Today was my first day of college and just... Wow. I was NOT supposed to make it this far with the decisions I've made in my life. Until 2ish years ago I just accepted that I would become a statistic like so many others in my position but I'm somehow making it through. Still have all the same issues that have haunted me over the last decade and I'd be lying if I said I am doing well (I doubt I ever will be) but I can at least recognize that there is a small light at the end of the tunnel. I just have to keep my head on straight and make better decisions. Easier said than done lol
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Lifestyle The Mental Wellness Thread
- Thread starter Rollout Shuckle
- Start date
Are there any good mental health books that anyone can recommend?
I found a book called "Taking care of yourself and your family" by John Ashfield Phd, PhD. From some of the content I could read at the bookstore, I thought it looked pretty good. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure how good the book actually is, considering I couldn't find a reasonable number of positive reviews for it.
I was thinking that, considering that these books would help us get out of depression and anxiety, it would be well worth it.
I found a book called "Taking care of yourself and your family" by John Ashfield Phd, PhD. From some of the content I could read at the bookstore, I thought it looked pretty good. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure how good the book actually is, considering I couldn't find a reasonable number of positive reviews for it.
I was thinking that, considering that these books would help us get out of depression and anxiety, it would be well worth it.
First, I want to say thank you for the time to respond to my message earlier.
like
When I mean social event, I should've clarified that I don't have a lot of them. Most of them are like extended family ones, like weddings and birthday parties and the other kind of social events would just be parties.
I also should mention that I don't have that many friends and even then, I don't think we meet up for much. The only times we do are when we hang out in my place (which usually just resorts to buying food and me beating them at games - which I deem to be a bit unfair), going to the movies (which isn't often considering there's not many good ones out there), or going out for dinner (which is the best for both worlds, but I unfortunately can't drive there).
It doesn't help that I sometimes keep forgetting basic stuff about them, like where they work or what majors they studied in. I also don't wanna tell them my possible mental struggles because I don't want to burden them and have them helpless on what to do. Plus, it's not fair if I can't remember much stuff about them, or even if they're going ok in spite of their problems, which could be worse than mine.
tw: depression, gore, trauma, parental trauma, transphobia, suicidal thoughts, self harm, heavy suicidal thoughts
Frankly, I currently often find myself coming back to the topic of my own death. To free myself from the shackles and chains of this seemingly uncurable poison that fights and quarrels with me in this [never-ending-nightmare], enveloping my ever passing sanity, devouring my psyche with nothing but pure, malicious, gluttonous wrath. Images often flash across my mind in times of distress. Images of me cleaving out my own flesh to disfigure myself, carving out the meat and fat and skinning myself to the bone. I pass away. I am unable to be disrespected in my funeral, with my body as disfigured as can be. My family will not and can not cut my hair off and put me in boyish clothing, and I will not have the privilege to listen to faux words of prayer and empathy. Words spawned from nothing but unjust profanity and misinformed hatred. My deadname shall not rise from the mouths of my family and into my souless skeleton. I will not hear me being misgendered anymore. I would be free. Tis but just one example. In these visions I starve. I jump. I drown. I die. For but just a brief moment, I visualise and foresee futures, perhaps the fate of my other selves, as I willingly pass away to end my sorrow.
I have never once felt that things were right. At a young age I had the affinity to be drawn to stories where a change in one's physical body occurs. Turning from boy to girl was subtly imbedded as a want in my mind, perhaps even from the very beginning. Once in my youth I found myself contemplating my deadname. I remember visualising in my mind a list of all possible English names for a boy to have. None fit me. I shrugged it off. I did not percieve that being a girl was an option. The task of being a girl was so rooted in fantasy that I did not once percieve it as an option. It was impossible. I was powerless to change my gender. I was stuck no matter what I did. Why try?
I first came to the understanding of being transgender around two years ago, around in October of 2023. I was led into misunderstandings in my youth, whether intentional or not, to be uneducated about LGBTQ+ people. I thought they were, to have the lack of better wording, cringe, and well, weird. In my youth I sometimes called things "gay" or used words to that effect to alienate the LGBTQ+ community. I deeply regret being born in a conservative asian culture, even though I had no control over the circumstances of my birthing. Anyway, I started to connect the dots between my own experiences post puberty and how that related to my earlier thoughts. It wouldn't be far fetched to say that I did an entire re-mapping of my gender identity. I rethought my life over, and what and who I wanted to become. In my mind I brought back something I had thought of many times before. My life would be so much better if I was simply born a girl. At a young age this feeling was internalised. I had thought this exact phrase many times over, yet I simply wrote it off as a joke. Not once did I entertain the idea that such a feat of becoming a girl was possible, yet now... it was. I tried being a girl online. I felt better. Loved. Respected. It felt right.
I started to realise that my body did not fit my gender identity. I had been conditioned to understand that my body was the sole dictator of my gender identity. I started to get depressed. With no outlet for my feelings and being scared of rejection from teachers, psychiatrists, and families, I hid my true self. Visible signs of anxiety and distress started to show. I cried at the sight of myself. I cried. I cried.
>> Side note: am I a fake trans person? because I didn't really feel dysphoria when I was younger
>> Side note: Im scared of rejection from the people I'm close to. I end up being a people pleaser. When I was younger I conformed to what my parents wanted me to do, or I would get beaten. It felt like I was not allowed to have my own opinion. I don't have an opinion on some things like on a favorite food even now because I was told to be unpicky and eat everything. Sometimes I hide my own opinion because I'm scared of backlash. I'm slowly growing out of this phase.
I self harmed. It felt weird. It felt like I was finally letting my emotions out. But I felt guilty. It was wrong. I should not do this. I can not do this. I simply was not allowed to.
>> Side note: It feels like my whole life is just a bunch of allowed to and not allowed to arguments.
I left school for a while to take a break. It was soon going to be Winter break anyway. I told my mom I had feelings of wanting to be a girl. She said she will support me no matter who I am in life. It felt nice. I was cared for.
Nothing happened. I was just sitting at home all day. My mom did not ask me how to accomodate me wanting to be a girl. In truth I do not blame her for not knowing what to do, but the lack of support was still relevant. Eventually I left to go back to my home country in Hong Kong to see medical professionals. Even then they only treated me for my symptoms. It still felt like no one cared about my feelings. I was alone. I was afraid. I felt unable to speak out. No one was welcoming enough to let me speak my desires, speak the truth. I told my dad I was trans. He was welcoming of the idea at first. The immediate morning after, he was angry. His mood was one of insanity. He threatened to call the cops on me, and shouted yelling and shouting. I did nothing to provoke him. Little did I know, this would be the start of many quarrels with my parents.
>> Side note: the psychiatrists i went to did not help and were either bigoted or did not help at all with even trying to help me get through my troubles of my gender identity. Well, there was this one time a psychiatrist did an assessment on me (I was uncomfortable with them and i lied a lot) and the verdict said my gender identity issues were caused by my anxiety and autism instead of having dysphoria or gender identity disorder. I think back to this a lot.
I went back to school in the UK. I lied to my teachers and my NHS General Practitioner. I acted like a boy to them. I acted the role of a boy to my friends. To my classmates. To everyone. I hated everything. I cried and cried. I wanted to die. My dad forced me to cut the hair i grew. I ran out of the barber shop after it was cut. I ran away to a park. I cried. I cried.
My dad saw me in distress. He asked if i wanted to continue school. I said no. I couldn't see a way out of this. I couldn't see a way of not lying to everyone. Looking back, I shouldn't have done any of this lying. But I was scared. I was afraid. I ran. I left school. I quit school. I flew back to Hong Kong.
...
The plane landed. Everything to me was so confusing. I was disoriented from all the stress. That night I got into an argument with my dad. I do not remember the specifics. I got really stressed out and locked him out of the room we were staying in (we were temporarily staying in a hotel). He called 999. They took me to the hospital.
I was stuck in Accident and Emergency for many hours - I would say over 5. I was deprived of my senses. Eventually I got put into a psych ward. Someone asked me who I was. I introduced myself as my deadname. Even in times of pure distress I still felt like i had to lie. Eventually I found that the children were very accepting of me. I believe that finding support in real life truely restored my faith in ceasing my lies.
>> Sidenote: The medical professionals in Hong Kong aren't that great in terms of attitude towards LGBTQ+ people, and I had to deal with many, many such cases of transphobia and absolving gender segregation in the psych ward myself. I got tied up by the psych ward staff for silent protest of gender based seating and so called social distancing (actually gender segregation), and that took a toll on me and I still have nightmares abt it (signifying my voice not being heard???) but I would rather not dive into that rabbit hole here.
>> Side Side note: The medical professionals were like wow your mental improved so much suddenly and I was like wow i wonder what happened (they got rid of most of the gender segregation)
I left the psych ward. It had been 35 days. I got to talk to my friends online again, and I made some friends in the psych ward during my stay which was really nice too. I started talking to my dad about my future, and one of the things I had to focus on was my education forward. I applied to a school. I lied to them. I could not be myself. I was not allowed to. In the psych ward i had gotten too accustomed to being appreciated and respected of who I am that I forgot I had to lie. So I lied. In the interview I lied. I lied and lied and lied and lied. I wanted to die.
At the end I did not end up going to that school. I went to a tuition center to pursue my grades. I still lied. To them I was a boy. Nothing but a boy. Male. Boy. Male. Boy. Male. Boy.
...
I had many arguments with my dad over the span of a year. I still do to this day. My dad would call me insults like me being useless or compare me to useless things like a grain of rice or not being able to achieve anything. Other insults include intentionally misgendering and deadnaming, as well as muttering phrases as if they were slurs. "autistic" "trans" "voice training" "you are whatever you think you are" and more all said in a sarcastic, mocking tone that invalidated my feelings and destroyed my integrity as a person. Once my dad called me worse than Chinese censorship for trying to "censor" my deadname and male pronouns.
...
Many arguments. Some arguments transcended to being physical. I was in deep distress. I still had little to no real world outlet of my emotions and feelings. (I still don't). I ran away once. I got kicked out once. My mom has been neutral in this whole conversation, yet remains conforming to my dad's transphobic tendencies to bring balance and restore order to the family. She still sometimes freaks out and gets mad and transphobic though.
...
My life is lived under the law of things I am allowed to do,and things I am not allowed to do. I am not allowed to be me at home. I must not do anything about my parents' attitude towards my gender identity at home. I must magically know and understand how to do everything I need in life. I must be "independent" and magically do everything i need to do in life myself even though my parents actively harm my well being to the point of me wanting to kill myself. I have explained to my parents over and over about what it means to be transgender. I have been called by my parents to be surrounding myself with "yes-men" and "cherry picking statistics" about what it means to be transgender and my own gender identity. I'm tired. Sometimes I just want to give up this battle. Succumb to life and pass away. I know it is wrong, but the beckoning of death seems ever so enticing.
...
I have sought professional help in the UK. However it is the NHS and waiting lists are ever so slow (takes like 6 months to a year for referrals to stuff to go through)
...
My mom says she liked me better when I was younger. I was more energetic and happier then.
...
I look ugly. My mom says I look ugly. My dad says I look ugly. I say I look ugly. I want to look pretty. I want to die. I want to die.
...
I think most of these "I want to die" phrases is me just screaming into the void like saying get me out of this shithole instead of actually wanting to die. I have many friends that wont let me die. I am grateful to many of them that have supported me over these few years. Thank you.
...
My dad thinks society is on his side. My mom does too. They both think they are right. They think it is just two sides of the same coin. Having empathy is two sides of the same coin. This statement alone makes me feel powerless. Hopeless.
...
They think they haven't done anything wrong. My dad says I destroyed the family. I just want to live as a girl. My feelings of dysphoria are denied. My dad creates tension in the family then blames it on me. It feels like no one in real life is standing on my side and actively defending me.
ty for reading through everything if you did ily
writing this made me feel a lot better today, theres prolly more ill add in the future through edits / updates ily all ill try not to kms
Frankly, I currently often find myself coming back to the topic of my own death. To free myself from the shackles and chains of this seemingly uncurable poison that fights and quarrels with me in this [never-ending-nightmare], enveloping my ever passing sanity, devouring my psyche with nothing but pure, malicious, gluttonous wrath. Images often flash across my mind in times of distress. Images of me cleaving out my own flesh to disfigure myself, carving out the meat and fat and skinning myself to the bone. I pass away. I am unable to be disrespected in my funeral, with my body as disfigured as can be. My family will not and can not cut my hair off and put me in boyish clothing, and I will not have the privilege to listen to faux words of prayer and empathy. Words spawned from nothing but unjust profanity and misinformed hatred. My deadname shall not rise from the mouths of my family and into my souless skeleton. I will not hear me being misgendered anymore. I would be free. Tis but just one example. In these visions I starve. I jump. I drown. I die. For but just a brief moment, I visualise and foresee futures, perhaps the fate of my other selves, as I willingly pass away to end my sorrow.
I have never once felt that things were right. At a young age I had the affinity to be drawn to stories where a change in one's physical body occurs. Turning from boy to girl was subtly imbedded as a want in my mind, perhaps even from the very beginning. Once in my youth I found myself contemplating my deadname. I remember visualising in my mind a list of all possible English names for a boy to have. None fit me. I shrugged it off. I did not percieve that being a girl was an option. The task of being a girl was so rooted in fantasy that I did not once percieve it as an option. It was impossible. I was powerless to change my gender. I was stuck no matter what I did. Why try?
I first came to the understanding of being transgender around two years ago, around in October of 2023. I was led into misunderstandings in my youth, whether intentional or not, to be uneducated about LGBTQ+ people. I thought they were, to have the lack of better wording, cringe, and well, weird. In my youth I sometimes called things "gay" or used words to that effect to alienate the LGBTQ+ community. I deeply regret being born in a conservative asian culture, even though I had no control over the circumstances of my birthing. Anyway, I started to connect the dots between my own experiences post puberty and how that related to my earlier thoughts. It wouldn't be far fetched to say that I did an entire re-mapping of my gender identity. I rethought my life over, and what and who I wanted to become. In my mind I brought back something I had thought of many times before. My life would be so much better if I was simply born a girl. At a young age this feeling was internalised. I had thought this exact phrase many times over, yet I simply wrote it off as a joke. Not once did I entertain the idea that such a feat of becoming a girl was possible, yet now... it was. I tried being a girl online. I felt better. Loved. Respected. It felt right.
I started to realise that my body did not fit my gender identity. I had been conditioned to understand that my body was the sole dictator of my gender identity. I started to get depressed. With no outlet for my feelings and being scared of rejection from teachers, psychiatrists, and families, I hid my true self. Visible signs of anxiety and distress started to show. I cried at the sight of myself. I cried. I cried.
>> Side note: am I a fake trans person? because I didn't really feel dysphoria when I was younger
>> Side note: Im scared of rejection from the people I'm close to. I end up being a people pleaser. When I was younger I conformed to what my parents wanted me to do, or I would get beaten. It felt like I was not allowed to have my own opinion. I don't have an opinion on some things like on a favorite food even now because I was told to be unpicky and eat everything. Sometimes I hide my own opinion because I'm scared of backlash. I'm slowly growing out of this phase.
I self harmed. It felt weird. It felt like I was finally letting my emotions out. But I felt guilty. It was wrong. I should not do this. I can not do this. I simply was not allowed to.
>> Side note: It feels like my whole life is just a bunch of allowed to and not allowed to arguments.
I left school for a while to take a break. It was soon going to be Winter break anyway. I told my mom I had feelings of wanting to be a girl. She said she will support me no matter who I am in life. It felt nice. I was cared for.
Nothing happened. I was just sitting at home all day. My mom did not ask me how to accomodate me wanting to be a girl. In truth I do not blame her for not knowing what to do, but the lack of support was still relevant. Eventually I left to go back to my home country in Hong Kong to see medical professionals. Even then they only treated me for my symptoms. It still felt like no one cared about my feelings. I was alone. I was afraid. I felt unable to speak out. No one was welcoming enough to let me speak my desires, speak the truth. I told my dad I was trans. He was welcoming of the idea at first. The immediate morning after, he was angry. His mood was one of insanity. He threatened to call the cops on me, and shouted yelling and shouting. I did nothing to provoke him. Little did I know, this would be the start of many quarrels with my parents.
>> Side note: the psychiatrists i went to did not help and were either bigoted or did not help at all with even trying to help me get through my troubles of my gender identity. Well, there was this one time a psychiatrist did an assessment on me (I was uncomfortable with them and i lied a lot) and the verdict said my gender identity issues were caused by my anxiety and autism instead of having dysphoria or gender identity disorder. I think back to this a lot.
I went back to school in the UK. I lied to my teachers and my NHS General Practitioner. I acted like a boy to them. I acted the role of a boy to my friends. To my classmates. To everyone. I hated everything. I cried and cried. I wanted to die. My dad forced me to cut the hair i grew. I ran out of the barber shop after it was cut. I ran away to a park. I cried. I cried.
My dad saw me in distress. He asked if i wanted to continue school. I said no. I couldn't see a way out of this. I couldn't see a way of not lying to everyone. Looking back, I shouldn't have done any of this lying. But I was scared. I was afraid. I ran. I left school. I quit school. I flew back to Hong Kong.
...
The plane landed. Everything to me was so confusing. I was disoriented from all the stress. That night I got into an argument with my dad. I do not remember the specifics. I got really stressed out and locked him out of the room we were staying in (we were temporarily staying in a hotel). He called 999. They took me to the hospital.
I was stuck in Accident and Emergency for many hours - I would say over 5. I was deprived of my senses. Eventually I got put into a psych ward. Someone asked me who I was. I introduced myself as my deadname. Even in times of pure distress I still felt like i had to lie. Eventually I found that the children were very accepting of me. I believe that finding support in real life truely restored my faith in ceasing my lies.
>> Sidenote: The medical professionals in Hong Kong aren't that great in terms of attitude towards LGBTQ+ people, and I had to deal with many, many such cases of transphobia and absolving gender segregation in the psych ward myself. I got tied up by the psych ward staff for silent protest of gender based seating and so called social distancing (actually gender segregation), and that took a toll on me and I still have nightmares abt it (signifying my voice not being heard???) but I would rather not dive into that rabbit hole here.
>> Side Side note: The medical professionals were like wow your mental improved so much suddenly and I was like wow i wonder what happened (they got rid of most of the gender segregation)
I left the psych ward. It had been 35 days. I got to talk to my friends online again, and I made some friends in the psych ward during my stay which was really nice too. I started talking to my dad about my future, and one of the things I had to focus on was my education forward. I applied to a school. I lied to them. I could not be myself. I was not allowed to. In the psych ward i had gotten too accustomed to being appreciated and respected of who I am that I forgot I had to lie. So I lied. In the interview I lied. I lied and lied and lied and lied. I wanted to die.
At the end I did not end up going to that school. I went to a tuition center to pursue my grades. I still lied. To them I was a boy. Nothing but a boy. Male. Boy. Male. Boy. Male. Boy.
...
I had many arguments with my dad over the span of a year. I still do to this day. My dad would call me insults like me being useless or compare me to useless things like a grain of rice or not being able to achieve anything. Other insults include intentionally misgendering and deadnaming, as well as muttering phrases as if they were slurs. "autistic" "trans" "voice training" "you are whatever you think you are" and more all said in a sarcastic, mocking tone that invalidated my feelings and destroyed my integrity as a person. Once my dad called me worse than Chinese censorship for trying to "censor" my deadname and male pronouns.
...
Many arguments. Some arguments transcended to being physical. I was in deep distress. I still had little to no real world outlet of my emotions and feelings. (I still don't). I ran away once. I got kicked out once. My mom has been neutral in this whole conversation, yet remains conforming to my dad's transphobic tendencies to bring balance and restore order to the family. She still sometimes freaks out and gets mad and transphobic though.
...
My life is lived under the law of things I am allowed to do,and things I am not allowed to do. I am not allowed to be me at home. I must not do anything about my parents' attitude towards my gender identity at home. I must magically know and understand how to do everything I need in life. I must be "independent" and magically do everything i need to do in life myself even though my parents actively harm my well being to the point of me wanting to kill myself. I have explained to my parents over and over about what it means to be transgender. I have been called by my parents to be surrounding myself with "yes-men" and "cherry picking statistics" about what it means to be transgender and my own gender identity. I'm tired. Sometimes I just want to give up this battle. Succumb to life and pass away. I know it is wrong, but the beckoning of death seems ever so enticing.
...
I have sought professional help in the UK. However it is the NHS and waiting lists are ever so slow (takes like 6 months to a year for referrals to stuff to go through)
...
My mom says she liked me better when I was younger. I was more energetic and happier then.
...
I look ugly. My mom says I look ugly. My dad says I look ugly. I say I look ugly. I want to look pretty. I want to die. I want to die.
...
I think most of these "I want to die" phrases is me just screaming into the void like saying get me out of this shithole instead of actually wanting to die. I have many friends that wont let me die. I am grateful to many of them that have supported me over these few years. Thank you.
...
My dad thinks society is on his side. My mom does too. They both think they are right. They think it is just two sides of the same coin. Having empathy is two sides of the same coin. This statement alone makes me feel powerless. Hopeless.
...
They think they haven't done anything wrong. My dad says I destroyed the family. I just want to live as a girl. My feelings of dysphoria are denied. My dad creates tension in the family then blames it on me. It feels like no one in real life is standing on my side and actively defending me.
ty for reading through everything if you did ily
writing this made me feel a lot better today, theres prolly more ill add in the future through edits / updates ily all ill try not to kms
Disclaimer: The following post is not directed towards any individual users. Viewer discretion is advised.
Trauma. This is a word that I think gets thrown around a lot. Arguably… too much. It’s a word that’s been mentioned several times in this thread and me being the person interested in developmental psychology and so-called “disabilities” that I am, I wanted to discuss what I think this word means and why I think society, on average, has a massive misunderstanding of it.
Like most words across most languages, the word “trauma” has a long list of generally accepted scholarly definitions. For the sake of this thread, I’m going to refer to traumas as any negatively perceived reaction to aversive physical, psychological, or emotional actions, events, or stimulus directed at or towards a person or people, whether that be directly or indirectly. This definition should give us a relatively easy to understand baseline for why the word gets thrown around a lot. What’s unique about traumas, apart from just how many different kinds of these there actually are, is how unlike something such as a stigma, traumatic impacts tend to be a lot more direct in their approach and can develop extremely quickly or over an extended period of time.
I used to think the world was a much happier, nicer place than I currently believe it to be. On a greater scale, I do still consider the world to be, on average, “good”. However, I cannot deny the reality that is people having differing belief systems, worldviews, and experiences. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, of course. The problem starts when someone, individually, or collectively, begins to try and make assumptions about how other people must feel about a certain topic. As the human brain continues to age, it’s generally harder for neural pathways to exchange newly information and, without giving this thread a collegiate-level psychology lecture, primes people to develop certain biases based on what they themselves have heard, seen, or been exposed to. This is why we see a lot of older people from more politically backgrounds struggle to make connections with younger people that may have different opinions about the world, how things should be done, so on and so forth. So where does trauma fit into all of this?
I often see the word “trauma” used in a similar manner to words such as “fear” or “phobia”, and it… kind of makes sense why. In theory, traumatic experiences often do lead to the development of new fears in people. That’s not the strange part. The strange part is why people seemingly never want to try and look at things from other people’s points of view. Use me as an example. I grew up in a pretty Christian environment, but I know full well that there are many, many, MANY people in the world that have religious trauma, across all kinds of different faiths and from several different causes. I once took a class about other different worldviews, but something didn’t make sense to me. It would only be after this course was completed that I finally made the connection. The course wasn’t being taught so we could try and force our beliefs onto other people or anything like that. The course was being taught to us so that, ideally, we could go into the world with more knowledge about what other people see and experience so that we may be able to make our own decisions on what we truly believe in and want to support.
At this, I reflected back on some of the stories I’ve heard from former Christians that left the church for religious trauma, and for good reason. Using any religious authority as justification to do some of what “those people” have done is arguably one of the most psychotically evil things you can do, especially if children are involved. I’d probably stay away from the church if I was a victim of such actions too.
As my schooling continued, I found myself more interested in learning about other people more and more, and when I fully committed to an education in the human services professions, one of the things I decided I wanted to learn the most about, alongside neurodivergence, was trauma and how I could use my own experiences and talents to help other people overcome their own adversities. I’m still learning to this day, but one of the main things I’ve learned is that there’s no reason for me not to want to respect people for who they really are on the inside. As an autistic person with ADHD and anxiety issues, I’ve felt misunderstood myself plenty of times, after all. Who am I, of all people, to automatically think I know what someone has been through when I am just as capable of learning from them as they are from me?
I want to take pride in helping people deal with their trauma, but I also want to discourage others from haphazardly throwing out the word too quickly without really, and I mean really getting to know them first. It’s not very healthy to stereotype entire groups of people based on the actions of just a few, after all. Incidentally, I also believe that our traumas are relative. That is to say, some that may not seem like a big deal to one person may mean the world to another person, and that’s okay. It’s a very tame example, I know, but when I lost possibly thousands of hours of memories when my 3DS XL broke in the early 2020s, for me, one memory stuck out to me as particularly traumatic. I’ve talked about this specific situation several times elsewhere on the Internet- you know, that whole Espeon thing I had a generational crash-out about earlier this month? My point I’m trying to make is, even if it’s something that seems small, it never hurts to be careful with what you say to someone or how you try and approach them. Try and learn and respect people’s boundaries, and if there are sensitive topics that they don’t want to talk about right now, respect their choices. Even if I can leave a positive influence on just one person with this post, I’ll be comfortable knowing I added some positivity to this world. Physical scars might not visually heal completely, but we can help each other through the hard times we all go through and eventually our own traumas will become just that- another memory, one that affects us but does not have to strictly define who we are. Traumas affect us all differently and appear in many different forms, but this is just what I think of the word and why I think it’s so important we learn about other people before trying to assume the worst of the world. At the end of the day, it’s all about perspective.
Trauma. This is a word that I think gets thrown around a lot. Arguably… too much. It’s a word that’s been mentioned several times in this thread and me being the person interested in developmental psychology and so-called “disabilities” that I am, I wanted to discuss what I think this word means and why I think society, on average, has a massive misunderstanding of it.
Like most words across most languages, the word “trauma” has a long list of generally accepted scholarly definitions. For the sake of this thread, I’m going to refer to traumas as any negatively perceived reaction to aversive physical, psychological, or emotional actions, events, or stimulus directed at or towards a person or people, whether that be directly or indirectly. This definition should give us a relatively easy to understand baseline for why the word gets thrown around a lot. What’s unique about traumas, apart from just how many different kinds of these there actually are, is how unlike something such as a stigma, traumatic impacts tend to be a lot more direct in their approach and can develop extremely quickly or over an extended period of time.
I used to think the world was a much happier, nicer place than I currently believe it to be. On a greater scale, I do still consider the world to be, on average, “good”. However, I cannot deny the reality that is people having differing belief systems, worldviews, and experiences. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, of course. The problem starts when someone, individually, or collectively, begins to try and make assumptions about how other people must feel about a certain topic. As the human brain continues to age, it’s generally harder for neural pathways to exchange newly information and, without giving this thread a collegiate-level psychology lecture, primes people to develop certain biases based on what they themselves have heard, seen, or been exposed to. This is why we see a lot of older people from more politically backgrounds struggle to make connections with younger people that may have different opinions about the world, how things should be done, so on and so forth. So where does trauma fit into all of this?
I often see the word “trauma” used in a similar manner to words such as “fear” or “phobia”, and it… kind of makes sense why. In theory, traumatic experiences often do lead to the development of new fears in people. That’s not the strange part. The strange part is why people seemingly never want to try and look at things from other people’s points of view. Use me as an example. I grew up in a pretty Christian environment, but I know full well that there are many, many, MANY people in the world that have religious trauma, across all kinds of different faiths and from several different causes. I once took a class about other different worldviews, but something didn’t make sense to me. It would only be after this course was completed that I finally made the connection. The course wasn’t being taught so we could try and force our beliefs onto other people or anything like that. The course was being taught to us so that, ideally, we could go into the world with more knowledge about what other people see and experience so that we may be able to make our own decisions on what we truly believe in and want to support.
At this, I reflected back on some of the stories I’ve heard from former Christians that left the church for religious trauma, and for good reason. Using any religious authority as justification to do some of what “those people” have done is arguably one of the most psychotically evil things you can do, especially if children are involved. I’d probably stay away from the church if I was a victim of such actions too.
As my schooling continued, I found myself more interested in learning about other people more and more, and when I fully committed to an education in the human services professions, one of the things I decided I wanted to learn the most about, alongside neurodivergence, was trauma and how I could use my own experiences and talents to help other people overcome their own adversities. I’m still learning to this day, but one of the main things I’ve learned is that there’s no reason for me not to want to respect people for who they really are on the inside. As an autistic person with ADHD and anxiety issues, I’ve felt misunderstood myself plenty of times, after all. Who am I, of all people, to automatically think I know what someone has been through when I am just as capable of learning from them as they are from me?
I want to take pride in helping people deal with their trauma, but I also want to discourage others from haphazardly throwing out the word too quickly without really, and I mean really getting to know them first. It’s not very healthy to stereotype entire groups of people based on the actions of just a few, after all. Incidentally, I also believe that our traumas are relative. That is to say, some that may not seem like a big deal to one person may mean the world to another person, and that’s okay. It’s a very tame example, I know, but when I lost possibly thousands of hours of memories when my 3DS XL broke in the early 2020s, for me, one memory stuck out to me as particularly traumatic. I’ve talked about this specific situation several times elsewhere on the Internet- you know, that whole Espeon thing I had a generational crash-out about earlier this month? My point I’m trying to make is, even if it’s something that seems small, it never hurts to be careful with what you say to someone or how you try and approach them. Try and learn and respect people’s boundaries, and if there are sensitive topics that they don’t want to talk about right now, respect their choices. Even if I can leave a positive influence on just one person with this post, I’ll be comfortable knowing I added some positivity to this world. Physical scars might not visually heal completely, but we can help each other through the hard times we all go through and eventually our own traumas will become just that- another memory, one that affects us but does not have to strictly define who we are. Traumas affect us all differently and appear in many different forms, but this is just what I think of the word and why I think it’s so important we learn about other people before trying to assume the worst of the world. At the end of the day, it’s all about perspective.
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