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Doesn't matter, suggestibility was correlated with trauma, which means they are likely to be suggestible to becoming miserable if you tell them they are.

Retric 1y ago
That requires someone to tell them they are miserable rather than observing them to be miserable. There’s a lot of historic terms to describe people suffering from traumatic experiences like shell shocked (WWI), soldier’s hart (US civil war), lost/bewildered (US Revolutionary War), etc going back literally thousands of years.
- Jensson 1y ago
  No it doesn't, I didn't say the source of their misery was people telling them that they are, but it could make it worse. Often the best cure is for your friends and family to treat you just like normal, except maybe demand a bit less and give space.
  - Retric 1y ago
    That’s a common response by friends and family but it’s simply not the best cure. Often it makes things worse and can lead to suicide through feelings of alienation.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > No it doesn't, I didn't say the source of their misery was people telling them that they are, but it could make it worse. It sounds like you're advocating for repressing traumatic experiences hoping to not cause inconveniences.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- strken 1y ago
  You need to separate physical trauma from psychological trauma. There's no debate that getting hit in the head or having explosives go off nearby can cause physical brain damage. That's empirically proven (at least in animal models) and so obvious that it's hard to argue against. What I'm unclear on is the details: is physical trauma a necessary factor in shell shock as it was understood a century or more ago? Is that shell shock the same thing as the combat stress reaction and/or post-traumatic stress disorder? Is PTSD an amalgamation of two different things that aren't the same? To what extent does suggestion worsen the physical vs psychological sides of PTSD? Is suggestion the only thing that causes shell shock, the CSR, and/or PTSD in the absence of physical damage? Etc.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > Is suggestion the only thing that causes shell shock, the CSR, and/or PTSD in the absence of physical damage? Etc. I think you're venturing into denialism territory. There is a mountain of evidence supporting the fact that traumatic experiences have a negative impact on health. See for example the impact of stress on, say, cardiac issues, and even growing grey hair and/or going bald altogether.
    - strken 1y ago
      I'm less saying "it definitely isn't" and more trying to show the complexity of understanding this and the paucity of evidence. Is long-term stress different from a one-off traumatic incident? How much stress does trauma cause? Is therapy effective at preventing stress caused by trauma? What part of therapy is effective: can you stick someone in a room with a nice doctor and no therapeutic plan and achieve a result? Does therapy make things worse for some patients? Which patients are those, and how do you tell? My personal opinion is that trauma probably has an effect, it's a lot worse in sustained cases, many of the symptoms are mixed up with other conditions, treatment for it is effective (in that it hits statistical significance) but not particularly effective (in that the effect size is small), treating healthy people can make them worse, some traumatised patients probably also get worse after treatment, and the symptoms of e.g. ASR/CSR are so vague that some of them apply to most of the people who read them.
  - 1y ago
zimpenfish 1y ago
Do you have a link to studies showing this? I had a look and I found one[0] (cw: child abuse) which agrees but the direction is wrong - they discovered trauma leads to suggestibility. [1] might be implying what you claim but, whilst I'm no expert, I'm reasonably sure "dissociative states"[2] isn't a simple "becoming miserable". [0] https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/37 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/37 "Our results show that PTSD increases the levels of immediate and delayed suggestibility" [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30987544/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30987544/ "These results suggest that high suggestibility confers vulnerability to dissociative states in individuals exposed to trauma and displaying an anxious attachment style." [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)
- Jensson 1y ago
  > I had a look and I found one[0] (cw: child abuse) which agrees but the direction is wrong - they discovered trauma leads to suggestibility. I never said that trauma comes from suggestibility. Even for traumatized people you can make things worse by using their suggestibility and saying they are miserable, they get more miserable, what you said agree with that.

Retric 1y ago

That requires someone to tell them they are miserable rather than observing them to be miserable. There’s a lot of historic terms to describe people suffering from traumatic experiences like shell shocked (WWI), soldier’s hart (US civil war), lost/bewildered (US Revolutionary War), etc going back literally thousands of years.

Jensson 1y ago
No it doesn't, I didn't say the source of their misery was people telling them that they are, but it could make it worse. Often the best cure is for your friends and family to treat you just like normal, except maybe demand a bit less and give space.
- Retric 1y ago
  That’s a common response by friends and family but it’s simply not the best cure. Often it makes things worse and can lead to suicide through feelings of alienation.
- motorest 1y ago
  > No it doesn't, I didn't say the source of their misery was people telling them that they are, but it could make it worse. It sounds like you're advocating for repressing traumatic experiences hoping to not cause inconveniences.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
strken 1y ago
You need to separate physical trauma from psychological trauma. There's no debate that getting hit in the head or having explosives go off nearby can cause physical brain damage. That's empirically proven (at least in animal models) and so obvious that it's hard to argue against. What I'm unclear on is the details: is physical trauma a necessary factor in shell shock as it was understood a century or more ago? Is that shell shock the same thing as the combat stress reaction and/or post-traumatic stress disorder? Is PTSD an amalgamation of two different things that aren't the same? To what extent does suggestion worsen the physical vs psychological sides of PTSD? Is suggestion the only thing that causes shell shock, the CSR, and/or PTSD in the absence of physical damage? Etc.
- motorest 1y ago
  > Is suggestion the only thing that causes shell shock, the CSR, and/or PTSD in the absence of physical damage? Etc. I think you're venturing into denialism territory. There is a mountain of evidence supporting the fact that traumatic experiences have a negative impact on health. See for example the impact of stress on, say, cardiac issues, and even growing grey hair and/or going bald altogether.
  - strken 1y ago
    I'm less saying "it definitely isn't" and more trying to show the complexity of understanding this and the paucity of evidence. Is long-term stress different from a one-off traumatic incident? How much stress does trauma cause? Is therapy effective at preventing stress caused by trauma? What part of therapy is effective: can you stick someone in a room with a nice doctor and no therapeutic plan and achieve a result? Does therapy make things worse for some patients? Which patients are those, and how do you tell? My personal opinion is that trauma probably has an effect, it's a lot worse in sustained cases, many of the symptoms are mixed up with other conditions, treatment for it is effective (in that it hits statistical significance) but not particularly effective (in that the effect size is small), treating healthy people can make them worse, some traumatised patients probably also get worse after treatment, and the symptoms of e.g. ASR/CSR are so vague that some of them apply to most of the people who read them.
- 1y ago

zimpenfish 1y ago

Do you have a link to studies showing this? I had a look and I found one[0] (cw: child abuse) which agrees but the direction is wrong - they discovered trauma leads to suggestibility. [1] might be implying what you claim but, whilst I'm no expert, I'm reasonably sure "dissociative states"[2] isn't a simple "becoming miserable". [0] https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/37 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/37 "Our results show that PTSD increases the levels of immediate and delayed suggestibility" [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30987544/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30987544/ "These results suggest that high suggestibility confers vulnerability to dissociative states in individuals exposed to trauma and displaying an anxious attachment style." [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)

Jensson 1y ago
> I had a look and I found one[0] (cw: child abuse) which agrees but the direction is wrong - they discovered trauma leads to suggestibility. I never said that trauma comes from suggestibility. Even for traumatized people you can make things worse by using their suggestibility and saying they are miserable, they get more miserable, what you said agree with that.