This is the big, scary truth about trauma: there is no such thing as
“getting over it.” The five stages of grief model marks universal stages
in learning to accept loss, but the reality is in fact much bigger: a
major life disruption leaves a new normal in its wake. There is no “back
to the old me.” You are different now, full stop.
This is not a wholly negative thing. Healing from trauma can also
mean finding new strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a
papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as
normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life — warts, wisdom, and
all — with courage.
2. Presence is always better than distance.
There is a curious illusion that in times of crisis people “need
space.” I don’t know where this assumption originated, but in my
experience it is almost always false. Trauma is a disfiguring, lonely
time even when surrounded in love; to suffer through trauma alone is
unbearable. Do not assume others are reaching out, showing up, or
covering all the bases.
It is a much lighter burden to say, “Thanks for your love, but please
go away,” than to say, “I was hurting and no one cared for me.” If
someone says they need space, respect that. Otherwise, err on the side
of presence.
3. Healing is seasonal, not linear.
It is true that healing happens with time. But in the recovery
wilderness, emotional healing looks less like a line and more like a
wobbly figure-8. It’s perfectly common to get stuck in one stage for
months, only to jump to another end entirely … only to find yourself
back in the same old mud again next year.
Recovery lasts a long, long time. Expect seasons.
4. Surviving trauma takes “firefighters” and “builders.” Very few people are both.
This is a tough one. In times of crisis, we want our family, partner,
or dearest friends to be everything for us. But surviving trauma
requires at least two types of people: the crisis team — those friends
who can drop everything and jump into the fray by your side, and the
reconstruction crew — those whose calm, steady care will help nudge you
out the door into regaining your footing in the world. In my experience,
it is extremely rare for any individual to be both a firefighter and a
builder. This is one reason why trauma is a lonely experience. Even if
you share suffering with others, no one else will be able to fully walk
the road with you the whole way.
A hard lesson of trauma is learning to forgive and love your partner,
best friend, or family even when they fail at one of these roles.
Conversely, one of the deepest joys is finding both kinds of companions
beside you on the journey.
5. Grieving is social, and so is healing.
For as private a pain as trauma is, for all the healing that time and
self-work will bring, we are wired for contact. Just as relationships
can hurt us most deeply, it is only through relationship that we can be
most fully healed.
It’s not easy to know what this looks like — can I trust casual
acquaintances with my hurt? If my family is the source of trauma, can
they also be the source of healing? How long until this friend walks
away? Does communal prayer help or trivialize?
Seeking out shelter in one another requires tremendous courage, but
it is a matter of life or paralysis. One way to start is to practice
giving shelter to others.
6. Do not offer platitudes or comparisons. Do not, do not, do not.
“I’m so sorry you lost your son, we lost our dog last year … ” “At
least it’s not as bad as … ” “You’ll be stronger when this is over.”
“God works in all things for good!”
When a loved one is suffering, we want to comfort them. We offer
assurances like the ones above when we don’t know what else to say. But
from the inside, these often sting as clueless, careless, or just plain
false.
Trauma is terrible. What we need in the aftermath is a friend who can
swallow her own discomfort and fear, sit beside us, and just let it be
terrible for a while.
7. Allow those suffering to tell their own stories.
Of course, someone who has suffered trauma may say, “This made me
stronger,” or “I’m lucky it’s only (x) and not (z).” That is their
prerogative. There is an enormous gulf between having someone else
thrust his unsolicited or misapplied silver linings onto you, and
discovering hope for one’s self. The story may ultimately sound very
much like “God works in all things for good,” but there will be a galaxy
of disfigurement and longing and disorientation in that confession.
Give the person struggling through trauma the dignity of discovering and
owning for himself where, and if, hope endures.
8. Love shows up in unexpected ways.
This is a mystifying pattern after trauma, particularly for those in
broad community: some near-strangers reach out, some close friends
fumble to express care. It’s natural for us to weight expressions of
love differently: a Hallmark card, while unsatisfying if received from a
dear friend, can be deeply touching coming from an old acquaintance.
Ultimately every gesture of love, regardless of the sender, becomes a
step along the way to healing. If there are beatitudes for trauma, I’d
say the first is, “Blessed are those who give love to anyone in times of
hurt, regardless of how recently they’ve talked or awkwardly
reconnected or visited cross-country or ignored each other on the
metro.” It may not look like what you’d request or expect, but there
will be days when surprise love will be the sweetest.
9. Whatever doesn’t kill you …
In 2011, after a publically humiliating year, comedian Conan O’Brien gave students at Dartmouth College the following warning:
“Nietzsche famously said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger.’ … What he failed to stress is that it almost kills you.”
Odd things show up after a serious loss and creep into every corner of
life: insatiable anxiety in places that used to bring you joy,
detachment or frustration towards your closest companions, a deep
distrust of love or presence or vulnerability.
There will be days when you feel like a quivering, cowardly shell of
yourself, when despair yawns as a terrible chasm, when fear paralyzes
any chance for pleasure. This is just a fight that has to be won, over
and over and over again.
10. … Doesn’t kill you.
Living through trauma may teach you resilience. It may help sustain
you and others in times of crisis down the road. It may prompt humility.
It may make for deeper seasons of joy. It may even make you stronger.
It also may not.
In the end, the hope of life after trauma is simply that you have
life after trauma. The days, in their weird and varied richness, go on.
So will you.
Some pretty good advice.
me, talking about my trauma: haha yeah it was no big deal tho i don’t really care it’s whatever honestly
somebody: validates my trauma and says i shouldn’t have had to go through that
me, suddenly crying: huh. weird
So they go around the world bombing and killing people and then expect us to feel sorry for them?? Nah son, you deserve it.
me if i ever find out any of my neighbors are veterans
Hmmm. I mean, just because the army as an institution is flawed and damaging doesn’t mean everyone in it is a terrible person. To paint every single veteran with the same brush is reductive and to make light of the debilitating mental disorders many have just seems wrong. Like yes, fuck the military as an institution completely 100%, but blaming disabled ex-front-line infantry maybe isn’t the best direction for our anger, perhaps.
A lot of veterans are poor people who were intentionally targeted by scouting programs coming to their schools starting at age 13, and most of them are worse off coming back than they were to start with… let’s be courteous to folks with PTSD
Don’t be an ableist fuckface. Intentionally triggering someone is disgusting.
I thought people on this godforsaken website at least understood this one basic principal, but apparently not, so let me make it crystal clear:
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BE SELECTIVELY PROGRESSIVE
You can hate Ann Coulter. But if you suggest that she deserves to be raped, you are a misogynist.
You can hate Woody Allen. But if you say he’s part of a Jewish conspiracy or joke about putting him in an oven, you are an antisemite.
You can hate Michael Vick. But you call for him to be lynched or call him the N-word, you are an anti-black racist.
You can hate Caitlyn Jenner. But if you misgender her, or make comments about her genitalia, you are a transphobe.
And you can hate the military. But if you deliberately try to trigger veterans with PTSD, you are an ableist piece of shit.
You do no get to pick and choose which people to treat fairly when it comes to acknowledging and combatting prejudice.
Not liking a person is not a free pass to disregard anti-prejudicial words and actions. Either you respect marginalized peoples as a whole (even if you don’t like an individual), or you don’t respect them at all. There is no middle ground.
If anyone really like, agrees with harassing veterans with PTSD or anything similar, unfollow me right the fuck now. I don’t want you following me.
You don’t have to like the military, it’s massively fucked up but y’all needs understand that most people in the military are victims of propaganda and are usually poor or part of a minority who are taken advantage of in order to join.
^^^ All of these comments tbh
Mhmm
Wasn’t it Hawkeye in MASH that talked about the fact that, except for a few brass very high up the food chain and very far removed from actual fighting, pretty much everyone in war is a victim?
Kids in poverty without hope of paying for college to dig themselves out of the cycle of being poor are the ones who enlist. Kids who have been busted for small offenses that suddenly make them hard to employ are the ones who enlist. Kids who would give anything to get away from the abuse and neglect of shitty home lives are the ones who enlist. They’re indoctrinated hard about strong they are, how much they’re a part of a greater good, how they’re heroes. Kids who have been fighting and scrapping and hustling their whole lives just to survive. Those kids are the ones with combat PTSD, not the fuckheads to use them like they’re disposable pawns on a chessboard. Most of those kids have basically zero good prospects without the military.
Enlisted kids are, by and large, victims. And they pay for it their whole lives with damaged bodies and damaged minds. Get your shit straight. Protest high ranking officers all the way up to the president, but leave combat vets the fuck alone.
Also, we’re not so far removed from the Vietnam War, which HAD A DRAFT. You didn’t get to choose to go, you didn’t go because you had no other options, you went because you were legally required to go.
My dad was drafted and fought in Vietnam. His family was poor, so unlike the wealthier members of his extended family, he couldn’t buy his way out (paying a doctor for a medical deferral) and he wasn’t in college. The only choice my dad had was to voluntarily enlist with the Marines, which gave him a 90 day deferral period.
(Which he freely admits was because he had just bought a motorcycle, and if he was going to die, he was going to die after he spent a summer riding his bike.)
My dad has PTSD. Sometimes, he’ll even admit it. But the resources that are available for Vets today weren’t for Vets from Vietnam. It’s called the forgotten war for a reason, and soldiers who returned home from Vietnam were vilified and attacked. A lot of them didn’t choose to go, and they certainly didn’t choose to be hated for fighting a war that they didn’t believe in. They didn’t have the option.
And I know I am a tumblr old, and my parents were older when they had me, but for the kids out there? My dad could be your grandfather. I hate these kind of comparisons, because human decency people, but think about how you’d feel about this post if the people advocating the disregard of combat Vets’ feeling were talking about older Vets from Korea and Vietnam?
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BE SELECTIVELY PROGRESSIVE
yes, that. a world of that. stop using progressive ideals as an excuse to be a vicious bastard. and if i catch you blaming individual soldiers for the wars that used them, i’ll give you such a Disappointed Dad Look you’ll feel six inches tall for a week.
when you go from a bad situation into a better one you may collapse exhausted and unsure what to do and full of grief, you may need time to regain the ability to do things as yourself or motivated by anything other than terror, you may need time to process or mourn or fall apart in ways you could not before,
and people may use this as proof that the old situation was better for you, proof that you need to go back, and it is not proof that it was better for you or proof that you need to go back
!!!
It’s so incredibly common to “fall apart” when you’re finally safe. You no longer need to stay so tightly coiled in on yourself, you can finally leave survival mode and process your trauma. You’re not holding yourself up by sheer terror anymore and suddenly the damage that terror has done to you becomes immediate and obvious.
This is so important. Don’t go back. Things are already getting better, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
This is a documented phenomenon with abuse in particular. I’ve had a number of people ask me why they’re falling apart now after they’ve moved into a safer home, or they’re in a less dangerous area, or they’ve left an exploitative job, or they’re in a healthy relationship for the first time. Generally, it’s because they made that positive change.
When we’re still in the midst of crisis, we’re often too overloaded and physically/emotionally unsafe to really feel or process anything. So for most of us, everything gets pushed down/repressed/dissociated until later, when we’re safe and supported. The threshold of safety at which processing begins to occur varies from person to person. And the mental calculations used to determine “safety” usually happen on an unconscious level. Very few of us have the conscious thought “I’m safe now, so I can process what happened to me.” Instead, the subconscious realizes some level of safety has been achieved, and so it just dumps a load of suppressed stuff.
Sometimes, it’s contrast to past experiences that makes us realize something was traumatic at all. In such cases, it’s not that we’ve reached a level of safety and can thus begin to process, it’s that we finally have a basis for comparison to know that what went before was unacceptable.
this is also the case for getting treatment/medication for an ongoing illness. it’s theorized that’s why antidepressants sometimes seem to cause suicide – someone who was too defeated and exhausted to even try to kill themself might react to the return of energy by following through on suicidal ideation they just didn’t have the wherewithal to address before.
i’ve even observed something similar with physical illness. when i found a pain medication that worked for my chronic pain, i slept like 14 hours a day for the first couple weeks – because finally i COULD sleep without being woken up by pain.
please spread the word that it’s normal to faceplant when a long-term stressor is removed. you’re not getting worse. you’re starting to heal.
I think a lot of people’s experiences of trauma have looked like “being forced to grow up too fast”. Having things they weren’t ready for pushed on them, whether that was being sexualized against their will or tasked with raising younger siblings in a parent’s absence. For those people to feel safe, they need a space where vulnerability is acknowledged and a strong boundary is maintained between dominant people and their potential victims. Hence the “I don’t care how mature she is; having sex with a 17-year-old is wrong” line of thinking. Those people’s pain is valid. Their boundaries are valid.
I think a lot of other people’s experiences of trauma have looked like “being infantilized against their will”. Things like growing up in a family that didn’t acknowledge your sexuality, or being institutionalized, or being disabled and therefore seen as a child long past the age of maturity. For those people to feel safe, they need a space where their agency is affirmed and no one will try to control them “for their own good”. Hence the “I may be young, but please believe me when I say I know what I’m doing sexually” line of thinking. Those people’s pain is valid. Their boundaries are also valid. And neither group deserves to take precedence over the other,
I, personally, fall into the latter category. My experience of abuse involved being treated like a petulant child who didn’t know her own mind or desires. I could not be in charge of my spirituality – of any aspect of my inner life, really. I couldn’t have the things I wanted; I couldn’t even be trusted to know what I wanted. And all of it, all the micromanaging, all the gaslighting, was allegedly for my own good.
So when I see statements like “having sex with a girl of X age is necessarily wrong, no matter what the girl says”, I have a very deep, very instinctive middle-finger reaction. I have had enough of being told that what I want doesn’t matter, isn’t important, and isn’t even really what I want. I can’t make my own decisions? Fucking WATCH ME.
That said, the statement “having sex with a girl of X age is necessarily wrong, no matter what the girl says” may be enormously beneficial for someone from the former group! I can absolutely see how, if someone has been sexualized against their will from a young age and groomed into wanting things they now regret, that someone might find it empowering to admit “I said I wanted it, but I wasn’t really mature enough to make that decision, and the adults in my life were at fault for that”. We just have to be mindful of splash damage to Group B, who will, predictably, prickle at the notion that what they say doesn’t matter.
It applies in non-sexual situations too. Someone from Group A, who was forced to drop out of school and raise their siblings after the death of their parents, might say something like “teenagers just aren’t capable of taking care of children. they’re still developing; they deserve to have a youth”. Meanwhile, someone from Group B, who is developmentally disabled and has fought for years to be allowed to babysit their siblings, will see that and think “fuck you, I’m just as capable as anyone else”.
I also think each group makes the mistake of projecting an abuser-centric view onto the other. Group A, for instance, might accuse Group B of secretly wanting to sexually coerce young women, while Group B might accuse Group A of wanting to sexually restrict those same young women. This is a mistake. Because both groups are speaking from their own trauma, neither is necessarily serving the needs of abusers. They are talking about what they, personally, need in order to feel safe and to extend aid to those like them, and both models are valid. We just can’t pretend that one can exclude the other.
This is relevant to a lot of the discourse.
this makes a lot of sense to me, and also explains why i crashed so dramatically into all the pedophile drama. i’m definitely a member of Group B, who chafed all my adolescence at being condescended to and controlled, and couldn’t wait to be grown up and powerful. i hated the idea that i was too young to do anything, especially anything sexual, and i admired my upperclassmen who maturely discussed smut and yaoi like they were suave experts. i had sex as soon as someone i liked was offering, at 16, and never regretted it. i was really enthusiastic about sex in my late teens, and had as much as i could. i was writing smut by the time i was 18.
so to me, 16 always seemed like a perfectly normal and healthy age for consensual age-appropriate sexual relations, and i was totally startled to find out a lot of 16 year olds disagree. i was then an idiot who realized way too late that it’s incredibly creepy for a grown woman to be arguing with teens that they are too old enough to have sex, and by the time this fact was rammed through my dense skull i had said some stuff that Group A people interpreted (incorrectly but understandably) as sexually predatory. and of course, call-out posts never include a user’s apologies or retractions…
ironically, my abuse was a kind of group C – people being rulebound and judgy in a very personal and dehumanizing way, controlling and punishing not because they wanted to infantilize me, but because they saw themselves as heroes and me as a monster. they didn’t want to make me into their baby doll or their sex toy or their ego stroker or anything at all; they wanted me to not exist.
which means the entire fucking discourse is a huge trigger to me, whichever side it’s coming from. although the anti side is much MORE triggery, seeing as they tend to play the hero/monster game.
i was seen as a monster because i’m autistic – my expressions are wrong, my tone of voice is wrong, my eye contact is wrong. pretty much everyone in my childhood except my parents, and uncountable other people through my youth and adulthood, many of them in positions of power over me, decided i was Bad or Not Real and treated me accordingly, and nothing i could do would change their minds. now roach is being seen as a monster ecause she’s been honest about her lived experience, by people who actively campaign to spread vicious rumors, and nothing anyone can say will change their minds.
I think a lot of people’s experiences of trauma have looked like “being forced to grow up too fast”. Having things they weren’t ready for pushed on them, whether that was being sexualized against their will or tasked with raising younger siblings in a parent’s absence. For those people to feel safe, they need a space where vulnerability is acknowledged and a strong boundary is maintained between dominant people and their potential victims. Hence the “I don’t care how mature she is; having sex with a 17-year-old is wrong” line of thinking. Those people’s pain is valid. Their boundaries are valid.
I think a lot of other people’s experiences of trauma have looked like “being infantilized against their will”. Things like growing up in a family that didn’t acknowledge your sexuality, or being institutionalized, or being disabled and therefore seen as a child long past the age of maturity. For those people to feel safe, they need a space where their agency is affirmed and no one will try to control them “for their own good”. Hence the “I may be young, but please believe me when I say I know what I’m doing sexually” line of thinking. Those people’s pain is valid. Their boundaries are also valid. And neither group deserves to take precedence over the other,
I, personally, fall into the latter category. My experience of abuse involved being treated like a petulant child who didn’t know her own mind or desires. I could not be in charge of my spirituality – of any aspect of my inner life, really. I couldn’t have the things I wanted; I couldn’t even be trusted to know what I wanted. And all of it, all the micromanaging, all the gaslighting, was allegedly for my own good.
So when I see statements like “having sex with a girl of X age is necessarily wrong, no matter what the girl says”, I have a very deep, very instinctive middle-finger reaction. I have had enough of being told that what I want doesn’t matter, isn’t important, and isn’t even really what I want. I can’t make my own decisions? Fucking WATCH ME.
That said, the statement “having sex with a girl of X age is necessarily wrong, no matter what the girl says” may be enormously beneficial for someone from the former group! I can absolutely see how, if someone has been sexualized against their will from a young age and groomed into wanting things they now regret, that someone might find it empowering to admit “I said I wanted it, but I wasn’t really mature enough to make that decision, and the adults in my life were at fault for that”. We just have to be mindful of splash damage to Group B, who will, predictably, prickle at the notion that what they say doesn’t matter.
It applies in non-sexual situations too. Someone from Group A, who was forced to drop out of school and raise their siblings after the death of their parents, might say something like “teenagers just aren’t capable of taking care of children. they’re still developing; they deserve to have a youth”. Meanwhile, someone from Group B, who is developmentally disabled and has fought for years to be allowed to babysit their siblings, will see that and think “fuck you, I’m just as capable as anyone else”.
I also think each group makes the mistake of projecting an abuser-centric view onto the other. Group A, for instance, might accuse Group B of secretly wanting to sexually coerce young women, while Group B might accuse Group A of wanting to sexually restrict those same young women. This is a mistake. Because both groups are speaking from their own trauma, neither is necessarily serving the needs of abusers. They are talking about what they, personally, need in order to feel safe and to extend aid to those like them, and both models are valid. We just can’t pretend that one can exclude the other.
This is relevant to a lot of the discourse.
this makes a lot of sense to me, and also explains why i crashed so dramatically into all the pedophile drama. i’m definitely a member of Group B, who chafed all my adolescence at being condescended to and controlled, and couldn’t wait to be grown up and powerful. i hated the idea that i was too young to do anything, especially anything sexual, and i admired my upperclassmen who maturely discussed smut and yaoi like they were suave experts. i had sex as soon as someone i liked was offering, at 16, and never regretted it. i was really enthusiastic about sex in my late teens, and had as much as i could. i was writing smut by the time i was 18.
so to me, 16 always seemed like a perfectly normal and healthy age for consensual age-appropriate sexual relations, and i was totally startled to find out a lot of 16 year olds disagree. i was then an idiot who realized way too late that it’s incredibly creepy for a grown woman to be arguing with teens that they are too old enough to have sex, and by the time this fact was rammed through my dense skull i had said some stuff that Group A people interpreted (incorrectly but understandably) as sexually predatory. and of course, call-out posts never include a user’s apologies or retractions…
ironically, my abuse was a kind of group C – people being rulebound and judgy in a very personal and dehumanizing way, controlling and punishing not because they wanted to infantilize me, but because they saw themselves as heroes and me as a monster. they didn’t want to make me into their baby doll or their sex toy or their ego stroker or anything at all; they wanted me to not exist.
which means the entire fucking discourse is a huge trigger to me, whichever side it’s coming from. although the anti side is much MORE triggery, seeing as they tend to play the hero/monster game.
i was seen as a monster because i’m autistic – my expressions are wrong, my tone of voice is wrong, my eye contact is wrong. pretty much everyone in my childhood except my parents, and uncountable other people through my youth and adulthood, many of them in positions of power over me, decided i was Bad or Not Real and treated me accordingly, and nothing i could do would change their minds. now roach is being seen as a monster ecause she’s been honest about her lived experience, by people who actively campaign to spread vicious rumors, and nothing anyone can say will change their minds.
In trauma survivors, Van der Kolk notes, the parts of the brain that have evolved to monitor for danger remain overactivated and even the slightest sign of danger, real or misperceived, can trigger an acute stress response accompanied by intense unpleasant emotions and overwhelming sensations. Such posttraumatic reactions make it difficult for survivors to connect with other people, since closeness often triggers the sense of danger. And yet the very thing we come to most dread after experiencing trauma — close contact with other people — is also the thing we most need in order to regain psychoemotional solidity and begin healing. Van der Kolk writes:
Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.
This, he points out, is why we’ve evolved a refined mechanism for detecting danger — we’re incredibly attuned to even the subtlest emotional shifts in those around us and, even if we don’t always heed these intuitive readings, we can read another person’s friendliness or hostility on the basis of such imperceptible cues as brow tension, lip curvature, and body angles. But one of the most pernicious effects of trauma is that it disrupts this ability to accurately read others, rendering the trauma survivor either less able to detect danger or more likely to misperceive danger where there is none.
“Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart.For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don’t need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers — but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.”
There is a mistaken notion that trauma is primarily about memory—the story of what has happened…It’s a too-simplistic view in my opinion. Your whole mind, brain and sense of self is changed in response to trauma.
In the long term the largest problem of being traumatized is that it’s hard to feel that anything that’s going on around you really matters. It is difficult to love and take care of people and get involved in pleasure and engagements because your brain has been re-organized to deal with danger.
It is only partly an issue of consciousness. Much has to do with unconscious parts of the brain that keep interpreting the world as being dangerous and frightening and feeling helpless. You know you shouldn’t feel that way, but you do, and that makes you feel defective and ashamed.
it pisses me off that i might be or someone implies that i’m one of those soft tender people who feel a lot of things all the time and have thin skin and cry over relatively unserious things
ive spent a lot of time being a person who can take a lot of shit and be an immovable object when it comes to things
i dont want that to all be just my depression or trauma goddamnit
leave me alone and let me be my weird self stop trying to fix me or make me the person i was when i was a little kid
just moving along like everyone else 