I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.

Wild things I have learnt in therapy:

When a child cries, parents are supposed to comfort them, not punish them

Parents are, in fact, supposed to want to spend time with their children

Children too have a right to privacy, meaning parents are not allowed to read their diaries etc and then punish them for the thoughts they found about

Children are allowed to be upset and cry

Children don't have to earn the love and attention from their parents by performing various things

Children are not supposed to be scared of going home and/or their parents

Children are not supposed to be physically abused and even a little bit of hitting is actually physical abuse

Parents are not supposed to expect that children are mentally as mature as other adults

Children are not supposed to be told that they're an accident, a burden, or something the parents regret

Children are not supposed to be scared and ashamed of themselves or feel like failures because of their parents

Listen to me. Listen. Listen to me. Please.

You don't have to earn the right to call the suffering you went through abusive.

I keep seeing people say, "I don't think I have a right to say I was abused because it was never physical," and "I don't have the right to say I was abused because it wasn't that bad," and most infuriatingly, "I don't have the right to say I was abused because I know I was loved."

Please. I am begging you.

I was abused in countless different ways for a long long time, and I am telling you, you are allowed to call your situation abusive.

You don't need permission, and I don't care if someone else 'has it worse.'

You are allowed to call it abuse.

It's okay. You aren't disrespecting anybody. You aren't taking attention away from "real victims." You can acknowledge your situation is fucked up. You can call it abuse.

@jenpeters_soulguide_healer

Childhood trauma culture is being grown and still getting really into whatever was popular with kids/teens when you were that age because you feel like you missed out

Infographics from Beauty After Bruises's article on complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) and dissociative identity disorder (DID). Please read the full article here!

Not to go off, but:

- structural, racial, and financial inequalities make it next to impossible for some parents to parent effectively (because they’re working six jobs and/or are in prison and/or are chronically ill);

- their kids go to understaffed and underfunded schools who are expected to provide not just education but also child care, mentoring, mediation, and twelve other unfunded mandates to support their students;

- the kids wind up trying to parent themselves and counsel their friends in schools that are not following through on their IEPs, not providing effective classroom management, and not able to keep sufficient adults around for supervision — and schools are thence full of dysregulated children. many of them high as balls, who do not feel safe;

- and our health insurance companies give me and my colleagues in community mental health like 8-12 therapy sessions to fix alllll of that and refer them out to community supports that either don’t take public insurance or straight up don’t exist.

(Plus we still don’t agree on best practices for teaching people to safely use television and the internet, much less these damn smartphones, and our brains are still running hardware from 150,000 years before the Neolithic Revolution.)

So not to kvetch or anything? but I think the rich assholes who have been profiteering off of the aforementioned inequalities should be obligated to spend a few billion dollars to fund some smart people who have been trying to actually fix, like, literally any part of this.

I ranted yesterday at the end of this post about C-PTSD about the extensive damage chronic stress and chaos does to brains. We have set up a system in which this damage is almost unavoidable for a vast number of people, and it’s only snowballing out of control as the generational trauma continues to rack up. (This shit was already endemic when I was a kid, and I’m old enough to be some of these kids’ grandparents.)

We continue to ask more out of workers, more out of children, and more out of their schools, and while thank GOD people are finally talking openly about the impact on mental health, community mental health centers designed to patch you up and send you back for more systemic damage are … not gonna be enough.

Like, it’s something! Therapy will and can and does help! But if you are sensing the game is rigged, I am here to validate the shit out of that for you.

And yet. And yet. We go on. Gotta haul on that moral arc and bend it. 💛

no offense to myself but like what the fuck am i doing

People need to understand that for those who have gone through trauma experience things differently.

If you went through an abandonment as a child, a breakup others would get over with in months can take years to overcome.

If you went through domestic abuse, even small changes in a loved one's tone can make you anxious.

If you were belittled your whole childhood, being professionally critized at work can feel like the end of the world.

Trauma effects us for a long time after it occurs.

Your worth is not tied into anything you do or do not do. You don't have to earn the right to exist. You don't have to earn the right to rest or sustain yourself.

No one asked to be born.

It is basic survival to care for oneself.

Do you think frogs sit there on their lily pads and beat themselves up over not deserving the flies they catch?

The idea that you have to do or be anything to deserve the right to live is wrong.

You're here. You're alive. That in itself means you have a right to take care of yourself and to do things that make you happy.

You don't have to earn it and the fact you were taught otherwise is nothing short of cruelty.

The School of Life

I've talked a bit about this before but if someone tells you they feel like their trauma wasn't bad enough to be valid and your response is to just start talking about """big T and little t trauma""" I hate you and sincerely hope you step on glass.

All that you're saying is essentially "Oh you feel like your trauma isn't bad enough compared to other traumatized people and it's causing you a lot of emotional turmoil? I have the solution! Here are two arbitrarily created boxes I've called 'Big Scary Traumatizing Valid Events' and 'small events but you're having reactions so I guess we have to acknowledge you', and you're actually in that second box! You actually don't have the same problem as the Big Scary Event People! They have the big problem and you have the little one! Do you feel better yet?"

Like, I've already talked about how trauma and its severity is subjective and the Big T vs little t bullshit has no set definition and varies wildly from person to person, but even setting that aside, do you think creating another box and separating the """little t people""" from other survivors is going to make them feel more valid and secure? Epescially how when people talk about """little t trauma""" they always talk about it like "oh the event wasn't that bad but you had a Big Reaction and it was your Feelings that caused the trauma" like...you're essentially saying they're overreacting disguised with a bunch of therapy buzzwords.

"The event wasn't that bad but we still feel hurt 😢😢😢". Go fuck yourself. ESPECIALLY when therapists/psychiatrists/etc tell this to their clients. To have a professional tell you your trauma doesn't fit into 'bad event box' and is just caused by you overreacting does so much fucking damage. Professionals should fucking know better, especially if you claim to be trauma informed.

Just say "Trauma is any event where the brain feels it is in danger, and trauma symptoms are simply when the danger response prolongs past the event. Doubting your experiences and the validity of them is a very common and severe trauma symptom. It's a way of your mind trying to separate itself from the trauma to protect you from the pain of it, and it's observed in almost all survivors with all kinds of trauma. In cases where the trauma is abuse, it's also indictive of severe psychological abuse using methods like gaslighting and other kinds of manipulation."

There. Gets the message across better than telling them they're just apart of the 'not that bad' group of survivors.

God I hate the wellness TikToker-ification of trauma discussions.

Long story short I desperately wanted people to see and understand their trauma because I felt like no one could see me or mine. Including myself