What is trauma? The author of "The Body Keeps the Score" explains [video](youtube.com)
youtube.com
What is trauma? The author of "The Body Keeps the Score" explains [video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJfmfkDQb14
125 comments
Trauma -> an experience that threatens your way of being / safety above and beyond what you’re capable of handling at the time.
It exists on a spectrum. So there’s large and small traumas and something that is traumatic for one person might not be for another.
To the spectrum point: seeing your friend killed in war can be traumatic. But also, if you don’t have the emotional tools to handle rejection, then that can also be an event that overloads your emotional system. (Not making value judgements, both no good)
PTSD -> post traumatic stress disorder. A group of symptoms that are believed to be originated from a traumatic event and have certain characteristics.
An event can be traumatic but not lead to ptsd.
Playing a little bit of devils advocate here. I wouldn’t say I’m in the crowd of “it’s trauma if you think it is”. However it can be useful to look at the processes of how our emotional processing system handles events, even if the systems someone is facing don’t reach the level of full on debilitating PTSD.
It exists on a spectrum. So there’s large and small traumas and something that is traumatic for one person might not be for another.
To the spectrum point: seeing your friend killed in war can be traumatic. But also, if you don’t have the emotional tools to handle rejection, then that can also be an event that overloads your emotional system. (Not making value judgements, both no good)
PTSD -> post traumatic stress disorder. A group of symptoms that are believed to be originated from a traumatic event and have certain characteristics.
An event can be traumatic but not lead to ptsd.
Playing a little bit of devils advocate here. I wouldn’t say I’m in the crowd of “it’s trauma if you think it is”. However it can be useful to look at the processes of how our emotional processing system handles events, even if the systems someone is facing don’t reach the level of full on debilitating PTSD.
PTSD is also lumped in with shell shock, a jarring of the braincase after explosions (usually during a war) with physical damage. It's unthinkable to me they lump it in with mental problems.
George Carlin skit. https://youtu.be/hSp8IyaKCs0
George Carlin skit. https://youtu.be/hSp8IyaKCs0
'Shell shock' is an obsolete term originating in the First World War (1914-1918) and referring indeterminately to either PTSD secondary to war trauma, or the chronic traumatic encephalopathy to which you refer. The term's imprecision is why it was retired.
I recall the bit well, and being struck as much by its insistence on direct and meaningful language as by the fierce sort of kindness he made evident in its ending. Carlin was and is a treasure. But if I get treated for PTSD when what I have is CTE or vice versa, I probably won't do so well. In that sense, the more specific modern terms do have value, jargon though they also be.
I recall the bit well, and being struck as much by its insistence on direct and meaningful language as by the fierce sort of kindness he made evident in its ending. Carlin was and is a treasure. But if I get treated for PTSD when what I have is CTE or vice versa, I probably won't do so well. In that sense, the more specific modern terms do have value, jargon though they also be.
It is not obsolete anymore, or will be renamed blast shock. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/blast-sho...
I don't know that 'renamed' is the word. Borrowing from the older term to name a newly recognized phenomenon, I'd rather say. On the other hand, they could call it Tuesday for all I care, if doing so helps people get effective treatment for it.
Also interesting in this connection is a meta-analysis [1] finding significant effect for propranolol, a beta blocker, in mitigating PTSD symptoms via a protocol of administration followed by trauma memory reactivation (colloquially, 'triggering'). The postulated mechanism is the drug's interference with epinephrine and norepinephrine binding sites, the effect being to reduce the experience of fear and anger associated with revisiting such memories.
Certainly this strikes me as entirely plausible, given my own experience of such memories. It does seem likely to further complicate the 'it's trauma if you think it is' model, considering the implicit organic correlate of trauma required for there to exist a mechanism of the demonstrated effect; the action of beta blockers is well understood.
[1] https://europepmc.org/article/nbk/nbk562942#rc1254.ref3 (free text)
Certainly this strikes me as entirely plausible, given my own experience of such memories. It does seem likely to further complicate the 'it's trauma if you think it is' model, considering the implicit organic correlate of trauma required for there to exist a mechanism of the demonstrated effect; the action of beta blockers is well understood.
[1] https://europepmc.org/article/nbk/nbk562942#rc1254.ref3 (free text)
Huh, is it true that "its trauma if you think it is" is a current and respected, if not widespread theory? I'm no neurobiochemiologist but it always felt to me like the difference between painful memory and trauma was the involuntary aspect of reaction to trauma. I can think of a painful memory in the middle of a presentation and not appear troubled, i could not say the same for a trauma. My laymans experience with ptsd is that most experiences are outwardly visible (i don't know anyone diagnosed with severe so please excuse my ignorance)
The model has been much under discussion here for about a day, and I think that discussion represents its status and the concerns with that status fairly well.
> My laymans experience with ptsd is that most experiences are outwardly visible
I would suggest the thought that you may be overindexing on what you've been able to notice. People don't always like to show what hurts.
> My laymans experience with ptsd is that most experiences are outwardly visible
I would suggest the thought that you may be overindexing on what you've been able to notice. People don't always like to show what hurts.
There being an organic correlate for attention, for memory formation, for emotions and so on – it's likely that the beta-blockers makes certain intents easier to override others, rather than the causality being only one way.
This comment appears to depend on a model unfamiliar to me, in that I have no idea what you mean by 'intents' or the reference to causality here. Would you mind elaborating? I may not be alone in failing as yet to have taken your point.
I didn't watch this video, but am familiar with "The Body Keeps the Score", and want to contribute supporting evidence (that I don't recall being discussed in the book).
I've taken and taught voice for theatre, following what's called the 'Natural Voice' method. (Look for a book called "Freeing the Natural Voice", by Kristin Linklater, though other practitioners have augmented that since.) To summarize: bodies have natural resonating chambers, that act like the sound-box of a guitar or violin; tension in the body inhibits sound vibrations; release the tension.
It's a completely physical process: exercises are about making sounds and feeling their vibrations in the body, relax, rinse repeat. It's occasionally odd, but not 'woo' in the least. Very pragmatic, and not at all psychological. Nevertheless, people have incredible emotional reactions while doing it. Linklater's theory is that we develop habitual tensions in response to things that hurt us (physically or emotionally), and that releasing tension releases emotions connected with the original incitement. (You can call that trauma, if you want, though I don't think Linklater ever uses that word. I never did when I was teaching, though maybe with "kids these days" I would.)
In fact, those responses are kind of non-psychological, in that they're not like a flashback, or anything like that. People don't necessarily (although sometimes they do) have any knowledge or memory of the inciting events, but their bodies do. It's a fascinating process, which I think gets at these ideas from (as it were) the other way around.
I've taken and taught voice for theatre, following what's called the 'Natural Voice' method. (Look for a book called "Freeing the Natural Voice", by Kristin Linklater, though other practitioners have augmented that since.) To summarize: bodies have natural resonating chambers, that act like the sound-box of a guitar or violin; tension in the body inhibits sound vibrations; release the tension.
It's a completely physical process: exercises are about making sounds and feeling their vibrations in the body, relax, rinse repeat. It's occasionally odd, but not 'woo' in the least. Very pragmatic, and not at all psychological. Nevertheless, people have incredible emotional reactions while doing it. Linklater's theory is that we develop habitual tensions in response to things that hurt us (physically or emotionally), and that releasing tension releases emotions connected with the original incitement. (You can call that trauma, if you want, though I don't think Linklater ever uses that word. I never did when I was teaching, though maybe with "kids these days" I would.)
In fact, those responses are kind of non-psychological, in that they're not like a flashback, or anything like that. People don't necessarily (although sometimes they do) have any knowledge or memory of the inciting events, but their bodies do. It's a fascinating process, which I think gets at these ideas from (as it were) the other way around.
Here’s a good article on the subject
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trauma-bessel-van-de...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trauma-bessel-van-de...
Question: how is trauma treated in this model? Basically, the concept is that there are hypersensitive neural pathways and your goal is to de-sensitize them? Is that right?
Is there any parallel to the behaviouralist concept of behaviour extinction? Because that is really hard to achieve. Sounds similar to Exposure therapy too
I don’t really want to talk about why but I’d love to know more about it
Is there any parallel to the behaviouralist concept of behaviour extinction? Because that is really hard to achieve. Sounds similar to Exposure therapy too
I don’t really want to talk about why but I’d love to know more about it
My mental model is replacing unwanted habits with preferred new habits.
An example might be replacing negative thoughts with something more positive. Terribly over simplifying, but in my case I decided to fake being happy and positive, wrote some scripts for myself, and just kept repeating these new scripts. Imagine my surprise some years later when I actually sincerely meant what I was saying.
--
In the case of pain and trauma, there's now a large and growing body of science about pain. In my case, my worst pain was a stabbing sensation in my back. It wasn't related to any of my physical injuries. Looking back, I now liken it to phantom limb pain.
I enrolled in Swedish's Pain Services, what I nicknamed "Pain College".
Lots of lectures and self-study about the best available science. Like "all pain is real" and the new paradigm of "pain is protection". So the trick is to identify that trigger and neutralize it. (My words. YMMV.)
I also learned a bunch of new skills. Tai chi and qi gong; multiple specific forms of breathing, relaxation, and mediation; ideas on how to reorganize my life (and schedule) to better manage pain; and a bunch of other stuff.
The most crazy thing I learned was "graded motor imagery". The intent was to reconnect my brain's pain processing with the actual source. So I was shown picture puzzles where I had to identify left vs right shoulder. During this activity, my experience of the stabbing pain (in my right shoulder) greatly diminished. Something that not even pain killers could do.
Mind blown.
--
So. Any way. Addressing one's trauma shouldn't cause more trauma. I've experienced that, multiple times.
"The Body Keeps the Score" is like a primer for addressing some kinds of trauma. It's main contribution is popularizing the new pain and trauma sciences. There's been so much progress since it was first published, no one book could cover it all.
--
To address one's pain (trauma), one has to find the right kind of professional, who has the answers you need. For me, that was Swedish's Pain Services.
There's similar clinics nationwide. It might be worth getting a consultation. The team that helped me gave me additional resources (referrals) for my problems that were outside of their purview.
--
https://www.swedish.org/services/pain-services
An example might be replacing negative thoughts with something more positive. Terribly over simplifying, but in my case I decided to fake being happy and positive, wrote some scripts for myself, and just kept repeating these new scripts. Imagine my surprise some years later when I actually sincerely meant what I was saying.
--
In the case of pain and trauma, there's now a large and growing body of science about pain. In my case, my worst pain was a stabbing sensation in my back. It wasn't related to any of my physical injuries. Looking back, I now liken it to phantom limb pain.
I enrolled in Swedish's Pain Services, what I nicknamed "Pain College".
Lots of lectures and self-study about the best available science. Like "all pain is real" and the new paradigm of "pain is protection". So the trick is to identify that trigger and neutralize it. (My words. YMMV.)
I also learned a bunch of new skills. Tai chi and qi gong; multiple specific forms of breathing, relaxation, and mediation; ideas on how to reorganize my life (and schedule) to better manage pain; and a bunch of other stuff.
The most crazy thing I learned was "graded motor imagery". The intent was to reconnect my brain's pain processing with the actual source. So I was shown picture puzzles where I had to identify left vs right shoulder. During this activity, my experience of the stabbing pain (in my right shoulder) greatly diminished. Something that not even pain killers could do.
Mind blown.
--
So. Any way. Addressing one's trauma shouldn't cause more trauma. I've experienced that, multiple times.
"The Body Keeps the Score" is like a primer for addressing some kinds of trauma. It's main contribution is popularizing the new pain and trauma sciences. There's been so much progress since it was first published, no one book could cover it all.
--
To address one's pain (trauma), one has to find the right kind of professional, who has the answers you need. For me, that was Swedish's Pain Services.
There's similar clinics nationwide. It might be worth getting a consultation. The team that helped me gave me additional resources (referrals) for my problems that were outside of their purview.
--
https://www.swedish.org/services/pain-services
It's not entirely clear from a brief Google what behavior extinction is.
However, I don't really think this is particularly parallel let alone same as any sort of prescriptive process for reward/training which the brief search on Google suggested behavior extinction is about.
I'm not going to totally deny that there are any parallels between any behavior reinforcement mechanism m, but I'd sooner redirect to reading more about body keeps score before making the parallels to another concept (in this case)
However, I don't really think this is particularly parallel let alone same as any sort of prescriptive process for reward/training which the brief search on Google suggested behavior extinction is about.
I'm not going to totally deny that there are any parallels between any behavior reinforcement mechanism m, but I'd sooner redirect to reading more about body keeps score before making the parallels to another concept (in this case)
Like most popular science/psychology books, this one has attracted a lot of criticism for making exaggerated claims and for peddling reductive concepts to appeal to a wider audience.
There’s no denying that massive stress and trauma can have long lasting effects. However, the pop culture definition of trauma and stress have become very diluted. I spent some time working with college students recently and it was remarkable to hear how many of them described common life events as “trauma”: Break ups, failing a class, or even getting yelled at by someone. Something weird happens when they’ve been primed to recognize everything uncomfortable as “trauma” and they’ve been instilled with the belief that it will forever become embedded in their person as baggage.
There’s no denying that massive stress and trauma can have long lasting effects. However, the pop culture definition of trauma and stress have become very diluted. I spent some time working with college students recently and it was remarkable to hear how many of them described common life events as “trauma”: Break ups, failing a class, or even getting yelled at by someone. Something weird happens when they’ve been primed to recognize everything uncomfortable as “trauma” and they’ve been instilled with the belief that it will forever become embedded in their person as baggage.
As someone who grew up in the 80s, this type of minimization of personal suffering was the norm. “You don’t know how good you have it” despite real mental and physical health struggles. You either made it to adulthood, cynical and damaged, transformed your suffering into growth on your own, or ended up in some marginalized place like a mental ward. Sometimes a mix of all of the above. I think we can do better.
I remember the first time I saw a therapist she thought I may have PTSD. I thought she was nuts and never went back. It took me another decade to realize that my mother was deeply mentally ill and physically and emotionally abusive, it’s just that no one ever talked about or recognized these things as abnormal. My dad was a high functioning alcoholic. I’ve talked to other adults who went through much less than I did and left home and lived on the streets rather than deal with their family situation. But talk to my parents, everything was “fine” and “pretty normal”. I had a “good upbringing” because we were not poor or in trouble with the law.
I also had some early sexual encounters that people would jump to classify as child abuse, but they were, from my standpoint, overall positive experiences.
I don’t know where to draw the line on what constitutes trauma for someone else. It’s highly subjective. There are always things in life we must just bear. But it’s good to recognize when things are not working and to make what changes we can, and to recognize when things have long lasting impacts, and when they don’t.
I remember the first time I saw a therapist she thought I may have PTSD. I thought she was nuts and never went back. It took me another decade to realize that my mother was deeply mentally ill and physically and emotionally abusive, it’s just that no one ever talked about or recognized these things as abnormal. My dad was a high functioning alcoholic. I’ve talked to other adults who went through much less than I did and left home and lived on the streets rather than deal with their family situation. But talk to my parents, everything was “fine” and “pretty normal”. I had a “good upbringing” because we were not poor or in trouble with the law.
I also had some early sexual encounters that people would jump to classify as child abuse, but they were, from my standpoint, overall positive experiences.
I don’t know where to draw the line on what constitutes trauma for someone else. It’s highly subjective. There are always things in life we must just bear. But it’s good to recognize when things are not working and to make what changes we can, and to recognize when things have long lasting impacts, and when they don’t.
> As someone who grew up in the 80s, this type of minimization of personal suffering was the norm.
It's a tricky problem. Some people need help. But there are a lot of people for whom "holding it in" and adopting general-purpose stoic principles are enough. For the latter group, the new openness about mental illness and trauma has been a disaster.
Like a lot of things, you can think of this issue in terms of "type 1 and type 2 errors". Ideally we try to minimize both but it seems that we often end up minimizing one and totally ignoring the other.
It's a tricky problem. Some people need help. But there are a lot of people for whom "holding it in" and adopting general-purpose stoic principles are enough. For the latter group, the new openness about mental illness and trauma has been a disaster.
Like a lot of things, you can think of this issue in terms of "type 1 and type 2 errors". Ideally we try to minimize both but it seems that we often end up minimizing one and totally ignoring the other.
> Some people need help. But there are a lot of people for whom "holding it in" and adopting general-purpose stoic principles are enough.
I think this is too dichotomous. I think it's common for people to just process things and move on over time, which isn't exactly "holding it in". People grow up, mature, learn to get over things, and move on.
But there is something weird happening with a subset of people who approach these now-mainstream psychological concepts not as a way of overcoming, but as a way of moving their traumas and issues front-and-center in their personality. This was one of the more concerning things I saw in the subset of college students I was talking about: People would get diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or ADHD and go on to make it an outward fixture of their personality. With some students I couldn't make it more than 5 minutes into a conversation without them injecting their diagnoses into a mundane conversation about something like a computer science topic. For this subset, it was less about getting over things and more about building a persona. I suspect many of them will grow out of it as they age, but it was very worrying to see it so normalized.
I think this is too dichotomous. I think it's common for people to just process things and move on over time, which isn't exactly "holding it in". People grow up, mature, learn to get over things, and move on.
But there is something weird happening with a subset of people who approach these now-mainstream psychological concepts not as a way of overcoming, but as a way of moving their traumas and issues front-and-center in their personality. This was one of the more concerning things I saw in the subset of college students I was talking about: People would get diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or ADHD and go on to make it an outward fixture of their personality. With some students I couldn't make it more than 5 minutes into a conversation without them injecting their diagnoses into a mundane conversation about something like a computer science topic. For this subset, it was less about getting over things and more about building a persona. I suspect many of them will grow out of it as they age, but it was very worrying to see it so normalized.
I believe some people need to talk about trauma (ie a cop that gets shot on), but some people wrap it up in their head and place it on a mental shelf.
Such people are not helped by well-meant “victim support” saying over and over that what they went through wasn’t easy and was certainly “not nothing”.
Probably depends on de magnitude of the trauma but cutoffs are likely highly personal.
Such people are not helped by well-meant “victim support” saying over and over that what they went through wasn’t easy and was certainly “not nothing”.
Probably depends on de magnitude of the trauma but cutoffs are likely highly personal.
I think it's because "getting over" is a really long process for someone with severe trauma. And it's often better to inform people around you about the problems you are having and the source of them. Like I have problems with particular task not because I do not respect you or I don't care about it but I am still fighting with me demons. Sure you can not care about that but it's still better that you know about it.
> But there are a lot of people for whom "holding it in" and adopting general-purpose stoic principles are enough.
I don't believe this is true - in my experience, the people who fall into this group are more likely to not be able to regulate their emotions properly, usually leading to them perpetuating the abuse. One can't "hold it in" forever - eventually it comes out, usually explosively.
I don't believe this is true - in my experience, the people who fall into this group are more likely to not be able to regulate their emotions properly, usually leading to them perpetuating the abuse. One can't "hold it in" forever - eventually it comes out, usually explosively.
If someone can in fact regulate their emotions properly, would you even know they’ve been traumatised at some point?
Like NPD, the only way is a proper comparison of reality to facts.
The difference between NPD and normal is, are the reactions and mental view based on reality, or a delusion?
Is the person actually regulating their emotions correctly, or is their internal world view a delusion that they are regulating their emotions correctly?
Are their traumatic events actually as presented and occurred - they were raped, or had someone blown up in front of them - or actually didn’t happen that way, never happened at all, or something else happened and they refuse to remember or see it?
Needless to say, separating delusion from fact can be extremely difficult in the best of circumstances and is prone to biases in the evaluator as well.
I think everyone has experience with someone in an authority position who was ‘not angry’ and took something out on them though, and refused to ever acknowledge the actual reality afterwards. Or was that person.
The difference between NPD and normal is, are the reactions and mental view based on reality, or a delusion?
Is the person actually regulating their emotions correctly, or is their internal world view a delusion that they are regulating their emotions correctly?
Are their traumatic events actually as presented and occurred - they were raped, or had someone blown up in front of them - or actually didn’t happen that way, never happened at all, or something else happened and they refuse to remember or see it?
Needless to say, separating delusion from fact can be extremely difficult in the best of circumstances and is prone to biases in the evaluator as well.
I think everyone has experience with someone in an authority position who was ‘not angry’ and took something out on them though, and refused to ever acknowledge the actual reality afterwards. Or was that person.
> For the latter group, the new openness about mental illness and trauma has been a disaster.
Why so?
Why so?
There is a sort of consensus that there is an inherent good to talking about, actively processing, analyzing trauma.
The feeling is there must be truth there - something to learn, and explanations for personal tendencies based on it.
For some people who have been able to work through their own trauma, the processing may have been wordless, barely conceptual, not at all based in logical processing or traditional talk therapy.
Maybe language-izing all that shit just brings the memories up for these people. For them the healing is not about learning or understanding. So so so much pain just can’t be understood. It’s not meant to be. We want to control it by knowing it, but that’s often not how it works. Maybe there is some hubris and cultishness in thinking it can or must be.
The feeling is there must be truth there - something to learn, and explanations for personal tendencies based on it.
For some people who have been able to work through their own trauma, the processing may have been wordless, barely conceptual, not at all based in logical processing or traditional talk therapy.
Maybe language-izing all that shit just brings the memories up for these people. For them the healing is not about learning or understanding. So so so much pain just can’t be understood. It’s not meant to be. We want to control it by knowing it, but that’s often not how it works. Maybe there is some hubris and cultishness in thinking it can or must be.
> For some people who have been able to work through their own trauma, the processing may have been wordless, barely conceptual, not at all based in logical processing or traditional talk therapy.
That's a good point, and definitely at odds with what OP wrote here:
> But there are a lot of people for whom "holding it in" and adopting general-purpose stoic principles are enough.
In every case I've ever witnessed, "holding it in" meant that someone tried to refrain from showing any signs of distress (spoken or body language) when they are in fact feeling a very negative emotion.
Outside of special cases-- say, someone who might get physically ill if they don't stop crying-- "holding it in" is so close to denial that we might as well call it functionally equivalent.
Alternatively, wordlessly sitting with one's emotions is actively encouraged in any healthy setting I've ever been a part of. Often it is the thing that people try their hardest to avoid doing, using a host of techniques like misdirection, rationalization, even problem solving. And in the cases I've seen, that person isn't trying to hold anything in. You can clearly see the secondary signs of them feeling pain.
Moreover, I'd be concerned about someone who cannot even put a few descriptors to what their pain felt like after the fact. It's a useful thing to do even for a simple check in over time. I have a hard time believing that doing so would actually hinder someone's ability to confront whatever it is they're dealing with.
Finally, just to rankly speculate a bit more-- one who has stoicism as a target would almost certainly advance toward their goal by being open to fully feeling and expressing the deeper pains they struggle with. IIRC, identifying, feeling, accepting, and expressing certain pains oftenmake the impact of that pain decrease over time (if slowly).
So, ironically, the non-stoic person slowly progresses closer to "indifference to pain" than the stoic who is (according to OP) holding it in.
That's a good point, and definitely at odds with what OP wrote here:
> But there are a lot of people for whom "holding it in" and adopting general-purpose stoic principles are enough.
In every case I've ever witnessed, "holding it in" meant that someone tried to refrain from showing any signs of distress (spoken or body language) when they are in fact feeling a very negative emotion.
Outside of special cases-- say, someone who might get physically ill if they don't stop crying-- "holding it in" is so close to denial that we might as well call it functionally equivalent.
Alternatively, wordlessly sitting with one's emotions is actively encouraged in any healthy setting I've ever been a part of. Often it is the thing that people try their hardest to avoid doing, using a host of techniques like misdirection, rationalization, even problem solving. And in the cases I've seen, that person isn't trying to hold anything in. You can clearly see the secondary signs of them feeling pain.
Moreover, I'd be concerned about someone who cannot even put a few descriptors to what their pain felt like after the fact. It's a useful thing to do even for a simple check in over time. I have a hard time believing that doing so would actually hinder someone's ability to confront whatever it is they're dealing with.
Finally, just to rankly speculate a bit more-- one who has stoicism as a target would almost certainly advance toward their goal by being open to fully feeling and expressing the deeper pains they struggle with. IIRC, identifying, feeling, accepting, and expressing certain pains oftenmake the impact of that pain decrease over time (if slowly).
So, ironically, the non-stoic person slowly progresses closer to "indifference to pain" than the stoic who is (according to OP) holding it in.
It might be because it throws into question whether they really had to adapt the way they did
> I don’t know where to draw the line on what constitutes trauma for someone else. It’s highly subjective.
Yes, and unless things have changed, this is a key component of psychiatric diagnosis: Are you able to manage your life traumas in a healthy constructive way or not? If not, you may want to learn new techniques, use medication if there’s a biological component, etc.
For a concrete example, the military’s research showed that some but not all combat veterans develop PTSD, and it seems like some are more able to manage the enormous stress. (Note that nobody goes back to their pre-combat state, all have to “deal” with the experience one way or another.)
Yes, and unless things have changed, this is a key component of psychiatric diagnosis: Are you able to manage your life traumas in a healthy constructive way or not? If not, you may want to learn new techniques, use medication if there’s a biological component, etc.
For a concrete example, the military’s research showed that some but not all combat veterans develop PTSD, and it seems like some are more able to manage the enormous stress. (Note that nobody goes back to their pre-combat state, all have to “deal” with the experience one way or another.)
Did they take the explosive damage to the braincase versus shot someone they didn't mean to? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/blast-sho...
> As someone who grew up in the 80s, this type of minimization of personal suffering was the norm. “You don’t know how good you have it” despite real mental and physical health struggles.
That's not what I was suggesting. My point was that many people do have real mental health struggles (I mentioned nothing about physical health at all), but that the trend is to elevate minor struggles into much larger issues.
The book associated with the linked video has drawn heavy criticism among psychologists for this reason. It's an inherent tradeoff in making a book appeal to a mass market and targeting the best-seller list. You don't get there by writing about how extreme trauma is rare and extreme. You get there by trying to normalize the concept and stretch it to apply to as many readers (and therefore, customers) as possible.
> I remember the first time I saw a therapist she thought I may have PTSD. I thought she was nuts and never went back. It took me another decade to realize that ...
I'm sorry for your experience, but I didn't mean to downplay your particular mental health struggles as nothing. I don't think anyone would argue that what you're describing is not deserving of therapy or treatment, and I certainly didn't want to imply that.
What I was trying to describe is a new phenomenon where some people read books and recast their own minor stresses on to the level of what you'd described. For example, some students described merely having lived through COVID or the Trump presidency as severely traumatic experiences for them. At one point a group of them that it was inconceivable that society just expected us to continue operating during a pandemic, which to them was the most traumatic thing they could imagine.
Another famous podcast-circuit psychology influencer (Dr. Gabor Mate) pushes a theory that being born is a traumatic experience that incurs some level of PTSD.
Once the threshold for "trauma" has been lowered to the point that literally everyone who has ever existed qualifies, it starts to lose meaning.
That's not what I was suggesting. My point was that many people do have real mental health struggles (I mentioned nothing about physical health at all), but that the trend is to elevate minor struggles into much larger issues.
The book associated with the linked video has drawn heavy criticism among psychologists for this reason. It's an inherent tradeoff in making a book appeal to a mass market and targeting the best-seller list. You don't get there by writing about how extreme trauma is rare and extreme. You get there by trying to normalize the concept and stretch it to apply to as many readers (and therefore, customers) as possible.
> I remember the first time I saw a therapist she thought I may have PTSD. I thought she was nuts and never went back. It took me another decade to realize that ...
I'm sorry for your experience, but I didn't mean to downplay your particular mental health struggles as nothing. I don't think anyone would argue that what you're describing is not deserving of therapy or treatment, and I certainly didn't want to imply that.
What I was trying to describe is a new phenomenon where some people read books and recast their own minor stresses on to the level of what you'd described. For example, some students described merely having lived through COVID or the Trump presidency as severely traumatic experiences for them. At one point a group of them that it was inconceivable that society just expected us to continue operating during a pandemic, which to them was the most traumatic thing they could imagine.
Another famous podcast-circuit psychology influencer (Dr. Gabor Mate) pushes a theory that being born is a traumatic experience that incurs some level of PTSD.
Once the threshold for "trauma" has been lowered to the point that literally everyone who has ever existed qualifies, it starts to lose meaning.
The weird thing is, what if sometimes they aren’t wrong?
It would explain some things.
If the tools work, why not use them? If they don’t, maybe use something else.
It would explain some things.
If the tools work, why not use them? If they don’t, maybe use something else.
I personally would argue that the issue happens to coincide with a language shift. While 'trauma' was indeed adopted to mean 'I stubbed my toe yesterday' ( and not without help from media, which popularized it ), similar to word 'mid', I am sure a new word exists that encompasses absolutely brutal treshold for PTSD.
Damn young people. They ruined English!
Damn young people. They ruined English!
I’ve never seen trauma mean ‘I stubbed my toe yesterday’, and I suspect that is the core part of the issue here if you think people are saying it is.
It might help to think of a trauma reaction more similarly to an allergic reaction.
Anaphylaxis is a real issue, and a real problem. Some people will get it from a single bee sting, or a peanut.
Other people can get stung hundreds of times or work in a peanut factory, and have no issues.
Until they do.
We don’t know why this is the case, but pretending it isn’t happening, or denying anyone an epi pen doesn’t help either - near as we can tell.
The difference is, it’s psychological not physical, so unlike anaphylaxis we can’t see it happening clearly and there isn’t a clear type of medicine we can give someone.
It’s common if someone has had bad issues, but has been told to ‘suck it up, it’s not happening’ to get resentful if someone else’s issues start actually being taken seriously.
For instance, if someone was neglected as a child, and then someone else starts pointing out that they want attention - ‘shut up and sit down’.
The issue here is that some of these reactions are adaptive, some are maladaptive, some can be addressed, and some can’t - and we frankly can’t seem to agree on which ones are which.
Which has probably always been the case. But now we get to navel gaze about it all in public. Yay.
It might help to think of a trauma reaction more similarly to an allergic reaction.
Anaphylaxis is a real issue, and a real problem. Some people will get it from a single bee sting, or a peanut.
Other people can get stung hundreds of times or work in a peanut factory, and have no issues.
Until they do.
We don’t know why this is the case, but pretending it isn’t happening, or denying anyone an epi pen doesn’t help either - near as we can tell.
The difference is, it’s psychological not physical, so unlike anaphylaxis we can’t see it happening clearly and there isn’t a clear type of medicine we can give someone.
It’s common if someone has had bad issues, but has been told to ‘suck it up, it’s not happening’ to get resentful if someone else’s issues start actually being taken seriously.
For instance, if someone was neglected as a child, and then someone else starts pointing out that they want attention - ‘shut up and sit down’.
The issue here is that some of these reactions are adaptive, some are maladaptive, some can be addressed, and some can’t - and we frankly can’t seem to agree on which ones are which.
Which has probably always been the case. But now we get to navel gaze about it all in public. Yay.
normal and abnormal are adjectives that attempt to quantify an ill defined distance from an ill defined center of what society considers acceptable.
They do shift a lot with geography and time.
They do shift a lot with geography and time.
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In my experience it's kinda the opposite. Realizing that stuff was trauma helped move on from it. Until I had a framework for why a fairly-normal-sounding experience was affecting my personality so much, I just felt like I was going crazy. It helped a lot to realize that ruminating on it was how trauma works: its purpose is to figure out how to avoid a recurrence at all costs, including warping one's behavior in aberrant ways.
Instinctual, evolutionary response.
It makes all sorts of sense.
It makes all sorts of sense.
I agree that words have meanings. Words like trauma and abuse shouldn’t be used casually or we won't have the language to describe horrific things. However-- having experienced some early childhood difficulties, I have had to make an intentional effort not to downgrade people's experiences and fall into a no true Scotsman trap. I try to remind myself that things like trauma and abuse are experiences that filter through people's minds. It's trauma if they think it is. I do also think though that some people have never experienced the same types of trauma as others so they may not really understand it. If and when they do, they may choose to rank the experiences differently.
Edit: updated my ramble
Edit: updated my ramble
> It's trauma if they think it is.
This is actually the point I was trying to make.
This is one of the problems with books that push trauma as a catch-all term to cover any stressful situation: An unintended consequence is that some people will read this and retroactively elevate stressful situations to the level of lasting traumas under this new framework.
For a concrete example: Dr. Gabor Mate is one of the more famous podcast influencer personalities. One of the concepts he pushes on podcasts is the idea that trauma begins at birth. He tells stories about working with clients where he's unable to uncover any trauma that explains their current depression, anxiety, or other conditions. Eventually he walks so far back in their past that he gets to childbirth, which he defines as a traumatic experience. The conclusion, therefore, is that they have a form of PTSD from being born.
This is an example of where I take issue with the everything-is-trauma narrative: If everyone, by definition, experiences deep lasting trauma by merely existing, then the term starts to become meaningless.
I suspect what's really happening in a lot of these cases is that some psychologists have been trained to treat severe trauma, but they have fewer frameworks for dealing with more common life stresses and mild depression. Now that therapy has become so normalized that it's being pushed as a solution to everything, these psychologists are trying to apply their trauma toolset to everything. By recasting everything as trauma, they can apply the trauma playbook on it.
This is actually the point I was trying to make.
This is one of the problems with books that push trauma as a catch-all term to cover any stressful situation: An unintended consequence is that some people will read this and retroactively elevate stressful situations to the level of lasting traumas under this new framework.
For a concrete example: Dr. Gabor Mate is one of the more famous podcast influencer personalities. One of the concepts he pushes on podcasts is the idea that trauma begins at birth. He tells stories about working with clients where he's unable to uncover any trauma that explains their current depression, anxiety, or other conditions. Eventually he walks so far back in their past that he gets to childbirth, which he defines as a traumatic experience. The conclusion, therefore, is that they have a form of PTSD from being born.
This is an example of where I take issue with the everything-is-trauma narrative: If everyone, by definition, experiences deep lasting trauma by merely existing, then the term starts to become meaningless.
I suspect what's really happening in a lot of these cases is that some psychologists have been trained to treat severe trauma, but they have fewer frameworks for dealing with more common life stresses and mild depression. Now that therapy has become so normalized that it's being pushed as a solution to everything, these psychologists are trying to apply their trauma toolset to everything. By recasting everything as trauma, they can apply the trauma playbook on it.
> It's trauma if they think it is.
And if they think it's trauma today and change their mind tomorrow - which one is it?
There is no problem for people to hold their own pesonal views and opinions, it becomes a problem when those are imposed on others.
And if they think it's trauma today and change their mind tomorrow - which one is it?
There is no problem for people to hold their own pesonal views and opinions, it becomes a problem when those are imposed on others.
This is a (the?) use case for room-temperature superconductors: cheap fMRI scanners. It's trauma if the brain scans match trauma responses.
Even in a dead fish? https://teenspecies.github.io/pdfs/NeuralCorrelates.pdf
Dying does sound traumatic.
/s
/s
> It's trauma if they think it is and it impacts them as trauma.
This sentence gained a clause before I hit 'reply', and I understand why because it addresses the criticism I intended to make, but I'm still not at all sure I agree with you here. Even the edit implies the assumption that no one is responsible for how they choose to respond to the events of their lives, and that is plausible but requires substantiation not evident here.
In particular, I do not think it is necessary for anyone to personally experience 'horrific things' to understand that some things are worse than others, and be glad that what they're dealing with isn't worse - which probably sounds cruel to some, but is in fact quite helpful; maintaining a sense of perspective around the mishaps that attend every human life can in itself go a long way toward responding to them in a way that's well calibrated to their actual severity.
In the meantime, not treating 'trauma' as suitable to describe every unfortunate happenstance - a college breakup! Really... - also avoids vitiating the concept, which strikes me as a worthwhile kindness to those who really have been through hell - or those who haven't yet, and will find it easier to come out the other side for there still being social space to accommodate the existence of those who have to recover from, or just find a way to live with, long experience of the genuinely atrocious.
This sentence gained a clause before I hit 'reply', and I understand why because it addresses the criticism I intended to make, but I'm still not at all sure I agree with you here. Even the edit implies the assumption that no one is responsible for how they choose to respond to the events of their lives, and that is plausible but requires substantiation not evident here.
In particular, I do not think it is necessary for anyone to personally experience 'horrific things' to understand that some things are worse than others, and be glad that what they're dealing with isn't worse - which probably sounds cruel to some, but is in fact quite helpful; maintaining a sense of perspective around the mishaps that attend every human life can in itself go a long way toward responding to them in a way that's well calibrated to their actual severity.
In the meantime, not treating 'trauma' as suitable to describe every unfortunate happenstance - a college breakup! Really... - also avoids vitiating the concept, which strikes me as a worthwhile kindness to those who really have been through hell - or those who haven't yet, and will find it easier to come out the other side for there still being social space to accommodate the existence of those who have to recover from, or just find a way to live with, long experience of the genuinely atrocious.
Yeah, I've waffled on that because I don't know how to say it how I mean it. I'll try to generalize it but I'm sure I won't get it right. If something has you afraid, it doesnt matter if I think your fear is justified. Me disregarding your emotion doesn't make you lose the fear. I don't disagree with the idea that we are responsible for how we respond to events in our lives. I tell my kids the same thing- nobody can control you unless you let them. You have the power to control how you respond to things. Sometimes it's the only power you have.
I don't have to agree that a college breakup is trauma, but it isn't helpful in most cases to point that out when someone thinks it is. Instead, maybe I can just listen the way I would if it were something I thought was more important. Maybe they'll get through it the same way I did given enough time.
Edit:
>In particular, I do not think it is necessary for anyone to personally experience 'horrific things' to understand that some things are worse than others,
Unfortunately I do disagree with you here. I've met too many people that seem incapable of proper empathy or otherwise lack the ability to learn from the mistakes of others. I could agree with swapping anyone with everyone.
Edit:
>In particular, I do not think it is necessary for anyone to personally experience 'horrific things' to understand that some things are worse than others,
Unfortunately I do disagree with you here. I've met too many people that seem incapable of proper empathy or otherwise lack the ability to learn from the mistakes of others. I could agree with swapping anyone with everyone.
> If something has you afraid, it doesnt matter if I think your fear is justified.
No, but it does matter if I do. That matters a great deal. If I assume any fear I feel is always justified and act on it accordingly, or if I never even frame the question of whether it might be excessive, then I implicitly concede to that fear the privilege of controlling my actions, invariably to my own detriment and that of others. We have a word for such people, and there's a reason no one likes to be called by it. No one should.
I'm not well acquainted with formal therapy for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, but I believe a central tenet of the cognitive-behavioral school is that emotions are input, not output. No one likes to be told they need therapy, either, but in this case I wonder if we wouldn't do the world a service by abstracting this idea from that context to make it a commonplace.
Edit to your edit: that seems easy to solve! I suspect for most I myself could achieve it in no more than an hour or two, given how much I had to learn I shouldn't talk about for fear of making people cry.
I know there's those out there who speak more freely, because I've read some of their stories. That's hard for me to do, because of how they resonate. I am not especially interested in the pleas of those without the burden of similar experiences that they can't even handle dispassionate-unto-clinical accounts of the same.
No, but it does matter if I do. That matters a great deal. If I assume any fear I feel is always justified and act on it accordingly, or if I never even frame the question of whether it might be excessive, then I implicitly concede to that fear the privilege of controlling my actions, invariably to my own detriment and that of others. We have a word for such people, and there's a reason no one likes to be called by it. No one should.
I'm not well acquainted with formal therapy for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, but I believe a central tenet of the cognitive-behavioral school is that emotions are input, not output. No one likes to be told they need therapy, either, but in this case I wonder if we wouldn't do the world a service by abstracting this idea from that context to make it a commonplace.
Edit to your edit: that seems easy to solve! I suspect for most I myself could achieve it in no more than an hour or two, given how much I had to learn I shouldn't talk about for fear of making people cry.
I know there's those out there who speak more freely, because I've read some of their stories. That's hard for me to do, because of how they resonate. I am not especially interested in the pleas of those without the burden of similar experiences that they can't even handle dispassionate-unto-clinical accounts of the same.
Good discussion, thanks!
> Even the edit implies the assumption that no one is responsible for how they choose to respond to the events of their lives, and that is plausible but requires substantiation not evident here.
I feel you're missing the point entirely with this criticism: trauma is often the result of people being unable to choose how to respond to events of their lives, to such a degree where that sense of un-agency becomes a recurring chorus of subsequent events.
I frankly, fully agree with the grand-comment here: It's trauma if you think it is. This experience is entirely, 100% subjective and isolated to the inner world of every given person. Trauma responses have gradations and degrees of severity certainly, but I don't believe there's a utility in ranking them by severity. Everyone's trauma is equally important and should be addressed with the care and understanding it deserves, end of. "Perspective" is important, sure, unless you're using it to discount the experiences of others in service of your own convenience. That sucks.
> In the meantime, not treating 'trauma' as suitable to describe every unfortunate happenstance - a college breakup! Really...
Exactly like this. This sucks. I can think of dozens of reasons that the end of any relationship, college-based or otherwise, could be traumatic. People do awful things to one another, sometimes on purpose and other times as a result of their own unprocessed trauma.
People are hard, relationships are complicated, and anyone suffering from this stuff does not need to "handle it better," they need to be taught how to process it and do their best to move forward, which is going to be as diverse of a set of experiences as the trauma itself. Moving on is different for different people. Some people never manage it at all. An unfortunate minority do the unthinkable to escape it. Ranking and judging "who's got it worse" solves absolutely none of the actual problems.
I feel you're missing the point entirely with this criticism: trauma is often the result of people being unable to choose how to respond to events of their lives, to such a degree where that sense of un-agency becomes a recurring chorus of subsequent events.
I frankly, fully agree with the grand-comment here: It's trauma if you think it is. This experience is entirely, 100% subjective and isolated to the inner world of every given person. Trauma responses have gradations and degrees of severity certainly, but I don't believe there's a utility in ranking them by severity. Everyone's trauma is equally important and should be addressed with the care and understanding it deserves, end of. "Perspective" is important, sure, unless you're using it to discount the experiences of others in service of your own convenience. That sucks.
> In the meantime, not treating 'trauma' as suitable to describe every unfortunate happenstance - a college breakup! Really...
Exactly like this. This sucks. I can think of dozens of reasons that the end of any relationship, college-based or otherwise, could be traumatic. People do awful things to one another, sometimes on purpose and other times as a result of their own unprocessed trauma.
People are hard, relationships are complicated, and anyone suffering from this stuff does not need to "handle it better," they need to be taught how to process it and do their best to move forward, which is going to be as diverse of a set of experiences as the trauma itself. Moving on is different for different people. Some people never manage it at all. An unfortunate minority do the unthinkable to escape it. Ranking and judging "who's got it worse" solves absolutely none of the actual problems.
> I frankly, fully agree with the grand-comment here: It's trauma if you think it is. This experience is entirely, 100% subjective and isolated to the inner world of every given person.
I keep seeing this, but then nobody actually ever updates based on this position. The position doesn't jive with the way people actually behave.
If "It's trauma if you think it is" holds, isn't the optimal solution to start trying to convince people it isn't trauma? No expensive therapy required, just convince them it isn't trauma and suddenly you have one fewer person experiencing trauma.
And it seems like the worst thing to do if you believe this position would be to have open discussions about trauma, because you would get a bunch of people re-examining their past experiences and becoming traumatized after the fact. It seems like this can only result in a net increase in people experiencing trauma, which basically nobody wants.
The way people behave is only consistent with trauma being a thing that exists independently of belief status.
I keep seeing this, but then nobody actually ever updates based on this position. The position doesn't jive with the way people actually behave.
If "It's trauma if you think it is" holds, isn't the optimal solution to start trying to convince people it isn't trauma? No expensive therapy required, just convince them it isn't trauma and suddenly you have one fewer person experiencing trauma.
And it seems like the worst thing to do if you believe this position would be to have open discussions about trauma, because you would get a bunch of people re-examining their past experiences and becoming traumatized after the fact. It seems like this can only result in a net increase in people experiencing trauma, which basically nobody wants.
The way people behave is only consistent with trauma being a thing that exists independently of belief status.
I believe that's what therapy is. Trying to convince someone that he is able to process his trauma and continue his life without this burden. And we just know that's not easy. It's a process that can take years. I think you could compare that somehow to trying to convince religious person that the god does not exists.
> Trying to convince someone that he is able to process his trauma and continue his life without this burden.
I believe it's to help them process the trauma, but if the above position holds, you don't need to do that. Convincing them they never had trauma is just as good. Minimization seems like a much better strategy if you actually believe that.
I believe it's to help them process the trauma, but if the above position holds, you don't need to do that. Convincing them they never had trauma is just as good. Minimization seems like a much better strategy if you actually believe that.
> The position doesn't jive with the way people actually behave.
I mean, that's the unfortunate thing. You have people who have suffered incredible awful events and who feel "invalidated" by the notion that someone who hasn't experienced nearly what they have also receives sympathy and care. It's... a difficult pattern to unwind that exists in a lot of people. My inner amateur sociologist wants to say it's an outgrowth of our increasingly atomized, individualist, and hyper-competitive world that people now, on an instinctual level, internalize that anything of worth including love, support, and care from their community is finite, limited and therefore, important to secure for oneself before the supply runs out; before the people who don't really need it take it all.
And I suppose if that's the case they aren't entirely incorrect, which sucks even more: community resources for people who need them are in short supply in basically every instance. But then that thought seems to carry over to the mere notion of empathy where people want to do this one-ups-man-ship with one another, that "what I dealt with is worse" stuff, or even worse IMO, where "I suffered this horrific shit and I'm fine, you can get over yours." Which frankly... I don't know, if you endured truly horrific things and came out functionally incapable of engaging with empathy with people who haven't, I'm really not certain you came out fine.
> If "It's trauma if you think it is" holds, isn't the optimal solution to start trying to convince people it isn't trauma? No expensive therapy required, just convince them it isn't trauma and suddenly you have one fewer person experiencing trauma.
I mean, sure. And then you can tell ADHD people to just pay attention, then we'll have less ADHD people. If mental illness struggles were this easy, we wouldn't have them.
I just don't see the upside to this. The worst case scenario is that someone receives care they may not strictly need for a brief period of time, until it becomes obvious they don't really need it. If that's our worst outcome, I'm frankly fine with it if it means that everyone gets heard how they need to be.
> The way people behave is only consistent with trauma being a thing that exists independently of belief status.
Well when I say it's isolated to their inner world, I mean it's extremely difficult to get objective, unbiased factual accounts of their trauma. There are things you can do: things like using various medical instruments to measure their physical reactions to stimuli; but that in itself involves the same exposure, if not even more directly than speaking about it. Mental illness is not a broken bone where a doctor may look at the bone and say "yes, that's broken:" It requires a level of subjectivity because the damaged part of the body is invisible and the damage itself is (usually) only observable by the individual whom is injured. It's a uniquely collaborative process between caregiver and patient where the patient must be a part of the diagnostic process.
I mean, that's the unfortunate thing. You have people who have suffered incredible awful events and who feel "invalidated" by the notion that someone who hasn't experienced nearly what they have also receives sympathy and care. It's... a difficult pattern to unwind that exists in a lot of people. My inner amateur sociologist wants to say it's an outgrowth of our increasingly atomized, individualist, and hyper-competitive world that people now, on an instinctual level, internalize that anything of worth including love, support, and care from their community is finite, limited and therefore, important to secure for oneself before the supply runs out; before the people who don't really need it take it all.
And I suppose if that's the case they aren't entirely incorrect, which sucks even more: community resources for people who need them are in short supply in basically every instance. But then that thought seems to carry over to the mere notion of empathy where people want to do this one-ups-man-ship with one another, that "what I dealt with is worse" stuff, or even worse IMO, where "I suffered this horrific shit and I'm fine, you can get over yours." Which frankly... I don't know, if you endured truly horrific things and came out functionally incapable of engaging with empathy with people who haven't, I'm really not certain you came out fine.
> If "It's trauma if you think it is" holds, isn't the optimal solution to start trying to convince people it isn't trauma? No expensive therapy required, just convince them it isn't trauma and suddenly you have one fewer person experiencing trauma.
I mean, sure. And then you can tell ADHD people to just pay attention, then we'll have less ADHD people. If mental illness struggles were this easy, we wouldn't have them.
I just don't see the upside to this. The worst case scenario is that someone receives care they may not strictly need for a brief period of time, until it becomes obvious they don't really need it. If that's our worst outcome, I'm frankly fine with it if it means that everyone gets heard how they need to be.
> The way people behave is only consistent with trauma being a thing that exists independently of belief status.
Well when I say it's isolated to their inner world, I mean it's extremely difficult to get objective, unbiased factual accounts of their trauma. There are things you can do: things like using various medical instruments to measure their physical reactions to stimuli; but that in itself involves the same exposure, if not even more directly than speaking about it. Mental illness is not a broken bone where a doctor may look at the bone and say "yes, that's broken:" It requires a level of subjectivity because the damaged part of the body is invisible and the damage itself is (usually) only observable by the individual whom is injured. It's a uniquely collaborative process between caregiver and patient where the patient must be a part of the diagnostic process.
> I mean, sure. And then you can tell ADHD people to just pay attention, then we'll have less ADHD people. If mental illness struggles were this easy, we wouldn't have them.
But that's my exact point. That doesn't work. People with ADHD have it regardless of their belief status.
> I just don't see the upside to this. The worst case scenario is that someone receives care they may not strictly need for a brief period of time
The worst case in the "it's trauma if you think it is" isn't unneeded care, it is that you convince someone that something is trauma that they previously didn't, and they become legitimately traumatized during the intervention. That is to say, that the intervention is capable of a net increase in suffering. That's a serious consequence and not something to brush off.
It feels like you aren't taking your own idea seriously here. I'm saying that if you're right, you need to be way more careful with the way you discuss trauma. Because the way you're doing it, if you're right, seems legitimately dangerous.
But that's my exact point. That doesn't work. People with ADHD have it regardless of their belief status.
> I just don't see the upside to this. The worst case scenario is that someone receives care they may not strictly need for a brief period of time
The worst case in the "it's trauma if you think it is" isn't unneeded care, it is that you convince someone that something is trauma that they previously didn't, and they become legitimately traumatized during the intervention. That is to say, that the intervention is capable of a net increase in suffering. That's a serious consequence and not something to brush off.
It feels like you aren't taking your own idea seriously here. I'm saying that if you're right, you need to be way more careful with the way you discuss trauma. Because the way you're doing it, if you're right, seems legitimately dangerous.
This remains a remarkable misrepresentation of the points I made yesterday. I had hoped for better, not least in that you might try speaking with rather than past and over me.
Let me make this part clear: You are not, as a result of any trauma at all, entitled to an answer. I love discussing things here and elsewhere, that's why I'm here afterall: but if at any point I feel a discussion is going nowhere I am fully within my ethical boundaries to check out and pursue others. I hold you with the same base respect I have for any person, but you have earned nothing beyond that. You are a faceless pile of (difficult to follow) words, nothing more.
That being said, if you want to try and "call me out," let's do it then.
It's fitting that you feel so misrepresented by what I presented as you, largely because it wasn't about you, but about others I've worked with over the years. I don't think you're nearly as far up that particular chain of thought (though it is interwoven through your writing on the subject) but you also seem aware that it's a bad thing, even if you continue doing it.
You denounce trauma olympics, then engage in them:
> You're not wrong that oppression olympics is bullshit, but since you went on to start doing it anyway under the color of performatively claiming not to, this is me telling you to knock it off.
Also somehow construing a denunciation of trauma olympics as somehow me performatively not doing them which is truly profound in it's nonsensicalness: how does one performatively engage in trauma olympics while not doing so? And when I asked that you followed with:
> Asserting everyone deserves the same prize is still handing out prizes. There is nothing to be prized in any of this.
Which is just... what? The "prize" at play here is a right to express your subjective experience?
And then accused me of saying you're psychotic by employing a very well used colloquial term for someone who has become incomprehensible in written communication. And I'm just... not going to engage with that.
Which is ultimately what led me to abandon the thread: I don't engage with people who purposely go out of their way to read every last thing someone says in the absolute worst way possible. I ignored it once with your first post that was in large part just straight hypocrisy, and you followed it, doubling down on it. Trauma olympics is bad, until you need to demonstrate your view on trauma is superior to mine, with, I'd add, zero knowledge about me at all and strictly is in competition with your own imagined adversary's trauma: and, secondly, going on to predict what I'm going to reply with and how shitty it will be, which is classic poisoning the well.
And like, as an aside, I consider myself a pretty well-read individual, and your posts are astonishingly cryptic, and require heavy effort to simply comprehend. I don't know why you do this, but that's also why I stopped talking, because decoding the layers upon layers of 5-dollar-words is just more work than I'm ready to perform, for free, as a part of my leisure time.
And if you'd like to spare yourself from writing another one, do feel secure in the knowledge that I will not be responding further.
That being said, if you want to try and "call me out," let's do it then.
It's fitting that you feel so misrepresented by what I presented as you, largely because it wasn't about you, but about others I've worked with over the years. I don't think you're nearly as far up that particular chain of thought (though it is interwoven through your writing on the subject) but you also seem aware that it's a bad thing, even if you continue doing it.
You denounce trauma olympics, then engage in them:
> You're not wrong that oppression olympics is bullshit, but since you went on to start doing it anyway under the color of performatively claiming not to, this is me telling you to knock it off.
Also somehow construing a denunciation of trauma olympics as somehow me performatively not doing them which is truly profound in it's nonsensicalness: how does one performatively engage in trauma olympics while not doing so? And when I asked that you followed with:
> Asserting everyone deserves the same prize is still handing out prizes. There is nothing to be prized in any of this.
Which is just... what? The "prize" at play here is a right to express your subjective experience?
And then accused me of saying you're psychotic by employing a very well used colloquial term for someone who has become incomprehensible in written communication. And I'm just... not going to engage with that.
Which is ultimately what led me to abandon the thread: I don't engage with people who purposely go out of their way to read every last thing someone says in the absolute worst way possible. I ignored it once with your first post that was in large part just straight hypocrisy, and you followed it, doubling down on it. Trauma olympics is bad, until you need to demonstrate your view on trauma is superior to mine, with, I'd add, zero knowledge about me at all and strictly is in competition with your own imagined adversary's trauma: and, secondly, going on to predict what I'm going to reply with and how shitty it will be, which is classic poisoning the well.
And like, as an aside, I consider myself a pretty well-read individual, and your posts are astonishingly cryptic, and require heavy effort to simply comprehend. I don't know why you do this, but that's also why I stopped talking, because decoding the layers upon layers of 5-dollar-words is just more work than I'm ready to perform, for free, as a part of my leisure time.
And if you'd like to spare yourself from writing another one, do feel secure in the knowledge that I will not be responding further.
I can't help how you consider yourself, or what colloquialisms we don't share. I also can't help that you don't get the privilege of choosing how you come across or how that's answered. No one does. But your behavior can influence it, and has.
If at any point you had attacked the argument rather than the person, we might have had a worthwhile discussion. Instead you opened with arrogant condescension, claiming I set out to minimize others' suffering in favor of my own, and explaining to me how I should do better than your own assumption, rather than attempting to engage with the argument I had actually made. When challenged on this you responded with considerably more of the same.
This has not changed to date, which is a pity. You could instead, for example, have introduced the concept of psychological resilience, with which I was not familiar under that name, and which is a lot of what I was striving to express. That would have made for a more useful discussion, but you weren't here for that.
I responded in accord with what such behavior deserves. If you didn't like that it turned into a fight, why did you do so much from the start to help that happen? If you didn't want to work to make your point, why enter the discussion at all? If you weren't here for a conversation, why did you start a conversation?
As I said, I can't help how you consider yourself. I can only tell you what you've shown me.
If at any point you had attacked the argument rather than the person, we might have had a worthwhile discussion. Instead you opened with arrogant condescension, claiming I set out to minimize others' suffering in favor of my own, and explaining to me how I should do better than your own assumption, rather than attempting to engage with the argument I had actually made. When challenged on this you responded with considerably more of the same.
This has not changed to date, which is a pity. You could instead, for example, have introduced the concept of psychological resilience, with which I was not familiar under that name, and which is a lot of what I was striving to express. That would have made for a more useful discussion, but you weren't here for that.
I responded in accord with what such behavior deserves. If you didn't like that it turned into a fight, why did you do so much from the start to help that happen? If you didn't want to work to make your point, why enter the discussion at all? If you weren't here for a conversation, why did you start a conversation?
As I said, I can't help how you consider yourself. I can only tell you what you've shown me.
The challenge here is that we don’t get to choose, rationally, who we are - except in some very, very limited circumstances, with a lot of expensive work. It requires re-training ourselves and our internal animal. The initial training was a combination of genetics and early childhood experiences which are going to be nearly impossible to truly understand in a clear way, for many reasons - including delusions on the part of all parties.
Everything from brain scans to double blind tests show that the vast majority (95%+) of what we do, we do before the parts of our rational brain even engage. We’re rationalizing animals more than rational animals.
So perhaps a lot of the actual trauma and PTSD is from trying to force ourselves (and penalize ourselves?) to do things against our nature - and sometimes failing - and from refusing to feel what we feel sometimes because it’s ‘wrong’ and ‘not there’ or even an active threat. And often deluding ourselves about what we even wanted or why we did something in the first place.
If emotions are ‘poop’, and trauma is an opioid induced mega-log, then PTSD is constipation.
And since refusing to see the problem makes it fundamentally impossible to solve the problem, and refusing to feel something makes it impossible to know it is occurring (or learn it's lesson), down the rabbit hole we go……
Especially since society literally can’t work if our answer is everyone ‘pooping’ all the time everywhere (toilet or not) because they felt like it at the moment.
So either some people are going to become ‘terminally constipated’ (severe PTSD?) and we need to learn how to deal with it, figure how not get to shit on ourselves, or figure out how to help them become less so.
Everything from brain scans to double blind tests show that the vast majority (95%+) of what we do, we do before the parts of our rational brain even engage. We’re rationalizing animals more than rational animals.
So perhaps a lot of the actual trauma and PTSD is from trying to force ourselves (and penalize ourselves?) to do things against our nature - and sometimes failing - and from refusing to feel what we feel sometimes because it’s ‘wrong’ and ‘not there’ or even an active threat. And often deluding ourselves about what we even wanted or why we did something in the first place.
If emotions are ‘poop’, and trauma is an opioid induced mega-log, then PTSD is constipation.
And since refusing to see the problem makes it fundamentally impossible to solve the problem, and refusing to feel something makes it impossible to know it is occurring (or learn it's lesson), down the rabbit hole we go……
Especially since society literally can’t work if our answer is everyone ‘pooping’ all the time everywhere (toilet or not) because they felt like it at the moment.
So either some people are going to become ‘terminally constipated’ (severe PTSD?) and we need to learn how to deal with it, figure how not get to shit on ourselves, or figure out how to help them become less so.
> Everyone's trauma is equally important
Thank you for explaining to me that having been repeatedly raped in childhood, for a start, is in some meaningful sense equivalent to a romantic relationship in adult life ending in less than an ideal way. You're not wrong that oppression olympics is bullshit, but since you went on to start doing it anyway under the color of performatively claiming not to, this is me telling you to knock it off.
> people being unable to choose how to respond to events of their lives, to such a degree where that sense of un-agency becomes a recurring chorus of subsequent events
This is a habit. Form a different one. That's hard, I know. No one promised it would be easy, though it is easier with help. But this is how the actual problems get solved. Making much of your generosity of judgment, while issuing the most ungenerous possible collection of therapy-speak commonplaces at everyone who looks askance at the current fad, solves nothing.
I assume your next play will be to discount everything I have to say as the obvious consequence of 'unprocessed trauma'. This is an error you are of course free to make. This is 'processed trauma'. Part of that process involved understanding that people who minimize real vileness are wrong to do so. You may not have realized you were doing that. You no longer have an excuse not to. It may be enlightening to see how you choose to respond to that constraint.
Thank you for explaining to me that having been repeatedly raped in childhood, for a start, is in some meaningful sense equivalent to a romantic relationship in adult life ending in less than an ideal way. You're not wrong that oppression olympics is bullshit, but since you went on to start doing it anyway under the color of performatively claiming not to, this is me telling you to knock it off.
> people being unable to choose how to respond to events of their lives, to such a degree where that sense of un-agency becomes a recurring chorus of subsequent events
This is a habit. Form a different one. That's hard, I know. No one promised it would be easy, though it is easier with help. But this is how the actual problems get solved. Making much of your generosity of judgment, while issuing the most ungenerous possible collection of therapy-speak commonplaces at everyone who looks askance at the current fad, solves nothing.
I assume your next play will be to discount everything I have to say as the obvious consequence of 'unprocessed trauma'. This is an error you are of course free to make. This is 'processed trauma'. Part of that process involved understanding that people who minimize real vileness are wrong to do so. You may not have realized you were doing that. You no longer have an excuse not to. It may be enlightening to see how you choose to respond to that constraint.
> Thank you for explaining to me that having been repeatedly raped in childhood, for a start, is in some meaningful sense equivalent to a romantic relationship in adult life ending in less than an ideal way. You're not wrong that oppression olympics is bullshit, but since you went on to start doing it anyway under the color of performatively claiming not to, this is me telling you to knock it off.
What in the world are you talking about? I didn't discuss any trauma of mine. How on Earth am I playing oppression (trauma?) olympics by not discussing any of mine?
And like, I am incredibly sorry for what's happened to you, but you are literally engaging the olympics you say are bullshit against a theoretical opponent you made up. I'm not in this race, you're arguing with yourself.
But if it's indeed bullshit, as we seem to agree, stop playing then.
> This is a habit. Form a different one. That's hard, I know. No one promised it would be easy, though it is easier with help. But this is how the actual problems get solved.
This is likely the way you worked through your trauma. It is not a universal experience.
> Making much of your generosity of judgment, while issuing the most ungenerous possible collection of therapy-speak commonplaces at everyone who looks askance at the current fad, solves nothing.
I cannot parse this word salad.
> Part of that process involved understanding that people who minimize real vileness are wrong to do so. You may not have realized you were doing that. You no longer have an excuse not to. It may be enlightening to see how you choose to respond to that constraint.
Stating that trauma is equally disruptive to all who suffer it and that gatekeeping someone else's trauma as "not bad enough" to warrant whatever they're struggling with is not minimization. I'm discussing the trauma itself, not the traumatic/triggering event. In that context: everyone's matters, and everyone who says they have it, has it, because it cannot be measured or quantified any other way. That terrible, awful things happen in this world does not mean those whom suffered less are not worthy of empathy, accommodation, support, etc.
What in the world are you talking about? I didn't discuss any trauma of mine. How on Earth am I playing oppression (trauma?) olympics by not discussing any of mine?
And like, I am incredibly sorry for what's happened to you, but you are literally engaging the olympics you say are bullshit against a theoretical opponent you made up. I'm not in this race, you're arguing with yourself.
But if it's indeed bullshit, as we seem to agree, stop playing then.
> This is a habit. Form a different one. That's hard, I know. No one promised it would be easy, though it is easier with help. But this is how the actual problems get solved.
This is likely the way you worked through your trauma. It is not a universal experience.
> Making much of your generosity of judgment, while issuing the most ungenerous possible collection of therapy-speak commonplaces at everyone who looks askance at the current fad, solves nothing.
I cannot parse this word salad.
> Part of that process involved understanding that people who minimize real vileness are wrong to do so. You may not have realized you were doing that. You no longer have an excuse not to. It may be enlightening to see how you choose to respond to that constraint.
Stating that trauma is equally disruptive to all who suffer it and that gatekeeping someone else's trauma as "not bad enough" to warrant whatever they're struggling with is not minimization. I'm discussing the trauma itself, not the traumatic/triggering event. In that context: everyone's matters, and everyone who says they have it, has it, because it cannot be measured or quantified any other way. That terrible, awful things happen in this world does not mean those whom suffered less are not worthy of empathy, accommodation, support, etc.
> How on Earth am I playing oppression (trauma?) olympics by not discussing any of mine?
Asserting everyone deserves the same prize is still handing out prizes. There is nothing to be prized in any of this.
> This is likely the way you worked through your trauma. It is not a universal experience.
Neither is forming the habit of assuming no agency that you described. I had that habit. To the extent I broke it, I described how I have done that. It's a bit rich of you to describe an experience of trauma that corresponds with mine, and then claim there is no merit in my description of how I responded to that experience.
> I cannot parse this word salad.
'Word salad' is a psychiatric term of art describing the faulty use of language seen in some undergoing psychotic or schizophrenic episodes. I assume you do not intend to suggest I am either, but in that case one wonders why you resort to the phrase at all.
Unwinding the dependent clause, then: You have implicitly claimed great generosity of perspective in your analysis of all human suffering as equally meaningful and worthy. You have also given the lie to that claim, in responding to my analysis without any evident effort to understand the perspective that informs it. Because your standing to make the argument is built on this claim of generosity, the error impugns the argument as a whole.
> That terrible, awful things happen in this world does not mean those whom suffered less are not worthy of empathy, accommodation, support, etc.
If I have said otherwise at any time here or elsewhere, I would appreciate you quoting where I did so. I should not like to think I could make such an error and fail to notice.
What I have said is that there is merit in keeping a sense of perspective, and where objectively something much worse could have happened than has, then including that fact in one's analysis can be useful. A major purpose of therapy is to provide an outside perspective, isn't it? You give the impression of assuming no other source of such perspective exists. I have twice now described one.
I have likewise at no point discounted the value of empathy, accommodation, or support. I think we define those terms differently, though. It's easy to wallow in misery. It is comfortable to wallow in misery. Of whom in such a state could anything fairly be expected? - even by oneself.
Of course, it also has the problem that nothing ever improves for doing that. And the thing about living through it - for any definition of 'it' - is that you still have the rest of a life to get through the best way you can, after.
In what sense is it supportive to suggest other than that people be about that work, to the absolute extent of their capacities to do so? In what sense accommodative, to suggest that a wound which can be healed or at least closed not be? In what sense empathetic, to suggest that no one need even try to find ways not to suffer?
I grant you not all can achieve this. It's not their situation to which I speak; I would not dare. But many more can than can't, and it seems to me a shocking and frankly culpable insult to all those of us who can to suggest that we need not, or that there can come no point at which we are living in it merely for the sake of living in it.
I would like you to show the generosity you claimed earlier - to really grant us agency, victims or survivors or whatever you care to call us. Encompass the idea that we can, should, and must at least try to overcome, will you? To do otherwise grants much more power to those who have misused us than they ever deserve.
Asserting everyone deserves the same prize is still handing out prizes. There is nothing to be prized in any of this.
> This is likely the way you worked through your trauma. It is not a universal experience.
Neither is forming the habit of assuming no agency that you described. I had that habit. To the extent I broke it, I described how I have done that. It's a bit rich of you to describe an experience of trauma that corresponds with mine, and then claim there is no merit in my description of how I responded to that experience.
> I cannot parse this word salad.
'Word salad' is a psychiatric term of art describing the faulty use of language seen in some undergoing psychotic or schizophrenic episodes. I assume you do not intend to suggest I am either, but in that case one wonders why you resort to the phrase at all.
Unwinding the dependent clause, then: You have implicitly claimed great generosity of perspective in your analysis of all human suffering as equally meaningful and worthy. You have also given the lie to that claim, in responding to my analysis without any evident effort to understand the perspective that informs it. Because your standing to make the argument is built on this claim of generosity, the error impugns the argument as a whole.
> That terrible, awful things happen in this world does not mean those whom suffered less are not worthy of empathy, accommodation, support, etc.
If I have said otherwise at any time here or elsewhere, I would appreciate you quoting where I did so. I should not like to think I could make such an error and fail to notice.
What I have said is that there is merit in keeping a sense of perspective, and where objectively something much worse could have happened than has, then including that fact in one's analysis can be useful. A major purpose of therapy is to provide an outside perspective, isn't it? You give the impression of assuming no other source of such perspective exists. I have twice now described one.
I have likewise at no point discounted the value of empathy, accommodation, or support. I think we define those terms differently, though. It's easy to wallow in misery. It is comfortable to wallow in misery. Of whom in such a state could anything fairly be expected? - even by oneself.
Of course, it also has the problem that nothing ever improves for doing that. And the thing about living through it - for any definition of 'it' - is that you still have the rest of a life to get through the best way you can, after.
In what sense is it supportive to suggest other than that people be about that work, to the absolute extent of their capacities to do so? In what sense accommodative, to suggest that a wound which can be healed or at least closed not be? In what sense empathetic, to suggest that no one need even try to find ways not to suffer?
I grant you not all can achieve this. It's not their situation to which I speak; I would not dare. But many more can than can't, and it seems to me a shocking and frankly culpable insult to all those of us who can to suggest that we need not, or that there can come no point at which we are living in it merely for the sake of living in it.
I would like you to show the generosity you claimed earlier - to really grant us agency, victims or survivors or whatever you care to call us. Encompass the idea that we can, should, and must at least try to overcome, will you? To do otherwise grants much more power to those who have misused us than they ever deserve.
As an aside, I don't think the use of the term word-salad implies mental instability in any way.
As someone who's edited millions of words in recent years, in a few languages, I'd put what you wrote (and other parts) on the harder to parse end of the spectrum. Understandable, with time, sure, but not written for clarity. A bit like code golf. Logical, operational, but not conducive to a flowing exchange of ideas.
I enjoy your writing, fwiw, it's likely better than most, and you've every reason to be proud of it, but you're not making it easy to follow along for an international audience.
I think you're also missing the point, again fwiw. If a soft snowflake brain (quote unquote) shows being shouted at or barked at by a dog as trauma under fmri, because they haven't been conditioned to tolerate any more, then that might well be classed as trauma. This doesn't undermine anyone else's experience.
It's also potentially indicative of less traumatic lives being lived in general, of the threshold lowering. Which should be a good thing. Or that, if you reject the trauma, the bone you have to pick is not in fact with the definition of trauma, perhaps, but unrecognised privilege.
Whatever it is, I think the benefit of accepting self definitions, despite the fact that they will be abused by hypochondriacs and attention seekers (human condition?), is that someone who needs to be heard will now be heard. Having grown up before all this stuff, can confirm that hasn't always been the case. This can save lives. Despite it being abused. That's the upside I can see. Perhaps it could be done more intelligently. I'm sure it will evolve. But yes, I can see the merit. More talking is a good thing, in general.
I think a lot of these identity issues have roots in modern lifestyles, consumerism etc but as set out above, it's about taking the rough with the smooth, to use an old phrase. Improved quality of life vs first world problems.
Finally, more generally, I'm sure everyone wants less trauma. We should perhaps be training resiliency alongside talking therapy. But resiliency only gets you so far in some cases.
I hope I'm not too guilty of talking too much about too little. Hopefully my 2c contributes something of value.
Peace to all.
As someone who's edited millions of words in recent years, in a few languages, I'd put what you wrote (and other parts) on the harder to parse end of the spectrum. Understandable, with time, sure, but not written for clarity. A bit like code golf. Logical, operational, but not conducive to a flowing exchange of ideas.
I enjoy your writing, fwiw, it's likely better than most, and you've every reason to be proud of it, but you're not making it easy to follow along for an international audience.
I think you're also missing the point, again fwiw. If a soft snowflake brain (quote unquote) shows being shouted at or barked at by a dog as trauma under fmri, because they haven't been conditioned to tolerate any more, then that might well be classed as trauma. This doesn't undermine anyone else's experience.
It's also potentially indicative of less traumatic lives being lived in general, of the threshold lowering. Which should be a good thing. Or that, if you reject the trauma, the bone you have to pick is not in fact with the definition of trauma, perhaps, but unrecognised privilege.
Whatever it is, I think the benefit of accepting self definitions, despite the fact that they will be abused by hypochondriacs and attention seekers (human condition?), is that someone who needs to be heard will now be heard. Having grown up before all this stuff, can confirm that hasn't always been the case. This can save lives. Despite it being abused. That's the upside I can see. Perhaps it could be done more intelligently. I'm sure it will evolve. But yes, I can see the merit. More talking is a good thing, in general.
I think a lot of these identity issues have roots in modern lifestyles, consumerism etc but as set out above, it's about taking the rough with the smooth, to use an old phrase. Improved quality of life vs first world problems.
Finally, more generally, I'm sure everyone wants less trauma. We should perhaps be training resiliency alongside talking therapy. But resiliency only gets you so far in some cases.
I hope I'm not too guilty of talking too much about too little. Hopefully my 2c contributes something of value.
Peace to all.
It isn't my typical register, but I do get formal when I get angry, and my prior interlocutor in this thread did a decent job of making me angry. It is of course the prerogative of the young to be unthinkingly cruel; I was the same. The prerogative of those no longer young is to decide whether and when this tendency deserves to be humored.
> the benefit...someone who needs to be heard will now be heard.
Will they, though? That's what bothers me about this. In a culture suffused with a concept of trauma so vitiated as to apply to seemingly almost anything more noxious than a paper cut, where is there any space for someone to talk about the experience of having suffered something legitimately horrific? If 'trauma' means someone broke it off with me and that sucked and I feel bad about it, how does it also mean what my grandfather did, and my father's girlfriend and later his second wife, and those other men I probably never will know how they got me in that room? If I use 'trauma' to mean those things, and everyone I say it to thinks I'm talking about a bad breakup, then in what sense am I heard?
Too, a culture so suffused offers many opportunities for unnecessary and uncomfortable mishap. I've had this happen, with someone who seemed to approach the concept so lightly as to regard the subject as a sort of shortcut to deepening acquaintanceship, the term that was used being 'trauma bonding' - this in a second conversation, at that.
I was somewhat sharp in dissuading what felt an unwarrantable and startling level of nosiness toward matters which are mine to share or not as I choose. I regret the brusqueness and not the dissuasion, but in her defense I can't imagine it arising at all, as a topic in a professional conversation within a professional setting, were it not a very ordinary aspect of culture in at least some places. Certainly it was nothing more than a clash of cultures, and a mildly inappropriate conversation for work - but the clash and the malaprop are themselves interesting to me, and corroborate a level of normalization and attenuation which, as I say, imperils any useful meaning for the term.
That is a real problem, too. People like to dismiss such arguments as 'merely semantic', as if the sole and only thing that distinguishes us as a species - the thing that stops us killing one another, to the extent anything ever does - were a triviality. But the entire point of having a semiotic framework around such a sensitive and painful topic is to make it possible to discuss in terms which, if not comfortable, are at least no further from it than can be avoided. Remove the framework, and what's left? You can either speak the bald truth, or say nothing. Neither option really serves.
I did the former earlier. It was not entirely without an emotional cost, and that's after about thirty years spent reckoning with this. Not that many years ago I couldn't have done it at all; much of my anger arose in the knowledge that there are people whom my prior interlocutor could successfully have silenced. I don't doubt they have done it before, almost certainly without ever realizing that they had. If I were they, it would bother me to think I might have done that. But, as I said, it is the privilege of youth to be thoughtlessly cruel.
The reason I chose instead to say what I did, and so bluntly, was again because if there is any purpose to such a framework as I describe, it is to be gentle. You're right that this stuff requires to be talked about. It is also extremely difficult to talk about! It is brutal, to say the least, and the cruel thing about it is that it stays that way. The scheme of language around it provides a tool with which to talk about it in a way that hurts less - for everyone.
That's a worthy thing for the same reason that medical anesthesia is a worthy thing. I don't always need it; I have often startled doctors and dentists with my ability to tolerate pain, in one case to a point where I was glad there was a CT scan to prove to an ER doctor I wasn't drug-seeking. Even I, though, do not care to open my soul in this way without something to take the edge off. I may choose to do so when I think it needs doing, but even for me it still hurts. For most people, most who need to do it for reasons like mine, I think it must be much more painful. As with a root canal, it should not be more painful than it absolutely has to be. It should not ever.
The language of trauma is, or was, one of a precious few tools to make that less painful, and certainly the only one available to everyone. Render the tool useless, and in the large majority case you only force a choice between brutality and silence. Most will choose silence. Most do, as you note. I didn't today, but I would still much prefer there continue to be a third and kinder option. The way I see 'trauma' devalued of late cuts directly against that, and if there is an argument to convince me otherwise, it has not been made in this thread today.
After all, it was you who made the point that being heard can save lives. I agree! I absolutely agree with you there. I also want that to keep happening, and I want it to happen more.
> More talking is a good thing, in general.
No. More meaning is a good thing. To speak without meaning, or worse to speak falsely, is a betrayal of what makes us human, and not without instrumental hazard besides - as I believe the state of the US at the moment should suffice on its own to show.
That said, you're quite right that there is a cultural dialogue here. My comments in this thread constitute a contribution to it. They are not perfect, but neither am I.
I had hoped that the like imperfection of others, this being also in the common heritage of humanity, would incline to some degree of charity. Unfortunately, my prior interlocutor was more interested in insisting on their own view, even to condescension and insult, than in hearing anyone else's. Unfortunately, I was not inclined to be very patient in the face of arrogance today. So it goes. Perhaps I'll do better next time. Perhaps they will, too.
> the benefit...someone who needs to be heard will now be heard.
Will they, though? That's what bothers me about this. In a culture suffused with a concept of trauma so vitiated as to apply to seemingly almost anything more noxious than a paper cut, where is there any space for someone to talk about the experience of having suffered something legitimately horrific? If 'trauma' means someone broke it off with me and that sucked and I feel bad about it, how does it also mean what my grandfather did, and my father's girlfriend and later his second wife, and those other men I probably never will know how they got me in that room? If I use 'trauma' to mean those things, and everyone I say it to thinks I'm talking about a bad breakup, then in what sense am I heard?
Too, a culture so suffused offers many opportunities for unnecessary and uncomfortable mishap. I've had this happen, with someone who seemed to approach the concept so lightly as to regard the subject as a sort of shortcut to deepening acquaintanceship, the term that was used being 'trauma bonding' - this in a second conversation, at that.
I was somewhat sharp in dissuading what felt an unwarrantable and startling level of nosiness toward matters which are mine to share or not as I choose. I regret the brusqueness and not the dissuasion, but in her defense I can't imagine it arising at all, as a topic in a professional conversation within a professional setting, were it not a very ordinary aspect of culture in at least some places. Certainly it was nothing more than a clash of cultures, and a mildly inappropriate conversation for work - but the clash and the malaprop are themselves interesting to me, and corroborate a level of normalization and attenuation which, as I say, imperils any useful meaning for the term.
That is a real problem, too. People like to dismiss such arguments as 'merely semantic', as if the sole and only thing that distinguishes us as a species - the thing that stops us killing one another, to the extent anything ever does - were a triviality. But the entire point of having a semiotic framework around such a sensitive and painful topic is to make it possible to discuss in terms which, if not comfortable, are at least no further from it than can be avoided. Remove the framework, and what's left? You can either speak the bald truth, or say nothing. Neither option really serves.
I did the former earlier. It was not entirely without an emotional cost, and that's after about thirty years spent reckoning with this. Not that many years ago I couldn't have done it at all; much of my anger arose in the knowledge that there are people whom my prior interlocutor could successfully have silenced. I don't doubt they have done it before, almost certainly without ever realizing that they had. If I were they, it would bother me to think I might have done that. But, as I said, it is the privilege of youth to be thoughtlessly cruel.
The reason I chose instead to say what I did, and so bluntly, was again because if there is any purpose to such a framework as I describe, it is to be gentle. You're right that this stuff requires to be talked about. It is also extremely difficult to talk about! It is brutal, to say the least, and the cruel thing about it is that it stays that way. The scheme of language around it provides a tool with which to talk about it in a way that hurts less - for everyone.
That's a worthy thing for the same reason that medical anesthesia is a worthy thing. I don't always need it; I have often startled doctors and dentists with my ability to tolerate pain, in one case to a point where I was glad there was a CT scan to prove to an ER doctor I wasn't drug-seeking. Even I, though, do not care to open my soul in this way without something to take the edge off. I may choose to do so when I think it needs doing, but even for me it still hurts. For most people, most who need to do it for reasons like mine, I think it must be much more painful. As with a root canal, it should not be more painful than it absolutely has to be. It should not ever.
The language of trauma is, or was, one of a precious few tools to make that less painful, and certainly the only one available to everyone. Render the tool useless, and in the large majority case you only force a choice between brutality and silence. Most will choose silence. Most do, as you note. I didn't today, but I would still much prefer there continue to be a third and kinder option. The way I see 'trauma' devalued of late cuts directly against that, and if there is an argument to convince me otherwise, it has not been made in this thread today.
After all, it was you who made the point that being heard can save lives. I agree! I absolutely agree with you there. I also want that to keep happening, and I want it to happen more.
> More talking is a good thing, in general.
No. More meaning is a good thing. To speak without meaning, or worse to speak falsely, is a betrayal of what makes us human, and not without instrumental hazard besides - as I believe the state of the US at the moment should suffice on its own to show.
That said, you're quite right that there is a cultural dialogue here. My comments in this thread constitute a contribution to it. They are not perfect, but neither am I.
I had hoped that the like imperfection of others, this being also in the common heritage of humanity, would incline to some degree of charity. Unfortunately, my prior interlocutor was more interested in insisting on their own view, even to condescension and insult, than in hearing anyone else's. Unfortunately, I was not inclined to be very patient in the face of arrogance today. So it goes. Perhaps I'll do better next time. Perhaps they will, too.
Certainly "trauma" has been diluted. Someone I think who does a really
good job of distinguishing actual trauma (something that disrupts
development) from acquired entitlement etc is Gabor Mate in "The myth
of normal". Would definitely recommend.
> Someone I think who does a really good job of distinguishing actual trauma (something that disrupts development) from acquired entitlement etc is Gabor Mate
Gabor Mate is extremely charismatic, but IMO he's part of the problem.
The last time I listened to a podcast where he was a guest, he pushed the idea that being born could qualify as trauma leading to PTSD in adulthood. He told a story about a patient with mental health issues where he was unable to identify overt trauma until despite going through her life in fine detail. Eventually he concluded that it must have been the experience of being born that was her trauma.
This is what I was talking about when someone pushes the "trauma explains everything" angle: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Some of these pseudo-experts may be good at treating trauma, but they take it too far and start trying to describe everything big or small as a trauma.
Gabor Mate is extremely charismatic, but IMO he's part of the problem.
The last time I listened to a podcast where he was a guest, he pushed the idea that being born could qualify as trauma leading to PTSD in adulthood. He told a story about a patient with mental health issues where he was unable to identify overt trauma until despite going through her life in fine detail. Eventually he concluded that it must have been the experience of being born that was her trauma.
This is what I was talking about when someone pushes the "trauma explains everything" angle: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Some of these pseudo-experts may be good at treating trauma, but they take it too far and start trying to describe everything big or small as a trauma.
If true that does indeed sound quite ridiculous.
I may be misremembering, but my recollection is that he talks about the stresses of the parents being passed on from birth. My other vague recollection is that studies exist which prove this phenomenon to be true. A third vague recollection is that his own mother was persecuted due to religion, giving his theories and his reason to pursue them some level of credibility.
My memory is not machine-like in its efficiency. I am open to correction. But I believe GP may not be fully stating the facts for their own reasons.
My memory is not machine-like in its efficiency. I am open to correction. But I believe GP may not be fully stating the facts for their own reasons.
Some people can kill a man, or lose a limb and not suffer traumatic rumination.
Some other people lose their favorite toy as an kid and it really does become a deep rumination pattern of traumatic loss for them.
Some other people lose their favorite toy as an kid and it really does become a deep rumination pattern of traumatic loss for them.
> Some other people lose their favorite toy as an kid and it really does become a deep rumination pattern of traumatic loss for them.
In this case, the "trauma" is virtually irrelevant, though. The issue is the rumination and pattern of overreaction, which should certainly be addressed.
For some, the obsession with "trauma" becomes a way to move the focus to something external, which is therefore out of their control. In your example, too much focus on "trauma" as an explanation for everything could mislead someone into thinking that the loss of the toy is to blame for their situation, whereas they really need to accept that their reaction and pattern of rumination is what needs to be addressed.
In this case, the "trauma" is virtually irrelevant, though. The issue is the rumination and pattern of overreaction, which should certainly be addressed.
For some, the obsession with "trauma" becomes a way to move the focus to something external, which is therefore out of their control. In your example, too much focus on "trauma" as an explanation for everything could mislead someone into thinking that the loss of the toy is to blame for their situation, whereas they really need to accept that their reaction and pattern of rumination is what needs to be addressed.
See "The rise of therapy-speak": https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rise-...
Many people experience severe health problems related to trauma that other people can shake right off.
Humans are a wide spectrum, all good and bad at unique things - and you "can't judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree".
Humans are a wide spectrum, all good and bad at unique things - and you "can't judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree".
For now it's the term people have adopted to describe a wide range of negative impactful experiences. Usually there's something deeper and older going on in someone when a seemingly minor event causes feelings of "trauma", but sometimes the extreme results of opening that can of worms in someone can be nearly as devastating. The human experience is messy and ultimately hard to keep confined in rigid definitions, but we keep trying.
I find it ludicrous that you would suggest that the breakup of a close romantic relationship shouldn’t be considered traumatic or qualify as trauma for someone that is of college age, only because of the commonality of occurrence.
many of them described common life events as “trauma”
We've experienced a massive dilution in language over the past decade or so. I'm not sure if it's because we're churning out more black & white thinkers or incentivizing folks with a victim mindset, but all sorts of words like *-phobic, gaslighting, trauma, etc. have become significantly overused given their traditional symptomatic markers.
It's the language equivalent of WebMD - basically implying that a grab bag of cold symptoms are in fact brain cancer. On one hand it's good that the next generation thinks a breakup is "traumatic", because it means people are experiencing less absolute trauma. On the other hand words have meanings so we can accurately describe the world.
We've experienced a massive dilution in language over the past decade or so. I'm not sure if it's because we're churning out more black & white thinkers or incentivizing folks with a victim mindset, but all sorts of words like *-phobic, gaslighting, trauma, etc. have become significantly overused given their traditional symptomatic markers.
It's the language equivalent of WebMD - basically implying that a grab bag of cold symptoms are in fact brain cancer. On one hand it's good that the next generation thinks a breakup is "traumatic", because it means people are experiencing less absolute trauma. On the other hand words have meanings so we can accurately describe the world.
Idk it wasn’t until I went to my therapist that I realised that my mum leaving at the age of 2 was traumatic and that I have a lot of extreme stress and depressive responses now from that even though I didn’t know it. It’s easy to say “divorce is normal and not traumatic” but I think that normal life events can and do cause trauma
The severity of pain of a life event changes with the skilld of a person. 2 children playing and one starts crying because the other broke their toy, is that less intense than an adult breakfing up with the lifelong partner?
The answer I thought was yes and over time came to realize that it's probably no.
Given that, what you perceive as traumatic is not the same for another person
The answer I thought was yes and over time came to realize that it's probably no.
Given that, what you perceive as traumatic is not the same for another person
The book does distinguish “Big T” & “Little T” trauma. Little T is a helpful concept re the fairly normal life difficulties noted—-validates the pain but keeps it in perspective.
Concern about a priming effect is also valid.
Concern about a priming effect is also valid.
I can absolutely see why break ups, failing a class, and getting yelled at by someone can be traumatic. I’ve had quite traumatic break ups in my youth due to my own attachment and expectations about the relationship and life. If someone had a lot of pressure about academic success growing up, or a lot of hopes attached to good grades, failure could be traumatic. I would hope that the potential for trauma in getting yelled at would be self evident.
Trauma doesn’t mean the experience will be forever embedded as “baggage”. It means it’s something we’re carrying with us right now. Something we’ve not fully processed or healed from. I’ve found that identifying and recognizing trauma is part of the healing process. Failing to identify trauma can mean carrying it with you longer - snapping at others when you get too irritated, because someone did so to you and you haven’t processed the emotional trauma of the situation, for example. Or high anxiety at work carried over from the trauma of failing a class, because you haven’t recognized that even after that failure things worked out okay and you’re still carrying the fear of failure.
Trauma like many words has degrees. It is similar to the word injury in that sense. Losing your legs in a motorcycle accident is an injury. A sprained wrist is also an injury.
Just remember that with trauma it is hard to see how deep it went. Perhaps someone did experience quite strong trauma from something you would manage easily. That’s due to the different lives you lead, and differences in experience, values, and goals. And remember that situations others might handle well could be things you struggle with. Everyone’s experience is their own.
Trauma doesn’t mean the experience will be forever embedded as “baggage”. It means it’s something we’re carrying with us right now. Something we’ve not fully processed or healed from. I’ve found that identifying and recognizing trauma is part of the healing process. Failing to identify trauma can mean carrying it with you longer - snapping at others when you get too irritated, because someone did so to you and you haven’t processed the emotional trauma of the situation, for example. Or high anxiety at work carried over from the trauma of failing a class, because you haven’t recognized that even after that failure things worked out okay and you’re still carrying the fear of failure.
Trauma like many words has degrees. It is similar to the word injury in that sense. Losing your legs in a motorcycle accident is an injury. A sprained wrist is also an injury.
Just remember that with trauma it is hard to see how deep it went. Perhaps someone did experience quite strong trauma from something you would manage easily. That’s due to the different lives you lead, and differences in experience, values, and goals. And remember that situations others might handle well could be things you struggle with. Everyone’s experience is their own.
> Break ups, failing a class, or even getting yelled at by someone
I agree a lot of people overblow trauma. However it is worth mentioning, all the things that you mention can be traumatizing, though. Like imagine breaking up with a partner of a few years because they've been serially cheating on you and lying about it. Imagine failing a class when you've been pressured by your parents your entire life to do well in school, and you know this is going to set them off the edge. Imagine being yelled at for 20 minutes in front of the whole class as a tiny kid.
Like the question isn't really "is X bad in an objective way" but more "did X create a bunch of problems for so and so that make their life harder in terms of emotions, psychology, etc."
I agree a lot of people overblow trauma. However it is worth mentioning, all the things that you mention can be traumatizing, though. Like imagine breaking up with a partner of a few years because they've been serially cheating on you and lying about it. Imagine failing a class when you've been pressured by your parents your entire life to do well in school, and you know this is going to set them off the edge. Imagine being yelled at for 20 minutes in front of the whole class as a tiny kid.
Like the question isn't really "is X bad in an objective way" but more "did X create a bunch of problems for so and so that make their life harder in terms of emotions, psychology, etc."
> Like the question isn't really "is X bad in an objective way" but more "did X create a bunch of problems for so and so that make their life harder in terms of emotions, psychology, etc."
From the book itself, trauma is more closely defined as “what causes the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) to overreact” which then causes the body to have to deal with the excess cortisol released by the overreaction. This can be the accumulation of micro-stressors or individual major events. OP’s dismissal of things due to being “common life events” is simply ridiculous.
From the book itself, trauma is more closely defined as “what causes the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) to overreact” which then causes the body to have to deal with the excess cortisol released by the overreaction. This can be the accumulation of micro-stressors or individual major events. OP’s dismissal of things due to being “common life events” is simply ridiculous.
> it was remarkable to hear how many of them described common life events as “trauma”: Break ups, failing a class, or even getting yelled at by someone.
Isn’t it a bit cruel to dismiss the ups and downs of college life as unworthy of being called ‘traumatic?’ Who are you to make that judgement?
Isn’t it a bit cruel to dismiss the ups and downs of college life as unworthy of being called ‘traumatic?’ Who are you to make that judgement?
Question: That part of the brain he likes to call the cockroach brain - what's the standard name for that part of the brain?
Reptilian brain?
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain
I'm annoyed at this book and others like it. Despite their helpfulness to many people, one side effect has been that some doctors in the USA now use CPTSD or similar to dismiss people suffering from chronic pain. "If you're in pain, you probably have some (childhood) trauma that you haven't processed correctly. Go see a therapist and come back for a follow-up." (when it takes 6 months or more to get in to a therapist, and the patient is in pain right now)
(Yes, this is a huge chip on my shoulder. Like copper thieves have ruined many buildings, doctors handing out opioid prescriptions to everyone has ruined pain management in the USA)
(Yes, this is a huge chip on my shoulder. Like copper thieves have ruined many buildings, doctors handing out opioid prescriptions to everyone has ruined pain management in the USA)
Yeah I mean its not great. Obviously, having CPTSD stresses the body out and can cause chronic issues. So there a big problem of the intersection of (people with chronic pain) and (people with CPTSD), is non-empty. But also a lot of chronic issues seem hard to diagnose, so if you're a doctor, and you're basically moving through the set of common problems/treatments that wont cause more harm, well then a bunch of people that should be down the pipeline will get delays.
It's a huge stretch to blame this book for the opioid crisis.
Interesting comments here. There's no way to put an objective scale on an internal experience, and not all effects are going to be externally measurable with any imposed schema of observations.
There's no point disagreeing with people about what trauma is, the point of the video is not to define it in a 'programming language' sense of absolute disambiguation, the point is to raise awareness of what's real.
Some of the commentary is confused in the sense that it is arguing over this thing which is subjective and cannot be pinned down, at least not in a way where you can objectively compare one person to another. To deny the reality of that internal emotional experience (which nevertheless can have diverse external manifestations) is to minimize people's pain and emotions, and effectively retraumatize them. It's a position which lacks empathy. Fixating on diagnostic criteria as prescriptive absolutes, rather than the non-exhaustive useful guides that is all they can be in this case, encodes this lack of empathy in a persistent formalism, which is very harmful. It's unlikely that those with an understanding of this would be trying to do that, tho it is possible as noted below.
Even if you believed that trauma were completely capturable via external measurements, it would be beneficial for people suffering, and a society as a whole, to move the cutoff for what constitutes trauma toward a more inclusive direction. This would enable and encourage more of the very many people who live with unresolved trauma (either in awareness, ignorance or wilful suppression that that's what ails them), to take steps to heal themselves. In a real sense, these people are disabled in one or more aspects of their lives, because of the trauma. This trauma is harder for them to deal with and heal from to the extent that there is large portion of society who hampers attempts to acknowledge it as real.
Pushing the needle in a more restrictive direction, as some of the comments sadly advocate for here, lacks empathy, harms society, is out of touch with the reality of the epidemic of unresolved emotional issues in society that often span generations, and even cultures, and is fundamentally incorrect.
In short, people will be reluctant to seek help, and unlikely to receive support, for what they or those around them do not believe is real. Reducing stigma around trauma (and mental illness) in general) , is crucial to developing the fairer, more just, happier and healthier society, and individuals in it, that we all deserve.
But why would people want to push the needle in the other direction, insist solely on limited objective measures of subjective experiences that you will not know unless you experience it, and in effect, try to minimize and disrespectfully dismiss other people's suffering?
Probably there's a small amount of mimicry commentary that's merely picking a side without thinking it through. Aside from that, the greatest share looks to be people who seek to minimize or deny the reality of trauma to hide from their own. That's because, as they are too afraid to face their own trauma, so therefore they want to pretend it's not real for any, except in the most obvious, and safely distant to them, cases. This is because their own suppressed suffering, and their lack of knowledge of how to deal with it, so frightens them, that they don't even want to acknowledge it. Akin to a young child (or even an adult) keep their eyes tight shut and their ears covered, to avoid facing a traumatic scene in a film. These suffering in silence, likely also do not know how to even begin to deal with what so ails them, and do not like the sense of powerlessness that even thinking about opening that 'can of worms' to face, process and heal their own trauma, seems to them to be. This is very understandable.
The last category of deniers or minimizers, while less understandable, are no less expected. These consist of people who seek to minimize other's trauma because they are so afraid that their own actions have hurt people, and do not want to see themselves called out for, or punished for this. Therefore, they think that by trying to minimize, mock, discredit and dismiss the feelings and experience of many traumatized people, they will make themselves safter from the feared punishment for the trauma they believe they caused others.
There's no point disagreeing with people about what trauma is, the point of the video is not to define it in a 'programming language' sense of absolute disambiguation, the point is to raise awareness of what's real.
Some of the commentary is confused in the sense that it is arguing over this thing which is subjective and cannot be pinned down, at least not in a way where you can objectively compare one person to another. To deny the reality of that internal emotional experience (which nevertheless can have diverse external manifestations) is to minimize people's pain and emotions, and effectively retraumatize them. It's a position which lacks empathy. Fixating on diagnostic criteria as prescriptive absolutes, rather than the non-exhaustive useful guides that is all they can be in this case, encodes this lack of empathy in a persistent formalism, which is very harmful. It's unlikely that those with an understanding of this would be trying to do that, tho it is possible as noted below.
Even if you believed that trauma were completely capturable via external measurements, it would be beneficial for people suffering, and a society as a whole, to move the cutoff for what constitutes trauma toward a more inclusive direction. This would enable and encourage more of the very many people who live with unresolved trauma (either in awareness, ignorance or wilful suppression that that's what ails them), to take steps to heal themselves. In a real sense, these people are disabled in one or more aspects of their lives, because of the trauma. This trauma is harder for them to deal with and heal from to the extent that there is large portion of society who hampers attempts to acknowledge it as real.
Pushing the needle in a more restrictive direction, as some of the comments sadly advocate for here, lacks empathy, harms society, is out of touch with the reality of the epidemic of unresolved emotional issues in society that often span generations, and even cultures, and is fundamentally incorrect.
In short, people will be reluctant to seek help, and unlikely to receive support, for what they or those around them do not believe is real. Reducing stigma around trauma (and mental illness) in general) , is crucial to developing the fairer, more just, happier and healthier society, and individuals in it, that we all deserve.
But why would people want to push the needle in the other direction, insist solely on limited objective measures of subjective experiences that you will not know unless you experience it, and in effect, try to minimize and disrespectfully dismiss other people's suffering?
Probably there's a small amount of mimicry commentary that's merely picking a side without thinking it through. Aside from that, the greatest share looks to be people who seek to minimize or deny the reality of trauma to hide from their own. That's because, as they are too afraid to face their own trauma, so therefore they want to pretend it's not real for any, except in the most obvious, and safely distant to them, cases. This is because their own suppressed suffering, and their lack of knowledge of how to deal with it, so frightens them, that they don't even want to acknowledge it. Akin to a young child (or even an adult) keep their eyes tight shut and their ears covered, to avoid facing a traumatic scene in a film. These suffering in silence, likely also do not know how to even begin to deal with what so ails them, and do not like the sense of powerlessness that even thinking about opening that 'can of worms' to face, process and heal their own trauma, seems to them to be. This is very understandable.
The last category of deniers or minimizers, while less understandable, are no less expected. These consist of people who seek to minimize other's trauma because they are so afraid that their own actions have hurt people, and do not want to see themselves called out for, or punished for this. Therefore, they think that by trying to minimize, mock, discredit and dismiss the feelings and experience of many traumatized people, they will make themselves safter from the feared punishment for the trauma they believe they caused others.
This is a reductive video from a content farm about a complex topic. Trauma has been well-studied in reasonably scientific ways for 100 years. We’re still not good at treating it, but the causes and mechanisms are pretty well understood — keep almost any human in a state of fear and helplessness long enough and they will develop trauma.
Exactly how long, and how, and why — we know more than we did, and you can look it up. Judith Herman’s 1992 “Trauma and Recovery” is groundwork in the field, and responsible for much of our modern thought about it.
Do we know exactly which brain regions and neurotransmitters give rise to specific effects? No. TBKTS does make forays into that, some with confidence and some with speculation. Criticisms of this aspect of the book don’t seem meaningful to me.
We do know clearly that trauma appears to be kept in and released from the body, usually against the conscious intent of the victim. That alone is a giant idea, and it would have been world-altering for WW1 veterans accused of cowardice for their “shell shock.”
Kids These Days (tm) are using the word “trauma” a lot to discuss things outside the medical definition of it. This happens with words. I’ve heard them talk, and most of it seems lightweight and ironic — “Oh god that English assignment gave me PTSD.” None of this should reflect back on the book, or the ideas within it.
Exactly how long, and how, and why — we know more than we did, and you can look it up. Judith Herman’s 1992 “Trauma and Recovery” is groundwork in the field, and responsible for much of our modern thought about it.
Do we know exactly which brain regions and neurotransmitters give rise to specific effects? No. TBKTS does make forays into that, some with confidence and some with speculation. Criticisms of this aspect of the book don’t seem meaningful to me.
We do know clearly that trauma appears to be kept in and released from the body, usually against the conscious intent of the victim. That alone is a giant idea, and it would have been world-altering for WW1 veterans accused of cowardice for their “shell shock.”
Kids These Days (tm) are using the word “trauma” a lot to discuss things outside the medical definition of it. This happens with words. I’ve heard them talk, and most of it seems lightweight and ironic — “Oh god that English assignment gave me PTSD.” None of this should reflect back on the book, or the ideas within it.
> Kids These Days (tm)
That doesn't mean there aren't three different things all worth considering and addressing. And there is such a thing as a discipline poo-pooing an entire aspect. In this case you describe:
- trauma as ironic, gossipy turn of phrase
- medical trauma (Is there even just one category? doesn't matter here.)
- trauma as short or long experience which leaves a mark which affects day to day life for years.
Just because you might work or consider one version doesn't mean the others are somehow "not legit". When people use a word for some purpose - they still mean something by it. Even when it's easy to dismiss that with a (tm).
That doesn't mean there aren't three different things all worth considering and addressing. And there is such a thing as a discipline poo-pooing an entire aspect. In this case you describe:
- trauma as ironic, gossipy turn of phrase
- medical trauma (Is there even just one category? doesn't matter here.)
- trauma as short or long experience which leaves a mark which affects day to day life for years.
Just because you might work or consider one version doesn't mean the others are somehow "not legit". When people use a word for some purpose - they still mean something by it. Even when it's easy to dismiss that with a (tm).
Oh, I don’t intend anything dismissive. I think if you read that paragraph again you may hear the patience and compassion I have for my kid and their friends. I don’t mind them defining their own language and experience.
It should be noted that what is often called “shell shock” is at least two distinct things that get lumped together (though they can absolutely co-occur).
The first is what we typically mean by “psychological” trauma, which can have physical secondary effects, but not reliably. Spending months being hunted is going to rewire some things. From what I’ve read, those who consistently imagine themselves “the hunter” rather than “the hunted” seem to fare better.
The second is blast-induced neurotrauma, direct brain damage that blast waves physically cause. If a shell lands nearby, even if the head is fully protected, the wave can propagate up the spine into the skull. These force waves can then cause microshearing in the extremely fragile tissue there, resulting in inflammation and oxidation of the highly reactive polyunsaturated fats that make up our brains. The cascade of complex negative effects that follow only finally started getting proper attention due to the large number of IED injuries when the US invaded Iraq/Afganistan. Autopsies of those subjected to blast effects can often show a brain filled with nodules, either tiny like sand or much larger. This is the one that is really the cause of involuntary tremors and seizures that resulted in the brain damaged victim blamed for “cowardice”.
The former can kinda-sorta be addressed. The later gets “hopes and prayers”.
The first is what we typically mean by “psychological” trauma, which can have physical secondary effects, but not reliably. Spending months being hunted is going to rewire some things. From what I’ve read, those who consistently imagine themselves “the hunter” rather than “the hunted” seem to fare better.
The second is blast-induced neurotrauma, direct brain damage that blast waves physically cause. If a shell lands nearby, even if the head is fully protected, the wave can propagate up the spine into the skull. These force waves can then cause microshearing in the extremely fragile tissue there, resulting in inflammation and oxidation of the highly reactive polyunsaturated fats that make up our brains. The cascade of complex negative effects that follow only finally started getting proper attention due to the large number of IED injuries when the US invaded Iraq/Afganistan. Autopsies of those subjected to blast effects can often show a brain filled with nodules, either tiny like sand or much larger. This is the one that is really the cause of involuntary tremors and seizures that resulted in the brain damaged victim blamed for “cowardice”.
The former can kinda-sorta be addressed. The later gets “hopes and prayers”.
Isn't "The Body Keeps the Score" regarded as a crackpot book full of long-discredited theories?
E.g. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674370505001...
and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/08/02/body-keeps-s...
E.g. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674370505001...
and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/08/02/body-keeps-s...
I’ve read your sources and they don’t say what you claim. Your first source says:
“* Memories of trauma are seldom, if ever, truly forgotten.
* Memories of trauma are often vivid, but they are not immutable (memory does not operate like a videotape machine).
* Not thinking about a trauma for a long time is not the same as being unable to remember it.”
None of that meaningfully contradicts “The Body Keeps the Score.”
Your second source’s strongest criticism seems to be of this sort: “When we collapse or disengage in a dangerous situation, van der Kolk says, we’ve been taken over by the dorsal vagal complex, “an evolutionarily ancient part of the parasympathetic nervous system.” Except the dorsal vagal complex hasn’t actually been proved to exist in humans.”
Again, that doesn’t contradict anything important in “The Body Keeps the Score.”
“* Memories of trauma are seldom, if ever, truly forgotten.
* Memories of trauma are often vivid, but they are not immutable (memory does not operate like a videotape machine).
* Not thinking about a trauma for a long time is not the same as being unable to remember it.”
None of that meaningfully contradicts “The Body Keeps the Score.”
Your second source’s strongest criticism seems to be of this sort: “When we collapse or disengage in a dangerous situation, van der Kolk says, we’ve been taken over by the dorsal vagal complex, “an evolutionarily ancient part of the parasympathetic nervous system.” Except the dorsal vagal complex hasn’t actually been proved to exist in humans.”
Again, that doesn’t contradict anything important in “The Body Keeps the Score.”
> None of that meaningfully contradicts “The Body Keeps the Score.”
I haven't read it, that's why I asked it as a question. What I've heard about the book is that it's not supported by the science. At least in the popular press I've seen positive coverage of the book claim that van der Kolk argues your mind can forget trauma and you can work from data from your body to recover information about forgotten trauma. For example, this school of life video [0] at t=284.
If I understand you correctly, it sounds like perhaps you're saying that's not a core part of the book. If so, then I defer to you since I haven't read it. But from the limited press I've seen, that appears to be what many people take away from it.
> I’ve read your sources and they don’t say what you claim
Hmm, okay, but I see them as being far more critical.
The second article talks in general about how he helps himself to discredited or unsupported theories, or in some cases research that he just doesn't seem to understand.
The first one talks about how his theory that the brain can forget trauma that is encoded in the body as the same "mistaken reasoning" that caused "arguably the most serious catastrophe to strike the mental health field since the lobotomy era."
I don't know of any studies that evaluate the various interventions he suggests. Some of it I think is well studied, some seems more experimental. Some related ideas, such as shame or guilt being encoded in sunken body posture etc are old and well known and don't seem to be related to trauma in particular, at least not trauma as studied by psychologists.
My guess is that the book, like many pop psych books, may be a mixed bag and that lots of people see the overall work as a net benefit even if some of the psych community is concerned about inaccurate representation of the results and the revival of the old memory wars.
https://youtu.be/QSCXyYuT2rE?t=284
I haven't read it, that's why I asked it as a question. What I've heard about the book is that it's not supported by the science. At least in the popular press I've seen positive coverage of the book claim that van der Kolk argues your mind can forget trauma and you can work from data from your body to recover information about forgotten trauma. For example, this school of life video [0] at t=284.
If I understand you correctly, it sounds like perhaps you're saying that's not a core part of the book. If so, then I defer to you since I haven't read it. But from the limited press I've seen, that appears to be what many people take away from it.
> I’ve read your sources and they don’t say what you claim
Hmm, okay, but I see them as being far more critical.
The second article talks in general about how he helps himself to discredited or unsupported theories, or in some cases research that he just doesn't seem to understand.
The first one talks about how his theory that the brain can forget trauma that is encoded in the body as the same "mistaken reasoning" that caused "arguably the most serious catastrophe to strike the mental health field since the lobotomy era."
I don't know of any studies that evaluate the various interventions he suggests. Some of it I think is well studied, some seems more experimental. Some related ideas, such as shame or guilt being encoded in sunken body posture etc are old and well known and don't seem to be related to trauma in particular, at least not trauma as studied by psychologists.
My guess is that the book, like many pop psych books, may be a mixed bag and that lots of people see the overall work as a net benefit even if some of the psych community is concerned about inaccurate representation of the results and the revival of the old memory wars.
https://youtu.be/QSCXyYuT2rE?t=284
> What I've heard about the book is that it's not supported by the science. At least in the popular press I've seen positive coverage of the book claim that van der Kolk argues your mind can forget trauma and you can work from data from your body to recover information about forgotten trauma.
A lot of this was from his earlier work (that I believe he distanced himself from as the evidence showed it to be incorrect) that wound up in courtrooms as recovered memories. This book is totally different and from a different era of his research.
A lot of this was from his earlier work (that I believe he distanced himself from as the evidence showed it to be incorrect) that wound up in courtrooms as recovered memories. This book is totally different and from a different era of his research.
got it, okay thanks for the correction then
> The first one talks about how his theory that the brain can forget trauma that is encoded in the body as the same "mistaken reasoning" that caused "arguably the most serious catastrophe to strike the mental health field since the lobotomy era."
I’ve never taken that from his work; it sounds like an over-characterization.
Here’s a thing he does claim, though — since trauma is stored/encoded in the body, it must be released from the body. It could be easy to mistake that as “trauma can be removed from the brain.”
I’ve never taken that from his work; it sounds like an over-characterization.
Here’s a thing he does claim, though — since trauma is stored/encoded in the body, it must be released from the body. It could be easy to mistake that as “trauma can be removed from the brain.”
I don’t think 100% of the claims will hold up over time, but I would not call it crackpot or discredited, by a long shot. Simply acknowledging that childhood trauma has some consistent effects and being 60% right. would be doing better than the American Psychiatric Association, which still hasn’t even added CPTSD to the DSM. They seem intent on pathologizing just about every type of behavior imaginable, but they don’t seem to think childhood trauma is very relevant to mental health.
> Simply acknowledging that childhood trauma has some consistent effects and being 60% right
The book is far from limited to childhood trauma. It is any event that leads to overreaction of the sympathetic nervous system causing increased cortisol downstream that the body struggles to adapt to. This can be consistent micro-stressors or singular major events. No requirement for them to have happened in childhood.
The book is far from limited to childhood trauma. It is any event that leads to overreaction of the sympathetic nervous system causing increased cortisol downstream that the body struggles to adapt to. This can be consistent micro-stressors or singular major events. No requirement for them to have happened in childhood.
No. And some would say that elements of the "medical profession" have
spent a lot of money soliciting hit pieces that try to weaken the link
between trauma and physiological effects.
But that would be a pointless 'argument' to get into since there is mountains of dishonest rubbish on both sides.
Instead I think this rather reputable Psychology Today summary on the causal links of trauma and consequent disorders is worth a read [0];
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-addiction-connec...
But that would be a pointless 'argument' to get into since there is mountains of dishonest rubbish on both sides.
Instead I think this rather reputable Psychology Today summary on the causal links of trauma and consequent disorders is worth a read [0];
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-addiction-connec...
I'm not sure what medical conspiracy theory you're on about, but it's trivially true that emotions have corresponding physiological signals. Electrical signals in the brain, hormonal signals to the rest of the body. The understanding of the physiological response to stress goes back at least to the 30s and 40s with the work of endocrinologist Hans Selye, before van der Kolk was even born. Unless I'm missing something, the article you linked seems to give an unproblematic summary of the basic science of the physiological response to trauma.
What your link doesn't address are the points brought up by the links I posted, such as van der Kolk’s attempt to revive the disastrous repressed memory theory, his misunderstanding of fMRI studies, his misrepresentation of the research on mirror neurons, his use of the discredited lizard brain idea, etc.
What your link doesn't address are the points brought up by the links I posted, such as van der Kolk’s attempt to revive the disastrous repressed memory theory, his misunderstanding of fMRI studies, his misrepresentation of the research on mirror neurons, his use of the discredited lizard brain idea, etc.
It seems we agree on all the important facts. You have an issue with
van der Kolk, but I cannot comment on that, having never read "The
Body Keeps the Score".
Gabor Mate, who I have read, does mention numerous occurrences in his career as MD where people had told him that making links between trauma and, for example auto-immune diseases, was "career suicide". Not sure what you make of that.
Gabor Mate, who I have read, does mention numerous occurrences in his career as MD where people had told him that making links between trauma and, for example auto-immune diseases, was "career suicide". Not sure what you make of that.
Oh gotcha, sounds good. I am not familiar with Gabor Mate, but it depends on what his theory was. Wikipedia tells me he considers ADHD to be a coping mechanism. So for example if he had a theory that trauma can cause things like ADHD, then I'd say I don't think that particular theory seems to be supported by the evidence.
But it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility to me that two seemingly unrelated complicated things can be linked. It's possible that he got that advice because he felt he was onto a grand theory and the evidence wasn't there for it. Or whatever, who knows.
It's possible there is something to say about anxiety/cortisol/stress, neurodivergence, gut micro-biomes, and some autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes. There are studies on all of this stuff, but it's all in early stages, we don't know if the statistical effects are even real. And we certainly have no reason to conclude that one set of effects would cause the other.
But it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility to me that two seemingly unrelated complicated things can be linked. It's possible that he got that advice because he felt he was onto a grand theory and the evidence wasn't there for it. Or whatever, who knows.
It's possible there is something to say about anxiety/cortisol/stress, neurodivergence, gut micro-biomes, and some autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes. There are studies on all of this stuff, but it's all in early stages, we don't know if the statistical effects are even real. And we certainly have no reason to conclude that one set of effects would cause the other.
Can you give a single example of the oddly scare-quoted "medical profession" soliciting a hit piece on anything, ever?
this question seems naive, despite the hyperbole from the parent-post. Western accredited medicine has made huge advances in things like antibiotics or germ-theory, yet have struggled with common definitions of mental health and its complement, mental illness. It was not very long ago, but perhaps two generations ago, that very, very different ideas of diagnosis and prescription for mental health conditions were published as fact with the force of law.
There are literally hundreds of modern books written responsibly, but with varying levels of rigor and accredation, on these topics. Since every thinking person also has moods, aging parents, and sometimes ill relatives or personal episodes, the source pool for writing is endless.
Last IMHO - yes, the American Medical Association and its accredited members do in fact draw lines, that change over time, but are defended at the time, sometimes aggressively. It is not exactly a "hit piece" but it is in fact, a disagreement with one side trying to settle the matter as an authority. Yet the decisions change over time. etc...
There are literally hundreds of modern books written responsibly, but with varying levels of rigor and accredation, on these topics. Since every thinking person also has moods, aging parents, and sometimes ill relatives or personal episodes, the source pool for writing is endless.
Last IMHO - yes, the American Medical Association and its accredited members do in fact draw lines, that change over time, but are defended at the time, sometimes aggressively. It is not exactly a "hit piece" but it is in fact, a disagreement with one side trying to settle the matter as an authority. Yet the decisions change over time. etc...
> It is not exactly a "hit piece" but it is in fact, a disagreement with one side trying to settle the matter as an authority.
Those are different worlds. The latter is someone arguing in good faith, albeit wrongly and stubbornly, for something they believe is true. The former is spending money intentionally trying to discredit something because you're worried it's true (or people will find out it's true). One is honest and the other is not. That matters.
The original comment accused the medical profession of spending "a lot of money" soliciting "hit pieces". Not some bad actors, but ("elements of", whatever that means) the medical profession as a whole. Not occasionally, not in a few notorious instances, but spending "a lot of money". Not being stubborn, not appealing to authority instead of evidence, but "hit pieces". That is bullshit disinformation and I called the poster on it. Nothing you said about our understanding of medicine changing over time, slower than it should have, involving more fights and stubbornness than it should, gets anywhere near the profession spending a lot of money on hit pieces.
Those are different worlds. The latter is someone arguing in good faith, albeit wrongly and stubbornly, for something they believe is true. The former is spending money intentionally trying to discredit something because you're worried it's true (or people will find out it's true). One is honest and the other is not. That matters.
The original comment accused the medical profession of spending "a lot of money" soliciting "hit pieces". Not some bad actors, but ("elements of", whatever that means) the medical profession as a whole. Not occasionally, not in a few notorious instances, but spending "a lot of money". Not being stubborn, not appealing to authority instead of evidence, but "hit pieces". That is bullshit disinformation and I called the poster on it. Nothing you said about our understanding of medicine changing over time, slower than it should have, involving more fights and stubbornness than it should, gets anywhere near the profession spending a lot of money on hit pieces.
The error that you've made, and then run a mile with is right there in
your first response when you say "oddly scare-quoted". You took that
to be disparaging of medical professionals whereas in fact the work
those quotes are doing in that sentence is precisely the opposite; to
throw scorn on the idea that it was "medical professionals" who said
that.
I can see how you made that mistake. And maybe I should have been more forthright in saying that - hey maybe Gabor Mate (being the "some" who might say) has a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
Sadly, it shows rather clearly how we all impose beliefs we already have (especially about other people) on the words we read.
Maybe where you could have jumped off that mistake train was where I said without stubbornness, that no, I have no evidence of such a thing and even if I did, I would not deem it credible.
Nonetheless it has been said, whether you or I believe it or not, and if you want more details then you'll have to read Mate's book.
I can see how you made that mistake. And maybe I should have been more forthright in saying that - hey maybe Gabor Mate (being the "some" who might say) has a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
Sadly, it shows rather clearly how we all impose beliefs we already have (especially about other people) on the words we read.
Maybe where you could have jumped off that mistake train was where I said without stubbornness, that no, I have no evidence of such a thing and even if I did, I would not deem it credible.
Nonetheless it has been said, whether you or I believe it or not, and if you want more details then you'll have to read Mate's book.
No. And I would not even attempt to because I feel sure that anything
I found (especially from a casual search on the internet) would not be
credible. As I said there is mud-slinging on both sides. Six of one
and half a dozen of the other.
But I am confident that the original claim of "crackpot" theories that have been "debunked" is just more of the same opinionated, unscientific bunkum.
But I am confident that the original claim of "crackpot" theories that have been "debunked" is just more of the same opinionated, unscientific bunkum.
My old boy went through a good amount of nasty stuff in Vietnam, but was from the stuff upper lip school of emotion. He suppressed it pretty well, but it stayed with him.
The stuff the commenters describe as being labeled trauma, such as being yelled at, doesn't reach the threshold of being problematic trauma by a reasonable person.
The stuff the commenters describe as being labeled trauma, such as being yelled at, doesn't reach the threshold of being problematic trauma by a reasonable person.
Yeah but you're doing a different problem where instead of defining the threshold too low, you're defining the threshold too high. Like should our bar for trauma be really be "you were drafting against your will to go to a jungle and see your friends die while you mow down innocent villagers"?
The thing is, trauma is not like "you've crossed the threshold of objective sociality accepted suffering", trauma is like "did something start to give you flashbacks? Hypervigilance? anxiety? nightmares?"
The thing is, trauma is not like "you've crossed the threshold of objective sociality accepted suffering", trauma is like "did something start to give you flashbacks? Hypervigilance? anxiety? nightmares?"
This is an ignorant and harmful comment.
As another comment said, trauma manifests as certain unique physiological effects and mental patterns. We have learned that there are many different circumstances that can bring about these effects.
As another comment said, trauma manifests as certain unique physiological effects and mental patterns. We have learned that there are many different circumstances that can bring about these effects.
Same. My old fella (Korea, Malaya, nuke tests) never once would have
asked for help or admitted effects. He's call trauma "silly
talk". It's definitely a generational thing.
"Veterans die by suicide at a higher rate than non-Veterans. In 2020, the age- and sex- adjusted suicide rate among Veterans was 57.3% higher than the age- and sex-adjusted rate among non-Veteran U.S. adults."
https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/docs/FSTP...
https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/docs/FSTP...
When I can I dig in my pocket for this charity [0]. They do a bit of
proactive mental-health work over here in UK.
[0] https://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/
[0] https://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/
[deleted]
When did this distinction largely disappear from the discourse? It seems like it could have a great deal of clarifying power here.
I don't believe I've yet seen anyone from the 'it's trauma if you think it is' school attempt to fit the empirical fact of PTSD into their theoretical model. I would be interested to see that, if anyone's inclined to try it.