Let’s start the conversation, where do you go when you want to see some good news? Do you check out a site like Upworthy.com? Do you follow someone making fun content or beautiful art on social media? Do you find fun music on your favorite streaming app? What can we do to bring more kindness into our newsfeeds?
Where do you go to find the good in this world?
I stumbled across this review from Verushka on Twitter yesterday. (Hey, it’s still good for something, sometimes!) Her description got my attention, and I thought it might also interest some of you:
What is this about?
Burn out; the different types — from carers to COVID and more. And some straightforward advice you probably already know, but might need a reminder of. I know I did.
What else is this about?
Mental health in today’s COVID, online, WFH world.
My first thought, obviously, was about the workplace and the culture we have created there that rewards being “always-on” but I think so much of this pressure permeates beyond work. As technology has become commonplace we all live with this pressure and this expectation. Think about it, how many times in a given week are you apologizing to friends and family because you couldn’t get back to them right away?
I do it all the time.
Heck, I’ve gotten text messages while having lunch or dinner with a friend, catching up with someone I haven’t gotten to see much for the last couple of years, and then apologized for doing that and being unavailable. Why? That makes no sense but we live in a culture where being connected to technology all the time also means that we should be responsive all the time. Or at least we feel like we should. Frankly, that’s a lot of pressure.
Again, as Peter goes on to describe the issue is not that people might suddenly play some Tetris when dealing with trauma. That’s probably not going to harm them much, it’s that we, as a society, will come to expect that is the “magic pill” to help everyone deal with trauma and start dismissing it as something that’s easy to fix with some Tetris when it’s much, much more complicated than that. We shouldn’t lose sight of that fact.
Whenever anyone asks me about blogging, especially about child abuse and mental health, I tell them that they need to decide two things, and always stick to them.
1. Decide what you will share about your own story, and what is off the table. Don’t share so much of yourself that you wind up becoming overwhelmed and find yourself dealing with the fallout. Remember, once you share it, you no longer control how other people respond. If you’re not ready for that, there’s no shame in it. Just know before you start.
2. The second one, is to decide what you’re willing and able, to give to your readers. This is the hardest one, as the article below mentions:
I like the fact that they not only offer concrete things to say but also some background on how to define your own boundaries and what that means. I know for may survivors, we have to first address the core issue, the elephant in the room, before we can start the practice, so let me just go ahead and say that:
You deserve to set your own boundaries.
Full stop. Let that sink in, let it rattle around in your brain, keep reading it until you believe that about yourself.
Then, go take a look at the practical examples of doing that.
What boundaries do you struggle with? What has helped you do better at maintaining them?
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