• Sharing – Other People Don’t Think You’re a Mess

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

    The key is to have some compassion for yourself, similar to the compassion you might have for someone else in a vulnerable situation. When you can do that, suddenly what the other person does isn’t as important, you’ve given yourself grace, and acceptance.

    As childhood abuse survivors, of course, this is tricky. Self-compassion is not generally one of our strengths. How could it be? All our lives we’ve been told that bad things happen either to bad people, or for a reason, and we’ve had something horrible happen to us, so we must be broken in some way to have had that experience. Didn’t we all think that way at one point or another? How could we not?

  • It’s The Time of the Year When We Need to Talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    As I realize that those of us in the US will be turning the clocks back to standard time this weekend, and those of you in other Northern Hemisphere countries may have done the same last weekend, it’s important to remind ourselves of what that time change, and change in the amount of daylight to follow, can mean for folks.

    So, I’m sharing a link and an image from the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) to remind us that SAD is a thing, and it can be mild and treated by taking some small actions, or it can truly interfere with living our lives and might require something more than eating healthier. Either way, keep this handy and know when the season might be affecting you.

  • Sometimes Self-Care Isn’t About The Self

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I have heard Shelly Tygielski’s story before. Right at the start of the pandemic, she put together a sort of community-based mutual aid organization that was designed to match people in need with people who could help. She has now written a book about that experience and shared her mindfulness teachings. 

    I caught an interview piece/book review over on the Time website this week and I thought this is something that really makes a lot of sense, and might be something we need to think much more openly about when we encourage people to self-care.

  • Sharing – Validation Is Important in Supporting Trauma Survivors

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    It’s true, there are people all around you right now who have experienced horrific traumas in their lives, and the reason you don’t know is that they don’t feel safe talking about it. They’ve lived years, even decades, with this truth, only to be met with invalidating remarks like “Why can’t you just let it go?” or “you should be over that by now”, “it wasn’t that bad”, etc.

    When your trauma, the thing you are struggling to overcome, is met with that kind of response you aren’t going to rush out to talk about it, which is a shame because talking about it to people who can be validating to us is one of the best ways to actually heal from it and have it no longer dominate our daily lives.

  • Sharing – 5 Powerful Self-Care Tips for Abuse and Trauma Survivors

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    How often do I see survivors talking about being healed as if there’s some end where they are done and never have to think about the trauma again, and berating themselves for not having yet reached this state when it doesn’t really work that way. Self-care and learning never stop. We never reach a point where we know everything and live happily ever after. Real-life does not have a happily ever after, it has ups, downs, twists, and turns, and healing will not be any different.

  • Sharing – Our Brains Were Not Built for This Much Uncertainty

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I guess I feel a little bit better knowing this at least:

    “To stay motivated as we encounter unprecedented levels of uncertainty in every aspect of our lives, we should understand that the human brain simply was not built for this. Knowing what your brain does well — and what it does surprisingly poorly — can give you a much clearer sense of the strategies you need to not just endure, but to thrive.”

    On the other hand, it’s not like the uncertainty is just going to go away and I can get back to the levels my brain is OK with. So, what do we do?