I think this is interesting. Obviously, during a pandemic and as survivors hugging someone else may or may not be all that realistic, but the fact that this study seems to indicate we can get similar results from self-soothing touch is an interesting idea.
Here’s the thing that I tend to forget, you don’t need to wait for an emergency to make someone feel seen, heard, and valued. In fact, we can maybe avoid more emergencies if we were in the habit of doing this. We have an opportunity to do that any time we spend time with the people we care about. But, we have to actually spend the time to do that.
I have a tendency to simply tell people that I’m here when they need me, instead of reaching out with a quick message, text, or even coffee just because.
I can’t help but wonder how many chances I’ve had to see and hear them, that I’ve missed. The holidays are, of course, a really good chance to send that text, get in touch, and remind people that you value them. You can read the article below to see just how much good that might do.
So again, we see that simply accepting people for who they are has a pretty large impact on the risk of losing them to suicide. Why would we do anything else, for anyone?
Healthy relationships have boundaries that are respected by everyone. Even if we didn’t see that growing up we can still learn to develop boundaries.
Maybe, most importantly, these parents seem to think they know better, that the mental health of their kids is something they can handle on their own. We know that isn’t true. We know the number of teens who have considered suicide is much higher than the number of parents who think their teen has. That doesn’t suggest that what we’ve been doing is working, it suggests that having mental health resources available at school is a net positive for everyone.
But that fact appears to be no match compared to stigma and conspiracy theories.
When I think about Monika’s point, and my own look at the numbers, I repeat what I said back then, when looking at one individual, the ACE survey is never the whole story. There are lots of childhood experiences that go unaccounted for, there are individual levels of resilience that are not accounted for, and there are early interventions that are not considered. One traumatic experience equals one traumatic experience in the final number, regardless of whether that experience was immediately followed up with support and maybe even therapy, or if it was ignored and maybe even repeated. There are numerous factors beyond simply answering more than 4 questions yes and assuming you’re an addict, or not answering enough questions yes and assuming you aren’t. It is much more complicated than that.Â
The ACE information is important though because it points us back to that childhood trauma and says “what happened to you?” when treating an individual for depression, or addiction, so that we can include that in our healing. What we want to be careful with is turning it into a blunt instrument when there is still so much not being accounted for within it.Â
