This is why that quote above rang true for me. You can’t act rationally if acting doesn’t feel safe, and many of us grew up never feeling safe. To our mind, staying silent and still was the rational choice. Doing something different could have been more dangerous. It was also the natural reaction because we were simply overwhelmed.
The kids and phones thing was always an easy excuse, but the real mental health issue is much more complicated:
As a survivor of childhood abuse, I don’t know if these being in place would have changed whether I reported it. For many of us, where abuse happens within the family, that’s a very complex question. What I do know is that those three things did not appear to exist, and that guaranteed I would not tell anyone about it until I was an adult, let alone report it.
And this is the core. Mental Health awareness is great, but the political will to solve some of the core issues that lead to increased mental health difficulty doesn’t exist. There is ample evidence that poverty, domestic abuse, bigotry, harassment, etc., lead to higher numbers of people struggling with their mental health, and we do nothing to prevent that.
The logical part of my brain knows that I’m safe. The part that learned how to be hyperalert is busy making sure I stay that way. It never stopped looking for danger. I doubt it ever will. I don’t consider that something wrong with me, but it is something I have had to learn to live with.
It is true that there are people with plenty of social skills and social contacts who are still lonely. As a survivor, I recognize this in things like the small number of people we can talk to comfortably about our abuse, our healing, etc. At various times in my life, I’ve had a lot of friends and was very social. I was still lonely. Because no one saw all of me. No one sat with me in my pain. I kept it hidden from everyone. That’s lonely.
