I once worked in a psychiatric outpatient clinic in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. In a list of patients brimming with troubled young women, it became quite apparent how much the psychiatric field was influenced by modern cultural trends. One of the cases that had me questioning this was Emily’s.
In her twenties, from an affluent, predominantly white neighbourhood, she was referred to me by her family doctor. For months, the GP had focused on an alleged traumatic event causing her significant psychological distress. Emily exhibited symptoms of depression and anxiety but lacked the indicators that, to me, would suggest PTSD. When I asked about this alleged trauma, Emily initially spoke vaguely of a toxic relationship with a former boyfriend.
I noticed this discrepancy when one day, a schizophrenic patient had a meltdown outside our therapy room. Suddenly, he barged in, slamming the door against the wall. While I was startled, Emily remained unfazed, her calm demeanour in stark contrast to someone with PTSD. This prompted me to investigate further.
With Emily’s permission, I invited her parents to a session, seeking context about the alleged trauma from her time living with them. Her parents, rational and attentive, seemed perplexed by my questions. They could not recall any traumatic event, confirming instead a stable and nurturing home life. Emily was their much-beloved, only child.
In a private session later on, she detailed an incident where her boyfriend had locked her out of their apartment after a heated argument, forcing her to spend the night at a friend’s place. On several occasions, he had been crass and loud with her, often using degrading remarks in the heat of the moment. At the time, she had felt utterly abandoned and humiliated, interpreting his behaviour as a form of emotional cruelty.
However, upon further discussion, it became clear that the argument had escalated after mutual miscommunication, and while his actions were harsh, they were not indicative of the kind of trauma that would (in my estimation) result in PTSD.
These findings along with my observations made me question the validity of the trauma-focused diagnosis. Had we misinterpreted her symptoms, fitting them into a framework that didn’t apply? Emily had paused her studies and reduced her activities since starting to receive counselling, following trauma care principles. Her parents were concerned about her stagnation, wishing to see her thrive again. Are we shying away from challenging our patients because that would interfere with accepting their subjective experiences?
The Expansion of the Trauma Concept
In the early years, DSM-I (1952) recognized “gross stress reaction” for psychological distress after extreme stress, like combat or disasters, but lacked a specific category for PTSD. DSM-II (1968) introduced “adjustment reaction of adult life” for transient disorders following major life changes, without mentioning trauma directly.
The big shift came with DSM-III (1980), after the Vietnam War, which formally introduced PTSD as a response to events “outside the range of usual human experience,” like war and natural disasters. Later, DSM-III-R (1987) expanded the definition to include sexual assault, and DSM-IV (1994) emphasized individual responses like fear or helplessness.
DSM-5 (2013) moved away from listing specific events and focused more on the subjective experience, including responses to threats of death, serious injury, or violence. It also introduced separate criteria for children and teens.
Adding insult to injury, ICD-11 (2018) added complex PTSD (C-PTSD) to address prolonged trauma, such as childhood abuse or long-term domestic violence, acknowledging broader symptoms like emotional dysregulation and identity struggles.
The initial push to recognize PTSD as a formal diagnosis was driven by psychiatrists such as Dr. Robert Jay Lifton with his book “Home from the War” and Dr. Chaim Shatan along with Vietnam War veterans. They understandably sought to address the severe psychological toll of trauma on veterans.
In later years, advocates like Dr. Matthew Friedman and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk expanded the understanding of PTSD. Friedman pushed for broader criteria in the DSM-IV and DSM-V, while van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score underscored the long-term impact of trauma on the body and mind. Other influential figures like Patricia Resick and Charles Marmar emphasized the importance of addressing both objective events and the subjective experience of trauma.
While expanding trauma criteria is often justified as necessary for inclusivity and compassion, critics contend that these expansions may be driven, by some, out of self-interest. The mental health industry, including therapists, pharmaceutical companies, and even heads of departments and trauma experts, have a vested interest in diagnosing as many individuals as possible. It increased demand for therapy and medication, amplified the importance and influence of experts within the field and justified allocating more resources to it. This vested interest can perpetuate the narrative of widespread victimhood, as these professionals are unlikely to advocate against the growth of their field, which directly benefits their status and resources.
Shifts in the Demographics of PTSD Diagnosis
PTSD affects approximately 6% of the general population at some point in their lives, with women now more likely to develop PTSD than men. Around 9.7% of women and 3.6% of men will experience PTSD over their lifetimes. This represents a significant shift in PTSD diagnoses from predominantly affecting men in the 1980s, when men constituted about 70% of diagnosed cases, to now predominantly affecting women, who by 2020 made up 70% of diagnosed cases. The National Centre for PTSD attributes this to the fact that men are more likely to experience trauma, but women are more likely to develop PTSD, possibly due to higher emotional sensitivity and reactivity, which increases susceptibility to mood disorders.
Since 2010, trauma diagnoses among adolescents have surged, rising from about 3% in 2010 to over 8% by 2023.
There have also been notable shifts in the types of traumatic events leading to PTSD. In the 1980s, combat-related trauma, especially among Vietnam War veterans, was the leading cause of PTSD, affecting about 30% of veterans. Other causes, such as sexual assault and serious accidents, contributed significantly but at lower rates. By the 2000s, PTSD diagnoses related to sexual assault had risen significantly, affecting about 33% of women, while adverse childhood experiences and domestic violence became more prominent, accounting for 25% and 20% of cases, respectively. These trends continued into the 2020s, with combat-related PTSD decreasing to 10%, and sexual assault affecting around 40% of PTSD sufferers, reflecting broader changes in societal awareness and diagnostic criteria for trauma.
The Paradox of Rising Trauma Diagnoses in an Era of Decreased Violence and Increased Safety
Why, despite the plethora of available treatment options, awareness, specialized professionals, and programs, does the burden of PTSD continue to increase?
Historical Context and Current Trends
Historically, as outlined above, high rates of trauma-related conditions like PTSD were often associated with periods of significant societal upheaval, such as wars or high crime rates.
However, current trends show a very different picture. Violent crime rates in the U.S. have declined significantly since their peak in the early 1990s. For example, the violent crime rate fell by 49% between 1993 and 2022, with substantial decreases in robbery, aggravated assault, and murder rates. This period also saw an end to mandatory military conscription, reducing the number of young people exposed to the horrors of war.
Life expectancy has increased globally due to advancements in medical technology, better hygiene, and improved access to healthcare. Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows substantial reductions in mortality rates from infectious diseases that once caused widespread fatalities. Child mortality rates have plummeted due to better prenatal and postnatal care, vaccinations, and improved nutrition.
Technological advancements have increased safety through advancements in automobile safety (like seatbelts and airbags) improved building codes, and enhanced disaster prediction and response systems. Occupational safety has improved as well, with more regulations and better enforcement reducing the number of workplace accidents and fatalities.
Regarding sexual violence, according to the CDC, prevention programs in schools have led to a decrease in reported incidents of sexual violence. Similarly, efforts to enhance the climate of respect and accountability in the military have helped to stabilize and even reduce the rates of sexual assault in some branches.
The official narrative attributes the significant rise in trauma diagnoses to increased awareness of mental health issues, advancements in diagnostic tools, and the global impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the following factors might be more plausible.
The Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
The rise in trauma diagnoses is partly driven by the misuse of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework, which was designed to study the link between childhood trauma and long-term health, not as a diagnostic tool. Originally intended to highlight risk factors, ACE scores are now used by clinicians to diagnose individuals, despite overlooking resilience and individual variations in response to adversity.
Demonstrating this, approximately 61% of adults report having experienced at least one ACE, and 16% report experiencing four or more types of ACEs.
The Dangerous Consequences of the Expansion
The Rise of Trauma-Informed Care
The rise of trauma-related diagnoses has brought with it the therapeutic approach Trauma-Informed Care (TIC). TIC encourages safe, healing environments because its core principles are based on ensuring physical and emotional safety. It also focuses on fostering trust through transparency and peer support. TIC has become so popular that its approach is boasted by most hospitals, schools, social services, correctional facilities. Workplaces follow suit to boost employee well-being.
There’s an argument to be made regarding TIC, that treating traumatic response through cognitive reassessment and moving the patient’s mindset from “helpless” to one of empowerment is more effective long-term than creating safe spaces. That was the case, at least, in my own experience treating PTSD in asylum seekers when I worked in the North of Norway.
Leaving that discussion for another day, it’s understandable that TIC’s inoffensive principles spread easily. However, there’s another problem: Given psychiatry’s lack of definitive diagnostic tests, it has always been vulnerable to malingering and simulation. In the current cultural climate, as I’ll explain shortly, this risk is amplified. An official diagnosis—especially trauma-related—can provide significant Krankheitsgewinn, an elegantly coined term in German for secondary gains from being ill.
Krankheitsgewinn is nothing new, but my concern lies in how TIC’s gentle, non-confrontational approach may inadvertently attract those tempted by secondary gains. Unlike more effort-intensive therapies, such as behavioural charts, structured schedules, or daily diaries, TIC risks reinforcing avoidance behaviours, fostering dependency, and stalling personal growth.
The Role of Victimhood Culture
The expansion of the PTSD diagnosis in recent decades has not only broadened the understanding and recognition of trauma but also intersected with cultural shifts towards recognizing and validating personal experiences of victimization.
Victimhood culture emphasizes personal suffering as a key identity component, directly tied to being a member of a marginalized group. Marginalization refers to the social theory that specific groups of people, typically minority groups based on race, gender, sexuality, or socioeconomic status, are pushed to the edges of society. This denies them access to resources, opportunities, and rights available to others. In today’s social dynamics and identity politics often valorises this victim status.
However, marginalization may also include individuals who do not fit traditional categories but seek similar status. For example, white, heterosexual males, who do not typically fall into traditional marginalized categories, may use a trauma diagnosis as a means to claim a form of victimhood and thus gain social capital within certain circles.
This pursuit of victimhood status is further exacerbated by the fragility of the young generation, a result of overprotective modern parenting practices. Jordan Peterson explores the idea that PTSD can result from experiencing malevolence and feeling helpless in the face of it. He argues that encountering true malevolence—whether in the form of violence, abuse, or betrayal—can shatter one’s worldview and lead to psychological distress, such as PTSD. This analysis would explain why natural disasters account for such a small percentage of the traumatic event types.
It also stands to reason that the perception of being traumatized is so prevalent young people. There is a growing body of literature supporting the idea that modern parenting practices, which includes overprotection and minimizing risks, hinders development of coping skills. Jonathan Haidt has described the current generation as fragile due to being overprotected and less resilient. This increases adolescents’ susceptibility to feelings of helplessness and trauma.
When individuals are brought up in this manner and seek marginalization to attain a particular status, psychiatry becomes a vulnerable field for exploitation. To this fragile generation, the appeal of the trauma diagnosis is its promise of a palatable treatment plan and social validation.
These perceptions are perpetuated by social media, which has also played a role in distorting trauma terms and concepts. It also gives potential patients insight into what practitioners look for, influencing how they report their symptoms.
The Proliferation of Trauma Types and Trauma Culture
In recent years, hashtags featuring trauma trend regularly on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube as influencers and mental health advocates spread bite-sized educational content that resonates with a broad and increasingly younger audience.
One such term is trauma bonding, originally coined by Dutton and Painter to describe the emotional ties between victims and abusers, making it difficult for victims to leave abusive relationships. Today, however, the term is often used to describe short-term, normal relationships, with some using it to justify aggressive behaviour as a defense mechanism. As of 2023, the hashtag #TraumaBonding has amassed over 1 billion views on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, reflecting its widespread adoption and oversimplification.
Similarly, secondary and vicarious trauma, which were once used to describe the emotional toll on professionals exposed to others’ trauma, have now broadened to encompass trivial experiences. People increasingly claim vicarious trauma from reading distressing news articles, watching emotionally charged TV shows, or even hearing a friend’s upsetting story. This broad application undermines the original intent of highlighting the legitimate struggles of frontline workers and caregivers.
Another increasingly popular term is climate trauma, rooted in Albrecht et al.’s concept of “solastalgia,” which refers to the distress caused by environmental changes. Now, it covers general anxieties surrounding climate change. The other trend of political origin is intersectional trauma, used to describe the compounded psychological impact of intersecting identities, such as race, gender, and class, and the discrimination associated with them.
This brings us to generational trauma, or intergenerational trauma, referring to the transmission of trauma effects across generations, a concept from Yehuda and Lehrner’s study on Holocaust survivors’ descendants. Again, we see that misrepresented: A characteristic viral tweet with over 47,000 likes suggested that “your ancestors needed therapy so badly that you need therapy as a result of sharing that traumatized DNA”.
The emerging concept of humiliation trauma was first explored by Klein, highlighting the psychological harm caused by experiences of shame and degradation, such as cyberbullying or perceived discrimination. While still gaining traction, hashtags like #Humiliation, #HumiliationTrauma, and #HumiliationWound have accumulated around 42,000 posts on TikTok, with similar content appearing on YouTube Reels, alongside research and blogs advocating greater recognition.
The Cult of Trauma
This proliferation has given rise to what’s often called a cult of trauma, where sharing personal stories of suffering is glorified and sensationalized. Social media is filled with trauma narratives, framed as part of one’s identity, gaining sympathy and validation. This trend has led to behaviours like trauma dumping—oversharing traumatic experiences with others, often without their consent or in inappropriate settings.
This behaviour became particularly prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic, as social media platforms became primary outlets for individuals seeking connection while coping with unprecedented stress and isolation.
By the mid-2020, the hashtag #TraumaDumping had garnered over 2 billion views on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Videos went viral of people unsolicited yelling their trauma stories at unwilling drive-through personnel.
This phenomenon could not have occurred without the shift from an objective to a subjective interpretation of trauma, broadening the diagnostic net. Have we carefully weighed the risks and benefits to assess whether this shift in diagnostic criteria has genuinely helped those it was meant to serve, or whether it has caused more harm than good?
I grew up around Holocaust survivors. My own grandmother survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, and we lived with her, surrounded by the unspoken weight of her memories. Therefore, I have no doubt that the PTSD diagnosis, as traditionally defined, is critical for a certain patient group.
I do have doubts, however, that those patients have benefitted from the manipulation of diagnostic criteria, and subsequent dilution of the condition’s seriousness. Additionally, the expansion causes suffering when it complicates the process of differential diagnosis. It blurs the lines between a psychological distress after traumatic event and other psychological disorders.
Differential Diagnosis Dilemmas
Distinguishing one diagnosis from another in the absence of biomarkers, imaging techniques and other physical signs, becomes difficult as symptoms overlap among mental health disorders. It creates a risk of misclassification, often referred to as “bracket creep.” This diagnostic ambiguity has significant consequences, especially when Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) is applied to conditions that are not necessarily trauma-based. Anxiety and depression, including major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), are commonly mistaken for PTSD or complex PTSD due to shared symptoms such as persistent sadness, sleep disturbances, tension, and difficulty concentrating.
Standard treatments like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are effective for both MDD and GAD. TIC, which focuses on avoiding potential triggers and revisiting past trauma, contrasts sharply with the proven method of exposure therapy, which gradually reduces anxiety by helping individuals confront and desensitize to the sources of their fear. Another trauma-focused approach, such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), can worsen feelings of distress and may lead to the development of false memories, thus postponing effective care and the growth of resilience in these patients.
Similarly, emphasizing a suspected trauma event of the past might inadvertently heighten anxiety in patients with panic disorder, as they begin to misattribute their symptoms to past trauma, exacerbating their panic symptoms.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is often mistaken for PTSD (as it’s currently defined) due to shared symptoms like emotional instability and turbulent interpersonal relationships. However, the two conditions are fundamentally different, and the distinction is crucial. While BPD often stems from difficult upbringings, the behaviours exhibited by individuals with BPD frequently lead to crises that, under the broadened definition of trauma, can emulate traumatic events. These incidents, however, differ significantly from the life-threatening experiences that traditionally defined PTSD.
PTSD, as originally defined, required exposure to a clear, life-threatening event—war, torture, or violent assault—resulting in intrusive memories, hypervigilance, and avoidance behaviours. It is a serious disorder, reflecting the deep psychological scars left by genuine trauma. It responds to targeted treatments like cognitive processing therapy (CPT) and prolonged exposure therapy.
BPD, on the other hand, is a pervasive personality disorder marked by chronic relational and emotional dysfunctions, including intense fear of abandonment, impulsivity, and unstable self-image. These symptoms are rooted in persistent emotional dysregulation rather than a singular traumatic event. Effective treatment, like dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), focuses on building skills for distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and improving interpersonal relationships, as was evident in the case of Emily.
The danger of confusing BPD with PTSD lies in misdirected treatment. While PTSD demands a trauma-focused approach, BPD requires intensive skill-building and behavioural work. Misdiagnosing one for the other risks not only ineffective therapy but also undermines the gravity of PTSD as it was originally conceived.
The relentless expansion, often driven by self-serving professionals and institutions, laid the groundwork for social media platforms to seize and distort these terms, allowing them to take on a life of their own in the fertile soil of victimhood culture. The resulting implementation of trauma-informed care, which focuses on safety and protection from triggers, poses a contraindication to building resilience through established techniques like CBT’s exposure therapy. The TIC approach and the over-diagnosing of trauma feed into a culture of avoidance and dependency, further weakening an already fragile generation. As these terms become ubiquitous on social media, they play into the hands of a culture that shuns self-improvement and coping skills. Ultimately, this undermines genuine mental health progress. It reduces profound psychological insights to buzzwords, encourages a societal mindset that prioritizes victimhood over recovery, and continues to bloat the already overweight mental health complex in which cases like Emily’s easily fall through the cracks.
Returning to Emily’s Case
Emily had been in trauma-focused therapy for nearly a year without seeing improvements. She was still dealing with intense emotions, feelings of emptiness, and strained relationships with her parents. Despite regularly attending her therapy sessions, Emily felt stuck and hopeless.
When I suggested that her symptoms might align more with BPD than Complex PTSD (the diagnosis the GP was pointing towards), Emily was difficult to convince. She was very attached to the idea of a trauma diagnosis and expressed dismay at the idea of changing it. However, given her lack of progress, she agreed to try a different approach.
We switched to DBT for BPD and CBT for depression. DBT included individual therapy, skills training, and phone coaching, focusing on distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and improving relationships. One key focus was Emily’s attachment issues, which often drove her to contact an ex-boyfriend she admitted, in her more stable moments, she didn’t want to continue seeing. During her anxiety-riddled and lonely moments, we used phone coaching to help her manage these impulses. In those conversations, and not many were required, I coached her to have faith in her own abilities by pointing to strength she had shown in her past. This helped her self-soothe without relying on external validation.
To further support her emotional stability, we addressed her high levels of neuroticism by making lifestyle changes. We focused on stabilizing her blood sugar levels by increasing her intake of protein and healthy fats while reducing carbohydrates. Emily had a habit of skipping breakfast and eating late at night, which often left her feeling sluggish and more emotionally reactive. I encouraged her to establish a fixed, earlier bedtime and to wake up at the same time every morning, starting her day with a non-sugary breakfast to maintain consistent energy and improve her mood stability.
CBT helped her identify and challenge negative thoughts. We created thought records, where she documented specific situations that triggered distress, identified the automatic negative thoughts, and evaluated the evidence for and against those thoughts. She also engaged in behavioural activation exercises and schedules, setting small, achievable goals which gradually improved her sense of accomplishment and with that, confidence.
Within a few months, Emily began to see improvements. Her emotional outbursts—those mistaken for PTSD arousal/tension—were fewer and more controlled. She entered a different relationship and spent more time with her parents. By addressing her actual needs with the right therapies, we made significant progress that we couldn’t have (and hadn’t been) achieved with a trauma-focused approach.
Focusing on her perceived trauma would have allowed a sense of identity as a victim to take root, reinforcing feelings of helplessness and impeding any development of resilience. Instead, we gave her a toolbox to rebuild her life.
This person, whom I’m sure is well educated, is coming across loudly and clearly as someone who does not care about Mad Rights, but is instead using her soapbox to disparage young women and promote disgraced quacks such as Jordan Peterson. Emily’s distaste for a new diagnosis is seen in this article as something to be overcome and ignored. This doesn’t scream ‘Mad Rights’ to me. BPD and PTSD are not, as the author presents, concrete, cohesive illnesses: they are simply a collection of symptoms that the psychiatric industry has decided occur together. Arguing that young people are too soft and that what women REALLY have is BPD is not Mad Rights. As someone who has what the author may consider ‘real’ ‘mental illness’ (hearing voices, seeing visions, the whole nine yards), you do NOT speak for us.
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Here here, this is a horrifying post. A deeply hateful, misogynist rant. He uses a single, potentially invented anecdote as his basis for this horrifying attempt to deny human beings the basic idea that what you experienced had an effect, basic cause and effect, the foundations of the universe.
For his one anecdote I can supply literally hundreds of people who have been raped/breaten/manipulated/abused, gone for support after, and never been asked a single question about their experiences before being told they’re at fault for their broken brain and given deeply poisonous, provably unhelpful drugs.
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To Jack: Yes! Agreed wholeheartedly!
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I agree Jack. I find this person confused in her narrative. To me, she clearly wants to defend « lovely » psychiatry field (ahaha) that is in turmoil. I would like to ask her: where does she think « depression » « gad » … etc come from ? What generate these ?? Lol
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Who said Jordan Peterson was a “quack?” Isn’t that what we call most people in the mental health field?
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Yes, the mental health field IS quackery, inasmuch as it lacks universally applicable, rigorous, objective, verifiable criteria for the accuracy of its diagnoses and the efficacy of its treatments.
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I have seen these ‘traditional values’ in psychiatry as championed by people like Hannah. They resulted in psychiatric total institutions that abused and dehumanised the victims that were placed in these settings.
We do need to hold a critical lens in psychiatry mindful of vested interests seeking to profit from human distress. However, an increase in trauma-related diagnoses may actually be the result in people recognising that it is not right that they should spend a lifetime suffering from the abuse of others. Hannah’s de-validating headings such as “The Cult of Trauma’ and “The Role of Victimhood Culture” are potentially harmful, and she should have reflected instead of pushing her own political agenda.
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I agree. While she presents herself as someone who is challenging the mental healthcare system’s practices, she reveals her hand by not so subtly blaming patients and their “cult of trauma” for being the actual cause of the mental healthcare system’s failures. It must be traumatizing to honest, hard working mental healthcare professionals like her to have their expertise and efforts wasted on patients who insist on being victims. Of course I jest. Victimhood indeed.
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Yes this is a disturbing take on trauma treatment. I began my social work career in community mental health and began to explore trauma treatment because I was working with clients who had been institutionalized for many years in our local long term psychiatric hospital. I work as a therapist with kids now and they are afraid to go to school because they are worried someone will come in and shoot them. They had drills on the first days of the school year. To think that trauma treatment is a way to keep mental health providers employed is short sighted and absurd. I have found through .my years that those who believe in a kind of ” tough love” have internalized that value and believe it applies to everyone. Why can’t we have compassionate, respectful care and safe places?
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I appreciate how Mad in America lets all voices and perspectives be heard and I think such dialogue is very important. When articles like this get published here, I have to remember that. This piece really disappoints though.
I feel that the writer — who describes herself as “antifeminist” on her public social media platforms — clearly has an agenda. As does the praise for Jordan Peterson’s work. The tone of the piece is condescending and unkind. It is disappointing to see the BPD and PTSD labels upheld as a a biomedical illness. The fact of the matter for so many psychiatric victims, especially those labeled BPD, is that we have been abused and exploited by people — usually but not always our families — whom we were supposed to trust. And then the system traumatizes and dehumanizes us as we “seek help.” I have not personally met a single BPD label survivor who has not experienced childhood sexual abuse or sexual assault in adulthood, often both. Long after the abuse stops, these — usually women — patients are abused in the medical system for the rest of their lives. It is obscene and it is wrong. Anyone championing the label refuses to face the truth of what that label does to victims of it.
The whole piece reeks of arrogance.
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What you say is so true on everything. A BPD diagnosis is invalidating because you’re seen as being naturally too sensitive so you tend not to be taken seriously even if you truly were traumatized. I had a therapist who didn’t care about hearing about my past because less sensitive, more normal people would have just been diagnosed with depression or anxiety and they can be taken seriously.
In a DBT class, we were taught that siblings are raised by the same parents and if one of them was diagnosed with BPD, then that’s because they are too sensitive. How can anyone judge that? Kids are treated differently in the family for various reasons. Birth order has an affect too. They have different experiences and perceptions. There are people who are more naturally sensitive, in general, but sensivity in and of itself is not a mental illness. In fact they tend to be deep thinkers and feelers. It makes it harder to cope with this harsh life but it’s not a mental illness. It’s not wrong or bad or weird or stupid at all but it’s often judged that way. So many people are taught to hate themselves that the last thing they need is to learn more self-hatred from mental health “professionals.”
So many of these unproven diagnoses overlap in symptoms so much that you can go to different psychiatrists and psychotherapists and get a different diagnosis from each one of them. The biological model is superficial, impersonal, judgemental, dehumanizing and ignorant.
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That’s a great point about how all children are treated differently by their families, whether or not abuse is present, it’s just a fact of life. Parents play favorites. They’re human. But no parent is going to admit that, it’ll make them look bad. Much easier to blame the kid and this BS affirmed by the biomedical model that basically says some people are born wrong. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and have compassion for how many families get sucked into the mental health industries. They’re lied to as much as their child patients are, it’s really sad. It’s also sadly true that not all families are safe or have the best interests of the kid at heart. Parents medicate and therapize for themselves, not for the kids.
I’m not a political extremist but the misogynistic bent to the BPD label should be self-evident to anyone who is willing to question it. Why is no one asking questions about how commonplace it is for the mental healthcare system to insinuate that women who have been horribly abused are “personality disordered” people? Just the name of the “illness” itself is so dehumanizing. I feel borderline and schizophrenia are the “it’s over, give up” labels.
DBT is a laughably absurd “therapy” practice. It seems to be an en vogue therapy today. It’s really just whitewashed Buddhism; building a real spiritual practice and not sitting in a circle doing worksheets about my feelings like I’m 5 has been far more beneficial. No one is raising an eyebrow at how absurdly expensive such “expert” and “evidence-based” treatment is either.
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I’m going to work on remembering that there are patents/families who think that what they are doing is right because they’re being lied too. I tend to think they know what they’re doing and that it’s for them to save face andstay in denial. This is true sometimes but not always.
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“DBT is a laughably absurd therapy practice.”
Correction: ALL “psychotherapy” is laughably absurd.
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IMHO —
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Sabrina, you are so right. Psychiatry does an excellent job pathologizing emotional sensitivity via their DSM, a “tool” that implicitly encourages a “patient’s” deep self-hatred while paying no heed to the subtle dynamics ever-present between family members or any other group of people. It’s a disgrace from start to finish.
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Yes. And the kicker is that she didn’t know anything about my past. She just made the assumption that it doesn’t matter because I’m apparently prone to lying or exaggerating simply because I was diagnosed with BPD which then assumes that you are too sensitive and can’t be trusted to perceive your trauma accurately. However, we did one EMDR session which clearly showed how angry and neglectful my mother was towards me but that still didn’t change her mind about me. They’re just retraumatizing us because invalidation is the root of the problem to begin with. People made some comments to me (while I was growing up) that showed me that they saw some of the problems but it wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been. I really needed help. Nobody knew all that was going on behind closed doors and didn’t want to know. I don’t think these “professionals” really understand or care about retraumatizing people. It’s quite hurtful and ugly.
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She didn’t know anything about your past…what’s worse is how she probably didn’t want to either, now THAT’s what’s sick. Why is it that so many therapists seem trained to withhold empathy when that’s pretty much all any human being really needs when they’re feeling upset?
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Your criticism of this article is spot-on.
The author uncritically parrots the terminology (e.g. “patients,” “symptoms,” “disorders,” “neuroticism,” “mental health,” etc.) and stigmatizing labels such as BPD that are so typical of biological psychiatry. To me, the conditions she describes are not “symptomatic” of faulty brain circuitry or dysfunctional behavior that necessitates therapy from a self-styled professional, but totally appropriate, understandable response of a normal brain to an oppressive, even life-threatening environment.
I also question whether the world is indeed “safer” as the writer claims. The deaths of despair among the disenfranchised working class, the opioid epidemic, widespread atomization and anomie, and other disturbing trends characteristic of the neo-liberal order would seem to indicate the contrary.
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Your last paragraph on our “safer” world I think is spot-on. It shouldn’t take a “mental health expert” to make sense of why so many people are “mentally ill” today. Something not at all benign and “helpful” is indeed behind mental health awareness campaigns, funded by a massive money-hungry medical industrial complex and totally unchecked pharmaceutical greed. Your average mental patient as well as their families are never provided alternatives to drugging, or absurd quackery like DBT/CBT, nor are they educated as to what the DSM actually is or the tremendous risks the drugs entail. The whole system thrives on coercion both overt and covert.
I am actually skeptical myself of the “trauma-informed care model.” Psychiatry seems to have found a new way to capitalize on people’s pain while simultaneously harming them and rendering them incapable of living a good life. After what I lived through I don’t believe these people care an ounce about trauma, they perpetuate it and gaslight people, causing trauma and betrayal in many lives where often there was none before, or compounding and replicating the traumas of child abuse many mental patients carry before getting sucked into the mental health matrix.
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Agree 100%. What’s happening with the so-called “trauma-informed care model” wasn’t hard to foresee; co-opting other people’s narrative for their own advantage is exactly what the “mental health” industrial complex does best.
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Yes, our symptoms and behaviors are understandable. Society is unhealthy and stressful in so many ways (some of it you mention) even with advanced technology. In fact, advanced social media is harmful in many ways. Things keep getting more complicated. I’m glad I grew up before everyone had computers and social media. There are pros and cons of course.
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If we ditch the various disorder labels and just look at the heart of the story, missing out all psychiatric and therapy language, what I see is a confused young woman struggling to find her place in life who just needed an auntie figure to guide her along till she found her own way in life as an independent adult.
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That’s a good way of putting it.
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Yes! An understanding family member, trusted friend (or even a total stranger!) is all one really needs to get through this life. Best to skip the emotional prostitutes, imho.
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There’s a lot to unpack here, including the contradiction between an apparent critique of the mental healthcare status quo, whilst simultaneously calling for a stricter adherence to some of its archaic diagnosis criteria.
But quoting Jordan Peterson?
The famously bigoted psychologist who nearly had his license revoked because of hateful statements?
The mental health “expert” who nearly died of a benzo addiction?
A whiny, blubbering baby-man who would still be an anonymous academic had he not lied to the press that he was the innocent victim of “woke cultural Marxists” who were supposedly trying to cancel him?
THAT’S the guy who supposedly lends credence to the argument against victimhood culture?
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great description of Jordan ! I cannot bear to even look at his pathetic face and I will not read a word of the crap he spews out
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Haha thanks. Peterson is one of those BS’ers who uses his extensive Academese vocabulary to obfuscate the fact he actually has nothing original, interesting, or helpful to say. And yet despite the opaque word salads he routinely tosses, he still manages to clearly deliver one message over and over: “I AM A VICTIM”.
Which of course undermines the author’s entire anti-victim rhetoric.
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Thank you for these considered responses critiquing the author’s article. It helps keep me sane in knowing I am not alone!
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How did this nonsense get published on MIA? Anecdotal evidence (I can literally provide a thousand counter-examples of people who’ve been raped, beaten, and abused who went for help and weren’t asked a single question, were given drugs, told the problem was them, and were told to piss off), quoting a man literally stripped of his job and titles multiple times for atrocious ethics violations, genuinely antiscientific conclusions. This post is genuinely hate filled propaganda.
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I recall reading a study of kids in a residential program. Over 80% reported overt trauma. Less than 20% had it noted in their charts. So either the clinicians didn’t bother asking about trauma, or they didn’t consider it important enough to write down! This in a residential program for teens with behavior problems. How they can be sooo off base is beyond my comprehension.
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At its most accepted level, trauma is a shock to the nervous system. On a deeper level, it affects the immune system and the metabolic pathways. Mostly downplayed level, trauma disrupts the sensory system, altering perception. At its basic understanding, trauma becomes a profound and egregious impact on the human body as a whole.
When a writer (claiming to be a doctor but trained as psychiatrist – I am seeing a lot of now owning this title lately) suggests that “men” might be faking trauma or accuses someone of ‘playing the victim,’ it oversimplifies a deeply complex issue.
If an individual claims they have experienced trauma and we dismiss them as part of a so-called ‘victim culture,’ it often reveals more about the accuser than the accused. Those making such claims are typically in a position of power and may lack the awareness or willingness to acknowledge the vulnerability of the individuals they label as ‘fake victims.’ This dynamic highlights how those accusing/labeling others of perpetuating victim culture frequently fail to recognize how their position of power skews their perspective…and ironically terming an experience one does not have becomes “victim” mentality in one’s mind!
At the end, it’s important to consider that what some may dismiss as a ‘faking personality’ or ‘victim like personality’ can, in reality, be one of the most common defense mechanisms for dealing with invisible trauma (i.e. economy, immigrants’ experiences coming so close to us, environment, climate, our own declining bodies, food, etc and its opposite, lack of all of them that may under stimulate our bodies). The only trauma we allow here is violence and relational but try to close your mind against the bombardment of powerful messaging culture and your body suffers!
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Okay. So, there are people who misattribute their trauma onto people who are faultless and not blameworthy. They effectively lie. It is unfair to the faultless people. Agreed that that happens.
There are also people who have been the victims of maltreatment and instead of getting justice they end up getting disease-mongered on by psychiatrists, slapped with DSM categorisations that only bring them even more gaslighting and harassment. Where do they go? More psychiatrists and more therapy? What about the perps? Because often, they’re free to do what they want while their victims end up in psychiatry.
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The other thing is this: I live in trauma everyday. It’s so bad that the fights I’m having with whichever people in my head, I verbalise it out and act it out. It happens involuntarily because that’s a mechanism my mind has developed to deal with those painful thoughts. But that does not mean I’ll behave the same way when I’m out with people. Even in front of a doctor, I’ll speak candidly as if I’m not as messed up as I am inside. It might give the impression I’m not hurt when I actually am badly.
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Keeping people, especially “mental health professionals”, at arm’s length is the only way to stay out of harm’s way these days; it’s just not safe to be yourself.
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…because at the very least you will be unfairly categorized, at the very worst cruelly institutionalized, and either way forever stigmatized as psychiatry/psychology has managed to infect the collective psyche to the point few people are able to see themselves and others simply for what they truly are: worthwhile human beings doing the best they can no matter their emotional/psychological/cognitive state.
So, here’s the lowdown: at all times, be sure to keep your wits about you no matter how alone or badly you feel as fewer and fewer people are having the luxury of NOT being tossed into psychiatry’s psychological junk heap.
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CORRECTION: make that PERMANENTLY stigmatized —-
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Thanks for saying that. Being resourceful, self-sufficient and cautious is the only way. Can’t trust people in the mental health industry or even out of it once you have a “history”.
“Psychiatric survivor”. The term sounds very victimy to me, but you really do have to survive it and survive all of them: the doctors, other patients and their families who consider mental health workers’ words as gospel and your own family (if they have malintent or are plain stupid/ignorant).
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It’s not a “victim mindset” if you genuinely are the victim of something lol. Saying it like that really comes across poorly. That’s literally like saying someone who went through the Holocaust sounds too self-victimizing by calling themselves a Holocaust survivor. Sounds pretty outrageous when I put it like that, doesn’t it? Comparing psychiatric survivors to Holocaust survivors is not so far-fetched when you realize the fact that many of the Nazis drew inspiration from psychiatry for their concentration camps and torture methods. Plus we’re even framing it in the language of survivorship in order to avoid the accusation of “self-victimization,” what more do you want from us? I identify as a psychiatric survivor. I am both a victim and a survivor of psychiatry. I also identify with Mad Pride. I’m proud to be a psych survivor AND wish I’d never had to be.These things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
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I don’t have a problem with anyone who call themselves a survivor/victim of anything. I just don’t like using either word to describe myself because it reminds me of something I’d rather forget. What I won’t stand for is anyone telling me that I see myself as a victim because I refuse to let psychiatry off the hook.
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I’m a huge fan of Mad in America, but I must say, I am very disappointed that Mad in America published this. This entire article reeks of victim-blaming, ignorance, misogyny, and sanism — all things that i thought MIA was supposed to stand against. I’m all for the fact that MIA allows diverse perspectives, but there is nothing inclusive or pro-Mad Rights about allowing bigoted and harmful opinions on here. “Victimhood culture” and “the trauma craze” are flimsy scapegoats that do not hold up under any amount of scrutiny. Honestly, this whole article just reads “the problem with society is that kids these days are too sensitive.” The author proudly brags about all the things she did to a former patient that basically amount to everything that would cause one to come to identify as a “psych survivor.” She also self-identifies as an “anti feminist” and is clearly pushing her (conservative) political agenda throughout the piece. It also strikes me as extremely tone-deaf that she speaks of the “paradox of rising trauma diagnoses in a safer world,” when we are living in an era of school shootings, climate crisis, police brutality, genocide, rampant transphobia… and the list goes on and on. So I don’t know what “safer world” she’s been living in… but it sure as hell isn’t mine, or nearly anyone else’s. And in my opinion, there’s nothing that screams “victimhood” more than railing against trauma survivors for an entire article, as though SHE’S the victim of THEIR traumas. Or “fake traumas,” according to her. Seriously, please do not waste your time reading this article if you are a trauma survivor and/or psych survivor; it will be pointless at best, or triggering and actively detrimental at worst. I’m truly disappointed, and quite frankly, a bit disgusted.
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I am glad about the comment section on this post I expected to be one of few voices disparaging this post. At time mad rights can seem like a incoherent movement a tent to big to direct. I am glad the community has a mostly correct reaction of rejection. Intersectionality is an effective framework and denying marginationation and all that shit shows a level of intellectual dishonestly.
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Also Jordan Peterson mentioned opinion disregarded
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Yikes. Glad to see many comments here echoing my thoughts. It is genuinely baffling to read what amounts to: “I was skeptical of her trauma and confirmed with her parents that she had a perfectly happy childhood…so my conclusion is, sure enough, she doesn’t have PTSD, she has BPD.” Huh? First of all, we’re relying on the parents’ narrative to confirm developmental trauma or not? That seems…just a tad dubious. And second of all, we’re just gonna go ahead and diagnose BPD with an assumption of no developmental trauma… ’cause mom and dad say so? (And just as an aside…wouldn’t an unusual level of non-reaction in the face of the schizophrenic patient’s disturbance raise some alarm bells in itself? Traumatized people don’t always have a big Hollywood reaction to a fear trigger like that. More often than not they freeze up.)
I am very sympathetic to concerns about the rise of trauma and victimhood culture—it is no doubt a real thing, and there are certainly perverse incentives at work throughout psychiatry and beyond that bolster it. But two things can be true at once: you can have individuals and institutions that weaponize and profit from “victim culture,” and you can also have genuinely traumatized individuals who need good psychotherapy and empathetic help whose trauma may not be readily apparent at first glance (particularly if you’re not looking in the right places). I don’t know which category—if either—”Emily” falls into, but she’s a poor example to make the argument in this article, in either case.
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I can’t imagine a more incompetent attempt to verify developmental trauma than asking the parents! They OF COURSE will almost always deny or minimize any harm done, and are happy to blame the child if they HAVE done some damage, as it lets them off the hook. Moreover, parents can be perfectly well intended and still do a lot of harm, of which they will not be consciously aware. They are the last people in the world to ask, “Was your child traumatized in your care?” Very often, the parents have contributed or facilitated the trauma themselves.
Beyond this, “Borderline Personality” diagnosis is HIGHLY associated with developmental trauma. I don’t think I ever encountered a person diagnosed with “BPD”(which I consider to be a diagnosis of little use except as a means of distancing oneself as a clinician from his/her client) who did NOT experience significant trauma as a child, especially when intermittent EMOTIONAL abuse is included. To diagnose BPD as an EXCLUSION for people whose parents deny they were traumatized is truly a bizarre choice, even within the confines of accepted psychiatric “differential diagnosis.”
Very odd thinking behind this kind of analysis, IMHO.
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BPD is literally one flavor of C-PTSD – the result of a certain combination of abuse and neglect (alternating domination and abandonment, is how Dr. Faye Snyder puts it). This should be basic, qualifying knowledge for mental health professionals. And how, exactly, did the inclusion of C-PTSD in the ICD “add insult to injury”? It’s the exact opposite – the concept of complex trauma is now *helping* many people understand and heal their injuries for the first time! How can one be a mental health professional and not understand that? As a society we’re not talking about trauma too much – it’s that we’re not talking about it enough! Have we figured out that all prisoners are severely traumatized people? Have we learned that childhood trauma is what causes war, and all our other social, and even physical ills? Not even close. We have soooo long and far to go with the trauma concept! Mental health professionals who have a distaste for or seem to disbelieve in developmental trauma 1. should not be around patients or people in distress and 2. need to deal with their own upbringing as they are acting out of their own childhood emotional repression, while impressing the same on others – which is exactly why the field has been so harmful and dysfunctional for as long as it has.
Alice Miller has a wonderful chapter on this – “The Psychiatrists’ Campaign Against the Act of Remembering” in Breaking Down the Wall of Silence – in which she shows how these kinds of “experts” just want to suppress their patients’ distress and truth by any means necessary so they can keep all their own distressing truth under wraps, exactly as their parents taught them to do. They want to control and shut down others the way they were controlled and shut down. If you don’t heal your childhood trauma, you *will* reinflict it on yourself or others. And most people don’t even realize they have emotional trauma from childhood, including so many so-called professional helpers.
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Thank you so much for the reminder of Alice Miller’s chapter…it’s the perfect answer to this whole perspective. It is scary to contemplate how many practitioners out there are drawn to the “helping” professions in no small part to bypass/suppress and/or reenact their own trauma and shame, with zero self-awareness of what they are doing and zero interest in investigating how it affects their clinical choices and potentially harms their clients. Another good recent discussion on this theme is “The Analyst’s Vulnerability” by Karen Maroda.
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So many people want to control and shut down others like their parents or others (including mental health “professionals”) did to them. Mt friend used to be honest about her childhood trauma but then all of that changed when she was taught by mental health professionals that she has BPD. Now she blames everything that goes wrong on this diagnosis and now insists that she had a blessed family and childhood. Not true from the things she used to tell me about her parents and brother. They were invalidating and mean to her.
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I agree with everything that you said. You are seeing the whole picture.
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I too am leery of the buzz phrase trauma informed. Most clinicians and other professionals as I did in graduate school school just don’t get a full history both in their own country and globally of human crisis. Druids in a long shingle like other indigenous peoples would induce an altered mental state in purpose at the end of a long initiation. Greeks had their healing temples. And always the issue of human respect fjrvachbotger and child rennabd the disabled and any othered type of groups. It’s been a mess and as far as I know doing comprehensive history taking in a safe way and allowing time fir thee take to come is virtually nonexistent in most places. Even back in the eighties community mental health centers were doing med groups with the psychiatrist. It was until my one relative died that another sibling spoke of a massive head injury he received so there you go it was missed a d probably played a role in his life but no one knew.
I trying to hold on to the concept of sacred self sacred earth in terms of dealing with trash and litter and the debris of this current world. Yeah can be a tool fir anger so throw it in the creek but if one sees oneself as sacred and the earth is sacred even in anger one can say no I feel like throwing it here but no Ivwill take the time to throw it in the garbage can. We need that type of thinking for all of us. No more garbage litter.
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This article represents a typical reaction from someone who feels defensive about their line of work, or “profession”; in other words, psychiatry’s losing of the narrative (i.e. having to face the reality of emotional trauma as opposed to their pet theory of biological cause) and isn’t very happy about it; I expect there to be more whining like this in the future. And what’s the dead giveaway? The author seems stuck on the flimsy idea of “psychiatric diagnosis”.
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Correction: Psychiatry’s losing CONTROL of the narrative around emotional distress, i.e., their having to face the reality of emotional trauma as opposed to them forever championing their pet theory of biological BULLSHIT —
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While it’s true that trauma concepts have been misused online, the idea that there can ever be an “objective” definition of trauma, as Spier contends, or, for that matter, of any other psy-idea, is specious.
The “normal” range of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and stress-responses are socio-cultural, sometimes defined by familial and individual sets of expectations. They’re influenced by one’s faith community and philosophical and ideological commitments.
Rather than making them impossible to talk about, these complexities oblige us to discuss them and to approach them with generosity and open-mindedness.
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Thank goodness for the MIA comments section! I have no idea who vets the writers on this site, but they really dropped the ball on this one. I would hope that this would be ONE place on the internet that I wouldn’t be confronted with Jordan Peterson quotes and hateful right-wing rhetoric about “victim culture” and how we all need to toughen up like our glorious ancestors.
Also, just to point out one glaring piece of misinformation: “Trauma Informed Care” is a general philosophy and guiding framework used by organizations to avoid unnecessarily retraumatizing people while providing all sort of services, it isn’t a mental health “treatment” that replaces or competes with modalities like DBT/CBT/EMDR.
Also, from years working in mental health, I can confirm that “Borderline Personality Disorder” in most charts actually means “woman with Complex PTSD who the doctors don’t like”.
I’ve also seen LOTS of people benefit from DBT/CBT, and lots of other people get no benefit from them at all, irrespective of their trauma history or symptoms. Everyone is different, and obsessing over “differential diagnosis” gets in the way of actually letting people access the supports that will work for them.
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Complex ptsd is not even in the DSM so I’ve never been formally diagnosed with it. It’s amazing to me how much ignorance or denial there is about how much harm a parent or someone else can actually do to a child. Nowadays it seems like these “professionals” don’t want a parent, anyone else or school or anything toxic about society to be responsible for harming a child. Look at NAMI. Mental illnesses are medical diagnoses like diabetes. The brain is blamed and so nothing else has to be dealt with. How convenient. I see things differently from the author. Even though there’s a lot of talk about trauma, I haven’t personally experienced that much understanding or compassion about it at all.
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Right on. This article is so not worthy of being printed in MIA, and leaves me questioning the journal’s commitment to liberation from historical psychiatry. Over and over the author’s words belie deep clinical biases.
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agree what is the point of it ? Proving these people are profoundly nasty ? Well most of us on here know that all too well.
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I question MIA’s sincere commitment to anything other than its OWN survival every goddamn day.
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I remember when MIA published the whingeing excruciating crap from Jordan’s daughter about his treatment in Russia to cure his benzo issues. At that point I gave up on MIA for a long time as part of the problem. I was hoping his plasma pherisis would also clean up and detox his evil spirit sadly not.
Whoever passes this garbage through for publication if you notice never comes back to explain their rationale . Is it meant to be helpful ?I just found it hateful depressing and pointless. But I was really glad you great people did too because that gave me hope.
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I’m glad that comments clearly show that plenty of readers were able to see the problems with this article pretty easily.
I’m always searching for a nuanced, rigorous critique of PTSD as a diagnosis as it intersects with cultural trends. Or even just more exploratory analysis of “trauma” as a deus-ex-machina concept, used in giving shallow explanations of complex situations, complex suffering. …. But this article fell apart almost instantly into childish culture war nonsense. I guess MIA is pretty hit-or-miss these days.
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A “safer world” – what a terrible thing to say! Thanks to the comments for the reminder that concessions do not need to be made to discourse which lacks a properly complex sight of the world. We must have standards. I must break the habit of dumbing-down my own judgment when presented with ideas from mainstream medical mental health. They must start to meet baselines of complexity expected of other industries & disciplines in the 2020s.
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This article is basically just implying “I thought a woman was lying about having trauma, so I diagnosed her with BPD” this is horrifying. And anyone who knows anything about BPD, will tell you that BPD is almost always caused by significant childhood trauma, so asking the parents if she experienced trauma, and then diagnosing her with BPD based on them saying she doesn’t have any trauma is super weird. Also, the parents are the last person you should believe about whether or not she has trauma, because if she does have developmental trauma, her parents are almost certainly the ones who abused her, so of course, they’re going to deny that any trauma took place. I am deeply disappointed in MIA. Their articles are usually so good and spot on. This article sounds it like it’s basically saying that discrimination against minority communities doesn’t exist, and that marginalization doesn’t exist, and that minorities just want to identify as marginalized because they want to be viewed as victims and treated special? That attitude feels racist, anti LGBT, classist, and ableist. Not to mention the pervasive sanism and misogyny present throughout this whole article. This article feels like it’s just saying that women lie about being victims, and that everyone is just too sensitive these days. I sincerely hope MIA takes this article down as everything in it goes against MIA’s beliefs and mission. I can’t believe this was even approved. I am deeply disappointed in MIA
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Hard agree! I’m surprised this was approved given a)the unprofessional public social media profile and posts of the author b) the hateful, dismissive tone of the article c) strong endorsement of one of the most openly despised SMI labels of BPD. I found the whole piece appalling, but also quite validating as to how I always knew I was being seen/treated as a BPD label survivor (“making it up” and being hysterical).
Even more horrifying was her assessment that because the parents seemed “normal” nothing could have gone wrong at home or at any other point in her life due to privilege or appearances. Yikes! Reading the piece a second time, I personally think the relationship she was in was not healthy and that heartbreak especially when young is hard. Perhaps the only way the patient could describe her suffering was with the language of “trauma” she found on the internet, and? I am concerned about how “trauma” is being catered to in the mental health industries but that doesn’t mean trauma doesn’t exist or is an objective fact.
It does not sound like the boyfriend treated her kindly anyway. And who’s to say what really happened with that guy!
Once again, what I love about MIA is how many perspectives — from clinicians, academics, survivors, family members — can contribute. I’m not sure if I’m in favor of anything being removed here but I’d be curious to hear what the process was on this one. I’d be a bit more concerned if this was the direction MIA took in the future but it seems like a fluke right now.
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“It does not sound like the boyfriend treated her kindly anyway. And who’s to say what really happened with that guy!”
I surmise there was probably A LOT more than meets the eye about THAT situation.
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After reading over the article in full, my sense is that the author puts a lot of time into “differential diagnosis” despite recognizing that it is objectively not possible with the subjective DSM criteria. For me, the key to success is adapting therapy to the person in front of me, and “diagnosis” per se had very little to do with that. If someone works well with a CBT (change your thinking to change your emotions and behavior) kind of approach, I’d use that approach, whether they had a “PTSD” or “BPD” or “ADHD” or no diagnosis at all. If it didn’t work, I’d use something else. I certainly wouldn’t waste my time convincing my client we needed a new “diagnosis.” I’d simply say, “Let’s try something different. Sometimes practicing skills can be more effective than going over past events. Are you OK giving that a try?” Or, God help us, I might ask the client what they’ve found to be helpful or not. After all, they are the ones who are defining “helpful” for us! If we think we’re helping and they don’t, we’re not.
So maybe the cultural references have some validity, though I see little to no scientific data to indicate that one way or the other, just anecdotes, really. But when it comes to providing therapy to a specific client, I think we do well not to call their recollections into question (particularly by asking their parents right in front of them!) but instead to apply the widest range of skills based on what actually works for the client, regardless of their ‘diagnosis.’ After all, even if CBT worked on 90% of depressed clients, there are still 10% who will fail unless you do something different. Forget “differential diagnosis” and do what works.
Milton Erickson reportedly said we have to re-invent therapy for every client. I think he got it right!
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I agree with many of the people critiquing this very narrow minded and colonizing world worldview in this article. The lack of acknowledgement of racism and its horrendous, traumatic impacts on individuals along with sexism, colonization and religious oppression. To say that trauma informed care should be thrown out in favour of a narrow Form of treatment approaches, is like saying since our mental health system is so bad, we should have no healthcare system whatsoever. It really is that extreme and unconsciously privileged. Specifically the statement that BPD is a result of difficult parenting is something you would hear from an ignorant untrained individual. Not from a professional. It’s so ridiculous to call extreme neglect in childhood ‘difficult parenting’ is absolutely ridiculous and harmful. And the statement that women have more mental illness because they are overly sensitive and vulnerable to disorders is misogynist at best. I do hope MAD will offer a more humane less misogynous, less colonizing viewpoint on this topic of trauma informed care in the next newsletter.
Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful critiques in the above comments.
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I agree with a lot of what Hannah (the author) is saying (though I didn’t read through the whole piece; it’s too long).
But trauma IS one of the bad guys in this story. This therapist (like most) was just looking for it in the wrong place.
It is true that a certain number of “patients” will use their diagnosis as an excuse to demand special treatment. In this way, their infirmity provides a “service” for them. On the other hand, you can’t hit anyone over the head with such an accusation; they must discover it for themselves.
One does need to be gentle with most patients, as one should be with all people. People who can stand up to being treated harshly have a special talent that often gives them extra value in society. Many wish to emulate such people, but only so many can. With real effective therapy, though, a person should come out feeling stronger and more resilient, not just better at “coping.”
Our current understanding of these problems is very poor, and our current expectations for good outcomes from “good care” are likewise poor. We know for sure that a world of sissies will not survive. So we need a way to make more people happy, strong and brave. For most of us, this is not our natural state.
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Your reply immediately raises a number of questions.
You write “One does need to be gentle with most patients…” If, as you claim, “most” patients deserve “gentle” therapy, can you please describe those few recalcitrant souls who require something harsher? Are they malingerers, whiners, hypochondriacs, deadbeats, spongers, stoned hippies, or other shiftless types? And what kind of firm treatment would you advocate in their case? Do you think it right to take upon yourself the role of a parent castigating a willful, disobedient child?
Furthermore, the statement that “a world of sissies will not survive.” What exactly do you mean by the word “sissy”–someone unable or unwilling to live up to his or her society’s expectations (which may be totally irrational and destructive)? I’m reminded here of two notorious incidents when General Patton slapped soldiers who had suffered a mental breakdown after intense harrowing combat. Were these soldiers pathetic weaklings, or was their emotional state an appropriate, understandable response to the horrible conditions in which they found themselves through no fault of their own?
Lastly, what does it mean to make more people “happy, strong, and brave?” Without a social or historical context these qualities have no substantive meaning. Should it be the goal of a human to function as an unquestioning, content, efficient cog in a highly structured corporate setting, an army, or a stultifying school environment? I can well imagine, for instance, that kamikaze pilots who sacrificed themselves for the sake of their emperor in World War II did so gladly and courageously–but do their mindset and conduct deserve our admiration? Sometimes it’s the disgruntled social misfit and outcast who is the true model of courage and the engine of moral and intellectual progress; think of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer or Sophie School in Nazi Germany.
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I made a spelling error: it should be Sophie Scholl (a prominent member of the White Rose resistance movement who was executed in 1943).
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Joel, if you studied (and practiced) what I have studied, perhaps you would understand. Some people can be pushed harder in therapy. They are in relatively good shape, but anyone can improve with good spiritual counseling.
It is not part of any workable therapy to “castigate” patients as parents sometimes treat their children.
Sissy: a timid, weak, or cowardly person (Merriam-Webster).
Soldiers who have not been sufficiently trained to face the horrors of warfare should, perhaps, not be made to fight. War is an extreme case of societal breakdown. If you want a better analogy, use sports.
If are not satisfied with the generally accepted meanings for “happy, strong, and brave” then I don’t know what to tell you. Of course they are subjective terms. Mental health is a subjective field. It deserves more objectivity than it now enjoys, but in the end it all boils down to personal experience. And personal experience will always be stressed, to some extent, by social requirements. And of course, societies – particularly governments – can go very wrong, as can individuals.
Regarding the Kamikaze, I can only quote a more recent Japanese commentator (as quoted in Wikipedia): “It’s all a lie that they left filled with braveness and joy, crying, “Long live the emperor!” They were sheep at a slaughterhouse. Everybody was looking down and tottering. Some were unable to stand up and were carried and pushed into their aircraft by maintenance soldiers.” As in most wars, the Japanese military included some very demented beings.
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You notably failed to mention what you have studied and why it should be considered a credible body of medical or scientific knowledge. Nor do you define what you mean by “good spiritual counseling” and how it differs from mediocre or downright harmful counseling. Whose spiritual principles are you applying in your practice—Ron Hubbard, Carl Jung, the Reverend Moon, Scott Peck, Krishnamurti, Alice Miller, James Dobson, or some anonymous Siberian shaman? Can you prove that these principles are superior in wisdom and efficacy to any other of the hundreds of therapies (i.e. cults) that rise and fall in the subjective gallimaufry known as the mental health field?
There cannot be greater objectivity in so-called psychotherapy, because the entire notion of mental health is ipso facto fallacious (I refer you, inter alia, to Thomas Szasz’s seminal work “Psychiatry: The Science of Lies”).
Lastly, what gives you the presumptuous authority to “push” another person to “improve” in a direction (unspecified) that you deem appropriate? Is it your goal to transform miserable “sissies” into happy, brave, well-adjusted human beings? What are your credible criteria for evaluating their progress?
Unless you can better substantiate and defend your arguments (sorry, you’ll have to find much more convincing sources than Wikipedia and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary), I see no reason to change my point of view regarding the unwarranted claims of psychotherapy to be regarded as a legitimate profession.
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Everyone who is familiar with me here knows I am a Scientologist.
If you don’t care to understand what that means and what that is, join the crowd. But it is a subject that is pertinent to “mental health” and in my opinion should be studied by anyone connected to the field.
Nowhere have I asserted that “psychotherapy” should be regarded as a legitimate profession. The fact is, though, that it is so regarded. What are you going to do about it?
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Couldn’t have said it better myself, Joel. I honestly can’t believe Larry’s comment was published and got through moderation, for many reasons, one of which being that “s*ssy” is considered a derogatory, misogynistic term, even considered a slur by some. (I, myself, have been censored on here for much milder.) It’s really quite disappointing to see it being allowed for somebody to blatantly insult trauma survivors/ the “mentally ill” by essentially calling them “feminine weaklings” on a site that is supposed to stand for mad rights & social justice. There is nothing productive or inclusive about allowing such behavior in the conversation. It is not intolerant to not tolerate intolerance, in my opinion.
Additionally, I had the same reaction to the “happy, strong, and brave” thing. This makes me think of the famous quote, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” by Jiddi Krishnamurti. What great societal change ever came from being satisfied and complacent with the status quo? What takes true bravery is having the courage to admit that you’re wounded instead of staying in denial in order to appear “tough.” What takes true bravery is having the courage to stand up against societal injustices instead of staying silent and pretending like it’s acceptable out of fear and shame. What takes true bravery isn’t taking out your own repressed dissatisfaction onto others by shaming them for their pain and “weakness” in your eyes; it’s having the courage to sit with them in their pain and recognize your own, and recognize the interconnectedness of it all, and having the courage to co-heal together. Healing is not for the faint of heart. Healing is what takes strength and bravery, not denial. Refusing to acknowledge a wound in the first place, isn’t “tough,” it’s what makes a person (or society) weak and cowardly, for one cannot heal a wound that has not been acknowledged. People who heal are tough as nails, but with the strength to let their softness and sensitivity remain in tact. People who heal don’t let their hearts calcify. People who heal don’t “forgive and forget,” we remember and repair.
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Thanks for your support, Jasmine. I was disgusted by the contemptuous word “sissies” and I just had to respond.
Back in the 1960s, I remember how Maine Senator Ed Muskie incurred ridicule and scorn when he once shed tears in public, as if such a display of genuine emotion were something weak and unmanly. Quite the contrary, in my opinion.
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“Suddenly, he barged in, slamming the door against the wall. While I was startled, Emily remained unfazed, her calm demeanour in stark contrast to someone with PTSD. This prompted me to investigate further.”
I have severe PTSD…I get calm when the sh** hits the fan. Uber calm. It made me a very good social worker. and it’s a very normal response for someone with PTSD…we’re used to that sort of chaos. I am absolutely great in a crisis…not so much at functioning day to day after all the drug damage and PTSD from the drug damage etc.
I’ll point out this is WHY “peers” are good at what they do. We know and are not afraid of the heavy stuff. You on the other hand were startled. It’s the fact that clinicians fear us that make you dangerous.
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I have worked with foster kids, and many of them are remarkably calm in a crisis. I think it’s something you learn if you live in a chaotic environment as a survival technique. But of course, not everyone has that skill. It amazes me how clinical people with experience still believe you can predict someone’s behavior reliably based solely on their “diagnosis.” There are LOTS of differing reaction to stressful events, and no one should get to tell another person, “Your event isn’t stressful enough to be called a trauma.” The client is the one who knows what is bothering him/her and ultimately holds any solutions to problems that exist.
BTW, I was also a social worker, very calm in a crisis, but I sort of thrive when crisis comes compared to regular life. Used to manage a crisis line – go figure!
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Oh, ye bards of the MIA comment section, I too was angered by this article- it brought up remembrances of a particularly nasty psychiatrist from my early adulthood- I was just 19. I am old now, and the thought of him still turns my blood cold. I wondered too, “Why would MIA publish such”, but then I realized that I am so glad that they did.
Just look at the comments! Don’t you see? The publication of this particularly offensive essay, very stealthily exposed the errors in the author’s thinking, and that was done by you all.
If the author ever desired feedback ( I wonder is Emily was ever asked for feedback by the author?), well you all gave a great dissection of the author’s monocled vision and poked huge holes in her reasoning. Pretty amazing tribe of warriors me thinks!
Maybe we need more such essays to tackle. Maybe, just maybe, such authors might find a moment to reflect on the comments of those harmed by the mental heath industry.
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“The publication of this particularly offensive essay, very stealthily exposed the errors in the author’s thinking, ….”
YES!!!
“For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:37
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How is it that at the beginning of the article, there isn’t a few lines specifying that the author of this piece defends an anti-feminist position, references a psychologist sanctioned for multiple statements about gender identity, trans identity, and obesity, deemed “inappropriate, outrageous, dishonorable, and unethical” by the College of Psychologists of Ontario? Publishing diverse opinions is a good thing. However, given that this person clearly holds views contrary to MIA’s editorial line, which is, among other things, oriented toward social justice and Mad rights, this should be stated at the beginning of the article. A trigger warning should even be included, as the reading of this article can be deeply disturbing. As a therapist I was confused because one expects to find a relevant critique of trauma based on MIA’s values (such as those of Emma Tseris, for example), but instead, it is an anti-feminist propaganda piece. Concerning Emily’s case: the approach of this psychiatrist amounts to victim-blaming and silencing women experiencing violence. This is backlash. Without even mentioning her method: Her parents didn’t notice any trauma, so that means she doesn’t have any? Really!?
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You are prepared to support the opinions of the College of Psychologists of Ontario?
MIA’s readers may be oriented towards “social justice” and “mad rights,” but the organization’s stated mission is as follows: “Mad in America’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the United States (and abroad). We believe that the current drug-based paradigm of care has failed our society, and that scientific research, as well as the lived experience of those who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, calls for profound change.”
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You are a Scientologist and assert that anyone “connected with the field” (I assume you mean the hodgepodge of unproven hypotheses and outright lies known as the mental health industry) should acquaint himself with its doctrine, without giving any cogent argument to justify the time and effort required for studying it. So, would you mind explaining for the benefit of this layman why what you call the “good spiritual counseling” presumably offered by Scientology is superior to any of the hundreds of therapies currently being practiced?
Moreover, it’s your contention that psychotherapy is regarded as a legitimate profession. I attribute this erroneous belief to Big Pharma marketing, psychiatric cover-ups, and connivance and apathy on the part of media, academia, regulatory agencies, and other institutions that are supposed to protect the public welfare but are failing to so–obviously for self-serving commercial reasons.
What’s to be done about this? The compelling testimonies by people who have been harmed physically and/or scarred emotionally by psychiatric quackery are one step in the right direction.
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I don’t see any reason to explain anything further to you.
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I am saddened by your request for a “trigger warning” to preempt this article; you’ve essentially made the author-shrink’s case and point to her thesis. The need to protect ourselves from others opinions, beliefs, dogmas, idiocy, and all manner of life sucking contribution, is a fruitless endeavor that only weakens ones critical thinking and muddies ones higher ground. I apologize if I sound preachy, but trigger warnings to others words is a dead end with those spared taking the brunt of the hit.
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@Kevin Smith, I hear what you’re saying, but I think there’s much nuance to be discussed here. I, too, think that “trigger warnings” are often misused or overused. But let me explain.
I think, for example, that psychiatric survivors should not have to issue a “trigger warning” every time we talk about our bad experiences with the mental health system out of fear that we will offend someone or make someone uncomfortable who still believes in the biomedical “mental illness” paradigm, or who goes to therapy or takes meds and finds it beneficial and is therefore not willing to acknowledge that some people may be harmed by it. I do not think that those of us who have used self-injury or disordered eating to cope should have to issue a “trigger warning” for the bodies we live in. I do not think that we should have to issue “trigger warnings” when talking openly about suicide. I do not think that those of us who have experienced trauma should have to issue a “trigger warning” for sharing our stories, exposing others to just a mere representation of the everyday realities that we have to live with. If we can live theough such pain, they should be able to tolerate just hearing about it.
In other words, I think that “trigger warnings” as a way to censor the stories and voices of the mad and/or trauma survivors, or to censor history because it is “too uncomfortable” for some, are overused, misused, and should be done away with almost entirely. Trigger warnings of this nature only serve the oppressor, not the oppressed; the abuser, not the abused; the privileged, not the marginalized. But they are especially insidious because of the way they masquerade under the guise of “sensitivity,” “awareness,” “wokeness,” and being “trauma informed.” It’s performative at best. They do little to protect actual trauma survivors, and instead intend to protect the fragile feelings of those who are most likely part of the problem, so they do not have to confront these difficult realities.
I do, however, believe that a trigger warning belongs on an article like this, if they should even publish it at all. Why, you may ask? What’s the difference? Well, because there is a difference between making someone uncomfortable and actually hurting them. There is a clear, though nuanced, difference between discomfort and pain; “upset” or “offended” vs truly harmed. I’ll use an analogy: I used to be a long-distance runner. My coach would often say that running is about “tolerating discomfort”; you have to push your body and be able to tolerate discomfort in order to improve. However, he would also say that you should “listen to your body,” and if you are in pain, you should ease up or even rest entirely. These principles are not mutually exclusive. It takes wisdom gained through experience to be able to distinguish between discomfort and pain, and although it is somewhat subjective, it is very much a real thing once you know how to tell the difference. There is no benefit in pushing your body past its breaking point when you are in pain; doing this does not make you “tougher” or “stronger,” it makes you injured. On the other hand, shying away from difficult workouts when your body is healthy for fear of discomfort will cause you to stagnate over time. Although trauma survivors are often accused of the latter, the former is far more likely for us. We are not the ones shying away from difficult conversations; usually it’s the ones who have never experienced any difficulty or trauma (or they have and want to remain in denial of their trauma) who want to maintain the status quo and stay in control of the narrative, so they silence any voices that make them uncomfortable, but in doing so, avoid growth. If we trauma survivors appear to shy away from difficulty, it is only because we are already in pain and injured, and need rest and recovery in order to heal. It is not the “weak” thing to do; it is the smart thing to do.
This article is not just making people “offended” or “uncomfortable,” I think it has the potential to truly hurt people, and that’s why I think it deserves a trigger warning (or to be taken down entirely). Additionally, just as there is a difference between “discomfort” and “pain,” I think there is a difference between not tolerating dissention and not tolerating bigotry. I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying lately, “the kids these days can’t handle anybody who disagrees with them,” and “the kids these days can’t tolerate any other opinions,” and I’m so sick and tired of hearing the narrative twisted in that way by *certain people*. It’s really the other way around! I think that arguing that this article belongs on MIA because “it’s important to include all perspectives” or whatever is weaponized inclusivity. I believe in inclusivity, and I believe in allowing diverse perspectives, and I believe in healthy disagreement, and I believe in tolerance. But not tolerating intolerance is not, itself, intolerant. Excluding those who aren’t inclusive is not failing to be inclusive. Refusing to accept those who refuse to accept others is not being unaccepting. Shutting down close-minded opinions is not a failure to be open-minded enough. See the difference? That’s not the same as an inability to handle being disagreed with.
To draw from my own lived experience, I do not find it triggering to hear others sharing their stories of trauma. I’ve read many a harrowing story here on MIA about the lived experiences of others, and not once have I felt compelled to comment under any of those “this needs a trigger warning.” Some of those stories stuck with me. They made me feel deeply sad, angry, or disturbed by what the person had to go through. But I did not feel “triggered” by them in the slightest. And I can’t speak for ALL trauma survivors/ psych survivors, but for me personally, that’s not what I find triggering. Trauma stories and discussions about suicide, self-injury, eating disorders, etc is not triggering to me as someone who has actually been through trauma, considered and attempted suicide, self-injured, and lived with an eating disorder. Like I said earlier, usually “trigger warnings” on these topics serves 1) to protect the fragile feelings of people who have never actually been through those things so they don’t have to face these realities or admit the ways in which they themselves might be part of the problem, and 2) censor and silence the voices of those with lived experience in order to stamp out dissention, erase our stories, and uphold the status quo. Proponents of the status quo are the ones that “can’t handle being disagreed with.” My mere existence should not necessitate a trigger warning.
What I DO find triggering however, is finding myself in situations that replicate the very dynamics that led to my trauma/ eating disorder/ suicidality in the first place. For example, contrary to popular belief, I do not find it triggering to talk about eating disorders or hear others talk about their lived experience with eating disorders. I do not necessarily find it triggering to see pictures of people with eating disorders, or listen to them describe their behaviors or symptoms. But I do find it triggering to witness body shaming or hear diet culture propaganda being thrown around. Perhaps more covertly, I do find it triggering to be disbelieved, misunderstood, or invalidated by others, or to hear others expressing that they disbelieve the pain and stories of trauma survivors like myself.
(Again, I can’t speak for everyone, only myself and my own experiences and triggers. People with eating disorders or trauma are not all the same, and I don’t intend to represent the group as a whole. Different people may have different triggers.)
So in summary, I do think that an article like this should at the very least have a trigger warning, if not be removed entirely, or have not been published in the first place. If that “proves the author right” or whatever, so be it. I don’t really care about her opinions anyway.
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You mean kind of like a “Beware of Dog” sign?
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@Jasmine, I couldn’t agree with you more surrounding people having, for the sake of “political correctness”, to spare others of their personal history because it offends ones “enculturated naiveté”. In fact, I’m afraid I am so removed from the circles, communities, and relationships where “this is happening”, that I’ve been completely unaware of its existence (relevance!). So please accept my apology for my oversight. You’re having made me aware of this dynamic made me realize that I have, over the course of my life- and even now, self-censored my psychiatric childhood, including my experiences of interpersonal violence, betrayal, et al (traumas in a word). I’ve self-censored for many reasons, some simply to avoid the woeful and bewildered responses from those I care about-or to lose their respect for me, or to spare others of things they can’t possibly understand in the first place. In this respect I’ve just wanted to avoid compounding the sense of alienation that history has already left me with. But your incredibly wise and emotionally intelligent response is prompting me to take another look at my position with self-censoring (at least when appropriate to not self-censor!). And, as a former collegiate runner and basketball player-and lifelong athlete, I totally understand your pain/discomfort analogy, and couldn’t agree more! In this respect I’ve come to believe that there is such a rupture between people’s sense of betrayal inherent in their traumatic experiences, with that of professional mental health clinicians further pathologizing people, thereby dismissing the fundamental relationship betrayal intrinsic in one’s traumatic experiences to begin with, that these “reified” institutional betrayals only compound ones sense of their original trauma (FWIW: my post below takes a whack at this dynamic). Thus, people with unattended betrayal trauma (as “the more” underlying problem to the actual experiences of trauma) may not be “in shape” to undertake the demands they’ve (now) been tasked with undertaking, ergo you’re analogy.
So, then, this brings me to your passage: “Trigger warnings of this nature only serve the oppressor, not the oppressed; the abuser, not the abused; the privileged, not the marginalized. But they are especially insidious because of the way they masquerade under the guise of “sensitivity,” “awareness,” “wokeness,” and being “trauma informed.” It’s performative at best. They do little to protect actual trauma survivors, and instead intend to protect the fragile feelings of those who are most likely part of the problem, so they do not have to confront these difficult realities.”
Again, I couldn’t agree more; and beautifully stated, too. As someone who’s experienced upsetting mental health professionals about the nature of the violence inherent in my psychiatric childhood (to the point of shutting “me and the subject for good every time”!), I understand this subject matter with a not insignificant sensitivity and insight-me thinks. Personally, I’m beyond sick and tired of the performative BS and “gaslighting” from professionals in general, and mental health professionals in particular.
I think what made this article so contentious among readers, was that the author-psychiatrist cast a multitude of psychiatric concepts and language, that were little more than outlines devoid of real world substantive intrinsic value. The outlines suggested the traits you touched on above, “sensitivity, awareness, etc. But given the selectivity of her subject matter, trope capture, and the singularity of her one patient- subject to arrive at the conclusions in her thesis, save that her statistical data doesn’t add up, I read the piece to be just another institutional narrative masquerading (ergo “virtue signaling”) as honorable and noble healers of life’s psychic wounded…
These are complex issues, as you clearly understand with great intelligence and sensitivity. I don’t have any answers. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s best to stay away from mental health professionals, at least if ones truly desires to undertake a process of greater consciousness, greater human wholeness, and liberations therein. Such a process can certainly begin in professional mental health settings, but it can never really progress beyond the perfunctory, nor be but undermined while captive to those spaces and their respective relationships (IMHO).
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Essays like this for me are a stark reminder that psychiatry tends to bring out the worst in certain kinds of people.
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I think it’d be a lot more helpful to hear Emily’s side of the story. Aren’t those the voices/stories this platform is meant to uplift?
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“Differential Diagnosis”??? Another fucked-up term for a fucked-up field.
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Against my better judgement, these comments:
First, the word trauma. No single word can possibly capture the magnitude of distinctions, degrees, variations, timing, associative and cumulative compact, nor plethora of other variables associated and implicated/connoted by the word trauma. And though the author-psychiatrist’s presented a historical roll call of the types of trauma’s that impact mental health, there wasn’t a single allusion to the fact that for decades these “varieties of trauma” had, until only recently, been ‘systematically ignored’ and subsequently pathologized in individuals, viz one or another DSM diagnosis. The historical evidence here, and the legacy of subsequent compounding psyhcho-social impacts therein, is damming, and, as Daniel Mackler and so many like-others have noted, that, in decades past, many people had no idea just how (traumatically) impacted they ‘were’ (hence psychiatry’s legacy of hermeneutical and testimonial injustice that discarded people’s histories). Now that people have become aware of this psychiatric legacy-failure, and the pendulum has swung a 180, this psychiatrist author doesn’t seem to see psychiatry and institutional mental health care’s complicity to our uniformed or misinformed populace, nor one that is desperate for competent and principled help. More, the psychiatrist-author uses one subset-demographic of people and one particular patient, to arrive at an overarching conclusion about the role of trauma in individual distress (as opposed to the more robust discussion surrounding the contradictions in diagnostic and treatment failures, or the socio-political implications therein). Also, FWIW, the authors noted statistical trauma aggregate to specific forms of trauma, don’t add up.
In this sense, I think the trauma word has been, like so many words today, hijacked, commercialized, weaponized, and, invariably, stripped of substantive and effective meaning. IMHO, a fertile array of words, descriptions, metaphors, and allegorical allusions used in place of the single word trauma, would go a long way in taking the word back from the margins of willing exploitation and obtuse misrepresentation. Using phrases like, for example, interpersonal violence, interpersonal betrayal that caused chaos in my personal and professional life, war violence that left me with a sense of a moral and existential wound that has impacted my sense of what it means to be human, rampant emotional and physical violence during my childhood that fundamentally warped my sense of Self, agency, and sense of others better selves, and did so at the most critical point in my life (the list is far too long, of course, but it must be as personalized as it is socialized, for “real traumas” are a non-negotiable psycho-social wound that happened through a myriad of broken bonds in ones relationships to others, time and its manifest continuities; trust and its fundamental interpersonal and socially stabilizing functions (or, in shared “event trauma’s “, i.e., car wrecks, natural disasters, etc.,) Also, the psychiatric diagnostic and treatment lens is designed and systematically operates to obscure and disconnect the social-political from the psychological-personal, largely achieved via a “personal diagnosis”, thereby suppressing its social and political (structural) relevance from individual and collective awareness (sight).
As for “coddled”, weak, or overly sensitive (younger!) people who “identify” with having been traumatized: I regard such people victims of collective culture, specifically a generation of hyper-technologically hyper-socialized people whose essential “individual psychological development” is being dangerously undermined (usurped) by having to assume and process the constant inescapable exposure to external information and phenomena, and all its implications, demands, expectations, values, valueless promise, lies, half-truths, “pseudo connections”, images, et al. Not to mention that many of today’s parent’s hyper-arrange their kid’s life so as to thrive economically, rather than as sufficiently well rounded people in a unpresented complex world.
Lastly, let me just say that, when it comes to trauma, old Boomers like me didn’t have words like PTSD, depression, C-PTSD, ACE, and dozens more from which to gage our experiences, ditto the internet, smart phones, cable TV, streaming, social media, and more from which our experiences were (“not”) gaged and seamlessly reflected back to us in 24-7 real time. The impacts on human development viz these advancements, can neither be overstated nor now adequately grasped To wit:
Child abuse back in the 60’s was a taboo word. I was legally removed from my parents’ house twice when I was a kid, but I never have considered myself abused, and am absolutely loathe to think of myself as having been traumatized by my kidhood-or anything else-per the cultural values and awareness of my time!. But the reality is nobody goes through these kinds of (traumatic) experiences without having been adversely changed in some fundamental way, from which a great deal of work must be done to turn that damage into assets, save be capable of connecting with others in more meaningfully productive ways. Today’s generations are faced with an antithetical awareness, save challenges. My deep concern is that today’s generation(s) neither sufficiently understand nor are being sufficiently changed by “their traumas”, but rather are technologically and neoliberally compelled to misunderstand and fit them into suffocating dis-individualizing social and institutional paradigms that foreclose the potential for the changes needed in their person, from which to take back out into our world a more consciously embodied individuated human being. I hope I am wrong here at every level…
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Every day I find myself thanking God I was born more intuitive than intellectual for the simple reason that too many words too much of the time add up to one huge pain in the ass.
Here’s what I say to myself when other people’s words get too plentiful: Let the idiots run their mouths. Trust your gut and move on.
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“We all have an appointment with ourselves, and most of us never show up for it.” ~ Jim Hollis
“Showing Up for Yourself”, from This Jungian Life
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“Everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane.” Carl Jung
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