Neglect

You can’t always see trauma.

It doesn’t always show up as bruises or broken bones.

Sometimes it shows up as anxiety that never seems to quiet down. Sometimes it shows up as addiction. Sometimes it shows up as pushing people away before they can hurt you.

Trauma often hides in the thoughts we carry about ourselves:

“I’m not good enough.”
“I can’t trust anyone.”
“Something must be wrong with me.”

For many individuals, trauma becomes something they wear every day—shaping how they see the world, how they connect with others, and how they survive.

Understanding trauma is not only essential for healing individuals; it is critical for transforming the systems that support them, including mental health services, addiction treatment, and child welfare.

Understanding Trauma

Trauma occurs when a person experiences events that overwhelm their ability to cope and leave lasting emotional, psychological, or physical effects.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines trauma as experiences that are emotionally harmful or life-threatening and have lasting adverse effects on functioning and well-being (SAMHSA, 2014).

Trauma can take many forms, including:

*Childhood abuse or neglect

*Domestic violence

*Exposure to addiction in the home

*Systemic discrimination

*Chronic instability or loss

For many individuals involved in mental health, addiction services, or child welfare systems, trauma is not a single event. It is often complex and cumulative, developing over time through repeated exposure to adversity.

Trauma Changes the Brain

Trauma does not just affect emotions—it affects biology.

When a person experiences danger, the body activates its survival response: fight, flight, or freeze. Stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline surge to prepare the body to respond.
While this response is adaptive in moments of immediate danger, chronic exposure to trauma can keep the nervous system in a prolonged state of survival.

Research shows trauma affects several critical areas of the brain:

*The amygdala, which processes fear, becomes overactive, increasing hypervigilance.

*The hippocampus, responsible for memory processing, may become impaired.

*The prefrontal cortex, which regulates decision-making and emotional control, can become less effective under chronic stress (van der Kolk, 2014).

Canadian research has also emphasized the long-term developmental effects of early adversity. Studies suggest that chronic childhood stress can disrupt neurological development and increase vulnerability to mental health disorders later in life (McEwen & McEwen, 2017).

Understanding these changes helps shift our perspective.

Instead of asking “What is wrong with this person?” we begin asking “What happened to this person?”

Trauma, Addiction, and Mental Health

The relationship between trauma and addiction is well established.

Many individuals struggling with substance use are not simply seeking escape or pleasure. They are often attempting to regulate overwhelming emotional pain.

The landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study found that individuals who experienced multiple forms of childhood adversity were significantly more likely to develop substance use disorders, depression, suicide attempts, and chronic health conditions later in life (Felitti et al., 1998).

Canadian public health research reflects similar findings. The Public Health Agency of Canada has reported strong connections between childhood trauma, exposure to violence, and later mental health and substance use challenges (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2020).

For many individuals, addiction becomes a coping mechanism—an attempt to numb memories, quiet intrusive thoughts, or regulate emotional pain.

Understanding this connection is essential for compassionate and effective care.

Trauma Within Systems

Trauma is not only an individual experience—it is also shaped by social systems.

Across Canada, research shows that children involved in child welfare systems often have extensive histories of trauma, including exposure to abuse, neglect, family violence, and parental substance use (Esposito et al., 2017).

Yet systems designed to support vulnerable populations are not always trauma-informed.
Without understanding trauma, behaviours may be misinterpreted as:

*Defiance

*Manipulation

*Resistance

*Non-compliance

In reality, many of these behaviours are survival responses.

Trauma-informed approaches emphasize safety, empowerment, trust, and collaboration rather than punishment or judgment (Poole & Greaves, 2012). When systems adopt trauma-informed frameworks, individuals are more likely to engage in services and experience meaningful healing.

Personal Reflection

Trauma is something many people carry quietly.

Through both my professional work and my own life experiences, I have seen how trauma can shape people in ways the outside world rarely understands.

I have seen individuals labelled as “difficult,” “attention-seeking,” or “non-compliant,” when what they were really experiencing was unprocessed pain.

I have also seen how trauma can intertwine with addiction and mental health struggles, creating cycles that are incredibly difficult to break—especially when systems respond with judgment instead of compassion.

Healing does not happen because someone is told to “move on” or “be stronger.”

Healing happens when people feel safe enough to finally be understood.

Recovery is not about pretending trauma never happened. It is about learning how to process it, make meaning of it, and reclaim parts of ourselves that trauma tried to silence.

And sometimes the most powerful part of healing is realizing this:

You are not broken.
You adapted to survive.

Moving Forward: A Call for Compassion and Change

Trauma shapes people—but it does not have to define them.

When we begin to understand trauma, something shifts.
Shame begins to loosen its grip.
Judgment begins to soften.
And compassion begins to take its place.

But healing cannot happen through awareness alone.
Our communities, mental health systems, addiction services, and child welfare systems must move toward trauma-informed care—approaches that recognize the profound impact of trauma and respond with empathy rather than punishment.

Because when we stop asking “What is wrong with this person?” and start asking “What happened to this person?” we open the door to healing.

That shift has the power to transform lives.

It is also the foundation of the work I hope to continue through Rise Above Your Norm—creating spaces where people are seen, understood, and supported as they rebuild their lives.

Because healing is possible.
And no one should have to do it alone.

BigmommaJ
#MentalHealth #traumainformed #Healing

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized diagnoses in mental health.
Not only by society—but within the very systems meant to offer care.

For individuals with BPD, especially those with histories in child welfare or addiction services, help-seeking is often met with subtle rejection: long waitlists, referrals that go nowhere, or the unspoken message—we don’t work with that.

This is not accidental. It is systemic.

BPD as a Trauma Response, Not a Character Defect

From a trauma-informed and child welfare perspective, BPD makes sense.

Canadian research consistently links BPD to:

*Chronic childhood maltreatment

*Attachment disruption

*Foster care placement

*Instability

*Emotional invalidation and neglect (Gilbert et al., 2020; Public Health Agency of Canada, 2018)

What clinicians sometimes label as manipulation is often:

*Fear-based survival behavior

*Attachment-seeking shaped by inconsistency

*A nervous system trained to expect abandonment

In child welfare, we understand that children adapt to unsafe environments to survive.
BPD represents those same adaptations—carried into adulthood.

Child Welfare: Where the Story Often Begins

Many adults diagnosed with BPD have histories that include:

*Multiple placements

*Separation from primary caregivers

*Exposure to domestic violence

Early involvement with protection systems
(Fallon et al., 2015)

Yet child welfare systems are rarely equipped to provide long-term relational repair. Instead, children learn early that:

*Care is conditional

*Attachment is temporary

*Needs can be dangerous

When those children become adults, the mental health system often responds with the same instability—repeating the trauma under a clinical name.

Addiction and BPD: A Shared Nervous System Story

In Canadian addiction services, BPD is frequently misinterpreted as non-compliance or treatment failure.

But the overlap is well-documented:

*High rates of substance use among individuals with BPD

*Substances used to regulate overwhelming emotional states

*Addiction functioning as a form of self-soothing when no relational safety exists
(Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction [CCSA], 2022)

From a clinical lens, addiction and BPD are not separate issues—they are co-occurring trauma responses.

Treating one while ignoring the other leads to relapse, disengagement, and revolving-door care.

Why Professionals Avoid This Work

As a professional, it’s important to name the truth honestly.

Many clinicians avoid BPD because:

*Graduate programs offer minimal training in personality disorders

*There is limited access to supervision and consultation

*Systems prioritize brief, symptom-focused interventions

*Risk management is placed on individual clinicians, not teams

In under-resourced Canadian systems, clinicians are often expected to manage:

*Self-harm risk

*Suicidality

*Crisis presentations without adequate backup or support (CAMH, 2021).

Avoidance becomes a form of self-protection—not clinical best practice.

The Systemic Failure, Not a Clinical One

Here’s what often goes unsaid:

BPD has one of the most positive long-term prognoses when treated appropriately.

Evidence-based approaches such as:

*Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

*Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT)

*Trauma-informed, attachment-focused care

Show significant reductions in:

*Self-harm

*Hospitalization

*Substance use

*Emotional dysregulation
(Linehan et al., 2015; CAMH, 2021)

The issue is not that people with BPD can’t heal.

It’s that our systems are not designed to stay.

The Cost of Professional Avoidance

When professionals opt out of BPD care:

*Clients internalize shame

*Trauma is reinforced

*Trust in helping systems erodes

*People disengage until crisis forces re-entry

In child welfare and addiction work, we know that repeated system rejection increases risk, not resilience.

Avoidance is not neutral.
It causes harm.

A Trauma-Informed Professional Reframe

From a clinical and ethical standpoint, working with BPD requires:

*Advanced training, not fear

*Supervision, not isolation

*Team-based responsibility, not individual liability

*Curiosity, not judgment

People with BPD are not “too much.”

They are often the most impacted by systems that failed to protect them early—and continue to struggle to hold them now.

Final Reflection

If we truly believe in trauma-informed care, we must ask harder questions:

*Why do child welfare systems end at adulthood?

*Why are addiction services separated from attachment trauma?

*Why do clinicians carry risk alone in underfunded systems?

And most importantly:

*Why do we continue to abandon people whose core wound is abandonment?

Healing happens when care is consistent, informed, and relational.

And when systems are willing to stay, people with BPD do more than survive.

They rise above what they were taught to expect.

BigmommaJ
#BPD #Awareness

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

I was just diagnosed with autism and ADHD at the ages of four and seven respectively. I had a 504 in place, but no one ever treated me as though I mattered, and they were simply following the law. Most teachers and every single betrayed me in one way or some other. The worst was an ablest teacher in that high school who taught AP World History. I knew this was no different than anyone else, but she completely went overboard with me having to wipe my nose with her around, teaching me apparently outside the classroom. She did not understand my allergies. She infantilized me by sitting me apart from everyone else, and people would stare at me. I felt watched under constant microscope of smothering and suffocating surveillance and freebie answers I wanted instead to find on my own. Yay, 9th Grade was over and so was that textationship for 2-week love-bombing on my side to help a vulnerable/covert narcissist feel more confident in her self-image. I was uplifting, not controlling as she was real control freak. I was publicly humiliated, had my own stuff licked, my own privacy invaded twice (stolen number, using mutual friends’ numbers), and the worst of the worst, being betrayed by the last psycho boyfriend #6 and two women children filing restraining orders over burner accounts I used to get rid of them as in telling them to F*** off. First was a reassurance junkie like I always been especially she bullied, harassed, ostracized, abused, deceived, betrayed, and traumatized me after the first boyfriend incident two years ago. Second was an egregious crybaby, who cannot handle anything but a narcissistic supply of histrionic tendencies for attention in court. I do not say this to cause any scandalous defamation, but to defeat a narcissist, you have five ways to do so. You can black rock them where you really go AWOL and have no contact whatsoever. If the situation requires you to be present with them, be a gray rock. Look as unassuming and as boring as possible. One-wording, but not yessing everything they say, but giving a nod, shrug, or “K” that does not give them at all, if not very little ammunition. It drove the last call crazy before she flipped the scenario on me and reversed the entire story projecting her insecurities. She embellish the truth to the judge and made up lies. What we and the judge did was give in to her so she could just shut up. Then, he took out all her accusations on the worst kind of mutual restraining order in my life. Also you can give a narcissist way too much supply. Give them so much power that they have no idea what to do with that. Overwhelmed their ego to where it falls and breaks them into a narcissistic mortification or collapse. Additionally, mirror their actions. A narcissist may act like they love themselves, but they have no internal validation, which is why they rely on that narcissistic supply. if it is possible, the one thing they despise most is themselves, which is why they require others to understand them and feed into their nasty behaviors to enable them and justify just how they act when they know deep down it could be wrong. Help them base their own demons by showing them exactly how they treat you. Ostracize them from your life and cut them out like they did to you in the discard phase. Here, however, this is the most dangerous technique on dealing with a narcissist. Use it very sparingly and only a last resort. The big whole smear campaign and proxy wars. If you must, you can turn everything they have said against them and twist their words exactly as they do to yours to gaslight, victim-blame, or neglect your needs. Never allow them to be that close to you. Know at any second you can sue them right after you broke down their walls and infiltrated them so much they are in infatuated with you and they will not fight for themselves. Make them just love-bomb you so much that they do not care if you go to court and will not retaliate. That was the last strategy for how I deal with narcissists but I’ve never gone to court over them before. I do allow myself to black rock them most of the time and have them learn to embarrass themselves on their own because they are extremely good at humiliating who they are and destroying their identity when faced with new adversity in the highest form of a mess they created not me or you or anyone but themselves. Let them dig their own social grave. You can’t fix stupid, but you can let it break someone. Not that that’s nice, but if you need to step away and walk away forever for your life, that is your own prerogative and volition. If you feel you are in a abusive toxic relationship, do not hold back. Never let them devalue you and then worship you as if a goddess or God. They love to suck up to their authorities and create institutional pity. They can abuse their own power and influence to control you, but I never let them. They never knew behind the scenes. I was always the one controlling them to make them head to the extremes and destroy themselves so much that they will never come back from it. I never lost my power, but for those who have, take it back! Show they how strong we all are as one unified front on the Mighty! If anyone needs any pointers, I am always available to talk. I, too, am gifted at art as well. If you would like to be taught in any way or form I would do it completely cost free out of the kindness of my heart, you can ask me for that as well. I hope my blog gives you bliss. Below is a strategy on how to manage anger I learned from 988 and it has worked miracles in my life just like the WRAP (wellness, recovery, action plan). Make your own strategies and learn to help me help you through my insights. Take this from a dark empath that fights behind the scenes to try and protect those I care about, which is now everyone in this community who deserves to be treated with humanity and not cruelty. I hope my message finds you well! Enjoy!

Mental health struggles do not exist in isolation. They are shaped by experiences, environments, systems, and relationships—many of which were never safe to begin with.

Yet stigma continues to frame mental illness as a personal failure rather than a human response to adversity.

Research consistently shows that stigma is one of the greatest barriers to seeking mental health support, often leading to delayed treatment, increased distress, and poorer outcomes (Mental Health Commission of Canada [MHCC], 2022). Stigma is not just uncomfortable—it is harmful.

For individuals impacted by trauma, child welfare involvement, addiction, and recovery, stigma often becomes an additional wound layered onto an already heavy history.

Where Stigma Begins

Mental health stigma thrives where understanding ends.

It shows up when behaviors are judged without context, when trauma responses are labeled as defiance or manipulation, and when people are reduced to diagnoses instead of seen as whole human beings shaped by what they have lived through. Language and labeling play a critical role in reinforcing stigma, particularly within systems meant to provide care (Herman, 2015).

Stigma asks, “What’s wrong with you?”

Trauma-informed care asks, “What happened to you?”

This shift in perspective is foundational to trauma-informed practice and is supported by evidence demonstrating improved engagement and outcomes when individuals feel understood rather than blamed (SAMHSA, 2014).

Child Welfare, Trauma, and the Mental Health Continuum

Children involved in child welfare systems are disproportionately exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including abuse, neglect, domestic violence, parental substance use, and chronic instability (Public Health Agency of Canada [PHAC], 2023).

These experiences do not disappear with time—they embed themselves in the nervous system, shaping attachment patterns, emotional regulation, and coping strategies across the lifespan.

The landmark ACEs study established a strong, graded relationship between childhood adversity and later mental health challenges, substance use disorders, and chronic physical illness (Felitti et al., 1998).

Despite this evidence, individuals with child welfare histories are often stigmatized for the very adaptations that helped them survive early adversity.

What we label as “problem behavior” is frequently a trauma response.

What we punish is often pain.

Addiction: A Stigmatized Trauma Response

Addiction remains one of the most stigmatized mental health conditions, particularly when it intersects with trauma histories.

Research shows that a significant proportion of individuals with substance use disorders have experienced childhood trauma, neglect, or violence (SAMHSA, 2014).

Substance use is often an attempt to regulate overwhelming emotions, numb intrusive memories, or create a sense of control when safety was never guaranteed.

Neurobiological research supports that trauma alters stress and reward pathways in the brain, increasing vulnerability to substance use as a coping mechanism (Herman, 2015).

Yet stigma continues to frame addiction as moral failure rather than a health condition, leading to:

*Delayed help-seeking

*Increased shame and secrecy

*Higher relapse rates

*Reduced access to compassionate care

Addiction is not a lack of willpower. It is a nervous system searching for relief.

Personal Reflection: What I’ve Seen—and Lived

Working within child welfare, alongside my own healing and recovery journey, has taught me that people are rarely broken—they are burdened.

I have seen children labeled “difficult” when they were terrified.

Parents judged as “unmotivated” when they were navigating unresolved trauma.

Individuals dismissed as “addicts” instead of recognized as survivors.

I have also lived the impact of stigma—the way it follows you into systems, appointments, and even your own internal dialogue.

Research confirms that internalized stigma significantly worsens mental health outcomes and reduces self-efficacy in recovery (MHCC, 2022).

Recovery, for me, was not just about changing behaviors. It was about unlearning shame. About recognizing that survival does not require justification. And about understanding that healing is not linear—a reality well documented in trauma and recovery literature (Herman, 2015).

Recovery Is Not an Endpoint—It Is a Practice

Recovery is often portrayed as a finish line. In reality, it is an ongoing process of self-regulation, self-awareness, and reconnection.

Evidence-based models of recovery emphasize that healing occurs over time and requires safety, trust, and empowerment (SAMHSA, 2014).

Recovery can mean:

*Learning safer coping strategies

*Rebuilding trust with self and others

*Naming trauma without being defined by it

*Choosing growth even when it’s uncomfortable

Stigma tells people they should be “over it by now.”
Recovery science tells us otherwise.

From Awareness to Action

Public awareness of mental health has increased, yet stigma continues to shape who is believed, who receives care, and who is left behind.

The Mental Health Commission of Canada (2022) emphasizes that meaningful change requires systemic, trauma-informed approaches rather than crisis-driven or punitive responses.

Action looks like:

*Trauma-informed child welfare and mental health systems

*Integrated treatment for mental health and addiction

*Language that reduces shame and increases engagement

*Early intervention rather than crisis-only care

Mental health care must do more than manage symptoms—it must restore dignity.

The Vision: Rise Above Your Norm

Rise Above Your Norm is not just a blog—it is the foundation of a future private practice rooted in lived experience, clinical understanding, and evidence-based, trauma-informed care.

This practice is being built to serve individuals who have been historically misunderstood or marginalized within systems:

*Those with complex trauma histories

*Individuals impacted by child welfare involvement

*People navigating addiction and recovery

*Families working to break generational cycles

*Thos affected by sexual abuse, exploitation and domestic violence

Research consistently shows that trauma-informed, person-centered care improves engagement, outcomes, and long-term recovery (SAMHSA, 2014; MHCC, 2022).

What This Practice Will Stand For

This space will be:

*Trauma-informed, grounded in ACEs and neurobiology research

*Non-judgmental, rejecting shame-based models

*Integrated, addressing mental health and addiction together

*Grounded in dignity, recognizing lived experience as expertise.

Healing should not require proving your pain. It should meet you where you are.

A Call to the Community

*If you are a professional: examine your language and assumptions.

*If you are a policymaker: invest in prevention, not punishment.

*If you are a loved one: replace judgment with curiosity.

*If you are struggling: your healing is valid—even when it is nonlinear.

Reducing stigma is a shared responsibility—and one that directly impacts lives (MHCC, 2022).

A Final Word

Mental health struggles are not evidence of weakness. They are evidence of endurance.

The work ahead is not easy—but it is necessary.

This is how we rise:

*By choosing understanding over stigma.

*By building systems that reflect real lives.

*By believing people are worthy of care long before they reach rock bottom.

This is the work of Rise Above Your Norm.
And this is only the beginning

BigmommaJ
#Stigma #MentalHealth #Addiction #change

Surviving mental health is rarely discussed honestly.

Much of the public conversation focuses on thriving, healing, or overcoming. While those are meaningful goals, they often overlook a critical reality: for many individuals living with mental illness, complex trauma, or co-occurring substance use, survival itself is the work.

Survival is not passive.
It is an active, ongoing process of regulation, endurance, and adaptation—often happening quietly, without recognition.

What “Surviving” Really Means From a Trauma-Informed Lens

Clinically, survival reflects the nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect.

When a person has experienced chronic stress, interpersonal trauma, neglect, abuse, or repeated loss, the brain and body may remain in a heightened state of alert long after the danger has passed. This prolonged activation of the stress response system impacts emotional regulation, decision-making, and physical health (McEwen, 2007).

Canadian trauma frameworks recognize that many mental health symptoms are rooted in unresolved trauma and adverse experiences, particularly when exposure occurs early or repeatedly (Public Health Agency of Canada [PHAC], 2018).

From a trauma-informed perspective, survival can look like:

*Emotional dysregulation or rapid mood shifts

*Hypervigilance, anxiety, or chronic fear

*Emotional numbing or dissociation

*Difficulty trusting others or forming stable attachments

*Avoidance, shutdown, or withdrawal

*Impulsive or self-soothing behaviors, including substance use

These responses are often misunderstood or pathologized. Clinically, they are adaptive survival strategies developed in environments where safety was inconsistent or absent (Herman, 1992; CAMH, 2021).

Neuroscience research consistently shows that trauma alters how the brain processes threat, emotion, and memory. Structural and functional changes in the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex affect fear response, emotional regulation, and impulse control (Teicher et al., 2016; van der Kolk, 2014).

Canadian clinical guidance emphasizes that these neurobiological changes are not character flaws—they are learned survival responses shaped by experience (CAMH, 2021).

This is why telling someone to “just calm down” or “move on” is not only dismissive, but clinically inaccurate.

The brain learned survival

before it learned safety.

Survival Is a Valid Clinical Phase—Not a Failure

Recovery from mental illness and trauma is non-linear. Both Canadian and international trauma models identify stabilization and safety as the first phase of recovery—often long before insight, growth, or symptom reduction is possible (Herman, 1992; SAMHSA, 2014; PHAC, 2018).

At times, survival may look like:

*Attending therapy while still struggling daily

*Using medication while navigating shame or ambivalence

*Harm reduction rather than immediate abstinence

*Pulling back socially to prevent emotional overload

*Staying alive through periods of suicidal ideation

From a trauma-informed clinical lens, survival is not regression—it is groundwork.

Without safety and nervous system regulation, deeper healing cannot occur.

The Hidden Grief of Surviving

Survival often carries grief that remains unspoken.

Grief for:

*The life that feels harder than it should

*Relationships lost to symptoms or misunderstanding

*Opportunities missed due to illness or instability

*The version of self that existed before the trauma

Canadian mental health literature increasingly acknowledges the role of grief and loss in long-term mental health conditions, particularly for individuals with trauma histories or chronic diagnoses (Mental Health Commission of Canada [MHCC], 2019).

Healing does not require gratitude for trauma.
It requires validation, compassion, and time.

Moving From Survival Toward Stability

Trauma-informed care does not rush people out of survival mode. Instead, it prioritizes:

*Establishing internal and external safety

*Strengthening emotional regulation skills

*Supporting healthy attachment and boundaries

*Reducing shame through psychoeducation

*Honoring autonomy, choice, and pacing

Polyvagal theory further supports Canadian trauma models by emphasizing how healing occurs through repeated experiences of safety and connection, allowing the nervous system to move out of chronic defense (Porges, 2011).

For some, this process is slow. For others, it unfolds in cycles. Both are clinically expected—and valid.

Personal Reflection: Survival Is the Part No One Applauds

There were seasons of my life where survival was all I had to offer.

Not growth.
Not stability.
Not strength the way the world defines it.

Just survival.

As someone who has worked in child welfare and mental health, I understand the clinical language—the diagnoses, the treatment plans, the frameworks. But I also know what it feels like to live inside a nervous system that never learned safety first.

I know what it means to function on the outside while unraveling internally.
To be judged for coping mechanisms that once kept me alive.

To be told I was “going backwards” when, in reality, I was still here.

Survival doesn’t announce itself.
It doesn’t look inspiring.
But it is brave.

And if you are surviving your mental health right now—quietly, imperfectly, painfully—please hear this:

You are not failing.
You are not weak.
You are doing the hardest work there is.
Staying.

BigmommaJ
#mentalhealthmatters #Surviving