Family

  • 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.

  • Sharing – Lost in the Storm

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    If you’re not familiar with what it can be like to try and get the proper mental health care in the US you should read this story. However, as you do read it, I need you to understand that this story, as hard as it is, actually represents the better side of the Mental Healthcare system. Ash’s parents have some financial means and expertise to help them navigate the system, even if her Mom had to leave her job. Now imagine what this looks like for someone without those things.

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    Thoughts After Watching “Shiny Happy People” – The Duggars Documentary

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 5 minutes

    As shocking and dark as the details of the Duggar family and their relgious beliefs may be to many of us, it shouldn’t surprise us at all that they were so many people with a vested interest in the show, the religious organization, and the family were encouraged and even forced to gloss over the reality of what happened. If you’re shocked that anyone would go to such lengths to hide child abuse and ignore victims, you simply haven’t been paying attention. It goes on everywhere, and I hope the more cases like this one that we can bring to light, the more we’ll start to understand how horrible this is.