Shared Links (weekly) August 17, 2025
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Not everyone has the same cultural background when it comes to treating mental health, and that can create a hurdle that is different than the hurdles we all face in dealing with our mental health. This post tries to acknowledge that and provide reading recommendations from some of those cultures.
As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t wait until my 40s or 50s to tell someone about my abuse, and my family found out about it in my 20s, primarily due to my roommate having to answer their questions about my mental health breakdown. I didn’t get to choose whether my parents found out, but I’m also thankful that he went ahead and had that difficult conversation with them. I needed them to know what happened so that they could be part of my life while I tried to heal my mental health.
On the other hand, I would be lying if I said everything in the family was great after that. It’s complicated and occasionally messy.
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.
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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