Shared Links (weekly) June 8. 2025
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Sharing – The Identity Crisis Is Coming from Inside the Group Chat
It was worth it, though. Stephanie is correct; if you don’t define yourself, other people will. It happened as a child to many of us when an abuser defined us as someone whom they could abuse; we took that lesson to heart and allowed others to keep defining us repeatedly. Some of those people may have wanted to help, some likely didn’t. It doesn’t matter. The only person who has the right to define you is you.
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Sharing – How Safety and Success Intertwine in Childhood
Asking someone to help you, to put them out in any way, is not only bothersome, but it can often lead to violence. The eggshells Kara describes in the article are a visceral memory for me. I also vividly recall all the opportunities I didn’t take advantage of growing up, because they might have required me to ask for help from a parent.
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Sharing – Psychological Abuse Explained
This logic that emotional and psychological abuse isn’t “as bad” gives short shrift to the people who’ve been psychologically abused. We also don’t recognize the emotional and psychological abuse that went on alongside the other forms of abuse in our situations. That can limit us when it comes to healing. We can’t heal what we don’t know. If we ignore the impacts of these other forms of abuse, we run the risk of dealing with the effects for the rest of our lives instead of taking them on in our healing work.
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Sharing – When Grief Has No Grave: Rebuilding After a Childhood You Never Got
We struggle enough to talk about grief when someone dies. We don’t even come close to acknowledging the other things we can and should be grieving. As an abuse survivor, I still grieve for the childhood I never had, the close relationships with parents I never had, and the freedom to enjoy life that I didn’t have as a child.
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Sharing – Mental health: ‘Shame is carried by people as a result of trauma. That sense of shame might be buried quite deep’
We have done a good job of removing the stigma of getting help for things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and multiple other symptoms of mental health issues. We haven’t done enough to make it acceptable for people to talk about the trauma they’ve suffered. Until we do that, and until we recognize that we all have experienced various levels of trauma, we’re going to continue to have a growing mental health crisis on our hands.
