Family

  • When Mental Health Struggles Spread Through the Family

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    The parents trying to navigate the maze of mental healthcare while also trying to work to help pay for the care that winds up not being covered and be there for their other children as well. It’s a lot. All of that stress isn’t good for anyone’s health, mental and physical. Imagine trying to support a child with getting mental healthcare while also needing your own care, or dealing with illnesses.

    It’s a mess. I don’t envy parents who find themselves in this position. If you know any parents in this boat, maybe see what they need. Find some way to take a little stress off. Provide a meal or two, run some errands for them, etc. They need it more than they will probably ever admit.

  • Sharing – Peer-on-Peer Abuse: What can be done when kids hurt kids?

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    There’s no real difference. I should know. I was sexually abused by an older minor. There was no creepy old man, only an older and bigger kid who threatened me. Someone in my own family. Mall parking lots, school, and our neighborhood park weren’t the places where I was not safe, my family was.

    And I had no way to tell anyone, because I wasn’t taught about that being child abuse. Only strange men in white vans giving out candy abused children. Whatever was happening in my family wasn’t to be discussed with anyone. It wasn’t, and it went on for years.

    Maybe we should do better with understanding the ways kids abuse other kids, and talking openly about it. The link below can help.

  • I Started Healing When I Convinced Myself I was Safe Now, What About People Who Aren’t Safe?

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Casey calls out those of us who would say “love is love” and support our LGBTQ friends and family members without standing up and doing what we can to actually make this world safer for them. I’ll go one further. If we want to call ourselves mental health advocates and advocates for trauma survivors we need to do what we can to push for a world that is safe for everyone. We can’t heal when we don’t feel safe, and for too many people in this world, they have no reason to feel safe.

    We need to advocate for a world that is safe for them too.

  • Sharing – Pay attention to the chameleon kids

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    ake describes the risk of these kids growing up to be people pleasers. I’d go one further. Not only did I grow up as a people pleaser, but I also had zero sense of self. Without someone to react to and to become the person they wanted me to be, I was no one. I tell people this often but I spent more time in therapy figuring out who I am than I spent trying to process childhood trauma and that was a direct result of growing up as this chameleon kid. My entire personality was based on fitting what was needed by other people, starting with my alcoholic father and the person who sexually abused me, right through to friends and my first wife. I was what I thought they wanted me to be. When my therapist started asking about what I wanted to be, I was blank. There was nothing there.

  • Sharing – Teen Suicide: What Parents Need to Know

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    We have said often that the best prevention we can offer is to simply keep people connected to those around them. When you’re talking about teens, staying connected to them as parents is vital. When it’s a friend, another family member, an adult, a kid, etc. the best thing we can offer is staying connected with them.

    That connection, that knowledge that they are not, in fact, going through this pain alone can make all the difference.

    Why not offer it?

  • It’s Amazing What You Get Used To

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    When Nedra talks about growing up in an alcoholic family, naturally that was something that resonated with me. Growing up my father was an alcoholic. It was normal for me to fear your father, especially when they’d been drinking. It was normal for there to be violence at home. It was normal for children to be physically attacked for as little as making too much noise.

    Perhaps worst of all, it was also normal to keep it all secret, to not share what happens at home outside of the immediate family.

    Which made it all the more easy for the sexual abuse I suffered later to be kept secret. And, in some odd way, for it also to seem normal.