meant urging or pressure to reach out in a time of need does not work for those who have experienced trauma in their lives. Something (seemingly) simple like accepting a compliment may be painfully hard. But the ability to integrate these…
Sharing – The Best Way to Reduce Anxiety Is to Make Your Brain Feel Safe
I think back to my childhood and the sexual and physical violence I was subjected to. I struggle with anxiety because my brain is always going back to that time – a time when I was not safe! The things my brain learned then weren’t a failure of mental health; they were survival instincts. They were healthy reactions to an unsafe environment. My current challenge is unlearning them now that I am no longer in that unsafe environment. Asking me to do that while I was unsafe would have been dumb. The anxiety was trying to keep me alive.
Sharing – Healing from trauma requires holding two tracks
Gretchen is right; they don’t tell you this when you start doing healing work on your trauma, but it’s a skill you’re going to need:
But for most people healing from trauma, it’s not about going away to get better, it is about learning to stay. Stay with the part of you that is healing. And stay with the part of you doing your day-to-day life. Healing from trauma is about learning to hold both: your life in the present and your trauma history–all at the same time.
Sharing – But first, we need to talk about it
We have gotten better at discussing mental health over the last couple of years, and one thing that has become clear is how broken that system is. How underfunded and under-resourced mental health services are and how many people are forced to go without them.
We wouldn’t know all this if we didn’t start talking about it. Hopefully, this increased attention brings about real change, not a return to not talking about it. The subject of child abuse is still considered a “downer” that people don’t want to discuss. So we don’t, and we don’t spend much time and energy as a society finding solid solutions. The problem just gets worse in silence, and the people living with that kind of trauma live in silence without the things they need.
