Survivors News and Reviews

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Thoughts After Watching “Shiny Happy People” – The Duggars Documentary
ByMikeM June 5, 2023June 5, 2023 Reading Time: 5 minutes

As shocking and dark as the details of the Duggar family and their relgious beliefs may be to many of us, it shouldn’t surprise us at all that they were so many people with a vested interest in the show, the religious organization, and the family were encouraged and even forced to gloss over the reality of what happened. If you’re shocked that anyone would go to such lengths to hide child abuse and ignore victims, you simply haven’t been paying attention. It goes on everywhere, and I hope the more cases like this one that we can bring to light, the more we’ll start to understand how horrible this is.

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Sharing – How To Make Someone Truly Feel Heard
ByMikeM June 5, 2023June 4, 2023 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Jeremy does a great job describing the skills necessary to do this. It’s well worth your time to read. Personally, the area I see people struggle with the most is the inability to sit in silence, which then leads to feeling like they need to say “something”, and that can often wind up not reserving judgment.

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Recommendations

I am Who I am Despite the Abuse, Not Because of It!
ByMikeM June 1, 2023May 25, 2025 Reading Time: 2 minutes

There was no gift involved in child abuse, no silver lining, and no reason for it to happen. It was abuse inflicted on me by another person. Period. That experience is part of me, but not nearly the sum of who I am. I refuse to let anyone define me that narrowly.

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Sharing – What the Advisory on Teen Social Media Use and Mental Health Missed
ByMikeM May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 Reading Time: 2 minutes

I agree with Janet. There is content available on the internet, and social media, that is dangerous for kids. There is also content available that is beneficial to kids as well. Protecting them from harm without killing off all of the positive things technology brings into their lives every day is not a simple task.

Anyone telling you it is simple, or claiming that we “have to do something”, without explaining all of the trade-offs is not to be taken seriously.

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Book Reviews

Reviews Elsewhere – The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in Healing Trauma
ByMikeM May 30, 2023May 30, 2023 Reading Time: 1 minute

There are certain books that I’ve seen discussed in the survivor community so often that it can be easy to overlook them when talking about recommendations for someone starting out on their healing journey. Bessel van der Kolk’s book about healing from trauma, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in Healing Trauma, falls into that category.

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Links

Sharing – Everybody Deserves Empathy
ByMikeM May 25, 2023May 25, 2023 Reading Time: 1 minute

As Scarlett discusses, it’s easy to feel sympathy for the “good” people with mental health issues. That would be the folks who didn’t commit a crime, and who can act mostly in socially acceptable ways. The ones who have much messier situations often escape our empathy, especially if they happen to be homeless, or a member of an underrepresented group.

Mostly though, it’s just luck. Just as I’ve mentioned many times that I was privileged and lucky enough to be able to get help to learn how to deal with my trauma, I was also lucky enough to have only been homeless for a little while, and to have not had a violent or disruptive outburst that led to my being imprisoned or killed.

That luck doesn’t make me more worthy of empathy. It was just luck.

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