Survivors News and Reviews

Book Reviews

Reviews Elsewhere – Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
ByMikeM March 20, 2024March 19, 2024 Reading Time: 4 minutes

I’ll repeat what I’ve said many times. Kids are often vulnerable because they have no close adults to trust and lean on for support. No one is there modeling what a mature sense of self is, so they aren’t learning it. I don’t necessarily agree with everything Drs. Maté and Neufeld said in this interview that I’m sure I wouldn’t agree with everything in their book, but on this point, I agree. Kids need trusted adults who make them feel safe and loved.

Yet we keep creating a society that makes it harder to provide that for kids. We are paying a price for that.

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In the News

The Benefits of Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs)
ByMikeM March 19, 2024March 18, 2024 Reading Time: 2 minutes

What do we have to offer those kids beyond a message about how their already-high ACE score likely means they have a lifetime of poor outcomes to look forward to? It turns out we have a lot to offer them. By creating positive experiences, we can start to undo the damage and create a preventative buffer to help avoid further adverse events.

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Sharing – Lifelong Imprints of Childhood
ByMikeM March 14, 2024March 13, 2024 Reading Time: 2 minutes

We hear stories about this all the time. If your parents constantly compare you to an older sibling who could do no wrong, you spend much of your adult life believing you are not enough. If you come from a family that didn’t express emotion, you find it hard to be close to someone emotionally as an adult, and so on.

You take those messages about what is expected from your surroundings and adjust your behaviors and beliefs to fit in with them. It can be very difficult, not impossible, to overcome that and relearn a different message.

If this seems familiar to you, I want you to take the next step and imagine what kind of messages a survivor of childhood abuse carries from their childhood.

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Sharing – Psychologist Explains Why Forgiveness Sometimes Does More Harm Than Good & You Don’t Owe It To Anyone
ByMikeM March 13, 2024March 13, 2024 Reading Time: 2 minutes

We haven’t talked about it here recently, but I know a lot of abuse survivors are bombarded with messages about forgiveness. Some of those messages are awful, such as demanding we forgive our family members for their benefit; some are more well-meaning but not helpful. What we don’t hear often enough is that you can…

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Links | Recommendations

Sharing – How to Develop a Strong Sense of Self
ByMikeM March 5, 2024March 4, 2024 Reading Time: 2 minutes

One of the struggles that I had as an abuse survivor, and one that I know other survivors have talked about, is defining who we are. Take everyone else away, remove all the ways we define ourselves based on our relationships with others – son, daughter, spouse, brother, sister, parent, coworker, friend, employee, boss, etc.

Who are you? As I often say, when you’re too busy trying to survive the chaos of an abusive childhood, you don’t get the guidance that would help figure this out. So we exist in these relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners, and we don’t know who we are outside of how they see us.

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In the News

Are Active Shooter Drills Harming Kids Mental Health?
ByMikeM February 29, 2024February 29, 2024 Reading Time: 3 minutes

But what is the least harmful way to deal with that? What is the least harmful way to inform kids of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza? What is the least harmful way to prepare kids for the natural disasters that seem only to get worse each year?

I don’t know. What I do know is that dealing with all of this is hard and only part of the causes of increased needs for youth mental health. Our current mental health system failed many people for years when the need wasn’t this high. What we are doing isn’t working. Continuing to do the same thing won’t work. Fighting against increased funding and availability of resources won’t work. Hiding our heads in the sand and saying, “not my kid,” won’t work. This is a society-wide problem that will require societal change. I am not sure we are willing to make those changes, but an entire generation of kids will pay the price for that unwillingness.

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