No, not really, but what we should do is be sure to maintain healthy boundaries. The article below is about Compassion Fatigue. It’s real. I’ve known people who’ve reached that point, and I’ve watched people online reach that point, where they write and share about every new abuse case they see until they just disappear online because they have become overwhelmed.
We have to face the fact that, as much as we might not openly admit it, we live in a society where kids with mental illness have very little hope, and we don’t care enough to change that. They, their parents, and their siblings are “others” that we’d rather not be bothered with. Societally, we’d rather they went away than be concerned with figuring out ways to help them.
That’s not good enough.
People with depression are less likely to report thriving regarding mental well-being 10 years later, but 10% of them do anyway.
Only 21% of people not diagnosed with depression reported thriving regarding their mental well-being, so it’s not like most people are living at that point anyway, for various reasons. Being diagnosed with depression doesn’t automatically make it impossible for you to recover and thrive. It’s just a bit harder.
More importantly, the article below talks about 67% of the people diagnosed with depression reporting no symptoms of it 10 years later.
People do recover from mental health issues. They can get better. It happens. Some even meet the criteria for mental well-being that only 21% of the world meets.
The danger comes in when we try to rationalize this belief because it demands we find a reason why whenever someone suffers some sort of calamity. Otherwise, we’d have to admit the world isn’t fair. We don’t want to do that, so we make up a reason why they deserve it.
This, of course, is classic victim blaming
Over the years of having this website, I’ve had many people suggest that my abusive childhood made me more compassionate and a kinder human being. Or, maybe it gave me a better sense of humor or made me more spiritual.
Or maybe it didn’t. No version of me wasn’t abused. If there had been a version of me that wasn’t abused, he could be more compassionate. He could be a complete narcissist. He could be funnier or kinder. He could be a selfish ass.
No one knows. That version of me is Schrodinger’s cat. It’s all the possibilities because the box can never be opened to see what’s inside.
Child abuse can be all about shame and guilt. Because the entire world wants to believe that things are fair when we grow up, trying to square that belief with what happened to us as children naturally leads us to believe it’s our fault.
You can’t have self-compassion and also believe the abuse you suffered was your fault. We have to get past this idea that the world is fair and we get what we deserve. It’s simply not true. We have to be willing to have the same compassion for ourselves that we would have for another crime victim.
Everyone deserves to have some compassion for others and learn how to have compassion for themselves.
