This came up on antisocial media recently. This is clearly what people who don’t have to deal with intergenerational and complex trauma believe about those of us who do. At least we should probably be grateful to ability supremacists to be honest enough to put their bile and garbage out in the open when those of us trying to survive things like Complex PTSD. It’s interesting to note at the outset that this meme shows interest in trauma when it’s not that of the person accused of traumatising others. If the speaker assumes they are being traumatised by the accused, then the speaker is clearly invoking false equivalencies to explain why being criticised and being attacked are the same thing, and being criticised and suffering developmental PTSD are the same thing.
This narrative also invisibilises people who are clearly trying to survive PTSD, as though they have already been seen, heard and made to feel understood and accepted unconditionally as people. How often does this actually happen in reality? Does it happen ever? Does it happen any more than trying to use trauma to dodge responsibility is demonstrably true, as opposed to being projecting on the part of those of us who don’t want to have to deal with the fact of someone else’s trauma, and have to be responsible in coming to terms with, humanising and understanding them? How many people do we know who even get a chance to talk about trauma before being judged for having to deal with the effects we didn’t choose, which no one understands, and which the manipulative love to play on, since problematising reactions to disrespect is super easy when disrespect and abuse sets off fucking trauma triggers!
Maybe talking about trauma is actually a good way of dealing with maladaptive behaviours, e.g. instead of
A. assuming that those behaviours reflect attitude rather than experiences we know nothing about, and which need to be separated from the person experiencing trauma for us to be able to deal with the kind of dissociation and identity disturbance that can’t be death with in conventional therapy;
B. taking this assumption as license to assume the worst about the person as default, to make moral judgements, and to talk in and reinforce stereotypes
C. ensuring thereby that nothing ever changes by giving the person trying to survive developmental trauma no room to repair and grow, by deincentivising any efforts at repair by making sure we’re stigmatised regardless of what we do or don’t do to try to help ourselves (we’re sure as fuck not going to get any from the Respectably Pious™).
If we can’t make survivors of Complex PTSD feel understood, if we can’t make them feel human, where does the problem truly lie? With people who have had too much shit to deal with already before we come along, or with ingrained social norms that make it easier to play performative games of purge the weakest link, than for society as a whole to evolve ideas, change and adapt? Does society as we now know it have any issues with being maladaptive as it stands? Who even knows hey.
Living with Complex PTSD seems nothing if not endlessly unforgiving and punishing so much of the time. Forgiveness for me, punishment for thee–especially if it suits me to conflate being criticised, contradicted, opposed or not worshipped with the requisite level of awe with being attacked or abused. Ironic to this extent that we tend to project our own aggression onto those we betray and abandon to make them feel like our lack of compassion, lack of understanding, inability to get over ourselves long enough to act responsibly and maturely, or lack of sensitivity and compassion.
In playing the victim like this, it seems like we assume entitlement to assume the worst about others as default, and, where they’re trying to survive something like complex ptsd, that the things that put them into emdr therapy define them as a person, when learning what it means that they don’t is the primary purpose of emdr in the first place. We’re far quicker with ‘that dude has a history’ than we are ‘that dude works himself to the bone trying to rise above his history and needs outside help to repair the attachment disorder that came with the developmental trauma disorder that seems to have been the root cause of a lot of shitty and fucked up behaviour, all the more so as diagnosis and treatment took a lot longer than judgement and shunning agro.’
I mean, imagine if there was nothing more defeating to a disorder based around the inability to feel secure in attachment to others than too-hard basketing and recommending head-shrinkage for having feelings and needing others to understand. Imagine if feeling understood was important to bonding with anyone. We’re just too busy for difficult and inconvenient feels, but we have all the time in the world to run the difficult and inconvenient down once we’ve abandoned them. We just problematise reactions to militant ignorance to excuse talking in stereotypes amongst ourselves, because forgiveness for me and punishment for thee is a good way of grandstanding values we don’t want to have to put effort into living. We tone-police to avoid having to hear the pain behind things we don’t want to hear anyway, especially when we’re responsible for causing or exacerbating it in the first fucking place.
I’m so tired of being discarded to the too-hard-basket and then needing time and space to repair enough to even cry out in pain. I made a choice a long time ago to not punch my own ticket and to live, with all the slings and arrows that were sure to come. It’s just daily punishment. The tough-love cruelty and brutality of majestic modern civilisation with its mask off is untold. It’s just something else. We lionise acting like cold and callous reptiles like it’s tough because it suits us to conflate the two, when it’s actually just patronising, assuming to know amidst militant ignorance, hypocritical and pissweak. Imagine if that was supposed to be the problem in the first place. Did we want to rise above it, or embody it? Am confused.
Seems like the attitude is, he’s still kicking so how bad could it be. Maybe he’s just being emotional and difficult. How about maybe I don’t know enough of a difference between the heinous isolation of dissociation, identity disturbance and clinical depression, and feeling connected to anyone else on the planet for demonising and shunning agro from collectively narcissistic abled ingroups to make a decisive difference. Maybe I don’t know enough of anything else for shunning agro not to be *normal*. Maybe I’m one tough mother fucker where those inclined to judge and discard to too-hard basket would have punched their own tickets early.