Trauma is Trauma

A Mental Health Talk with Kevin Smith

Hey! So this week, I’d like you to find 35 minutes to yourself — free of distractions — and watch this powerful, potentially lifesaving video by filmmaker Kevin Smith about trauma, codependency, healing, and self-acceptance.

“One morning in January 2023, CLERKS director Kevin Smith awoke in terror, convinced he was losing his mind. The next day, he checked into Arizona's Sierra Tucson Treatment Center, where he spent a month in intensive therapy and learned how childhood sexual abuse and body-shaming over his weight by his 4th-grade teacher led him to create and hide behind a larger-than-life public persona he calls "the other guy."

Now Kevin has stopped smoking weed, cut back on social media, is slowing down his work schedule after churning out movies, comic books, TV shows and podcasts, and learning about the healing power of self-acceptance. Most importantly, he is determined to get the word out to others who could benefit from hearing his story and the tools he's acquired to help find peace.” — PEOPLE

As I listened to Kevin pour his heart out, I heard many things that sounded all too familiar. I realized that I, too, have trauma that I haven’t dealt with — trauma that has ultimately shaped who I am today.

Anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, codependency — I carry them with me everywhere I go, and I use humor to try and make people see past my body because, like Kevin, there’s a level of disgust and self-loathing there that I’ve never been able to overcome.

I sincerely hope this video helps you contextualize things you might be thinking and feeling. I've been numb for... almost 15 years now. I've tried to fill the hole inside my heart with everything — food, weed, material possessions, internet clout, the validation of others — and the hole just got bigger and bigger until it swallowed me whole.

Now, I’m trying to climb out of that hole and find happiness — peace. I hope you find it too.

Adam