Again, I’ll say it. You can’t solve the problems that exist and create risks for traumatized children when you don’t acknowledge the trauma. How can someone dealing with discrimination, hate, poverty, etc., get assistance when we won’t recognize that those things exist?
In the mental health field, I would agree with the experts quoted in the article. We treat mental health and trauma recovery based on the symptoms shown most often by women, because it is most often women who are seeking help. We define the symptoms based on what we see in those women, which are not the symptoms that every woman would have, let alone others. Someone who is abusing a substance, dealing with anger, taking risks, etc., isn’t typically what we consider “depressed,” but that might be the reality.
It was worth it, though. Stephanie is correct; if you don’t define yourself, other people will. It happened as a child to many of us when an abuser defined us as someone whom they could abuse; we took that lesson to heart and allowed others to keep defining us repeatedly. Some of those people may have wanted to help, some likely didn’t. It doesn’t matter. The only person who has the right to define you is you.
Asking someone to help you, to put them out in any way, is not only bothersome, but it can often lead to violence. The eggshells Kara describes in the article are a visceral memory for me. I also vividly recall all the opportunities I didn’t take advantage of growing up, because they might have required me to ask for help from a parent.
Like her, I am all for doing what you need to for self-care, whatever that looks like for you. But we cannot simply prescribe better self-care practices to people who need our society to stop harming them.
Until we recognize that and fight for those changes, we are falling short in advocating for better mental health for everyone.
This logic that emotional and psychological abuse isn’t “as bad” gives short shrift to the people who’ve been psychologically abused. We also don’t recognize the emotional and psychological abuse that went on alongside the other forms of abuse in our situations. That can limit us when it comes to healing. We can’t heal what we don’t know. If we ignore the impacts of these other forms of abuse, we run the risk of dealing with the effects for the rest of our lives instead of taking them on in our healing work.
