Thank you for your amazing feedback and clear wealth of understanding and knowledge in this area 💥

This is something many kids don't even see at home. And at home is where the attachment style is formed and the vicious circle of victim-abuser begins.

This is something I have to repeatedly guide my clients into and through because, the sad thing is, most of them don't even realise that what they thought was normal when they were young was abuse.

And it's not even anybody's fault. The trauma is usually multi-generational and hereditary. It gets past on systematically and, usually, completely unconsciously as well.
 

I can't express enough how I wish there would be emotional education in school where someone, anyone, could teach you what healthy love is.

I tried to get a campaign launched in 2019 called "The Perfect Campaign" a.k.a #uralreadyperfect

The idea being that perfectionism is a form of addiction and causes mental health problems. We need to redefine "success" and get real to beat this. The pretense, consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses is making the kids sick now. It's serious.

Absent parents chasing the almighty dollar.

Impoverished parents too stressed out to be there for their kids either.

New technology and no real education or skills provided for it yet. (don't even get me started on Meta/Fakebook?Instaham)

The campaign was aimed at education - to do exactly what you suggest :) To offer education, prevention and support for our younger humans. For free as those that usually needs this the most can't afford it because these struggles make it almost impossible to be productive consistently.

It was aimed to be self sustaining, based on the 12 step model, with the idea that if we could share the insight we now have on trauma (and the effects it has on mental health and addiction), along with new natural, holistic therapies, skills and tools, we could save lives.

Or, at least, save precious time for those that may get lost for a while and lose good years working things out for themselves.

I had a meeting with some incredible therapists who were very keen to get on board and collaborate, but then a personal challenge escalated and I had to focus on that entirely.

I did continue to share videos of tools and methods as I could, but do you know what... the parents were the ones that weren't willing to engage mostly. It's easier to blame the kids as being troubled and medicating them.

The stigma around this stuff also made it impossible to raise funds to buy time for more content. And I got to a stage, after two years, where I just couldn't work until 2am, after normal work hours, to provide content and stay afloat physically. Or financially in the end. I did give it a good go though! :)

Again. It's not the parents fault... because the nature of trauma is to hide itself to protect the individual. See? This becomes a real problem to get right. You couple this with the fear of judgement because of the stigma and it's a really difficult conversation to get going.

But a trauma informed approach has grown substantially since I tried to share this perspective in 2019.

And the open-mindedness to discuss the not so shiny things and the support here on Hive has encouraged me to start chipping away at it again.

More will follow on Hive and 3Speak.

More voices are more easily heard 😊

Sorry - I know this is more than just the codependency and the love addiction conversation. Thing is...

other addictions really are the same thing in a different form.

And you address the root causes and hey presto... people get well and mental "illness" magically disappears.