• Is There a Hole in the ACE study?

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 4 minutes

    I’ve written before about the ACE studies and surveys, and if you’ve read those you know that I think everything about ACE scores needs to be taken with a grain of salt. However, until my wife shared this news article from her alma mater I had not noticed that the question about childhood sexual abuse is somewhat more specific than it should be. Apparently, Robyn Dolson noticed it too, and decided to use her thesis work investigating why, and how it impacts the results. In short, the question about sexual abuse refers to being abused by an adult or someone 5 years or older than you.

    As many of us can attest, that leaves out quite a few survivors who were abused by someone in their peer, or a slightly older, group, which happens quite frequently.

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    Sharing – The 18 Best Books About Anxiety for Kids and Parents

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    here’s a pretty good selection, take a look if you think it might help. I definitely agree that, especially with younger children, they won’t have the words to talk about feeling anxiety, or to understand what is normal nervousness versus life-altering levels of anxiety. As a parent, it can be difficult to know. Maybe, one of these books might help.

    What books have you read about anxiety that you would recommend?

  • Sharing – People Aren’t ‘Addicted’ to Wearing Masks, They’re Traumatized

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    ‘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.

  • Sharing – Allowing Survivors of Suicide Loss to Be Honest

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    As Brandy shares, processing grief can sometimes mean being angry, or feeling things about the death of a loved one that don’t always jive with how we’d want suicide reported, but these are not spokespeople, advocates, or reporters, they are people dealing with their own pain.

    Maybe, if we want people to speak their truth, we need to give them the room to express it the way they feel it, not silence them in the interest of not hearing terms we don’t love.

  • Sharing – We Should Be Careful Before Celebrating the Suicide Rate Decrease

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    The truth is we’ve all been living through one of the most uncertain, and terrible, times that many of us have ever experienced, all at the same time. Saying that you’ve been struggling with all of it doesn’t really raise any eyebrows, we all nod in agreement and share our own struggles. The stigma, the isolation, the fear of talking about it, is gone.

    But, what happens when it’s no longer a pandemic, and someone is still struggling? Does the stigma come back? Do the “what do you have to be depressed about?” questions start back up, does the fear of not belonging, of not being enough, come back?