Dwade picks out some excellent quotes that have helped. Some of these were familiar to me, other were not. This one though, hit home for me: ““I wonder if it will rain after we die. When you kill yourself, you don’t know what happens next, afterward.” ~Albert Borris Once again, this one gives me an…
What we see here is what we see for a lot of mental health solutions, it works for some, and doesn’t work for others. Mental health is complicated. As the article points out, if the school environment is hurting student mental health or they are living in an environment at home that does the same, mindfulness isn’t going to change that and isn’t likely to have much of an overall impact even if they engage.
It’s complicated. The solutions are going to be complicated as well. I’d like some simple mindfulness training to be “the answer” for everyone too, but it just isn’t.
On the other hand, if it helps you, keep doing it.
As the article explains, we feel empathy for people who are most like us. Children and other victims may not look like us as much as the abuser does. We might even know the abuser and not know the victim. The mentally lazy thing is to let our familiarity with the accused abuser blind us to the reality of what is happening. The way to get out of that is to focus on the humanity of the victim just as much. When you have empathy for everyone, regardless of whether they are like you or not, you can react to the situation in front of you instead of your bias about the people involved.
Everyone deserves that. No matter how different they may be from us.
On the heels of more tragedy over the holiday weekend in the US, this is such a great reminder.
“One of the messages we emphasize most at Active Minds is that you don’t have to be an expert to help. There are ways to support those around you that are coping with the struggles from either directly experiencing the ills of this world or from the pain caused by seeing others experience them. And, those around you don’t have to be experts to help you, either. Through empathetic and compassionate conversations, partnered with purposeful and tangible actions, we can be part of the solution to our broken world for our families, our communities, and – therefore – our nation. We can’t fix all the problems in this world for everyone, but we can control how we show up for those around us with our voices, our words, and our actions.”
I think Brittany makes an important point about boundaries in the post below. Most commonly when we talk about setting boundaries we talk about what we won’t accept from other people. That’s important, but it’s also important and healthy to consider how we protect ourselves.
I’ve felt this and I’ve talked about it many times before. Children forced to deal with a lot of trauma do that instead of learning about our place in the world, and in respect to other people. So would this be any surprise?
