Despite childhood trauma’s disadvantages, kids can recover after childhood trauma and live perfectly healthy, successful lives. They need help. They need a support system and people there to help them navigate it, but childhood trauma is not, as we often hear a life sentence.
I wish we would talk about this more. Survivors could use the reminder.
It’s not just saying I believe you when someone tells you they are struggling with depression or anxiety. It’s all of the subtle ways we show them that we don’t believe them. The “But you don’t look”, the “you’ll be fine”, the toxic positivity, the refusal to change your own behavior in supportive ways, etc., do just as much damage. They send the message that we don’t believe what you just said is serious enough to warrant doing anything differently.
Is that the message you want to send someone who trusted you enough to admit they are struggling with you? That their struggles aren’t valid enough for you to do anything differently?
Not acknowledging the humanity of anyone is what should not be acceptable. Trying to will an entire subset of humanity out of existence because they make you uncomfortable or some religious leader has told you that they are dangerous is not acceptable.
People die from suicide when there is so much pain that they see no path forward. The solution to that is to connect with them, to show them a path forward that involves being in community with people who accept and support them. Anything less than that is a willful decision to let people die.
If that’s what your beliefs tell you to do, you need better beliefs.
There are two things I want you to think about here.
1. Save the things that comfort you to look at, listen to, read, etc. Whatever works for you on a hard day to feel a bit better, save those. Encourage other people to do the same.
2. Send more messages that people can save to make them feel less alone on a hard day. I love that the first response a friend had to hearing Monika saved messages like this, and might have lost them, was to send exactly that kind of message.
So hey, send more of those. Remind people in your life that you appreciate them and care about them. In personal and professional relationships, just say thank you in meaningful ways. You never know who saves those messages to get them through the days they don’t feel good enough.
I do. I bet people around you do too.
What I really enjoyed about the list of things Anya uses to support her own well-being is that some of them are simple activities, yoga, reading, knitting, etc.
Many of us think of our support network when it comes to addiction, mental health, healing trauma, etc., in terms of the people around us. That’s an important part of it, yes, but there are also the things we do to support ourselves. Those are important too.
My list of support activities doesn’t look at all like Anya’s, but it’s there. Getting out and taking photos, learning new technologies, writing, listening to podcasts, etc. Those things keep me connected and involved with the things that interest me, and they are an important part of taking care of my mental health.
I’m not a researcher but these two facts make me wonder if there’s not something we can do.
If we have a list of “nudges” that can help people feel like they belong or help educate people about things like safety plans, etc. and we don’t know who is at risk and which nudge might help them, maybe we should just continue to generally be kind to the people around us. That means trying to understand what makes them feel supported, connected, etc., and doing those things consistently. It also means noticing if a “nudge” has the opposite effect, and trying something different instead.
Help people feel like they belong, educate people about prevention resources, help them stay connected to family and friends, involve them, accept them, etc.
Help your friends and loved ones by communicating the kinds of things that help you. When you feel disconnected or like you are a burden, what can they do to keep you connected? What things do they do that make it worse?
When we don’t talk about these things we only make it worse, and we only continue to lose more people. We have to learn how to have these conversations. We have to be open to listening to the people closest to us and connecting to them without stigma and judgment. The researchers will keep working to learn more about prevention, but in the meantime simply caring about each other and being honest with each other is the best tool we have. We should use it.
