Shared Links (weekly) Oct. 27, 2024
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I think back to my childhood and the sexual and physical violence I was subjected to. I struggle with anxiety because my brain is always going back to that time – a time when I was not safe! The things my brain learned then weren’t a failure of mental health; they were survival instincts. They were healthy reactions to an unsafe environment. My current challenge is unlearning them now that I am no longer in that unsafe environment. Asking me to do that while I was unsafe would have been dumb. The anxiety was trying to keep me alive.
We all deserve access to resources that would help us avoid becoming a danger to ourselves. These resources shouldn’t be limited to people like me, who are lucky enough to have family support to help cover the extra costs, and they shouldn’t require that we wait around for people to reach the point of needing to be hospitalized before we offer them any. That middle ground is full of people who deserve better.
What we need as individuals and what we need on a given day can vary. If we know ourselves, though, we can use the mental health tools we have, including a day off, to our best advantage.