As a result of physical abuse, a child tends to become fearful of both the person and the context in which the abuse occurred. Over time, the cues to context can become generalized, and the fear response can be activated by people and places bearing only a small resemblance to the original context of the maltreatment.
– Scott Barry Kaufman
Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. (p.97)
– Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.
– Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. People believe what they’ve seen happen exponentially more than what they read about has happened to other people, if they read about other people at all. We’re all biased to our own personal history.
– https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/ideas-that-changed-my-life/
- adversary-events or widerpart/widersacher/gegner-ereignis
- "remaining emotions" vs "missing skills"
- sometimes anxiety comes "just" from sensory overload
- chronic pain
- temperature
- hunger
- sound
- etc.
- fawn response
- from https://www.facebook.com/spencer.greenberg/posts/10106027264744932
- Important truths about trauma that are often neglected: note: for the purpose of this post I define trauma to be any experience that leads to a substantial, long-lasting, negative psychological effect, either reducing well-being or causing unproductive behaviors or both)
- Trauma's an internal experience not a type of event: You can have trauma from something others wouldn't view as a big deal (e.g., a friend gets mad at you unfairly). That doesn't make the suffering less real.
- "Traumatic seeming" events don't always cause trauma: Some people go through a terrible thing that is widely considered traumatic, yet don't experience trauma from it (e.g., not everyone who is in a war zone or who is assaulted has trauma from the experience). This is good! Some people have higher resistance to trauma than others, probably due to differences in a combination of genetics, upbringing, past trauma, and coping strategies.
- Trauma doesn't always imply there was wrongdoing: While any form of harm that a person experiences from another person is at least some EVIDENCE of wrongdoing, in some cases a person experiences trauma from a completely acceptable action (e.g., their partner chooses to breakup)
- Trauma can have long-term hidden effects: Safe situations that have aspects in common with a traumatic experience can trigger painful feelings and unhelpful behaviors (e.g., avoiding someone who just happens to look a bit like a former abuser). Trauma also can impact self-image (e.g., sometimes people blame themselves for the traumatic experience even though it wasn't their fault).
- Almost everyone experiences some trauma: Being human comes with challenges (pain, loss, abandonment, failure). While some people face much less hardship than others, and some have personalities making them highly resilient to hardship, most will have at least some trauma.
- Trauma can be improved: A variety of methods have been developed for helping people move past trauma so that it has less negative future impact (e.g., CBT, DBT, IFS, Prolonged Exposure, EMDR, or Cognitive Processing Therapy). Trauma also can improve with time for some (though others find they require treatment to improve). If you experienced substantial trauma that you feel is having a negative impact on you today, I hope you'll consider seeking help from a therapist! Even just talking to a highly trusted, compassionate friend about a past trauma (when you feel ready to) can help. Some people also find it helpful to journal about their trauma.
- Not all trauma needs to be resolved: Sometimes people fall into a failure mode of obsessing over past trauma or thinking it makes them "broken". But with enough time we sometimes get over things without treatment and move on. That's a good thing when it happens! Many people can live a great life despite substantial past trauma.
- your trauma is not your personality
greed that isn't a selfish greed as much as it's a scared animal trying to be important when it bought a narrative that it's this shrimpy little sack of skin.
so its already trapped in a trivialized sense of self.
See
Models
You cannot separate politics from medicine
Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale
Traumacene vs Noonsphere vs Anthropocene
The term ‘Anthropocene’ accomplishes another task worthy of note. It hides the fact that not all human beings, living or dead, contributed to the aforementioned destruction equally. Some, including those who coined the term in the first place, live within a cultural body that contributed far more than others, and continues to do so. Another more practical shortcoming is that it focuses our attention on the symptoms of our traumatized cultural body rather than their root cause, and provides no path forwards besides one leading to the despair and self-loathing I noted earlier.
References
Notes
Links