6 ms·

This article makes a lot of assumptions or claims with nothing to back them up, mostly the parts about a system built to traumatize, Charlottesville as an examp

This article makes a lot of assumptions or claims with nothing to back them up, mostly the parts about a system built to traumatize, Charlottesville as an example, etc. It seems to be entirely lacking any context of what life was like in preindustrial times vs modern times. Death was way more common back then, including losing your children. Let's not forget the impacts of religions and superstitions as societal frameworks and how those tended to handle anything different. Even punishments like stoning, flogging, or crucifixion were much more brutal. One of the main premises of this article is that society today is more traumatic than in the past, which I find to be laughably incorrect. They took what could have been a good article simply exploring modern drug use and ruined it with all these tangential and unfounded claims.

grvdrm 1y ago
I read the article and said “so, what was that about?” Felt more like a journal entry. Anecdote: try everything but the drugs if you can. What helps me: regular exercise, cut alcohol, do my best to sleep/wake up with a schedule. Make a list of what I need to do every day that isn’t insane. Not going to solve everyone’s problems. But I’ve consumed clonapen here and there for very specific reasons and otherwise don’t need it when I keep all of the above as top life priorities.
- cwmoore 1y ago
  Sure, but if alcohol and clonopin are not drugs, neither are any of the others.
walleeee 1y ago
It can be read charitably as claiming that society is traumatic in different ways, maybe, and in a wider variety of ways. Which is much more defensible. A rapid change in everyday psychological or physiological reality is traumatic, by definition, as one must adapt to it or bear the consequences. There may be less instances of stoning and flogging but many more of subtle conditioning, for instance. Quantity comparisons are challenging when there are big differences in kind
- giantg2 1y ago
  I think it would have been more interesting if they spent any amount of time exploring the causes. Such as basic life sustaining tasks being easier so there are fewer distractions from trauma. Or feedback mechanisms around effort, success, struggles, and triumph are reduced compared to a hunter gatherer. Etc
  - walleeee 1y ago
    I agree with you.
  - lanstin 1y ago
    And our being adapted to many of those struggles - it's a rare person that won't be happier walking 10 kilometers a day compars to walking less than 1. Or happier seeing 1000 trees a day rather than just walls.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  The social media definition of trauma has diverged from the clinician definition. The social media version of “trauma” is used to define anything stressful. When we start redefining trauma to cover everything down to the basic realities of life like having to pay for rent to live somewhere, the term loses meaning. With a definition this broad, where do we draw the line between stress and trauma? Is there a line between basic inconvenience and trauma, if the person suffering the inconvenience doesn’t handle it well? The less discussed problem is that some people have a problem of exaggerating everything into catastrophic stressors, thereby turning common experiences into traumas. This itself is a problem that is addressed through therapy, but it’s not as amenable to garnering sympathy on social media. It’s not appealing to read someone whine about having to work a job to eat food in a first world country, because that’s life and it’s a hundred times easier than it was for our ancestors. However, reframe that as a high-brow article about the perils of capitalism and how it inflicts trauma on us and causes PTSD and now it feels like we are the victims who deserve sympathy.
  - crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
wswope 1y ago
The article is tailing off a well-established historiographic narrative that it cites at the beginning (Will Self) but doesn’t dwell on much. Basically, the common argument is that life WAS emphatically much more brutal in the preindustrial past, and people felt the same grief that we do today — however, such events were less likely to serve as an etiology of chronic anxiety-centered conditions like PTSD for a multitude of reasons. E.g. you can’t lay around depressed in bed all day if you rely on subsistence agriculture because you’re going to slowly and painfully starve, or you’re exposed and desensitized to brutality from a younger age, or you have less strict social requirements/expectations than a modern 9-5 would impose so you can grieve and act out on your own terms, etc. Dan Carlin’s “Painfotainment” is a good self-contained intro to these ideas for a casual audience, if it seems up your alley.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  > you can’t lay around depressed in bed all day if you rely on subsistence agriculture because you’re going to slowly and painfully starve What makes you think this wasn't common?
- giantg2 1y ago
  Yes, and the article explores none of that. Complaining about stress from rent being high would be much more palatable if they explored those types of things, or simply didn't mention it at all. Instead they focus on the stress being from high rent vs from the reasons you point out. The way they use that quote makes it seem like they didn't read or understand the larger text, but just cherrypicked what fit with their narrative.
- discreteevent 1y ago
  Well, I remember reading an article some time after 9/11 where they studied the incidence of PTSD in New York following that event. Even in areas that were some distance from the towers there was a relatively high incidence. They put it down to a background level of stress including sources like violence on TV. This was in comparison to other parts of the world that were less modern and less busy than experienced more traumatic events but had less PTSD. The conclusion was that if you generally have a more boring/ quiet life you will be better able to absorb trauma if it occurs.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
There's been an attempt to redefine "trauma" broadly. Technically trauma is acute stress. That is, a great deal of stress delivered all at one time. There's been an attempt to redefine it to include chronic stress. That is, generally living under stressful conditions. I don't know why people are doing this, but it's almost always closely bound to politics. For example, the commenter below mentioning the political commentators Will Self and Dan Carlin as evidence for the theory. I've noticed generally that people who talk about trauma being broad in this sense also tend to have a confused understanding of psychology in general. > One of the main premises of this article is that society today is more traumatic than in the past, which I find to be laughably incorrect. They are definitely incorrect. One pop culture way of looking at this is fairy tales. Not too long ago we used to tell children that if they went into the woods they could get eaten by people who lived there and lured children into their houses.
- elmomle 1y ago
  Do you think another term is more appropriate to describe the experiences underlying CPTSD? It's now quite broadly recognized that its effect on the psyche is severe and if anything broader in impact and more difficult to heal than acute trauma.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > Do you think another term is more appropriate to describe the experiences underlying CPTSD? True CPTSD as diagnosed over time by a clinician is the result of complex traumas (complex, specifically, as that’s part of the definition. It’s what the C is for). The term is valid in that context. In common social media language, even the term CPTSD has become diluted. It was intended to represent complex cases of PTSD which were edge cases, and correspondingly rare. At some point the social media version of CPTSD emerged as a generic term and nearly everyone who self-diagnosed as having PTSD started upgrading themselves to CPTSD. The comment above is right that “trauma” has become so generic as to cover everything stressful or saddening in common vernacular. The concept of CPTSD was supposed to be a step above even normal trauma, but now even CPTSD is being brought out as a generic term for any post-trauma response, which was never the definition of CPTSD. A similar trend is happening on social media with the ADHD influencers now upgrading themselves to “AuDHD” which they say is a special more difficult variant of ADHD combined with Autism. My friends in psychiatry are at their wits end with all of the people coming in and demanding Autism diagnoses or “AuDHD” diagnoses despite not showing Autistic traits at all. There’s an arms race going on where some people try to amplify experiences into something much more dramatic. These therapy and psychiatry terms start to lose their meaning when they get adopted by social media.
6stringmerc 1y ago
Counterpoint: The instance at the cheerleading convention here in Dallas where a knocked over piece of equipment prompted a panic and viral news spread with incorrect assumptions. The "ripple effect" of trauma is magnified more than ever. You don't even have to go out of your way to get the news, as with the past, oh, before 30 years ago...now it's in our pockets. I think the assumption passes the intuition prima face test in my world, too bad not yours. Equipment may need better calibration.
bendigedig 1y ago
I like the fact that it attempts to provide an alternative narrative to the artificial medicalisation of 'mental illness'. Maybe it isn't totally factually accurate but it has enough truth to me that it represents a small flicker of hope in what is too often a chronically invalidating world.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

grvdrm 1y ago

I read the article and said “so, what was that about?” Felt more like a journal entry. Anecdote: try everything but the drugs if you can. What helps me: regular exercise, cut alcohol, do my best to sleep/wake up with a schedule. Make a list of what I need to do every day that isn’t insane. Not going to solve everyone’s problems. But I’ve consumed clonapen here and there for very specific reasons and otherwise don’t need it when I keep all of the above as top life priorities.

cwmoore 1y ago
Sure, but if alcohol and clonopin are not drugs, neither are any of the others.

walleeee 1y ago

It can be read charitably as claiming that society is traumatic in different ways, maybe, and in a wider variety of ways. Which is much more defensible. A rapid change in everyday psychological or physiological reality is traumatic, by definition, as one must adapt to it or bear the consequences. There may be less instances of stoning and flogging but many more of subtle conditioning, for instance. Quantity comparisons are challenging when there are big differences in kind

giantg2 1y ago
I think it would have been more interesting if they spent any amount of time exploring the causes. Such as basic life sustaining tasks being easier so there are fewer distractions from trauma. Or feedback mechanisms around effort, success, struggles, and triumph are reduced compared to a hunter gatherer. Etc
- walleeee 1y ago
  I agree with you.
- lanstin 1y ago
  And our being adapted to many of those struggles - it's a rare person that won't be happier walking 10 kilometers a day compars to walking less than 1. Or happier seeing 1000 trees a day rather than just walls.
Aurornis 1y ago
The social media definition of trauma has diverged from the clinician definition. The social media version of “trauma” is used to define anything stressful. When we start redefining trauma to cover everything down to the basic realities of life like having to pay for rent to live somewhere, the term loses meaning. With a definition this broad, where do we draw the line between stress and trauma? Is there a line between basic inconvenience and trauma, if the person suffering the inconvenience doesn’t handle it well? The less discussed problem is that some people have a problem of exaggerating everything into catastrophic stressors, thereby turning common experiences into traumas. This itself is a problem that is addressed through therapy, but it’s not as amenable to garnering sympathy on social media. It’s not appealing to read someone whine about having to work a job to eat food in a first world country, because that’s life and it’s a hundred times easier than it was for our ancestors. However, reframe that as a high-brow article about the perils of capitalism and how it inflicts trauma on us and causes PTSD and now it feels like we are the victims who deserve sympathy.
- crawfordcomeaux 1y ago

wswope 1y ago

The article is tailing off a well-established historiographic narrative that it cites at the beginning (Will Self) but doesn’t dwell on much. Basically, the common argument is that life WAS emphatically much more brutal in the preindustrial past, and people felt the same grief that we do today — however, such events were less likely to serve as an etiology of chronic anxiety-centered conditions like PTSD for a multitude of reasons. E.g. you can’t lay around depressed in bed all day if you rely on subsistence agriculture because you’re going to slowly and painfully starve, or you’re exposed and desensitized to brutality from a younger age, or you have less strict social requirements/expectations than a modern 9-5 would impose so you can grieve and act out on your own terms, etc. Dan Carlin’s “Painfotainment” is a good self-contained intro to these ideas for a casual audience, if it seems up your alley.

colechristensen 1y ago
> you can’t lay around depressed in bed all day if you rely on subsistence agriculture because you’re going to slowly and painfully starve What makes you think this wasn't common?
giantg2 1y ago
Yes, and the article explores none of that. Complaining about stress from rent being high would be much more palatable if they explored those types of things, or simply didn't mention it at all. Instead they focus on the stress being from high rent vs from the reasons you point out. The way they use that quote makes it seem like they didn't read or understand the larger text, but just cherrypicked what fit with their narrative.
discreteevent 1y ago
Well, I remember reading an article some time after 9/11 where they studied the incidence of PTSD in New York following that event. Even in areas that were some distance from the towers there was a relatively high incidence. They put it down to a background level of stress including sources like violence on TV. This was in comparison to other parts of the world that were less modern and less busy than experienced more traumatic events but had less PTSD. The conclusion was that if you generally have a more boring/ quiet life you will be better able to absorb trauma if it occurs.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

There's been an attempt to redefine "trauma" broadly. Technically trauma is acute stress. That is, a great deal of stress delivered all at one time. There's been an attempt to redefine it to include chronic stress. That is, generally living under stressful conditions. I don't know why people are doing this, but it's almost always closely bound to politics. For example, the commenter below mentioning the political commentators Will Self and Dan Carlin as evidence for the theory. I've noticed generally that people who talk about trauma being broad in this sense also tend to have a confused understanding of psychology in general. > One of the main premises of this article is that society today is more traumatic than in the past, which I find to be laughably incorrect. They are definitely incorrect. One pop culture way of looking at this is fairy tales. Not too long ago we used to tell children that if they went into the woods they could get eaten by people who lived there and lured children into their houses.

elmomle 1y ago
Do you think another term is more appropriate to describe the experiences underlying CPTSD? It's now quite broadly recognized that its effect on the psyche is severe and if anything broader in impact and more difficult to heal than acute trauma.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Do you think another term is more appropriate to describe the experiences underlying CPTSD? True CPTSD as diagnosed over time by a clinician is the result of complex traumas (complex, specifically, as that’s part of the definition. It’s what the C is for). The term is valid in that context. In common social media language, even the term CPTSD has become diluted. It was intended to represent complex cases of PTSD which were edge cases, and correspondingly rare. At some point the social media version of CPTSD emerged as a generic term and nearly everyone who self-diagnosed as having PTSD started upgrading themselves to CPTSD. The comment above is right that “trauma” has become so generic as to cover everything stressful or saddening in common vernacular. The concept of CPTSD was supposed to be a step above even normal trauma, but now even CPTSD is being brought out as a generic term for any post-trauma response, which was never the definition of CPTSD. A similar trend is happening on social media with the ADHD influencers now upgrading themselves to “AuDHD” which they say is a special more difficult variant of ADHD combined with Autism. My friends in psychiatry are at their wits end with all of the people coming in and demanding Autism diagnoses or “AuDHD” diagnoses despite not showing Autistic traits at all. There’s an arms race going on where some people try to amplify experiences into something much more dramatic. These therapy and psychiatry terms start to lose their meaning when they get adopted by social media.

6stringmerc 1y ago

Counterpoint: The instance at the cheerleading convention here in Dallas where a knocked over piece of equipment prompted a panic and viral news spread with incorrect assumptions. The "ripple effect" of trauma is magnified more than ever. You don't even have to go out of your way to get the news, as with the past, oh, before 30 years ago...now it's in our pockets. I think the assumption passes the intuition prima face test in my world, too bad not yours. Equipment may need better calibration.

bendigedig 1y ago

I like the fact that it attempts to provide an alternative narrative to the artificial medicalisation of 'mental illness'. Maybe it isn't totally factually accurate but it has enough truth to me that it represents a small flicker of hope in what is too often a chronically invalidating world.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]