Relationships

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

There was a time in my marriage when the stress felt so constant that I found myself spiraling into a very dark thought: Maybe I made a mistake.

I didn’t want a divorce. I didn’t want to break up our family or lose the life we had built. But I was so overwhelmed by the friction between my wife, Rivka, and me that I felt like I was suffocating. Every interaction felt like a landmine. I was tired of the tension, tired of the misunderstandings, and honestly, I was tired of feeling like I was failing at the most important relationship in my life.

When you’re in that headspace, you don’t just feel unhappy; you feel trapped. You start to question your past decisions and wonder if you simply picked the "wrong" person.

If you are there right now, I want to share the shift in perspective that helped me find my way back-not as a rabbi or a therapist, but as a husband who was once ready to give up.

Understanding the "Hijacked" Husband - In my own struggle, I discovered a piece of science that gave me an immense amount of relief. I learned about the "Limbic Hijack."

I realized that when Rivka and I were in those high-stress moments, my brain wasn't operating from a place of love or logic. My amygdala-the part of the brain that handles survival-was taking over. Because I felt so much pressure and stress, my body was reacting as if I were in physical danger. In that state, I couldn’t see Rivka as my best friend; I could only see her as the source of my stress.

Learning this changed everything. It meant that I hadn’t necessarily made a mistake in marrying her; I was just having a very human, biological reaction to sustained relational stress. We weren't "incompatible"-we were just two people with overwhelmed nervous systems who didn't know how to find safety with each other.

Why I Needed More Than an Hour: For a long time, I thought that if we couldn't "fix it" in a weekly therapy session, it couldn't be fixed. But I found that for a brain as stressed as mine was, 50 minutes wasn't enough time to actually calm down. Just as I’d start to feel a little bit of hope, the session would end, and we’d go right back into the stress of our daily lives.

I realized I needed a bigger "container." I needed a way to stay in the conversation long enough for my nervous system to realize that Rivka wasn't my enemy. For us, that meant an intensive format-taking the time to step away from everything else and just focus on co-regulation. It allowed the "mistake" narrative to fade away and be replaced by the truth: we were just two people who needed to learn how to feel safe again.

A Message of Hope for the Stressed Spouse: If you are sitting there today feeling like the stress is too much and wondering if you made a wrong turn years ago, I want you to know that your feelings are valid. You aren't a bad person for feeling overwhelmed or for questioning things.

But before you decide that the "mistake" is permanent, I invite you to consider that you might just be exhausted. Not from feeling tired though. You might be a person whose nervous system is trying to protect you from the very person you want to be closest to.

Only you can decide your path. But in my life with Rivka, I found that when we addressed the stress as a biological hurdle rather than a character flaw, the "mistake" started to look a lot more like a path toward deeper healing.

You aren't alone in the stress. And sometimes, the person you think was a mistake is actually the person who can help you heal the most.

#MentalHealth #Relationships #Marriage #Stress #Anxiety #livedexperience #CheckInWithMe #NervousSystemHealth #selfcare #Tr auma #Healing #Family #communicatio n #selfcare

Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin, MS, LCPC, is a licensed clinical professional counselor and the founder of The Marriage Restoration Project. After navigating his own journey from relational stress to deep connection, he dedicated his career to helping couples move from the "brink" to healing. He specializes in 2-day Marriage Intensives that use neurobiological insights and Imago Therapy to create lasting safety and restoration. You can learn more about his work and download his free 60 Second Plan to a Happy Marriage at www.themarriagerestorationproject.com

Diagnosed with enough and done with the labels Ive been analyzed https://within.My resilience is not gained by ignoring the facts or https://pretending.It is from facing what others prefer to destroy and deny. I have sat by and watched, him, destroy relationships that I wanted to foster.Calls, I pushed him to https://make.Every attempt was ignored and I decided to stop trying all together. I learned my place, from her, them and https://him.To blatantly ignore and pretend the last two years didnt take place, is not my deal or my issue to sort https://out.Time will catch up, it will and people who were playing, with my boundaries, always pay in the end.
My lowest point, was celebrated and I owe nothing to those who chose to partake, no matter who they are.

People who have a tendency towards perfectionism may tell you that being a perfectionist drives their success. That striving for flawlessness makes them the best at what they do. And sometimes, it actually does pay off, at least in some ways. But overall, the relentless pursuit of perfection can often feel more like a heavy and unfulfilling emotional tax rather than rewarding.

This is when perfectionism crosses over from striving for excellence and instead becomes a source of stress and a feeling of inadequacy and failure.

Aiming for Excellence, Running From Fear

When perfectionism begins to backfire, your drive towards excellence may start to feel like you're running from fear (and it can often be both at the same time, however the running from fear begins to hold more power than the drive towards excellence). This type of perfectionism is often a powerful, rigid shield against things such as feeling inadequate, feeling like a failure, making a mistake, or the shame of falling short of what can be lofty expectations. In this cycle, your focus may unconsciously turn to eliminating the threat of shame, failure, and inadequacy, rather than trying to reach reasonable goals with reasonable expectations.

In a more fearful state, people can set impossible expectations for themselves, hoping to prove their worth (to themselves and others), only to find that the expectations aren't reached. This can lead to self-blame and strip away confidence (or make it hard to build confidence that was already low). When in a place where the rigidity of perfectionism is consuming you, it can be a set up so either you achieve perfection, or anything less is inadequate and not good enough. There is little to no window of flexibility for mistakes or "good enough" to exist. This can have a suffocating impact on mental health, often resulting in intense stress and pressure to do things the "right" way, which can also strongly impact relationships.

Avoidance If Perfection Is Too Daunting

When you’re stuck in this fear-driven cycle, it can be tempting to become inflexible, sometimes without even realizing it. The pressure and anxiety may continue to grow as you're striving for perfection.

This often shows up in unexpected ways. For some, it results in procrastination. After all, if you don’t start something, you can’t mess it up or fail. For others, the pressure to be perfect may show up as overworking and compulsively checking (and re-checking) every detail, which may feel productive in the moment, but over time can result in burnout. It also may show up as inflexibility with others around you when the way you do things may differ from theirs. These are all different forms of avoidance, aimed at keeping uncomfortable, unwanted feelings of doubt and inadequacy at bay as long as possible.

It may feel within yourself like you're always working hard to keep things together, and that any mistake or failure feels like you'll lose control and everything is going to fall apart. It can make anything less than perfection feel scary and catastrophic. Therefore, avoidance can be a common response to fear of failure.

The Harsh Inner Critic

One of the most destructive responses that comes with this kind of pressure is debilitating self-criticism. When you inevitably are unable to meet an arbitrary, impossibly high standard, the immediate response can often be a harsh and unrelenting internal attack. It’s a vicious cycle. Your high standards may generate fear and anxiety, and when that fear is validated (that you're not good enough), you may respond with judgment and self-blame. This only intensifies the anxiety and the pressure to do better next time—making it even harder to succeed the next time and more likely you'll end up back in the self-judgment.

What's even more complex is that, every so often, some people may reach the high mark they have set. However, it then becomes about the anxiety of sustaining that bar, and any movement away from it becomes the new failure. It can become exhausting and defeating constantly trying to meet or maintain a standard that almost sets up failure from the start. It's these setups that really need to be understood on a deeper level when working through perfectionistic tendencies.

Shame, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Moving Forward...

There are many reasons perfectionism can show up in people's lives. But when you're going through it, it can feel like there is no room for compassion, no room for mistakes (obviously, within reason) to be okay, and no room for good enough. There can be so much shame, guilt, anxiety, fear, tension and other feelings that uphold perfectionism—and it's often when these feelings go unacknowledged that perfectionism can take a stronger, even paralyzing hold. This can eventually turn into panic attacks, phobias, and more.

It is possible to move forward from perfectionism. Therapy is a place to be able to slow down and become more in touch with the deeper anxieties and fears that lead to the urge to be perfect, and learn how to feel safe without continuing these patterns.