Relationships

Putting yourself first is often misunderstood.

In clinical spaces—particularly within mental health, addiction recovery, and child welfare—we see a consistent pattern: individuals who have survived trauma, chaos, caregiving burdens, and systemic gaps are often the last to receive care themselves. When they begin to prioritize their own stability, they are labeled selfish.

They are not selfish.
They are stabilizing.

Self-Abandonment: A Trauma Pattern

Self-abandonment is common in both mental illness and substance use disorders. It can present as:

*Ignoring early warning signs of relapse

*Staying in unsafe or dysregulated relationships

*Avoiding treatment because others “need you more”

*Neglecting sleep, nutrition, and medical care

*Silencing emotional needs to prevent conflict

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) identifies trauma, chronic stress, and social instability as major drivers of substance use harms in Canada (CCSA, 2023). Similarly, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) emphasizes that trauma exposure significantly increases risk for both mental health disorders and substance use disorders (CAMH, 2022).

When we continuously put ourselves last, our nervous system does not regulate—it remains in survival mode. Prolonged activation of stress pathways increases vulnerability to depression, anxiety disorders, and relapse (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2020).

What once protected you may now be exhausting you.

Why Putting Yourself First Feels So Wrong

For trauma survivors, prioritizing oneself can activate guilt, shame, and fear of abandonment. From a clinical lens, this may be linked to:

*Insecure attachment patterns

*Codependency dynamics

*Learned hyper-independence

*Developmental trauma

*Internalized beliefs that worth is tied to usefulness

Trauma-informed practice teaches us that self-neglect is often adaptive. It was a strategy to maintain safety, connection, or survival.

But strategies built for survival rarely sustain recovery.

In Addiction Recovery:

Self-Preservation Is Relapse Prevention

Recovery requires regulation.
Regulation requires capacity.
Capacity requires care.

Putting yourself first in recovery may look like:

*Attending meetings instead of attending chaos

*Going to therapy consistently
Blocking triggers—even if they are people

*Taking medication as prescribed

*Choosing sleep over late-night dysregulation

*Saying “no” without over-explaining

The Statistics Canada reports ongoing substance-related harms across Canadian communities (Statistics Canada, 2023). Sustainable recovery reduces not only individual harm but intergenerational impact.

You cannot stabilize others while you are destabilizing yourself.

Mental Health Is Foundational Health

The Public Health Agency of Canada recognizes mental health as integral to overall health and well-being (PHAC, 2020). Chronic stress elevates cortisol, impairs executive functioning, disrupts sleep, and reduces impulse control—all of which increase relapse risk.

This is not a character flaw.
This is neurobiology.

Prioritizing yourself is preventative medicine.

Boundaries as Protective Factors

In child welfare practice, we speak frequently about protective factors for children. Stable caregivers. Predictable routines. Emotional regulation. Safe environments.

Why do we not apply the same framework to adults in recovery?

Boundaries reduce exposure to high-risk situations. They improve emotional regulation and reinforce self-efficacy—both critical predictors of long-term recovery outcomes (CAMH, 2022).

Boundaries are not selfish.
They are clinical interventions.

Personal Reflection

Putting myself first did not come naturally.

As someone who has worked in child welfare and walked my own recovery journey, I know what it feels like to be the strong one. The reliable one. The one who holds everything together while quietly unraveling.

For years, I confused self-sacrifice with strength.

I said yes when I meant no.

I stayed when I should have stepped back.

I minimized my exhaustion because others were “worse off.”

But healing forced a confrontation: I was abandoning myself in the name of loyalty.

And loyalty without self-respect is self-destruction.

Putting myself first meant disappointing people. It meant stepping out of chaos and into uncomfortable silence. It meant acknowledging that I deserved the same compassion I advocate for in practice.

The truth is this:

When I protect my mental health, I am a better mother.
A better clinician.
A safer presence.

Stability is not selfish.
Stability is sacred.

Clinical Reframe

Putting yourself first in mental health and addiction recovery is:

*Relapse prevention

*Trauma stabilization

*Nervous system regulation

*Protective factor development

*Intergenerational cycle disruption

This is not indulgence.
This is evidence-informed recovery practice.

Call to Action

If you are struggling:

*Identify one area where you are overextending yourself.

*Set one boundary this week

*Schedule one act of restorative self-care (not avoidance-based coping).

*Engage with professional support if available.

If you are in crisis in Canada, call or text 9-8-8 for immediate mental health and suicide crisis support.

You deserve recovery.
You deserve stability.
You deserve care.

And sometimes the most radical act of healing is choosing yourself.

BigmommaJ
#putyourselffirst #MentalHealth #Addiction

Mighty staffer @sparklywartanks was recently having an interesting conversation about the definition of “normal,” especially as it relates to managing a mental health condition. It got her thinking about how she defines “normal” and how she learned to recognize the difference between her symptoms and her true personality.

She realized that her definition of “normal” has changed over time. Ultimately, she feels it’s her relationship with self-awareness that helps guide what “normal” means to her each day.

What are your thoughts? How do you define “normal” while living with a health condition? How does your relationship with your health shape that definition?

Feel free to share your insights below! 👇💭

#MightyMinute #CheckInWithMe #ChronicPain #ChronicIllness #Disability #RareDisease #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Autism #Parenting #PTSD #ADHD #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #BipolarDisorder #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #EatingDisorders #Depression #Fibromyalgia #Lupus #MultipleSclerosis #Migraine #Spoonie

Child welfare systems exist to protect children from harm. Yet for many children and families, involvement with these systems becomes another layer of trauma rather than a pathway to safety and healing. This paradox is not the result of individual failure—it is the result of systems responding to trauma without being designed to understand it.

Trauma-informed care is not an enhancement to child welfare practice. It is a foundational requirement for ethical, effective, and humane intervention.

Child Welfare Is Inherently Trauma-Exposed

The overwhelming majority of children and families involved in child welfare have experienced multiple, chronic adversities long before a report is ever made. These experiences often include:

*Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse

*Chronic neglect

*Exposure to domestic violence

*Parental substance use and untreated mental illness

*Poverty and housing instability

*Systemic racism and discrimination

*Intergenerational and historical trauma

*Separation from caregivers, siblings, culture, and community

Research consistently demonstrates that child welfare–involved populations have significantly higher Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) scores than the general population, placing them at increased risk for lifelong physical, emotional, and relational difficulties (Felitti et al., 1998; Anda et al., 2006).

Without a trauma-informed framework, child welfare systems risk responding to trauma symptoms as behavioural problems, rather than as adaptive survival responses.

Trauma Shapes Behaviour, Not Morality

Trauma alters neurodevelopment, particularly when experienced in early childhood. It impacts:

*Emotional regulation

*Stress response systems

*Attachment and trust

*Impulse control

*Cognitive processing

*Sense of safety

In child welfare contexts, these trauma responses are frequently misinterpreted as:

*Defiance

*Aggression

*Manipulation

*Non-compliance

*“Lack of insight” or “poor motivation”

A trauma-informed lens reframes the central question from:

“What’s wrong with this child or parent?”

To

“What happened to them, and what do they need to feel safe enough to change?”

This shift is not semantic—it fundamentally alters assessment, intervention, and outcomes.

System Involvement Can Re-Traumatize

Even when removal is necessary for safety, child welfare involvement is itself a potentially traumatic experience. Children often experience:

*Abrupt separation from caregivers

*Loss of routine, identity, and belonging

*Placement instability

*Repeated retelling of traumatic experiences

*Lack of voice or agency in decisions affecting their lives
Parents experience:

*Shame, fear, and grief

*Loss of autonomy and parental identity

*Heightened surveillance

*Re-activation of their own unresolved trauma

Without trauma-informed care, standard child welfare practices—court processes, compliance-based case plans, rigid timelines—can unintentionally replicate dynamics of powerlessness and control, undermining engagement and long-term safety.

Trauma-Informed Care Improves Outcomes

Evidence-informed trauma-responsive child welfare systems demonstrate:

*Greater placement stability

*Improved caregiver-child relationships

*Increased family engagement
Higher rates of successful reunification

*Reduced use of punitive or coercive practices

*Improved permanency outcomes

Trauma-informed care recognizes that regulation precedes reasoning. When people feel safe, they are neurologically capable of learning, reflecting, and changing.

Fear-based compliance may satisfy short-term system goals—but it does not create sustainable safety.

Reflection: A Child Welfare Lens

As a child welfare professional, I have seen how easily trauma is mislabeled as resistance—and how devastating that misinterpretation can be.

I have watched children punished for behaviours that were, in truth, survival strategies learned in unsafe environments. I have seen parents deemed “uncooperative” when their nervous systems were locked in fight, flight, or freeze. I have witnessed systems demand emotional regulation, insight, and compliance from people who had never been offered safety, consistency, or trust.

Trauma-informed care challenges us—not just to change how we intervene, but to examine how power is exercised within systems.

*It asks us to slow down in systems designed for speed.

*To listen in systems designed for documentation.

*To see humanity in systems trained to assess risk.

Child welfare does not operate in a vacuum. Many families enter the system already failed by mental health services, addiction supports, housing systems, education, and healthcare. By the time child welfare intervenes, the harm is rarely new—it is cumulative.

If we do not practice trauma-informed care, we become another chapter in that harm.

Trauma-Informed Care Is Also a Workforce Issue

Child welfare professionals are exposed daily to secondary trauma. Without organizational trauma-informed practice, workers experience:

*Compassion fatigue

*Burnout

*Emotional numbing

*High turnover

*Reduced decision-making capacity

A trauma-informed system must support reflective supervision, manageable caseloads, and psychological safety for staff. A dysregulated workforce cannot effectively serve dysregulated families.

Equity, Culture, and Historical Trauma

In Canada, Indigenous, Black, and racialized families are vastly overrepresented in child welfare systems. This reality cannot be separated from:

*Colonization and residential schools

*Forced child removals (e.g., the Sixties Scoop)

*Systemic racism

*Intergenerational trauma

Trauma-informed care, when paired with cultural humility and anti-oppressive practice, is essential to preventing the repetition of historical harm under modern policy frameworks.

Without this lens, child welfare risks perpetuating the very injustices it claims to address.

Call to Action

Trauma-informed care must be embedded at every level of child welfare:

*Legislation and policy

*Intake and investigation

*Court processes

*Placement decisions

*Case planning and timelines

*Permanency planning

Workforce development
Children and families do not come to child welfare because they failed.

They come because systems failed them first.

If child welfare is truly about protection, then trauma-informed care is not optional—it is an ethical obligation.

BigmommaJ
#traumainformedcare #MentalHealth #Recovery

So I don't try to hide the fact that I am polyamorous. And I realized many of you know nothing about polyamorous people and just assume it's cheating because*snort* only monogamous people are committed to their relationship.
Ok, I'm done laughing. Let's get down to the basics.
Polyamorous people can and do have any number of partners as they want or need. I currently only have my primary partner Pauley. We've been together for over a year now. I do actually have another pseudo partner... He's my long distance QPP. We've been bestest friends for about 7 years now. He's like a dad or eccentric uncle who likes krampus, furries, leather kink, and he has an odd relationship with jello molds from long ago.
Stick around for the end credits, spoilers!
Now for me it's just the most logical relationship dynamic for me and Pauley. Pauley has alexathymia. It's often found in the auDHD community but it's not everyone. Basically Pauley doesn't understand human emotions. She's emotionally stunted. She cannot read facial expressions or body language. And when I desperately need someone to love me and talk out my emotional baggage she just can't. So either I try to reach out to my platonic friends for support or I seek a secondary emotionally mature partner.
I think the heart to heart conversation I had tonight with her was...necessary but painful. We are still devoted and deeply in love with each other. But we understand there are important things I'm not getting from this relationship. Which isn't to say this relationship is bad. It's not perfect but it's mine. And I'm not perfect. And Pauley isn't perfect. And together we're 2 fucknoodges looking for that little spark that makes the edges of my sweet potato crispy.
Why should we be worried about perfection in this fucked up hellscape called America 2026. Let's all find weird little joys where we can when we are able.
Anywho.
We're life partners and that didn't change. But we both agreed I need someone else to bond with for emotional growth.
What does this mean for our future together?
Well.
If she can recover from her depression enough to bill her clients and we can live on her income without my SSI, we're gonna get legally married.
If that doesn't happen we're gonna have a pagan handfasting ceremony with my QPP giving me away at the altar.
It's gonna be a potluck because what pagan doesn't imbibe in the occasional potluck. At normal intervals pagans are like little fuck head kittens with no order and one climbed the tapestry. But pull out your fancy crockpot and here they come running.
I'm thinking about hosting a reception at the local BDSM venue. We can put all the crockpots in the eaty place and play with the stingy thuddy toys I have come to love and hate. Oh gosh being a sadomasochist is fun. Yeah I know. I'm a heathen and I'm going to hell for being in leige with the devil.
I mean yeah I'm a witch. Duh.
But I'm not interested in demons unless they know their way around my coffee. I might be interested in a student exchange program.
I'm a kitchen witch, I am a tactile healer. I cook joy, happiness, catharsis, release of negative energy, growth and enlightened understanding of the world inside of us all. I am a tarot card reader and have been for over 20 years. Unfortunately due to some past "let's see if noxs head can make dents in the plaster if we hit hard enough" courtesy my adoptive dad, I cannot memorize the cards.
So over the course of about 5 years I researched the different thought schools of tarot interpretation. I took what resonated with me and left the rest for the spirit to help others in the aether.
I need to redo my book in a hard binder.
I like dancing around flaming cauldrons while we chant to raise our vibration to reach the divine, even if it's just to say hi.
So my ceremony will be wonderful regardless of what kind of union I need. Traditional marriage just doesn't do it for me. It's rigid and steeped in rules of the church and my church is the forest. My altar is the dirt from whence arise steady noble redwoods and tiny mushrooms all with the same sunshine. My Deity has a name. She is Brigid. Celtic goddess of healing and poetry. And she loves me and protects me from harm.
I haven't celebrated my holy days in over 10 years. I plan to do little things for Brigid on my holy sabbaths this year. Mostly light candles, recite some of my own poems, and offer the wild animals some freshly made suet cakes and peanut butter pinecones covered in seeds hung from the trees. For blessed he who loves the gentle lowing animals of the world, may the comfort they have shared come upon him and his family threefold.
Blessed be.

I’m be having a good day with my bf and he’ll be having a good day and then something shifts in me and it ends up causing more trouble, pain and upset instead of just continuing to be a good day. I’m having a really hard time regulating emotions lately and idk why. I have been having trouble with my new job, there’s been health issues with my family and me personally, and I don’t get to really be with my bf as much as I’d like to be. But I thought I was handling it so well. And then there I went again, messed it up because I let something get to me that shouldn’t have and causing a big argument and now I just feel depressed and broken. I keep pushing to get the things done that I wanted to tonight but I’m just not ok. I want to be, but I’m not. Does anyone else have tips or something they use for emotional regulation? I could really use the help.

Picture of my brand new tattoo so I don’t get lost
#Relationships #Depression #Anxiety #ADHD #ChronicPain #Emotionalregulation #exhausted

Rehab was hard work this morning. Which is great news. It’s a sign my body is recovering, in fact the readings of movement in my leg showed a lot of improvement in the past 2 weeks.

While exercising I overheard an elderly lady who was quite distressed that she couldn’t go to hydrotherapy at 10:30 instead of 11:15 as the class was full. She had another appointment today so needed the change.

I approached her and offered to swap sessions with her as I have no appointments until 3pm. She almost started crying. Such a simple thing to bless someone.

I used my available time to go to the hospital cafe for a much needed macchiato. The waitress brought me my coffee and said, “I have drawn you in the coffee”. I looked down at the coffee and she says, “That is you, Mr Smiley”.

What a unique and unexpected blessing. Today is panning out so well.

(They may be difficult to read on small screens)

There are many kinds of love: friendship, parent and child, sibling, romantic, mentor/mentee, etc., and they are all just as important 🧡🖤♥️💕

(RIP Catherine O’Hara)

#artastherapy #Relationships