Shared Links (weekly) Sept. 28, 2025
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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 – I Was Afraid Asking for Help Would Make Me Look Weak
I’m glad that Tammy was willing to share this story. I think it really helps to know that those of us who might feel like it’s weak to ask for help are not alone in that thought, but we are also wrong about that.
Link – One in three children entered foster care in 2017 because of parental drug abuse
As I’ve been writing recently, when childhood trauma goes untreated, or not prevented in the first place, it can often lead to problems with addiction in adulthood, as well as many other things. (Not in everyone, but it is a significant factor statistically) Now we see that not doing anything about that childhood trauma, is…
Sharing – The impact of non-recent child sexual abuse on the wider family
As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t wait until my 40s or 50s to tell someone about my abuse, and my family found out about it in my 20s, primarily due to my roommate having to answer their questions about my mental health breakdown. I didn’t get to choose whether my parents found out, but I’m also thankful that he went ahead and had that difficult conversation with them. I needed them to know what happened so that they could be part of my life while I tried to heal my mental health.
On the other hand, I would be lying if I said everything in the family was great after that. It’s complicated and occasionally messy.
Sharing – Ending Mental Health Stigma Takes More Than Talking
Obviously, talking about can lead to these other things. Not talking about it won’t get us anywhere. But we need to do more than talk, we need to figure out better ways to treat people who need it, and make it accessible. That doesn’t happen until all of society understands the importance of it, and is truly educated about it. So, keep talking, but also keep demanding better.
