Concentric Circles of Trauma

Concentric Circles of Trauma

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

No, the easiest way to break up those circles, as any kid who threw rocks into the water can tell you, is to throw another rock and create new concentric circles starting from a different location.

Gee, in my metaphor about the trauma I wonder what those other rocks could be? Mental health treatment? Care and support from family and friends? The elimination of stigma attached to trauma?

How about instead of ignoring the circles we started throwing some more useful rocks and disrupting the cycles of trauma that we see repeated over and over again in those circles?

Running on Fumes

Running on Fumes

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

I heard someone on the radio use this phrase to describe herself as we were out grabbing a few last-minute items to assist with riding out Hurricane Ida. She was talking about evacuating her home in New Orleans at 10:30 last night, driving to Alabama to seek shelter, and then doing the show remotely from there.

Here, we aren’t in as much of a need to evacuate, we are further from the coast and the storm surge, but it’s still going to be a long, dangerous couple of days. So, we are spending a lot of time, and both mental and physical energy, preparing to possibly be without power, for needing to leave if the house is damaged, and so forth. It’s a lot. And that is on top of all the mental energy necessary to deal with large COVID outbreaks we’ve had in recent weeks, all of the recent events in world news, and the various personal and professional challenges that we are also dealing with.

Running on fumes is a really good description of how I think most of the entire state feels today, and yet, there’s a storm coming that we are all going to have to deal with, while everything else just continues on as well.

Mental Illness as Scapegoat – Not Every Poor Behavior is Mental Illness

Mental Illness as Scapegoat – Not Every Poor Behavior is Mental Illness

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 6 minutes

I’ve been thinking about this topic for awhile now. Some of it has been brought on by hearing many of the comments about the Joker movie, some by the way people react to violence, and even some on the way political discussions tend to take place in the US these days. It all came together…

Thoughts on Mother’s and Father’s Days

Thoughts on Mother’s and Father’s Days

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

As a survivor, the question of how to appropriately mark Mother’s and Father’s day is always a bit tricky. We tend to see all the folks who have good, warm, relationships with their parents marking those days on social media, posting their great childhood memories on Facebook, sharing old family photos, or wishing their spouse,…