It’s the step where you can truly understand at the deepest level that what happened was not your fault. Many a survivor will say that without ever really feeling it, and you can tell because they will say that and immediately begin talking about how weak or needy they were as a child. As if that explains why they were abused, when in fact the only explanation necessary is that someone decided to abuse them.
Look, we know that untreated mental health issues impact people’s lives in many ways. Would the lack of treatment at 20 for bipolar make a huge difference in lifetime income? Of course, it would impact the ability to even finish college successfully and that would then continue to impact things significantly. Would the need to take leaves of absence or go to work every day with depression and no access to help for that cause you to be less successful? Again, statistically, I think that would be obvious that it happens more times than not.
My first thought, obviously, was about the workplace and the culture we have created there that rewards being “always-on” but I think so much of this pressure permeates beyond work. As technology has become commonplace we all live with this pressure and this expectation. Think about it, how many times in a given week are you apologizing to friends and family because you couldn’t get back to them right away?
I do it all the time.
Heck, I’ve gotten text messages while having lunch or dinner with a friend, catching up with someone I haven’t gotten to see much for the last couple of years, and then apologized for doing that and being unavailable. Why? That makes no sense but we live in a culture where being connected to technology all the time also means that we should be responsive all the time. Or at least we feel like we should. Frankly, that’s a lot of pressure.
I found this review by Kevin C of this book by Nicole Dake and was immediately drawn to the title. As a trauma survivor panic attacks have been a part of my life at various times and I know the same is true for many other survivors I’ve talked to.
There are other ways in the article below but this one? This one is pure gold right now because we are all so overwhelmed, stressed, anxious and uncertain about everything. In the midst of that?
Keep track of your wins
I hope we can start to understand this better and provide a wider variety of tools to help with the wide variety of ways that mental health issues can manifest in different people.
I also hope we can start to understand that there is no one “right” way to treat our mental health issues, no magic solution that everyone can just go and get.
Lastly, I also hope that we can understand that my symptoms are not your symptoms, and the way something like depression can appear for one person versus another doesn’t make one more or less severe.
