3 ms·

> 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 wor

by Kamq 3y ago

> 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.

tgaj 3y ago
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.
- Kamq 3y ago
  > 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.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> 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.
- Kamq 3y ago
  > 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.
- throwanem 3y ago
  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.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    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.

by Kamq 3y ago

tgaj 3y ago

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.

Kamq 3y ago
> 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.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

> 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.

Kamq 3y ago
> 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.
throwanem 3y ago
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.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  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.