It could also be a way to dismiss people in need of care, over-blowing what is just a bad day while minimizing actual trauma. Now that everyone is traumatized (they’re not), no one is actually harmed (they are).
I have never been in a war or seeing a murder, or affected for a natural disaster. I have lived with very violent and aggressive parents, I had bullying for teachers, and my grandmother. I have supposedly being affected for another forgotten event with a childminder when I was about four years. I am 55 and can't stand in darkness, I can't sleep properly by myself in a room. Having often my hold body triggered like some violent or dangerous event will certainly pass during nights. My siblings lived similar circumstances, but they aren't experiencing same difficulties. Are considered myself damaged? Yes, for sure I am. Does it affect the severe way my live, totally. I do believe some people get "broke", specially in very early stages in their lives, and some of us, maybe due another factor as genetic stuffs, we have not the same strength nor way to affront our traumatic experiences. My opinion of course.
Your life has been significantly different to that of your siblings and the layers of trauma that you suffered have defined your life from your teenage years onwards. There is no doubt in my mind that a person can be deeply harmed when a psychiatric journey is imposed on them and doesn't solve anything, but adds layers of further harm and pain on top of the original hurt. You have however worked incredibly hard all your life to amend your situation, which could easily have been catastrophic. This is why you can articulate your situation so well.
I'm not an expert except for working through my own past and dealing with healing my body and spirit as well but I want to offer an hypothesis : maybe your body and mind are still stuck in the experience of those horrible moments and need to be "evacuated" through different therapeutic modalities. There has been a tremendous amount of progress in understand and treating such "wounds" (and maybe instead of seeing yourself as broken you could see yourself as wounded). If I may, a licensed psychologist well versed in Complex PTSD, EMDR to reprocess and "purge" your traumatic memory overload as well as self hypnosis practices (EFT comes to mind to practice in these delicate moments at night) and somatic experiencing are worth a shot to work with your body. That same body has carried you so far and sometimes it needs a little help, even if it lasts a while before the wound is closed and you learn another way to "walk" out there. Best of luck.
You are not broken. You are experiencing the effects of Complex PTSD, which is any experience that felt like "too much, too fast, too soon" at the time... Or on the flip side, "not enough for too long". It's a real thing and it's possible to heal those wounds and move on with your life from a place of true inner peace. Not just burying it, ignoring it, or downplaying it. Your experience is real, your symptoms are valid and I hope you or anyone reading this will receive the competent and compassionate support you deserve.
I think it's interesting how many people in the comments are triggered by your wise words. It seems people focus more on the exact words said and not the message behind the words. As a survivor of traumatic events myself, I know exactly what you're talking about, not identifying yourself with the brokenness and the ashes is what gets you through and beyond the wounds. To make trauma your identity keeps you stuck in victimhood, like its all there'll ever be for you, it swallows you whole if you don't somehow detach yourself from it, it eats away at your whole life if you don’t find a way to zoom out & realise your whole life doesn't have to be traumatic just because you experienced trauma.
@BickylaBiscuit Victimhood? Trauma identify, gosh! You maybe passed for traumatic events, but please stop making assumptions and judgements. Some people perhaps had not the same "intelligence," clarity, support, or whatever you had to overcome that situations. I am a fighter and am still struggling in my life. Every single day I am getting up to going to work and facing this live, but also every single day would like death. No victimism at all. Maybe some people are simply not that strong like you. Congrats, though, to be like ypu.
@yod63 @yod63 Hey I'm sorry to hear I somehow hurt you with what I said. I don't think I'm better than you, I got triggered by this video too, I was talking about myself here as much as anyone, I'm just speaking my own truth. I don't know what you've gone through, but I'm not the enemy here and I do salute you for showing up here & continuing to be a fighter, working through the struggle everyday. I'm right there with you on that.
"Triggered" has become similar to using the word "Hater" to shut down or dismiss criticism. Also, "focusing on the words instead of the message behind them" doesn't make much sense - that's exactly what words are for, to convey a message. It's not everyone else's fault that they didn't use their words more effectively.
you raise good points, I just wrote triggered cos I actually felt triggered by some of what was said, but overall was moved, so I wrote what I wrote, I do agree with triggered being a weaponised word, it wasn't my intention to use it that way, but I can see how it comes across. Pobodys Nerfect!
You say Emmy : "Don't darken your days with things that are not part of your experience and learn to heal and grow after your difficulties instead of continuing to open your wounds." This sentence is essential for me.
Thanks, I have long hesitated to post about this, not wanting to make things worse for people but also feeling I had to bring some realism back to the way this topic is currently being handled.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen Social networks have often brought very superficial information about various mental health topics. I feel safe hearing about this topic from you.
Exactly what a lot of us need to hear more. We survived and came home but I’m not living my life. I might as well been KIA because if I don’t leave my house and live my life what’s the difference? Thank you. I truly believe the algorithm worked today. I needed to hear this
My colleague Susan Iacovou did some amazing research with soldiers who had seen combat and she realized that what made them so cut off was not that they were traumatised, but that their experiences were so enormous that they had destroyed their previous framework of meaning and needed to find a new framework. While they were withdrawn from society and from family in the aftermath, they were avoiding coming to terms with that. Yes, you are right. If you stay in that place, you may as well have been killed in action. You, potentially, have an enormous amount to teach people and you, for sure, have also got courage and stamina and determination. Make the most of it. You can read about this in my book Rising from Existential Crisis: life beyond calamity.
This is a complex and nuanced topic. I see the value in the perspective that Emmy is offering, many of us live in a culture which conditions us to diagnose ourselves and limit our full potential. And any thought pattern or narrative we play over and over in our mind can become a vortex we get trapped in. However, trauma survivors already often struggle to validate their own experiences and believe in the pain of what they have been through. The prevalence of trauma was outright denied in a very harmful way until a fairly recent cultural shift. Yes people are amazingly creative and adaptive, but many of the ways people adapt to difficult circumstances can be harmful, and eventually need help in unwinding; rumination about their suffering being one of them. Glad to see all the nuanced responses in the comments, and I understand the reaction of those who felt offended by this video. As a mental health professional, I would recommend Emmy think carefully about the vast variety of contexts in which her words will be received.
I didn't know I had CPTSD. I wasn't afford the safety, space or room to grow that awarness until I was told and given the opportunity to see my wounding. However, I do agree it's not okay to make someone a victim either. I know survivors who have no idea what they faced was "debilitating traumatic" but have found a way to move throughout life in a fulfilling well. Overall, I hear some golden nuggets in your messaging but also caution as well. We all have our own journies with what has happened to us. We are the experts of our own story and should demand space for how we choose to express it.
An extremely important message to all people, especially young people who are being exposed to the trauma marketing that has been happening for some time now. You are an honest and authentic psychologist that is much needed now ❤🙏 YOU ARE MUCH STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE 👏👏👏👏
There is a difference between becoming aware of trauma to understand why one always repeats the same mistakes, and wallowing in to, using it as a shield or an identity. When you have worked hard your entire life, but every time you come to a point where you have reached some success, you sabotage your success because you find yourself unworthy, you can’t just grow a thicker skin. It doesn’t work. The tree analogy fails because it is simplistic. Human minds are complex.
Exactly, but because human minds are complex people sometimes get lost and a simple metaphor, simplistic as it may be can help them unlock new resources.
This actually healed me a lot. One thing I’ve realized throughout my healing journey is that is that it doesn’t help to go through life feeling like a victim. If anything I was retraumatizing myself by defining my every thought and reaction and my belief system based on my traumas. It’s hard though because sometimes in letting go of your trauma you can feel that you are neglecting the hurt part of yourself or ignoring your wounds. The trick is to find the balance between acknowledging your hurt and allowing yourself to feel the sadness and also recognizing your strength and allowing yourself to move on and grow new branches
@@Anonymous21r95 Exactly that. The trick is to be tender and attentive to your wound and astute in understanding the situation that caused it. When that work is done, you need to be tough in overcoming it and build the scar tissue and reeducating yourself, training yourself to be more than that victim. Rehabilitation first, but mastery after that, as you are rising above your victim hood and even above your sense of being a survivor. You now have become a hero or heroine in your own life and you have strength beyond what others think possible. Hopefully you also have developed visions, understanding and compassion and can see how such injuries occur and can be resolved. I wrote about all this in my book Rising from Existential Crisis.
Thank you for starting this important conversation about trauma. I am someone who has invested a fair amount of time and energy into the idea of trauma. This is because 'trauma' is a way of removing blame from the person who has been hurt, and showing compassion to them for their behaviour. However, the term and concept itself it kind of disempowering. I think this is a regular pattern for how humans tend to learn to understand one another. Firstly we blame, and ostracise what we do not understand. Then, we classify that experience as an 'illness' or 'affliction' that is beyond the moral responsibility of the victim. Then often things become an identity label, something for people to own and cling onto. And finally, when we are ready, we return back to seeing that person's situation and experience as just that, an experience, a feeling, a situation, a thought... And we realise that we *can* have compassion for people without always labelling or pathologising their experience (although ofc some instances are so severe that pathology can be a justified concept), we can just return to seeing them as a person with power and uniqueness, character and their own ways of being, and we can accept that sometimes situations makes their choices harder, or that they have painful memories, or that some of us need time, but we have immense resources inside ourselves to grow and overcome difficulties, and we are not always sentenced to a 'life with trauma' .
Fabulous response and good thinking about the societal process of blaming, followed by diagnosing. I agree with everything you said. The challenge is to find better ways of helping people to overcome adversity, conflict, drama and pain, without adding a further layer of trouble.
I come from a toxic and psychologically abusive relationship with my father who was a covert narcissist, I was homeless with him for a very long time during my upbringing, I escaped that and went to go be with extended family that found me on the internet, I genuinely felt that I would belong with them and I thought they felt same way, but unfortunately what seemed like a gift from god just turned into something that completely hurt me, I was only with them for 3 months because of how difficult they were to live with, and how conditional their love and regard was towards me, it’s just bloody unfair to me how my fully related brother got to have what they called a ‘privileged life’ while my upbringing pretty much got robbed by my narcissist father and that it’s something no kid should ever have to have gone through. Yet, people on the internet tell me “who are you and why should you be loved and cared for” and even an ex friend tells me “well they raised your brother and not you why do you think you deserve everything your brother always gotten.” …but to me it’s just really unfair, and it has put me in a constant endless loop of rumination.
That does sound like a very difficult situation to grow up in. I hope you have some professional help to sort this out in your mind and to find the dignity that should come with the knowledge that you have had such a hard early start but will still make something amazing out of your life.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen Exactly, and that sad thing is, is that I remember I stayed with a friend of mine and his family for a little while because his mom couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I was homeless sleeping in a car in a parking lot somewhere. They treated me as equally as their 2 boys… I wanted that with my brother.
@@blankearth5840 I am glad you met good people and did not end up hating the world and mistrusting everyone. You have seen a lot of life and I trust you will put your knowledge and understanding to good use.
While my past is colored by a pathologically narcissistic mother, not my father, my current life is all about getting over my entire childhood and ALL of my romantic relationships (with narcissists of course.) Trauma trauma trauma. And yessss I am FIGHTING very hard by reparenting and learning everything I didn’t. Next I will be rehusbanding since men are too childish to respect women as humans, and therefore I have to do that for myself too. Trauma does need to addressed actually. My trauma is intense. However it’s healable. I call it “Spiritual Kintsugi” in which I get to go back into the past and pick up all the pieces my mother rejected and later I myself. Trauma has to be addressed. Not indulged in. It has to be acknowledged. Not given a place at the table. To become whole means claiming the beauty of your being and realizing your parents were very selfish. It means realizing chosen partners were just abusers. It means being alone alone alone, with friends, knowing most men are toooo traumatized to be oak trees.
I went through a horrible trauma (it made front page news in my city for a week, and then again several months later with court proceedings).... People I hadn't spoken to in 15+ years in other countries were messaging me because they saw the news online. I remember the first thing I told my therapist was "I don't want to be defined by my trauma." Five years later and I can safely say I was never defined by it, it's not what people ask me about anymore, and I work hard not to be a victim. It feels good to come out the other side stronger!
@@highpriestess7520 That was a wise thing to say in the midst of horror. You were so right, too many people are prepared to let their traumatic experiences define their identity, so they become frozen and unfree to be everything else they are capable of being.
Dear Emmy, thank you once again for this wonderful teaching this evening! I have, in fact, experienced more than my share of trauma, but people close to me often comment on my resilience! And yes, I have grown exponentially by working out the knots! I have also, through support gr, seen people who have been sucked into the ? well of despair by taking on other’s perceptions of their experiences. This does damage in an$ of itself, because I have seen these same people going round in circles within themselves trying to find clarity, but seem to lean toward holding onto the perceived trauma as a crutch of some sort. It’s a very sad thing to see indeed! I’m new to your channel, but I’m loving your talks/ discussions. Thank you 🌹🙏
The stages of trauma are various and different from each other. At first we need to recognize that we are victims and we are traumatized, in order to break the "curse" and begin to heal, but years later we can get stuck in victimhood and the repetition and recreation of traumatic events. That is where we need to take action and set internal limits so as not to continue self-harming. Thank you for talking about this.
Just came across your channel. Really am enjoying it. You have deep wisdom which very few at least on the surface seem to have. It is wonderful to "meet" someone of like thinking. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. New friend here.
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Nietzsche For years I tried to give practical meaning to this sentence. Emmy is the first one who made me understand. If we believe that we are victims of trauma, we cannot be what we are capable to be. We are more ! We are not a diagnosis, we are people with the ability to overcome life's hardships ! I wish to all resilience and perseverance. We can change our life in every moment.
Thank you! I’m an existential consultant and coach too. I had 3 your books in Russian translation and the first of them with your signature and wishes for success to me (I received it in Kyiv many years ago). Unfortunately, all the books remained in Odessa. I had to run away with a tiny suitcase. But I will find them in English. These’re really useful books. I recommend them to my students, friends, and colleagues.
Thank you Emmy....so much distress in people's lives and so much anxiety....the word trauma is used freely nowadays. It doesn't have to define anyone xx
Very "down to earth" approach. I very much like your approach and good ideas on these topics. It is only now, as a senior, that I am starting to understand the past differently. Most likely ( almost always ), the people that inflict "injury" on you have been injured themselves. And we have to learn to see our "Parents" as "just people" --- even though we have no choice but to see them as "gods" when we are LITTLE. I have also listened to some "talks" by Michael Singer recently and one thing he constantly mentions is that we have to learn to have "preferences" rather than insist that things be a certain way - and our insistence is basically the core of all or our troubles. Insisting the past be "different" or that someone change it, or make it understandable is probably not a option - even though I have spent decades doing just that.
I love the tree analogy, I liken myself to a tree a lot, it is very useful. And overall I agree. I do however find 2 problems with what you have said, and I am sharing them for anyone else in a similar boat as myself in the past. 1) That a severely damaged person is "obvious". This is not true, even to professionals. To the most experienced, perhaps. But only because they are aware of the very SUBTLE ways in which someone severely traumatized presents. The most truly traumatized people tend to be highly dissociative. Which means they act "normal" "happy" "outgoing" "positive" etc, even MORE so than your average person. (I don't think it fair to claim that these people will "never claim they have been traumatized" though.) A skilled practitioner knows what to look for, but to the uninitiated they look "fine". Even to themselves. It can take many many years of uncovering what really happened, and a very gentle and supportive touch for these people, including myself, to come to terms with what really happened - and to stop blaming ourselves. 2) That trauma doesn't include relational trauma. The reason that only a small percentage of people who experience traumatic events come away with PTSD seems to have a lot to do with the relationships in our lives. See ACE scores and the associated resilience score. In my experience, relational trauma, and the lack of relational/social SUPPORT, is highly traumatic in and of itself. Bullying can be some of the absolute worst things to happen to a person. Are there people online whining about things that aren't really traumatic just to get attention? Probably. I personally haven't seen it, but I stay in pretty healthy spaces online, so I imagine it is out there, just like in the real world. But that doesn't mean that bullying is not ever actually traumatic. Same with parents and spouses abusing their children and spouses. These can be MAJOR traumatic events in people's lives. Ones that are often dismissed by others. To use the tree analogy, this is like the tree being uprooted, and then continually moved about and not allowed to root down. Being told it's not ok to take nutrients from the soil. That it should just do without and carry on. Of course it's going to wither and eventually die - which people who experience this kind of ongoing relational abuse do through nervous system dysregulation which causes a host of physical symptoms including eventual heart attack and death. We are fighters, for sure, but please don't make it harder on us than it already is.
@@gracebelonging2633 A very good elaboration on the theme. You are correct on everything you say and you show the care and cautiousness that I was hoping to achieve. My post was meant to pause people’s bandwagon responses to the trauma fashion. Your response is a measured and informed professional one, which I entirely agree with.
Well said Grace. I find myself in the strange place of situations that previously dysregulated me no longer do. So new healthy patterns of response have had to emerge. It's really lovely but takes some getting used too. I wish you well 🙏🔥
Wasn't with you in the beginning and can see why you hesitated before posting, however personally found this very empowering to hear by the end and definitely food for thought as a clinician. Thank you.
Ahhh at about 6.50 I understood where you were coming from. Working hard and well with help to heal the wounds and experience a fulfilling life. I'm not quite understanding the advice to withhold expressing one's historical cptsd. It's taken the ownership and expression of my journey to begin the healing and get out of victim metality, in the privacy of family and therapy. Anyway, the way you've communicated is gentle and encouraging. I have a feeling whom your speaking too may not be mature or developed enough to hear your message (younger generations)or even care (industry) but of course I'm generalising. Food for thought. This will be a video to watch again as I process. Thankyou
Yes, indeed, with maturity comes the capacity to hold all your memories and learnings from life, traumatic or joyful and to draw on all of these in your everyday life. But I don't really feel that people who are capable of doing that will be that interested in me telling them about it!
Well it's 6 months later. And yes I have been making acorns 😊 I'm reconciled with my past trauma at last. A difficult and painful experience. Sobriety a while ago was key to opening the path through. Now the past is a gift of knowledge. But it's so strange to have the ghosts of my old survival patterns jump up and down when a difficult situation arises but they have no impact, because they are ghosts. Finding new gentle, humorous, loving patterns of behaviour is so so rewarding. I understand your message here now. It has a fierce love about it. A lioness love. A powerful message. 🤍🙏🔥
I believe the universe places people, experiences and messages in my life at exactly the right times. I needed to hear this today. I have been living in victim hood for quite a while; it’s something I’m trying to overcome but has become such a part of my psyche that I get pulled into it before I realize it has. You hit the nail on the head. I’ve been making myself to feel like nothing but a traumatized, broken person who needs a shit load of therapy before I can be who I’m truly meant to be. I’m whole just the way I am. Because although my traumas exist, they do not make up my spirit. They are obstacles that I face and must CHOOSE to overcome. To let all of my bad experiences rule my life is to let the devil himself win. My higher self is fighting every single day to be set free. We’re already in hell. We just need to view it from a different angle.
I think I only had one event that might have been traumatic. It was during a period of drug use, where I had an anxiety attack because I couldn't control my breathing, and I fear the entire night that some malevolent people who could hear me breathing and shifting would come and stab me for disturbing them. It was the worst experience of my life, both terrifying and humiliating. And then since then I had this symptom of breathing anxiety, whenever I could hear my own breath, and it would become very tense, like shivering. And so that made every night a kind of painful hellish experience where it would take me hours of being in a state of anxiety to finally be exhausted enough to get a few hours of sleep. Along with a sort of recurrence of the trauma when I had a full on panic attack during the night and heard someone in the other room remark about my breathing. Which was extremely humiliating for me because of what it might have implied to them. But, the silver lining is, because of it I eventually sort of stumbled upon how to breath, and the power of the role that breathing plays in pretty much everything, including mental health. Which is a whole long story too. But now, breathing is like my number one tool in life. Which mostly involves feeling the breath, and finding the natural breath which is deep and slow and from the belly, and feels like a relieving sigh. I still have some of the anxiety but it's now much more manageable if it comes. So when I think about trauma, and the stuff other people have experienced including PTSD, I don't think of myself as traumatized just because I feel I got a small little taste of it, like a preview or something. And all the other stuff I sort of refer to as emotional wounds, because to my understanding or introspection it just sort of looks like layers of emotionally powered patterns that are designed to protect the identity and it's associated beliefs. I think of it as psychological scar tissue that is kind of a problem but also kind of functional, or adaptive. It becomes relevant to me when I want to trade coping for healing, which to me involves unpacking burried feelings and their associated beliefs, and letting go of some aspect of my self-image and world-view. Just now I was caught up in a kind of emotional storm, and spent a while unpacking it in my own way internally, going through all kinds of emotions and thoughts and feelings eventually in the end leading to this realization that what was underneath it was something I had been overlooking, whilst being fixated on these big words and fancy emotions all along. And I realized I was burrying a lot of what I had disregarded as a simple and trivial emotion. And so I basically realized, almost laughing, and with a great feeling of relief, that I was embarrassed about a lot of things in front of a lot of people. It was even being concealed by feelings such as heartbreak and despair, and even guilt. I was just embarrassed. Now I feel completely clear and empty, almost bored without my complex ball of yarn of what seemed like emotional wounds. So this seems to be leading me to understand that pretty much any emotion/feeling can conceal any other feelings, and it's just a matter of how willing we are to let go of our attachment to constantly feeling a certain way, in order to see how it could just be a feeling about a belief that might not necessarily be true. But a belief that conveniently distracts from something a little more simpler and uncomfortable to feel. And then being open to feel that also, and let it go also as just another feeling-belief knot, to find that background of empty, silent, boring, peace. And the willingness to laugh at yourself in the process
Thank you so so much, dear Emmy 🌻this is exaclty what i needed to hear today 💚'Let yourself heal and let yourself feel. And like and old oaktree to make a stronger stem and trunk and roots.' Love this so much 🙏
I stopped whining about perceived lack of the *right* emotional support when I was a child and teenager, when I read that whatever it was that we felt was lacking in our lives was never supposed to be given to us. It was OUR job to provide that for ourselves. That was a whole new way of seeing things, and gave me a fresh purpose. Thanks for this talk, Emmy. It was great. ❤❤
@@elizabethwinters5361 I would be curious to know where you read that very important information. It is remarkable that you were able to take it on board at such an early age. It is so essential to understand this but it is not what our culture teaches.
It's supposed to be your parents' job to provide emotional support. Ending up being able to provide it for yourself anyway is still important, but we shouldn't pretend that parents have no responsibility in protecting and caring for us.
You speak very clearly and slowly. Although this is British English (it’s not easy for me to understand American either, although I ended up in the USA during the war in Ukraine). Your simple and wise thoughts, clear speech with good articulation really help me calm down, look at life philosophically and believe that I will speak English well. I read your page on Facebook too. Thank you for these short, but very useful lectures.
I have the impression we are just starting to explore what trauma can be - or what in life can result in trauma. Yes, if I’m offended by a blunt question it might not be trauma. But I’m also sure that especially the older generation - and not to minimize us, essentially because they want to help us - might say: “This is not a trauma!” because they experienced things that traumatized them but they never got to acknowledge it. They were told to deal with it and that’s become their way of thinking
@@simonanardi4312 Some very good points there. We need more understanding of what hurts people and what makes them retreat into themselves or give up on life. But perhaps we also need to hold on to the wisdom of the older generation that difficulties should be overcome rather than given into with the mentality of victimhood.
I totally agree with everything you say. I suffered a breakdown in 2017. It took some time to get back but when I did I became stronger and less stressed and less affected by others. I stopped being offended by others. 😊
You have typified trauma as single event driven rather than the impact of contunuous emotional and psychological neglect and trauma (cptsd). The tree metaphor is very strong and useful.
Trauma is trauma. You cannot say this trauma is worse than that trauma. Of course on a human level that is the case. But it’s also a form of blaming the victim, for the fact that they (still) feel like a victim. I have trauma from my childhood, but no I have never been to a war, or being brutally assaulted. But I heal on a deeper level, that is how it feels for me. And it’s healing for the collective. In order to be able to do this, I have lived very isolated for a couple of years. No conscious choice, but I just couldn’t handle the world anymore. And at some point I understood it, I have to heal and find myself, and then I will be ready for the outside world again. Some people can do these two things at the same time, but for a period I couldn’t. And at first I was the victim. I identified myself with the victim. Later on, I could detach more and more from the victim. Could see in how much pain she was. And now I can see how strong she is, I am so proud of her, and I can see how much strength and light there is underneath all this pain and trauma. And I’m not there yet, but every day I move forward towards to this strength and light. It’s a rocky road, but also a beautiful one. And every day I enjoy life, more and more. I can appreciate it more and more. But it’s not a battle, it’s not a fight, it’s a process. Fighting is still a duality that costs a lot of energy. You have to take steps again yes - in your own time. It’s not a fight, it is a process. This is my experience.
A beautifully modest and accurate description of the process of your overcoming. Thanks so much for sharing. Many will find new courage in reading this.
Great argument for mental and emotional health. Bless you for telling the truth. Iam so sick of the victim mentality. Very weak and disappointing. I have been through the loss of three children to this mentality. That pain could have paralized me. But I chose to keep going and live the best I could. I cried every day for years. I still cry some days but I do what I can to work, and live, and enjoy my life. Thank you❤
This is something I think about. Thank you for putting in to words. I'm a parent and I feel that there is a lot of talk about trauma relative to parenting. And parents walking on egg shells when dealing with kids. You can't say this, you can't do that, you can't use this word....Afraid to traumatize them. And I'm not willing to play that game. I try to treat my children with respect, not abuse in any way, care and love as I can. But I will say what I must say, get upset when I must, not allow them to disrespect each other, make my needs and my boundaries clear to them. It's hard, very hard. Sometimes they are very upset, they are angry at me, they feel I did them wrong. Is that real trauma?? I'm hoping they will turn out fine. Thanks for your video.
@@socksandsandalsASMR As long as you are open with each other and there is mutual respect and care and you seek to understand and resolve problems together, you cannot go far wrong.
That's definitely part of it, but that leads to a complex process of understanding the past, the present, the future, yourself and your human relationships.
My mother always said that we weren't promised a rose garden. Everyone experiences trauma and unless it's something like what the Titanic survivors experienced it's not worth dwelling on.
My foundling Matilda. Found in the backyard running around like long leg ratty . She was starving full of lice ,ringworm, ear mites and mange . We cared for her and she thrives I believe because of her starving she eats as a security to always have food. Some of us like Matilda may be unconsciously eating what wasn't available....... Its part of surviving. 😊🎉❤
Disagree with the notion that only events can traumatize people. Long abusive relationships can also traumatize people. The results are basically the same.
It would have been really nice to have had you as my grandmother instead of the one who told me what happens in the family stays in the family when it was sexual abuse. I have grown past my traumas but some things still sting when it comes to the people that i looked up to and remembering how wrong they really were on guiding me.
It's both. A person needs to have the time and space for both feeling the grief and then rising out of it. Mindfulness helps us remember to keep our eyes on the prize, which is release from the trauma brought by grief. Mindfulness of the need for return to health and vitality we were born with, our birthright-- not get blindsided and trapped in the quicksand misery of permanent grief. Grief is one of those things that cannot be avoided, we need to teach young people the skills for how to work through it so they don't get stuck and then recruited by dark forces.
Remember when “labels” were avoided at all costs? Today “labels” are used to describe character flaws with an excuse and worn like badges of honour. It is quite pathetic overall to live your life as a victim.
I will keep a look out for your new book "The Art of Freedom: Guide to a Wiser Life,” hope i can get it sent here to Melbourne. I'm going to look up the Copernican Revolution never heard of this before. maybe my answers are in here.
What if the acorn doesn't quite germinate the right way, from the very beginning? Continuous toxic stress in the first years of life can cause very concrete epigenetic changes in relation to stress response pathways. This can contribute to having abnormally heightened stress responses for the rest of your life. Culturally we might think children should be able to persevere through having neglectful or abusive parents more readily than witnessing abhorrent violence or natural disasters but on the physical level it doesn't have a bearing what the incessant release of cortisol is caused by in those formative stages of brain development. Is it always self-victimization to admit to having "bugs in your software" or can it sometimes be self-acceptance? Some people have to build their life around not being able to do all the things that most others can.
So, if your trauma isn't the result of combat/natural disaster/being mugged, you just need to get over it? I've watched this video many times, and that's the main message I get from this. Maybe it's overly simplistic, but so is reducing the complexity of human consciousness to a tree. Metaphors only get you so far, and in this case I think it failed. Sometimes those "tree gnarls" on the mind you speak of don't make it stronger, just more callous and withdrawn. I don't really want to broach the ignorant and dismissive comparison you make between childhood trauma and "real" trauma like combat PTSD, because others have already commented on it, but I will say that the few people I've spoken to who have experienced combat PTSD are the ones who have been the most open-minded and non-dismissive toward any and all kinds of other trauma.
I completely understand your take on this and don't disagree with any of what you say. I have worked with many people who were traumatised by a wide range of different experiences and have written about an experience in my own life of a serious traffic accident as a ten year old. This reverberated through many years of my life. Notwithstanding this, there is a pernicious trend towards clients coming to therapy having made up their minds that they are traumatised and they have also decided that this is going to be a life long conditions. My title is 'be modest about it' and that is my message. I may add some words to the explanation of the video to deal with your reasonable request for not coming across as if I am denying trauma, or as if i believe that only war and natural disasters or other violent experiences can lead to trauma. That was not my intention. I suggest you read my book Rising from Existential Crisis, which makes my standpoint much more clear. This video is intended for the general public and is meant as a starting point for discussion and reflection. Thank you for your contribution.
I'm 42. I had a number of events in my early life that certainly qualified for traditional interpretations of 'traumatic'. I spent decades just sort of cruising along and feeling pretty lucky that that I didn't seem to be suffering anything too serious from these experiences. At 41, an incident on a packed train sparked off a series of overwhelming multi sensory flashbacks. At 42, I now have to go to therapy for things that happened literally decades ago. I feel as though I don't have the right to get therapy for these things as I was perfectly okay for so many years. Is it possible to have a kind of imposter syndrome for PTSD? 😅Or am I just not understanding my own resilience? It was always a point of pride for me before; my ability to just get up, start again, keep smiling. I have not lost that completely. I feel fairly strong and cheerful until something sparks a return to the past and then I must endure that for around three minutes or so and then I can get back to ordinary life. Unfortunately, those three minutes might cause obvious and attention drawing physical symptoms like sweating, looking panicked or even vomiting. I can't argue with those symptoms. Outside the house they happen more frequently than inside the house. It's very embarrassing for me. I feel ridiculous for not being able to shimmy out of it like before. Most people I listen to talk about trauma in a very 'immodest' or 'inclusive' way. I find myself not knowing how to frame my own experiences and reactions at all. Can I even say (to myself) that I have PTSD? Is it useful to do that and acknowledge it? Is it better to think of it as something else? Thank you for your video! Apologies for the long comment. :)
You have every right to get the support you need. You can't argue with your symptoms, as you say, and I hope you are also talking to your GP, to check on potential underlying physical causes. You are clearly a strong and courageous person, and you will learn to face your fears, as you speak about them to your therapist. This will make your pluck even more real than it was before you had the flashbacks.
I suggest you look at the ACES research. I feel you are focused incorrectly on the most harmful types of trauma in that the trauma you seem to feel is the most harmful is the trauma that has actually been shown to be the most easily over come, while the trauma you seem to disregard is actually the type of trauma that is the most harmful and difficult to overcome. Interpersonal trauma perpetrated against children has been shown in study after study to be the most difficult to overcome, causes the most long term consequences, and as a child's brain is still developing, the way their brain becomes wired is very specific to trauma. While natural disasters or one time violent occurancee, especially in adults, have been shown to cause the least long term consequences and the most amenable to treatment. It's disappointing that your message is that natural disasters or witnessing a murder are somehow legitimate traumas while childhood trauma which is actually the most legitimately harmful, is somehow not that big a deal. You are conflating the idea that people with childhoods trauma over identify with the trauma because you are comparing it to what it is not, which is trauma that does not cause structural changes into the brain, rather than what it is, trauma that literally causes changes to the brain and personality structure. This is such a disappointing interpretation and based on a very misaligned with science view of things.
Thanks for engaging in a rational and scientific way. I didn't explain myself well enough if this is the conclusion you drew. The situations I was referring in terms of natural disasters is that of people whose livelihood and safety has been removed from them in the long term, those who live in drought areas for instance. I also didn't refer to people witnessing a murder as a one off, but was thinking about the people I have worked with who have been exposed to killings for long periods of time. As you will see from other responses, other people have understood the essence of what I was getting at: that our current cultural focus on 'trauma' has created a huge rabbit hole that many people get stuck in. If you want to go down the brain structure path, things get a great deal more complicated and this narrative too is being highjacked unhelpfully by many people. Our brains are far more flexible than people realize and they are very good at making new synaptic connections and healing old wounds, unless they have been physically damaged, and even then, they can amaze us by their adaptation. All difficult and painful experiences affect our brains. And the evidence I gathered in my book Rising from Existential Crisis, is that certain types of painful experiences, that alter your entire sense of who you are are the most damaging. I also showed how people can overcome and go beyond such experiences. Fifty years of psychotherapy practice and research has shown me that those who linger with the idea of their victimhood and traumatisation, especially those people who relish being given the label of PTSD. Those who do well are inclined to people with a greater purpose and a new project. I hope this clarifies for you why I felt it was important to say these things to a wider audience. When you accuse people of being 'misaligned with science', perhaps it is a good idea to ask yourself whether there is new evidence, beyond your understanding of current 'science'. We can only move forward by continuing to observe the evidence. But focusing only on neurological evidence is not enough. Experiential and existential evidence are equally important.
By the way the ACES research shows the same thing: that not all children who experience severe childhood adversity will become traumatised. My experience of working with a wide range of children who were traumatised in events like the Holocaust, the Kinder transport or growing up in various wars, shows that certain ways of approaching that sensitivity and dread, or complete avoidance of it, can plunge a person into long term suffering whereas a more gradual emergence and continuous reflection can help people to find a new path. With that new way of life, will come brain changes, because the brain is a miracle of adaptation.
@@EmmyvanDeurzenI experienced many ACEs. I have neurodiverse brain, I dunno if I was autistic previously as I was so young or if it's what happened. Being how things are, for me at least, I'm triggered alot and it's internal retraumatising self speak that I try to curb. I think for me my brain does what it does straight into hypervigilence so it doesn't work so good😂. My brain on fight or flight, always flight really for me. But I try everyday , and it helped me to hear you say in a previous video: life is a game. In games you can keep trying and change will come and confidence will come. And that is enough. I've tried speaking and cognitive therapy but maybe immersive life therapy is okay for me too. But thank you for your videos.
@@Hammerbammers Glad it helps a bit. Rising above the pain you are trapped in, can be a very helpful metaphor. See my book Rising from Existential Crisis.
Respectfully, I think you may look at how studies and understanding of trauma have evolved since simply adequating it with certain settings (war, sexual abuse, extreme misery laced with experiences of physical violence). This video would benefit from stating what you personally mean by trauma and what experiences can defined as traumatic (frequency, how they present in terms of symptoms etc). My personal understanding of the current psychology of trauma is that it includes our recent understanding of how our brains and nervous system develop from birth to adulthood, how certain patterns of repeated violence whether it is physical or through other means (verbal, belittlement, abandonment / unreliable parents) can lead to developing complex trauma and comes with a variety of somatic symptoms. Adverse early life experiences have always and will always exist because the perfect parent and environment will never exist, however some situations actually put a strain so severe and often insidious in people (until it blows up in adulthood) that it is necessary to treat the root cause (eg the trauma). Every person is different. Just like some people will get lung cancer from smoking and not will get it and not have smoked a day of their lives, some people will develop trauma while their siblings or peers who have gone through the same experience will not. It is unfair and strange to objectively understand but that's how life and our biology works. Some people are more vulnerable and their brain and nervous system will just collapse or glitch one day. Doesn't matter that they were objectively not in a war or whatever. The wound is here, the suffering is here, the taboo memories are here, the stuckness and the symptoms are there too. Just telling people that life sucks, to suck it up, meditate and think of the dying children out there doesn't cut it. Sorry to be so blunt but as you said it, a lot of people who have or rather are traumatized are high functioning and spend a lot of energy hiding or rather resisting the trauma in silence, shame, denial and alone. Some times until it's too late because "they shouldn't feel that way, they haven't a good enough story to warrant the term of trauma" etc. They're not to be lauded. It is the ancient ideology of suffering in silence that most often than not leads to festering, exploding and some times even to death... Granted there may indeed be an inflation of psychological terms for this and that, but maybe one way of looking at it is not that people are making it up but that there is indeed a bigger awareness of the impact of some life altering wounds in a person's life and how we don't have to normalize and repeat unhealthy if not destructive behaviors. If people get better from it (and it actually does take a lot of courage and work to reshape oneself and accept that we all go through trauma), who are we to act as censors to say who is worthy of being traumatized or not? I feel your point of view is a little outdated. A little tough love is always welcome, however the whole "pull up your pants and get over yourself" may be counterproductive. After all, for a long time domestic violence was put under the rug as a normal part of life, and same for incest (in all shapes or forms), which we would all agree today is always destructive and has long lasting effects on the individual.
@@jumpingbee4717 Thanks. I replied to a similar response by explaining that my intention was to make people pause for thought and not jump on the bandwagon of the trauma trend. Of course you are right in the points you make and I have just written a foreword to a new book on the existential approach to trauma, based on the work of many of our doctoral students at the New School. This will provide you with an answer on how we work with the new information available.
@@ingaverteja511 Because the pop psychology interpretation of trauma is creating many problems for people. I am confronted with this in clients all the time. When you start using words like ‘triggering’ out of their original clinical context, you open yourself to a whole different level of confusion. Clinically speaking a trigger is something that causes a sudden increase in symptoms - like flashbacks in PTSD or compulsions in OCD. A trigger is not just a source of general discomfort. I am not ‘triggered’ by the trauma trend. I am deeply concerned about what it is doing to people and how it is pushing them into believing themselves to be victims who get triggered, rather than human beings who make sense of the world and act in it. Read my work Rising from Existential Crisis if you are actually interested in my views.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen but if somebody can be pushed into believing they have trauma, it means that they are struggling with something, maybe it's not trauma, but it is something unpleasant. I don't understand how this can hurt somebody. Nobody feels a victim just because they use incorrect words to name what they feel. They still feel something that is hard for them to process/cope with. And by dismissing their feelings therapists are not helping, in my opinion. Whatever they feel is valid and they have every right to feel that. And this trauma trend started for a reason, maybe it would be worth trying to find that reason, that underlying cause and not using some weird (offensive) labels like "trauma trend". And who gets to decide whether it's trauma? A therapist? Many people are not aware that they have cPTSD and cannot name any events that traumatized them, however, they still are traumatized (and often convinced by those who abused them that they hadn't been). Many abusers use gaslighting as did my family members. I witnessed severe physical abuse, experienced a lot of psychological and even sexual abuse and constant humiliation as a child, however, I didn't blame anybody but myself for everything that happened to me. It took me a few years to disclose this material to my therapist because I just never realized that I had been mistreated. I thought that I was a bad child and my family members, relatives and even teachers were right to blame me for being a "difficult child". I think that such messages, telling people that they shouldn't feel like victims and their trauma is not valid only because it's not a natural disaster, are very misleading and counterproductive for those, who have been gaslit into believing they hadn't been traumatized. Nobody told me I was for 30 years and I'm glad my therapist never tried to convince me I wasn't a victim (I did feel like one) because I was, I just didn't know it. And the term "trigger" has more than one meaning: "The slang term "triggered" is used to describe someone who is upset or offended, or who has had their feelings hurt. It can also be used to describe something that causes a negative or unpleasant emotion." And I used it consciously because you used the term "trauma trend".
@@EmmyvanDeurzen and why is it bad that people believe themselves to be victims? It's their choice and their way of being in the world. Why all of a sudden therapists feel they need to change that in people (save them?)? I always thought that therapists are supposed to meet the person where they are and help them find their answers, not teach them what the answers are. Why not just explore with them what "trauma" means to THEM and how they experience it in their every-day life. And it's interesting how you call them victims, I don't think that many people would use that word to call themselves, even in therapy. It must be a label that you put on them: "somebody who believes they are a victim". And I wouldn't like to get such label from my therapist. It sounds very judgemental. Maybe they just feel helpless or hopeless and it's not easy to sit with that (anxiety), accept their feelings and let them infect you with them a little bit. I know it happens a lot with traumatized people, where therapists feels they need to save their clients (because of their counter-transference)... I thought that existential therapy is about exploring what clients bring to therapy (from their perspective), meeting them where they are, not about some strict DSM labels (like trauma) or text books.
@@ingaverteja511 Yes, indeed. I will do another video about how people can sometimes keep re traumatising themselves, stopping themselves from resolving those problems.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen well in the video you describe anyone articulating themselves as traumatized from something other than war or a natural disaster as self-victimization so maybe some video editing/re-working is needed if that is your point.
Not a question that I wish to answer on a public forum. If you are genuinely interested in my work and background, there is plenty of information in my published work.
i don't understand what purpose this perspective serves. i don't know how a person in crisis, listening to this youtube video, could possibly use this information in a helpful way.
Sounds like a lot of jumping to conclusions and not much compassion Emmy. This is not a competition. Not your place to decide whose trauma is valid, and whose trauma is not. You should take your own advice, and should be more modest with your opinion on trauma. :) There is a process to healing. Bring it to light and talking about it, and not shaming the experience, or judge it, is one step of that. Not sure from where you get those percentages, would be nice to see those studies, could you share the resources? Your tree example is actually awesome, but misses some important elements. Trees, just like humans are generally not standing alone. Did you know, that the trees in the forests are interconnected through their roots, and they notice if any of them is damaged or even cut, and lack nutrients, and the surrounding trees nurture the damaged one, and don't start to question the need of the other trees. Whenever you see a dead tree trunk with young sprouts, remember that it1s because it's nurtured by its surroundings. Did you know, that there's another thing with trees, that sometimes the growth of young trees in the understory are limited by the lack of sunlight blocked by the older ones, however if they are lucky they can still get their nutrients through the roots, but won't grow as fast, as those trees, who are not blocked from the sunlight by others. But we are talking about trees, not humans. Older humans would never ever block the development of younger ones, would they....or wait. You are an old tree. Know your power: you can block, but you can nurture too.
You make some good points, but perhaps you are rather quick to dismiss mine. Read my book Rising from Existential Crisis for the resources I mentioned on Post Traumatic Growth. And yes, of course it is a great deal more complex than this and yes, trees are part of a much large biome, but this is just a little clip to help those who got themselves down a rabbit hole. If it doesn't apply to you: so the better.
Here is my problem with this: we are dealing with complex entities which compose a perceived "self." You're right that trauma should not just become us, it makes us repulsive. You're right that there's degrees to the severity of the trauma, and thus the becoming of the trauma for us, and thus an aversion to ourselves as we lose touch and become something unrecognizable. The problem with your dismissal of people's experiences is that you are merely treating a symptom and not the cause of a problem. Why not listen to people that say that something "traumatized" them and realize that they are not saying that they suffered a certain amount which you perceive as adequate for the defining of trauma, but to a certain other point, where something they didn't agree with "became" them. We experience this constantly. It has a name. It is epistemic violence, or knowledge violence, and the only thing we have to cling to is our knowledge of the world and the concepts, including any conceptions about ourselves, that it presents. What is trauma if it is just a degree to which suffer and not the type of suffering it causes? I will simply refer to as something that causes an overbearing and oppressive narrative to take hold of the complexity of our being. The essential property of an entity like trauma is not the suffering, it is the projected lack of self that results from it. This lack of self is a void with laws for self-governance on its fringes. Often times it is not divine in nature, at least not obviously. In other words, it is not simply destroying the laws of our being, of our conception of a self, of our ability to project something good for ourselves into the future, it is actively choosing what to replace it with. What does it replace it with? An entity that digs a deeper hole. You are dealing with people that know they have been parasitized by the changes people intended to invoke in them with a subtle trauma. They are dealing with an uprising in their own mind against an ontic fascism which, if they are dealing with family members or really any being which we socially derive "self" from, will seem impossible to get out of. That means losing their innocence again. It means realizing that they weren't necessarily doing the right thing by staying with an abuser. This is especially true if the abuse is subtle. This is especially true when society measures the degree to which one must suffer before they are right in turning towards their environment with violent intention. It was their environment that parasitized them, as it too was parasitized upon its own conception within the parasitized thing. By encouraging people to view themselves not as being parasitized by their environment (their free-will and comportation towards prioritized entities high-jacked) but as being in total control, you are ignoring the very physical nature of their "stuckness" and cause them to pick at themselves anxiously. Your words become an extension of the violent entity/context. We need to admit to ourselves that it is not our selves, but our environment that nourishes us, that becomes us, not some divine calm which might somehow manifest in us if we're lucky. This is playing the lottery with the soul, saying, "just think upon it," like it would be safe to send a long adopted dog out into a bustling city in search of its own mother. We must not search ourselves, but our environment, for a gracious god. The divinely good entity. We must avoid any entities that do not nourish it and our way of living in accordance with it well. This includes parents. This includes siblings. This includes spouses. This includes everyone!!
@@IsaacWstawac Thanks for your long and thoughtful response. If it sounds as if I am dismissing people’s experiences, then I have not expressed myself carefully enough. The experiences matter, but I am trying to alert people to the fact that they are often allowing these experiences to let themselves be drawn into that void, you speak of and thus becoming part of the problem. instead of building new strength and being agents for change towards the good you speak of. There is more good in the world than many fear but it only comes to us when we set out to find and strengthen it.
No. This is wrong and damaging. Trauma can come from insidious events over a long period of time. Narcissist abuse for example, is a good example of a traumatic impact on a person. Its actually right to tell trusted friends youre traumatised by what you experienced, it takes a load off, and that validation you get back is valuable, when part of the traumatising cycle is so much invalidation. Dont be part of that invalidation, please. And that doesnt mean youre not resilient, or wont work to heal yourself as much as possible.
Sorry but i don't agree with you , if you didn't live something please do not talk about it i lived my whole life scared, feeling not worthy, and feeling a deep feeling of shame, my experience with school was traumatized my mom insulting me because i wasn't as good as she want and also if i get bad marks she is beating me and compare me to others and That's why now i have a low self esteem i use to hate study a lot and i became more anxious and angry i feel like I'm in danger if i would study or pass an exam and to avoid all this feeling i start daydreaming and i waste all my life i didn't learn any skill because i have a low self esteem and the fear stops me to do anything, first i didn't know about this but now i feel like I'm more free in life and that makes me discover my real self
@@jihanblm Very glad to hear that you have figured things out for yourself and that you are beginning to find more freedom in your life and are getting to know yourself. Stay strong and find good people to be with. Remember that the biggest factor of change and improvement of confidence is education. The more you learn and the more you are able to think critically and clearly the easier life becomes. Take good care, my friend.
Funny how these messages from those who got offended just 'screams' victim mentality :') how is that helpful to argue: "you can't say me calling my self a victim is bad for me!! Look how sad and poor I am!!!" ?
I disagree. I think coming from a place of absolute stigma I think we need to allow people to look at themselves deeply and visualize their trauma and understand it. Otherwise people will keep on suppressing their emotions and they will not be able to get the help they need. I come from a society where mental health is deeply stigmatized. When I was struggling I did not get help and that led to several health issues. If we keep our traumas modest we will never get to understand their impact on our health and wellbeing and its impact on the health of our families and societies.
@@sunriselotus I am in complete agreement with you. We need to feel the pain deeply in order to heal. My words were meant as a warning against getting trapped in the rabbit hole of the trauma industry. They are not meant to deny pain and injury.
The thing is once you understand what led to your trauma you're supposed to drop it. Not share it with a lot of peope, not keep looking for people to relate to, not consume trauma related content. Understand, acknowledge and move past it. Nowadays trauma is a trendy topic and people know they can make a lot of money being "relatable" for traumatised people. This is the road to nowhere. They make money, you stay stuck. As someone wrote in a comment I read some time ago "Straingers mining for your trauma is never a good thing. Ultimately you have to get up and move on.
Deflecting, that doesn’t make you an expert either. The point remains that you felt compelled to spread disinformation on what constitutes trauma or not, disregarding all knowledge acquired in this field the last 40 years. I may not be doing myself any favours in spending my time talking to you, but you certainly have proven yourself ignorant.
on the spot! And i think this is connected to capitalization of mental health and a culture of over valorization of the individual!
It could also be a way to dismiss people in need of care, over-blowing what is just a bad day while minimizing actual trauma. Now that everyone is traumatized (they’re not), no one is actually harmed (they are).
th-cam.com/video/eJ3RzGoQC4s/w-d-xo.html
I have never been in a war or seeing a murder, or affected for a natural disaster. I have lived with very violent and aggressive parents, I had bullying for teachers, and my grandmother. I have supposedly being affected for another forgotten event with a childminder when I was about four years. I am 55 and can't stand in darkness, I can't sleep properly by myself in a room. Having often my hold body triggered like some violent or dangerous event will certainly pass during nights. My siblings lived similar circumstances, but they aren't experiencing same difficulties. Are considered myself damaged? Yes, for sure I am. Does it affect the severe way my live, totally. I do believe some people get "broke", specially in very early stages in their lives, and some of us, maybe due another factor as genetic stuffs, we have not the same strength nor way to affront our traumatic experiences. My opinion of course.
Your life has been significantly different to that of your siblings and the layers of trauma that you suffered have defined your life from your teenage years onwards. There is no doubt in my mind that a person can be deeply harmed when a psychiatric journey is imposed on them and doesn't solve anything, but adds layers of further harm and pain on top of the original hurt. You have however worked incredibly hard all your life to amend your situation, which could easily have been catastrophic. This is why you can articulate your situation so well.
I'm not an expert except for working through my own past and dealing with healing my body and spirit as well but I want to offer an hypothesis : maybe your body and mind are still stuck in the experience of those horrible moments and need to be "evacuated" through different therapeutic modalities. There has been a tremendous amount of progress in understand and treating such "wounds" (and maybe instead of seeing yourself as broken you could see yourself as wounded). If I may, a licensed psychologist well versed in Complex PTSD, EMDR to reprocess and "purge" your traumatic memory overload as well as self hypnosis practices (EFT comes to mind to practice in these delicate moments at night) and somatic experiencing are worth a shot to work with your body. That same body has carried you so far and sometimes it needs a little help, even if it lasts a while before the wound is closed and you learn another way to "walk" out there. Best of luck.
You are not broken. You are experiencing the effects of Complex PTSD, which is any experience that felt like "too much, too fast, too soon" at the time... Or on the flip side, "not enough for too long". It's a real thing and it's possible to heal those wounds and move on with your life from a place of true inner peace. Not just burying it, ignoring it, or downplaying it. Your experience is real, your symptoms are valid and I hope you or anyone reading this will receive the competent and compassionate support you deserve.
@@CarlaSantorini A very sane and respectful response--thank you.
@@CarlaSantorini I support your statements
I think it's interesting how many people in the comments are triggered by your wise words. It seems people focus more on the exact words said and not the message behind the words. As a survivor of traumatic events myself, I know exactly what you're talking about, not identifying yourself with the brokenness and the ashes is what gets you through and beyond the wounds. To make trauma your identity keeps you stuck in victimhood, like its all there'll ever be for you, it swallows you whole if you don't somehow detach yourself from it, it eats away at your whole life if you don’t find a way to zoom out & realise your whole life doesn't have to be traumatic just because you experienced trauma.
@@BickylaBiscuit Absolutely right.
@BickylaBiscuit Victimhood? Trauma identify, gosh! You maybe passed for traumatic events, but please stop making assumptions and judgements. Some people perhaps had not the same "intelligence," clarity, support, or whatever you had to overcome that situations. I am a fighter and am still struggling in my life. Every single day I am getting up to going to work and facing this live, but also every single day would like death. No victimism at all. Maybe some people are simply not that strong like you. Congrats, though, to be like ypu.
@yod63 @yod63 Hey I'm sorry to hear I somehow hurt you with what I said. I don't think I'm better than you, I got triggered by this video too, I was talking about myself here as much as anyone, I'm just speaking my own truth. I don't know what you've gone through, but I'm not the enemy here and I do salute you for showing up here & continuing to be a fighter, working through the struggle everyday. I'm right there with you on that.
"Triggered" has become similar to using the word "Hater" to shut down or dismiss criticism. Also, "focusing on the words instead of the message behind them" doesn't make much sense - that's exactly what words are for, to convey a message. It's not everyone else's fault that they didn't use their words more effectively.
you raise good points, I just wrote triggered cos I actually felt triggered by some of what was said, but overall was moved, so I wrote what I wrote, I do agree with triggered being a weaponised word, it wasn't my intention to use it that way, but I can see how it comes across. Pobodys Nerfect!
You say Emmy : "Don't darken your days with things that are not part of your experience and learn to heal and grow after your difficulties instead of continuing to open your wounds."
This sentence is essential for me.
This is a very sensitive but necessary conversation. I was happy to receive this notification from TH-cam today. Thank you, Emmy! ❤
Thanks, I have long hesitated to post about this, not wanting to make things worse for people but also feeling I had to bring some realism back to the way this topic is currently being handled.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen Social networks have often brought very superficial information about various mental health topics. I feel safe hearing about this topic from you.
I base my words on a good knowledge of the research and fifty years clinical experience. @@andrevieirapsi
Wonderful tree metaphor. Useful. Relevant
her metaphors are really well considered.
I’m going to watch this video multiple times as a manifestation. Thankyouu!
Exactly what a lot of us need to hear more. We survived and came home but I’m not living my life. I might as well been KIA because if I don’t leave my house and live my life what’s the difference? Thank you. I truly believe the algorithm worked today. I needed to hear this
My colleague Susan Iacovou did some amazing research with soldiers who had seen combat and she realized that what made them so cut off was not that they were traumatised, but that their experiences were so enormous that they had destroyed their previous framework of meaning and needed to find a new framework. While they were withdrawn from society and from family in the aftermath, they were avoiding coming to terms with that. Yes, you are right. If you stay in that place, you may as well have been killed in action. You, potentially, have an enormous amount to teach people and you, for sure, have also got courage and stamina and determination. Make the most of it. You can read about this in my book Rising from Existential Crisis: life beyond calamity.
This is a complex and nuanced topic. I see the value in the perspective that Emmy is offering, many of us live in a culture which conditions us to diagnose ourselves and limit our full potential. And any thought pattern or narrative we play over and over in our mind can become a vortex we get trapped in. However, trauma survivors already often struggle to validate their own experiences and believe in the pain of what they have been through. The prevalence of trauma was outright denied in a very harmful way until a fairly recent cultural shift. Yes people are amazingly creative and adaptive, but many of the ways people adapt to difficult circumstances can be harmful, and eventually need help in unwinding; rumination about their suffering being one of them. Glad to see all the nuanced responses in the comments, and I understand the reaction of those who felt offended by this video. As a mental health professional, I would recommend Emmy think carefully about the vast variety of contexts in which her words will be received.
Well said. I agree with every word.
I didn't know I had CPTSD. I wasn't afford the safety, space or room to grow that awarness until I was told and given the opportunity to see my wounding. However, I do agree it's not okay to make someone a victim either. I know survivors who have no idea what they faced was "debilitating traumatic" but have found a way to move throughout life in a fulfilling well.
Overall, I hear some golden nuggets in your messaging but also caution as well. We all have our own journies with what has happened to us. We are the experts of our own story and should demand space for how we choose to express it.
Thanks for sharing that experience.
Your last sentence is so beautiful.
Thank you for Sharing that. ❤
An extremely important message to all people, especially young people who are being exposed to the trauma marketing that has been happening for some time now. You are an honest and authentic psychologist that is much needed now ❤🙏 YOU ARE MUCH STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE 👏👏👏👏
Exactly. Trauma marketing. So many people making money off people's trauma.
There is a difference between becoming aware of trauma to understand why one always repeats the same mistakes, and wallowing in to, using it as a shield or an identity. When you have worked hard your entire life, but every time you come to a point where you have reached some success, you sabotage your success because you find yourself unworthy, you can’t just grow a thicker skin. It doesn’t work. The tree analogy fails because it is simplistic. Human minds are complex.
Exactly, but because human minds are complex people sometimes get lost and a simple metaphor, simplistic as it may be can help them unlock new resources.
This actually healed me a lot. One thing I’ve realized throughout my healing journey is that is that it doesn’t help to go through life feeling like a victim. If anything I was retraumatizing myself by defining my every thought and reaction and my belief system based on my traumas.
It’s hard though because sometimes in letting go of your trauma you can feel that you are neglecting the hurt part of yourself or ignoring your wounds.
The trick is to find the balance between acknowledging your hurt and allowing yourself to feel the sadness and also recognizing your strength and allowing yourself to move on and grow new branches
@@Anonymous21r95 Exactly that. The trick is to be tender and attentive to your wound and astute in understanding the situation that caused it. When that work is done, you need to be tough in overcoming it and build the scar tissue and reeducating yourself, training yourself to be more than that victim. Rehabilitation first, but mastery after that, as you are rising above your victim hood and even above your sense of being a survivor. You now have become a hero or heroine in your own life and you have strength beyond what others think possible. Hopefully you also have developed visions, understanding and compassion and can see how such injuries occur and can be resolved. I wrote about all this in my book Rising from Existential Crisis.
Thank you for starting this important conversation about trauma. I am someone who has invested a fair amount of time and energy into the idea of trauma. This is because 'trauma' is a way of removing blame from the person who has been hurt, and showing compassion to them for their behaviour. However, the term and concept itself it kind of disempowering. I think this is a regular pattern for how humans tend to learn to understand one another. Firstly we blame, and ostracise what we do not understand. Then, we classify that experience as an 'illness' or 'affliction' that is beyond the moral responsibility of the victim. Then often things become an identity label, something for people to own and cling onto. And finally, when we are ready, we return back to seeing that person's situation and experience as just that, an experience, a feeling, a situation, a thought... And we realise that we *can* have compassion for people without always labelling or pathologising their experience (although ofc some instances are so severe that pathology can be a justified concept), we can just return to seeing them as a person with power and uniqueness, character and their own ways of being, and we can accept that sometimes situations makes their choices harder, or that they have painful memories, or that some of us need time, but we have immense resources inside ourselves to grow and overcome difficulties, and we are not always sentenced to a 'life with trauma' .
Fabulous response and good thinking about the societal process of blaming, followed by diagnosing. I agree with everything you said. The challenge is to find better ways of helping people to overcome adversity, conflict, drama and pain, without adding a further layer of trouble.
I come from a toxic and psychologically abusive relationship with my father who was a covert narcissist, I was homeless with him for a very long time during my upbringing, I escaped that and went to go be with extended family that found me on the internet, I genuinely felt that I would belong with them and I thought they felt same way, but unfortunately what seemed like a gift from god just turned into something that completely hurt me, I was only with them for 3 months because of how difficult they were to live with, and how conditional their love and regard was towards me, it’s just bloody unfair to me how my fully related brother got to have what they called a ‘privileged life’ while my upbringing pretty much got robbed by my narcissist father and that it’s something no kid should ever have to have gone through. Yet, people on the internet tell me “who are you and why should you be loved and cared for” and even an ex friend tells me “well they raised your brother and not you why do you think you deserve everything your brother always gotten.” …but to me it’s just really unfair, and it has put me in a constant endless loop of rumination.
That does sound like a very difficult situation to grow up in. I hope you have some professional help to sort this out in your mind and to find the dignity that should come with the knowledge that you have had such a hard early start but will still make something amazing out of your life.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen Exactly, and that sad thing is, is that I remember I stayed with a friend of mine and his family for a little while because his mom couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I was homeless sleeping in a car in a parking lot somewhere. They treated me as equally as their 2 boys… I wanted that with my brother.
@@blankearth5840 I am glad you met good people and did not end up hating the world and mistrusting everyone. You have seen a lot of life and I trust you will put your knowledge and understanding to good use.
While my past is colored by a pathologically narcissistic mother, not my father, my current life is all about getting over my entire childhood and ALL of my romantic relationships (with narcissists of course.) Trauma trauma trauma. And yessss I am FIGHTING very hard by reparenting and learning everything I didn’t.
Next I will be rehusbanding since men are too childish to respect women as humans, and therefore I have to do that for myself too.
Trauma does need to addressed actually. My trauma is intense. However it’s healable. I call
it “Spiritual Kintsugi” in which I get to go back into the past and
pick up all the pieces my mother rejected and later I myself.
Trauma has to be addressed. Not indulged in. It has to be acknowledged. Not given a place at the table. To become whole means claiming the beauty of your being and realizing your parents were very selfish. It means realizing chosen partners were just abusers. It means being alone alone alone, with friends, knowing most
men are toooo traumatized to be oak trees.
I went through a horrible trauma (it made front page news in my city for a week, and then again several months later with court proceedings).... People I hadn't spoken to in 15+ years in other countries were messaging me because they saw the news online. I remember the first thing I told my therapist was "I don't want to be defined by my trauma." Five years later and I can safely say I was never defined by it, it's not what people ask me about anymore, and I work hard not to be a victim. It feels good to come out the other side stronger!
@@highpriestess7520 That was a wise thing to say in the midst of horror. You were so right, too many people are prepared to let their traumatic experiences define their identity, so they become frozen and unfree to be everything else they are capable of being.
Dear Emmy, thank you once again for this wonderful teaching this evening! I have, in fact, experienced more than my share of trauma, but people close to me often comment on my resilience! And yes, I have grown exponentially by working out the knots! I have also, through support gr, seen people who have been sucked into the ? well of despair by taking on other’s perceptions of their experiences. This does damage in an$ of itself, because I have seen these same people going round in circles within themselves trying to find clarity, but seem to lean toward holding onto the perceived trauma as a crutch of some sort. It’s a very sad thing to see indeed! I’m new to your channel, but I’m loving your talks/ discussions. Thank you 🌹🙏
@@brigidoconnor7001 Welcome here.
The stages of trauma are various and different from each other. At first we need to recognize that we are victims and we are traumatized, in order to break the "curse" and begin to heal, but years later we can get stuck in victimhood and the repetition and recreation of traumatic events. That is where we need to take action and set internal limits so as not to continue self-harming.
Thank you for talking about this.
Just came across your channel. Really am enjoying it. You have deep wisdom which very few at least on the surface seem to have. It is wonderful to "meet" someone of like thinking. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. New friend here.
@@UltimateGoldenGirl Welcome friend.
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Nietzsche
For years I tried to give practical meaning to this sentence.
Emmy is the first one who made me understand.
If we believe that we are victims of trauma, we cannot be what we are capable to be.
We are more !
We are not a diagnosis, we are people with the ability to overcome life's hardships !
I wish to all resilience and perseverance.
We can change our life in every moment.
Thank you for your encouraging words ♥️
Thank you! I’m an existential consultant and coach too. I had 3 your books in Russian translation and the first of them with your signature and wishes for success to me (I received it in Kyiv many years ago). Unfortunately, all the books remained in Odessa. I had to run away with a tiny suitcase. But I will find them in English. These’re really useful books. I recommend them to my students, friends, and colleagues.
th-cam.com/video/PtIfxSabg0E/w-d-xo.htmlsi=BYie05-gkO2HSCmh
Thank you Emmy....so much distress in people's lives and so much anxiety....the word trauma is used freely nowadays. It doesn't have to define anyone xx
Very "down to earth" approach. I very much like your approach and good ideas on these topics. It is only now, as a senior, that I am starting to understand the past differently. Most likely ( almost always ), the people that inflict "injury" on you have been injured themselves. And we have to learn to see our "Parents" as "just people" --- even though we have no choice but to see them as "gods" when we are LITTLE. I have also listened to some "talks" by Michael Singer recently and one thing he constantly mentions is that we have to learn to have "preferences" rather than insist that things be a certain way - and our insistence is basically the core of all or our troubles. Insisting the past be "different" or that someone change it, or make it understandable is probably not a option - even though I have spent decades doing just that.
@@charliemurphy3529 good 👍 for you
I love the tree analogy, I liken myself to a tree a lot, it is very useful.
And overall I agree.
I do however find 2 problems with what you have said, and I am sharing them for anyone else in a similar boat as myself in the past.
1) That a severely damaged person is "obvious". This is not true, even to professionals. To the most experienced, perhaps. But only because they are aware of the very SUBTLE ways in which someone severely traumatized presents. The most truly traumatized people tend to be highly dissociative. Which means they act "normal" "happy" "outgoing" "positive" etc, even MORE so than your average person. (I don't think it fair to claim that these people will "never claim they have been traumatized" though.) A skilled practitioner knows what to look for, but to the uninitiated they look "fine". Even to themselves. It can take many many years of uncovering what really happened, and a very gentle and supportive touch for these people, including myself, to come to terms with what really happened - and to stop blaming ourselves.
2) That trauma doesn't include relational trauma.
The reason that only a small percentage of people who experience traumatic events come away with PTSD seems to have a lot to do with the relationships in our lives. See ACE scores and the associated resilience score. In my experience, relational trauma, and the lack of relational/social SUPPORT, is highly traumatic in and of itself. Bullying can be some of the absolute worst things to happen to a person. Are there people online whining about things that aren't really traumatic just to get attention? Probably. I personally haven't seen it, but I stay in pretty healthy spaces online, so I imagine it is out there, just like in the real world. But that doesn't mean that bullying is not ever actually traumatic. Same with parents and spouses abusing their children and spouses. These can be MAJOR traumatic events in people's lives. Ones that are often dismissed by others.
To use the tree analogy, this is like the tree being uprooted, and then continually moved about and not allowed to root down. Being told it's not ok to take nutrients from the soil. That it should just do without and carry on. Of course it's going to wither and eventually die - which people who experience this kind of ongoing relational abuse do through nervous system dysregulation which causes a host of physical symptoms including eventual heart attack and death. We are fighters, for sure, but please don't make it harder on us than it already is.
@@gracebelonging2633 A very good elaboration on the theme. You are correct on everything you say and you show the care and cautiousness that I was hoping to achieve. My post was meant to pause people’s bandwagon responses to the trauma fashion. Your response is a measured and informed professional one, which I entirely agree with.
Well said Grace. I find myself in the strange place of situations that previously dysregulated me no longer do. So new healthy patterns of response have had to emerge. It's really lovely but takes some getting used too. I wish you well 🙏🔥
Wasn't with you in the beginning and can see why you hesitated before posting, however personally found this very empowering to hear by the end and definitely food for thought as a clinician. Thank you.
Ahhh at about 6.50 I understood where you were coming from. Working hard and well with help to heal the wounds and experience a fulfilling life. I'm not quite understanding the advice to withhold expressing one's historical cptsd. It's taken the ownership and expression of my journey to begin the healing and get out of victim metality, in the privacy of family and therapy. Anyway, the way you've communicated is gentle and encouraging. I have a feeling whom your speaking too may not be mature or developed enough to hear your message (younger generations)or even care (industry) but of course I'm generalising. Food for thought. This will be a video to watch again as I process. Thankyou
Yes, indeed, with maturity comes the capacity to hold all your memories and learnings from life, traumatic or joyful and to draw on all of these in your everyday life. But I don't really feel that people who are capable of doing that will be that interested in me telling them about it!
Well it's 6 months later. And yes I have been making acorns 😊
I'm reconciled with my past trauma at last. A difficult and painful experience. Sobriety a while ago was key to opening the path through. Now the past is a gift of knowledge. But it's so strange to have the ghosts of my old survival patterns jump up and down when a difficult situation arises but they have no impact, because they are ghosts. Finding new gentle, humorous, loving patterns of behaviour is so so rewarding. I understand your message here now. It has a fierce love about it. A lioness love. A powerful message. 🤍🙏🔥
Crystal clear speech.
I believe the universe places people, experiences and messages in my life at exactly the right times. I needed to hear this today. I have been living in victim hood for quite a while; it’s something I’m trying to overcome but has become such a part of my psyche that I get pulled into it before I realize it has. You hit the nail on the head. I’ve been making myself to feel like nothing but a traumatized, broken person who needs a shit load of therapy before I can be who I’m truly meant to be. I’m whole just the way I am. Because although my traumas exist, they do not make up my spirit. They are obstacles that I face and must CHOOSE to overcome. To let all of my bad experiences rule my life is to let the devil himself win. My higher self is fighting every single day to be set free. We’re already in hell. We just need to view it from a different angle.
Absolutely. You are so much more than that and with additional strength and understanding from having lived through difficult times.
I think I only had one event that might have been traumatic. It was during a period of drug use, where I had an anxiety attack because I couldn't control my breathing, and I fear the entire night that some malevolent people who could hear me breathing and shifting would come and stab me for disturbing them. It was the worst experience of my life, both terrifying and humiliating. And then since then I had this symptom of breathing anxiety, whenever I could hear my own breath, and it would become very tense, like shivering. And so that made every night a kind of painful hellish experience where it would take me hours of being in a state of anxiety to finally be exhausted enough to get a few hours of sleep. Along with a sort of recurrence of the trauma when I had a full on panic attack during the night and heard someone in the other room remark about my breathing. Which was extremely humiliating for me because of what it might have implied to them.
But, the silver lining is, because of it I eventually sort of stumbled upon how to breath, and the power of the role that breathing plays in pretty much everything, including mental health. Which is a whole long story too. But now, breathing is like my number one tool in life. Which mostly involves feeling the breath, and finding the natural breath which is deep and slow and from the belly, and feels like a relieving sigh. I still have some of the anxiety but it's now much more manageable if it comes.
So when I think about trauma, and the stuff other people have experienced including PTSD, I don't think of myself as traumatized just because I feel I got a small little taste of it, like a preview or something.
And all the other stuff I sort of refer to as emotional wounds, because to my understanding or introspection it just sort of looks like layers of emotionally powered patterns that are designed to protect the identity and it's associated beliefs. I think of it as psychological scar tissue that is kind of a problem but also kind of functional, or adaptive. It becomes relevant to me when I want to trade coping for healing, which to me involves unpacking burried feelings and their associated beliefs, and letting go of some aspect of my self-image and world-view.
Just now I was caught up in a kind of emotional storm, and spent a while unpacking it in my own way internally, going through all kinds of emotions and thoughts and feelings eventually in the end leading to this realization that what was underneath it was something I had been overlooking, whilst being fixated on these big words and fancy emotions all along. And I realized I was burrying a lot of what I had disregarded as a simple and trivial emotion. And so I basically realized, almost laughing, and with a great feeling of relief, that I was embarrassed about a lot of things in front of a lot of people. It was even being concealed by feelings such as heartbreak and despair, and even guilt. I was just embarrassed. Now I feel completely clear and empty, almost bored without my complex ball of yarn of what seemed like emotional wounds.
So this seems to be leading me to understand that pretty much any emotion/feeling can conceal any other feelings, and it's just a matter of how willing we are to let go of our attachment to constantly feeling a certain way, in order to see how it could just be a feeling about a belief that might not necessarily be true. But a belief that conveniently distracts from something a little more simpler and uncomfortable to feel. And then being open to feel that also, and let it go also as just another feeling-belief knot, to find that background of empty, silent, boring, peace. And the willingness to laugh at yourself in the process
Thank you so so much, dear Emmy 🌻this is exaclty what i needed to hear today 💚'Let yourself heal and let yourself feel. And like and old oaktree to make a stronger stem and trunk and roots.' Love this so much 🙏
I stopped whining about perceived lack of the *right* emotional support when I was a child and teenager, when I read that whatever it was that we felt was lacking in our lives was never supposed to be given to us. It was OUR job to provide that for ourselves. That was a whole new way of seeing things, and gave me a fresh purpose. Thanks for this talk, Emmy. It was great. ❤❤
@@elizabethwinters5361 I would be curious to know where you read that very important information. It is remarkable that you were able to take it on board at such an early age. It is so essential to understand this but it is not what our culture teaches.
It's supposed to be your parents' job to provide emotional support. Ending up being able to provide it for yourself anyway is still important, but we shouldn't pretend that parents have no responsibility in protecting and caring for us.
I write this with tears in my eyes, you don't know how much this has helped me. Thank you. Thank you so much ❤
@@jennioma Something shifted as you watched. Fabulous.
I love the way of describing the will to “ command” extra for yourself.
You speak very clearly and slowly. Although this is British English (it’s not easy for me to understand American either, although I ended up in the USA during the war in Ukraine). Your simple and wise thoughts, clear speech with good articulation really help me calm down, look at life philosophically and believe that I will speak English well. I read your page on Facebook too. Thank you for these short, but very useful lectures.
So pleased that you found my channel Olena. We have quite a few Ukrainian friends in our village in Sussex, several of them are therapists.
Love this idea, and sometimes it takes maturity of spirit to come to this.
I have the impression we are just starting to explore what trauma can be - or what in life can result in trauma. Yes, if I’m offended by a blunt question it might not be trauma. But I’m also sure that especially the older generation - and not to minimize us, essentially because they want to help us - might say: “This is not a trauma!” because they experienced things that traumatized them but they never got to acknowledge it. They were told to deal with it and that’s become their way of thinking
@@simonanardi4312 Some very good points there. We need more understanding of what hurts people and what makes them retreat into themselves or give up on life. But perhaps we also need to hold on to the wisdom of the older generation that difficulties should be overcome rather than given into with the mentality of victimhood.
I totally agree with everything you say. I suffered a breakdown in 2017. It took some time to get back but when I did I became stronger and less stressed and less affected by others. I stopped being offended by others. 😊
@@HelenBrennan-u9i good work!
Thank you so much for this!
I agree with what she's saying for my life experiences.
You have typified trauma as single event driven rather than the impact of contunuous emotional and psychological neglect and trauma (cptsd).
The tree metaphor is very strong and useful.
Thank you for this perspective. 🌲
Trauma is trauma. You cannot say this trauma is worse than that trauma. Of course on a human level that is the case. But it’s also a form of blaming the victim, for the fact that they (still) feel like a victim. I have trauma from my childhood, but no I have never been to a war, or being brutally assaulted. But I heal on a deeper level, that is how it feels for me. And it’s healing for the collective. In order to be able to do this, I have lived very isolated for a couple of years. No conscious choice, but I just couldn’t handle the world anymore. And at some point I understood it, I have to heal and find myself, and then I will be ready for the outside world again. Some people can do these two things at the same time, but for a period I couldn’t.
And at first I was the victim. I identified myself with the victim. Later on, I could detach more and more from the victim. Could see in how much pain she was. And now I can see how strong she is, I am so proud of her, and I can see how much strength and light there is underneath all this pain and trauma. And I’m not there yet, but every day I move forward towards to this strength and light. It’s a rocky road, but also a beautiful one.
And every day I enjoy life, more and more. I can appreciate it more and more. But
it’s not a battle, it’s not a fight, it’s a process.
Fighting is still a duality that costs a lot of energy. You have to take steps again yes - in your own time. It’s not a fight, it is a process. This is my experience.
A beautifully modest and accurate description of the process of your overcoming. Thanks so much for sharing. Many will find new courage in reading this.
Thankyou for your wise words 💜
Great argument for mental and emotional health. Bless you for telling the truth. Iam so sick of the victim mentality. Very weak and disappointing. I have been through the loss of three children to this mentality. That pain could have paralized me. But I chose to keep going and live the best I could. I cried every day for years. I still cry some days but I do what I can to work, and live, and enjoy my life. Thank you❤
This is something I think about. Thank you for putting in to words. I'm a parent and I feel that there is a lot of talk about trauma relative to parenting. And parents walking on egg shells when dealing with kids. You can't say this, you can't do that, you can't use this word....Afraid to traumatize them. And I'm not willing to play that game. I try to treat my children with respect, not abuse in any way, care and love as I can. But I will say what I must say, get upset when I must, not allow them to disrespect each other, make my needs and my boundaries clear to them. It's hard, very hard. Sometimes they are very upset, they are angry at me, they feel I did them wrong. Is that real trauma?? I'm hoping they will turn out fine. Thanks for your video.
@@socksandsandalsASMR As long as you are open with each other and there is mutual respect and care and you seek to understand and resolve problems together, you cannot go far wrong.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen Thank you. That is reassuring.
Very relevant advice!!
I think being truthful about your trauma is better use of it.
That's definitely part of it, but that leads to a complex process of understanding the past, the present, the future, yourself and your human relationships.
I struggle with really bad with childhood Trauma, dew to my Autism
My mother always said that we weren't promised a rose garden. Everyone experiences trauma and unless it's something like what the Titanic survivors experienced it's not worth dwelling on.
I need to build more roots, thank you ☺️
Thank you so much!
My foundling Matilda.
Found in the backyard running around like long leg ratty .
She was starving full of lice ,ringworm, ear mites and mange .
We cared for her and she thrives
I believe because of her starving she eats as a security to always have food.
Some of us like Matilda may be unconsciously eating what wasn't available.......
Its part of surviving. 😊🎉❤
Sister and I witnessed a murder attempt. Can’t imagine wanting to tell others about it
@@artsie8282 We often keep such things to ourselves for years until we are ready to share and start working it all out.
Disagree with the notion that only events can traumatize people. Long abusive relationships can also traumatize people. The results are basically the same.
How intelligent…… beautiful…… thank u so much….. what does not kill us makes us stronger
It would have been really nice to have had you as my grandmother instead of the one who told me what happens in the family stays in the family when it was sexual abuse. I have grown past my traumas but some things still sting when it comes to the people that i looked up to and remembering how wrong they really were on guiding me.
Where do you post a question?
thank you
It's both. A person needs to have the time and space for both feeling the grief and then rising out of it. Mindfulness helps us remember to keep our eyes on the prize, which is release from the trauma brought by grief. Mindfulness of the need for return to health and vitality we were born with, our birthright-- not get blindsided and trapped in the quicksand misery of permanent grief. Grief is one of those things that cannot be avoided, we need to teach young people the skills for how to work through it so they don't get stuck and then recruited by dark forces.
@@basilrose exactly.
Tx you❤
If trees could talk they would tell you! 😂
Indeed.
It's the reality of universal human suffering, which we don't know how to make sense of.
Remember when “labels” were avoided at all costs? Today “labels” are used to describe character flaws with an excuse and worn like badges of honour. It is quite pathetic overall to live your life as a victim.
I will keep a look out for your new book "The Art of Freedom: Guide to a Wiser Life,” hope i can get it sent here to Melbourne. I'm going to look up the Copernican Revolution never heard of this before. maybe my answers are in here.
It's the revolution that brought us the heliocentric universe.
What if the acorn doesn't quite germinate the right way, from the very beginning? Continuous toxic stress in the first years of life can cause very concrete epigenetic changes in relation to stress response pathways. This can contribute to having abnormally heightened stress responses for the rest of your life. Culturally we might think children should be able to persevere through having neglectful or abusive parents more readily than witnessing abhorrent violence or natural disasters but on the physical level it doesn't have a bearing what the incessant release of cortisol is caused by in those formative stages of brain development. Is it always self-victimization to admit to having "bugs in your software" or can it sometimes be self-acceptance? Some people have to build their life around not being able to do all the things that most others can.
don't deprive yourself.
So, if your trauma isn't the result of combat/natural disaster/being mugged, you just need to get over it? I've watched this video many times, and that's the main message I get from this. Maybe it's overly simplistic, but so is reducing the complexity of human consciousness to a tree. Metaphors only get you so far, and in this case I think it failed. Sometimes those "tree gnarls" on the mind you speak of don't make it stronger, just more callous and withdrawn. I don't really want to broach the ignorant and dismissive comparison you make between childhood trauma and "real" trauma like combat PTSD, because others have already commented on it, but I will say that the few people I've spoken to who have experienced combat PTSD are the ones who have been the most open-minded and non-dismissive toward any and all kinds of other trauma.
I completely understand your take on this and don't disagree with any of what you say. I have worked with many people who were traumatised by a wide range of different experiences and have written about an experience in my own life of a serious traffic accident as a ten year old. This reverberated through many years of my life. Notwithstanding this, there is a pernicious trend towards clients coming to therapy having made up their minds that they are traumatised and they have also decided that this is going to be a life long conditions. My title is 'be modest about it' and that is my message. I may add some words to the explanation of the video to deal with your reasonable request for not coming across as if I am denying trauma, or as if i believe that only war and natural disasters or other violent experiences can lead to trauma. That was not my intention. I suggest you read my book Rising from Existential Crisis, which makes my standpoint much more clear. This video is intended for the general public and is meant as a starting point for discussion and reflection. Thank you for your contribution.
I'm 42. I had a number of events in my early life that certainly qualified for traditional interpretations of 'traumatic'. I spent decades just sort of cruising along and feeling pretty lucky that that I didn't seem to be suffering anything too serious from these experiences. At 41, an incident on a packed train sparked off a series of overwhelming multi sensory flashbacks. At 42, I now have to go to therapy for things that happened literally decades ago. I feel as though I don't have the right to get therapy for these things as I was perfectly okay for so many years. Is it possible to have a kind of imposter syndrome for PTSD? 😅Or am I just not understanding my own resilience? It was always a point of pride for me before; my ability to just get up, start again, keep smiling. I have not lost that completely. I feel fairly strong and cheerful until something sparks a return to the past and then I must endure that for around three minutes or so and then I can get back to ordinary life. Unfortunately, those three minutes might cause obvious and attention drawing physical symptoms like sweating, looking panicked or even vomiting. I can't argue with those symptoms. Outside the house they happen more frequently than inside the house. It's very embarrassing for me. I feel ridiculous for not being able to shimmy out of it like before. Most people I listen to talk about trauma in a very 'immodest' or 'inclusive' way. I find myself not knowing how to frame my own experiences and reactions at all. Can I even say (to myself) that I have PTSD? Is it useful to do that and acknowledge it? Is it better to think of it as something else? Thank you for your video! Apologies for the long comment. :)
You have every right to get the support you need. You can't argue with your symptoms, as you say, and I hope you are also talking to your GP, to check on potential underlying physical causes. You are clearly a strong and courageous person, and you will learn to face your fears, as you speak about them to your therapist. This will make your pluck even more real than it was before you had the flashbacks.
I suggest you look at the ACES research. I feel you are focused incorrectly on the most harmful types of trauma in that the trauma you seem to feel is the most harmful is the trauma that has actually been shown to be the most easily over come, while the trauma you seem to disregard is actually the type of trauma that is the most harmful and difficult to overcome. Interpersonal trauma perpetrated against children has been shown in study after study to be the most difficult to overcome, causes the most long term consequences, and as a child's brain is still developing, the way their brain becomes wired is very specific to trauma. While natural disasters or one time violent occurancee, especially in adults, have been shown to cause the least long term consequences and the most amenable to treatment. It's disappointing that your message is that natural disasters or witnessing a murder are somehow legitimate traumas while childhood trauma which is actually the most legitimately harmful, is somehow not that big a deal. You are conflating the idea that people with childhoods trauma over identify with the trauma because you are comparing it to what it is not, which is trauma that does not cause structural changes into the brain, rather than what it is, trauma that literally causes changes to the brain and personality structure. This is such a disappointing interpretation and based on a very misaligned with science view of things.
Thanks for engaging in a rational and scientific way. I didn't explain myself well enough if this is the conclusion you drew. The situations I was referring in terms of natural disasters is that of people whose livelihood and safety has been removed from them in the long term, those who live in drought areas for instance. I also didn't refer to people witnessing a murder as a one off, but was thinking about the people I have worked with who have been exposed to killings for long periods of time. As you will see from other responses, other people have understood the essence of what I was getting at: that our current cultural focus on 'trauma' has created a huge rabbit hole that many people get stuck in. If you want to go down the brain structure path, things get a great deal more complicated and this narrative too is being highjacked unhelpfully by many people. Our brains are far more flexible than people realize and they are very good at making new synaptic connections and healing old wounds, unless they have been physically damaged, and even then, they can amaze us by their adaptation. All difficult and painful experiences affect our brains. And the evidence I gathered in my book Rising from Existential Crisis, is that certain types of painful experiences, that alter your entire sense of who you are are the most damaging. I also showed how people can overcome and go beyond such experiences. Fifty years of psychotherapy practice and research has shown me that those who linger with the idea of their victimhood and traumatisation, especially those people who relish being given the label of PTSD. Those who do well are inclined to people with a greater purpose and a new project. I hope this clarifies for you why I felt it was important to say these things to a wider audience. When you accuse people of being 'misaligned with science', perhaps it is a good idea to ask yourself whether there is new evidence, beyond your understanding of current 'science'. We can only move forward by continuing to observe the evidence. But focusing only on neurological evidence is not enough. Experiential and existential evidence are equally important.
By the way the ACES research shows the same thing: that not all children who experience severe childhood adversity will become traumatised. My experience of working with a wide range of children who were traumatised in events like the Holocaust, the Kinder transport or growing up in various wars, shows that certain ways of approaching that sensitivity and dread, or complete avoidance of it, can plunge a person into long term suffering whereas a more gradual emergence and continuous reflection can help people to find a new path. With that new way of life, will come brain changes, because the brain is a miracle of adaptation.
@@EmmyvanDeurzenI experienced many ACEs. I have neurodiverse brain, I dunno if I was autistic previously as I was so young or if it's what happened. Being how things are, for me at least, I'm triggered alot and it's internal retraumatising self speak that I try to curb. I think for me my brain does what it does straight into hypervigilence so it doesn't work so good😂. My brain on fight or flight, always flight really for me. But I try everyday , and it helped me to hear you say in a previous video: life is a game. In games you can keep trying and change will come and confidence will come. And that is enough.
I've tried speaking and cognitive therapy but maybe immersive life therapy is okay for me too. But thank you for your videos.
@@Hammerbammers Glad it helps a bit. Rising above the pain you are trapped in, can be a very helpful metaphor. See my book Rising from Existential Crisis.
Respectfully, I think you may look at how studies and understanding of trauma have evolved since simply adequating it with certain settings (war, sexual abuse, extreme misery laced with experiences of physical violence).
This video would benefit from stating what you personally mean by trauma and what experiences can defined as traumatic (frequency, how they present in terms of symptoms etc).
My personal understanding of the current psychology of trauma is that it includes our recent understanding of how our brains and nervous system develop from birth to adulthood, how certain patterns of repeated violence whether it is physical or through other means (verbal, belittlement, abandonment / unreliable parents) can lead to developing complex trauma and comes with a variety of somatic symptoms.
Adverse early life experiences have always and will always exist because the perfect parent and environment will never exist, however some situations actually put a strain so severe and often insidious in people (until it blows up in adulthood) that it is necessary to treat the root cause (eg the trauma). Every person is different. Just like some people will get lung cancer from smoking and not will get it and not have smoked a day of their lives, some people will develop trauma while their siblings or peers who have gone through the same experience will not. It is unfair and strange to objectively understand but that's how life and our biology works. Some people are more vulnerable and their brain and nervous system will just collapse or glitch one day. Doesn't matter that they were objectively not in a war or whatever. The wound is here, the suffering is here, the taboo memories are here, the stuckness and the symptoms are there too.
Just telling people that life sucks, to suck it up, meditate and think of the dying children out there doesn't cut it. Sorry to be so blunt but as you said it, a lot of people who have or rather are traumatized are high functioning and spend a lot of energy hiding or rather resisting the trauma in silence, shame, denial and alone. Some times until it's too late because "they shouldn't feel that way, they haven't a good enough story to warrant the term of trauma" etc. They're not to be lauded. It is the ancient ideology of suffering in silence that most often than not leads to festering, exploding and some times even to death...
Granted there may indeed be an inflation of psychological terms for this and that, but maybe one way of looking at it is not that people are making it up but that there is indeed a bigger awareness of the impact of some life altering wounds in a person's life and how we don't have to normalize and repeat unhealthy if not destructive behaviors. If people get better from it (and it actually does take a lot of courage and work to reshape oneself and accept that we all go through trauma), who are we to act as censors to say who is worthy of being traumatized or not?
I feel your point of view is a little outdated. A little tough love is always welcome, however the whole "pull up your pants and get over yourself" may be counterproductive. After all, for a long time domestic violence was put under the rug as a normal part of life, and same for incest (in all shapes or forms), which we would all agree today is always destructive and has long lasting effects on the individual.
@@jumpingbee4717 Thanks. I replied to a similar response by explaining that my intention was to make people pause for thought and not jump on the bandwagon of the trauma trend. Of course you are right in the points you make and I have just written a foreword to a new book on the existential approach to trauma, based on the work of many of our doctoral students at the New School. This will provide you with an answer on how we work with the new information available.
With all due respect, why do you feel so triggered by the "trauma trend"?
@@ingaverteja511 Because the pop psychology interpretation of trauma is creating many problems for people. I am confronted with this in clients all the time. When you start using words like ‘triggering’ out of their original clinical context, you open yourself to a whole different level of confusion. Clinically speaking a trigger is something that causes a sudden increase in symptoms - like flashbacks in PTSD or compulsions in OCD. A trigger is not just a source of general discomfort. I am not ‘triggered’ by the trauma trend. I am deeply concerned about what it is doing to people and how it is pushing them into believing themselves to be victims who get triggered, rather than human beings who make sense of the world and act in it. Read my work Rising from Existential Crisis if you are actually interested in my views.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen but if somebody can be pushed into believing they have trauma, it means that they are struggling with something, maybe it's not trauma, but it is something unpleasant. I don't understand how this can hurt somebody. Nobody feels a victim just because they use incorrect words to name what they feel. They still feel something that is hard for them to process/cope with. And by dismissing their feelings therapists are not helping, in my opinion. Whatever they feel is valid and they have every right to feel that. And this trauma trend started for a reason, maybe it would be worth trying to find that reason, that underlying cause and not using some weird (offensive) labels like "trauma trend". And who gets to decide whether it's trauma? A therapist? Many people are not aware that they have cPTSD and cannot name any events that traumatized them, however, they still are traumatized (and often convinced by those who abused them that they hadn't been). Many abusers use gaslighting as did my family members. I witnessed severe physical abuse, experienced a lot of psychological and even sexual abuse and constant humiliation as a child, however, I didn't blame anybody but myself for everything that happened to me. It took me a few years to disclose this material to my therapist because I just never realized that I had been mistreated. I thought that I was a bad child and my family members, relatives and even teachers were right to blame me for being a "difficult child". I think that such messages, telling people that they shouldn't feel like victims and their trauma is not valid only because it's not a natural disaster, are very misleading and counterproductive for those, who have been gaslit into believing they hadn't been traumatized. Nobody told me I was for 30 years and I'm glad my therapist never tried to convince me I wasn't a victim (I did feel like one) because I was, I just didn't know it. And the term "trigger" has more than one meaning: "The slang term "triggered" is used to describe someone who is upset or offended, or who has had their feelings hurt. It can also be used to describe something that causes a negative or unpleasant emotion." And I used it consciously because you used the term "trauma trend".
@@EmmyvanDeurzen and why is it bad that people believe themselves to be victims? It's their choice and their way of being in the world. Why all of a sudden therapists feel they need to change that in people (save them?)? I always thought that therapists are supposed to meet the person where they are and help them find their answers, not teach them what the answers are. Why not just explore with them what "trauma" means to THEM and how they experience it in their every-day life. And it's interesting how you call them victims, I don't think that many people would use that word to call themselves, even in therapy. It must be a label that you put on them: "somebody who believes they are a victim". And I wouldn't like to get such label from my therapist. It sounds very judgemental. Maybe they just feel helpless or hopeless and it's not easy to sit with that (anxiety), accept their feelings and let them infect you with them a little bit. I know it happens a lot with traumatized people, where therapists feels they need to save their clients (because of their counter-transference)... I thought that existential therapy is about exploring what clients bring to therapy (from their perspective), meeting them where they are, not about some strict DSM labels (like trauma) or text books.
@@ingaverteja511 Yes, indeed. I will do another video about how people can sometimes keep re traumatising themselves, stopping themselves from resolving those problems.
you are conflating acknowledging being traumatized with self-victimization ... it is not the same thing.
@@heatherv3515 Indeed it’s not the same thing. That’s is my exact point.
@@EmmyvanDeurzen well in the video you describe anyone articulating themselves as traumatized from something other than war or a natural disaster as self-victimization so maybe some video editing/re-working is needed if that is your point.
What is your own experience of childhood trauma?
Not a question that I wish to answer on a public forum. If you are genuinely interested in my work and background, there is plenty of information in my published work.
wonderful, a tree creates a leaf to leave the reef. Dit heet liefde in jouw oude taal.
@@OlafSager Zo is dat.
i don't understand what purpose this perspective serves. i don't know how a person in crisis, listening to this youtube video, could possibly use this information in a helpful way.
If you read other responses you may see that some people do find it helpful. Perhaps they have a different outlook and are ready for the challenge.
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Sounds like a lot of jumping to conclusions and not much compassion Emmy. This is not a competition. Not your place to decide whose trauma is valid, and whose trauma is not. You should take your own advice, and should be more modest with your opinion on trauma. :) There is a process to healing. Bring it to light and talking about it, and not shaming the experience, or judge it, is one step of that. Not sure from where you get those percentages, would be nice to see those studies, could you share the resources? Your tree example is actually awesome, but misses some important elements. Trees, just like humans are generally not standing alone. Did you know, that the trees in the forests are interconnected through their roots, and they notice if any of them is damaged or even cut, and lack nutrients, and the surrounding trees nurture the damaged one, and don't start to question the need of the other trees. Whenever you see a dead tree trunk with young sprouts, remember that it1s because it's nurtured by its surroundings. Did you know, that there's another thing with trees, that sometimes the growth of young trees in the understory are limited by the lack of sunlight blocked by the older ones, however if they are lucky they can still get their nutrients through the roots, but won't grow as fast, as those trees, who are not blocked from the sunlight by others. But we are talking about trees, not humans. Older humans would never ever block the development of younger ones, would they....or wait. You are an old tree. Know your power: you can block, but you can nurture too.
You make some good points, but perhaps you are rather quick to dismiss mine. Read my book Rising from Existential Crisis for the resources I mentioned on Post Traumatic Growth. And yes, of course it is a great deal more complex than this and yes, trees are part of a much large biome, but this is just a little clip to help those who got themselves down a rabbit hole. If it doesn't apply to you: so the better.
With you on this one 💯, @Marlenkaminta
Thanks for that clarification@@lexibat7829 Exactly right. 😊
You missed the whole point of the video, love.
Or you missed mine :) It's all about perspectives love :D @@ridiculousflor
Here is my problem with this: we are dealing with complex entities which compose a perceived "self." You're right that trauma should not just become us, it makes us repulsive. You're right that there's degrees to the severity of the trauma, and thus the becoming of the trauma for us, and thus an aversion to ourselves as we lose touch and become something unrecognizable. The problem with your dismissal of people's experiences is that you are merely treating a symptom and not the cause of a problem. Why not listen to people that say that something "traumatized" them and realize that they are not saying that they suffered a certain amount which you perceive as adequate for the defining of trauma, but to a certain other point, where something they didn't agree with "became" them. We experience this constantly. It has a name. It is epistemic violence, or knowledge violence, and the only thing we have to cling to is our knowledge of the world and the concepts, including any conceptions about ourselves, that it presents. What is trauma if it is just a degree to which suffer and not the type of suffering it causes? I will simply refer to as something that causes an overbearing and oppressive narrative to take hold of the complexity of our being. The essential property of an entity like trauma is not the suffering, it is the projected lack of self that results from it. This lack of self is a void with laws for self-governance on its fringes. Often times it is not divine in nature, at least not obviously. In other words, it is not simply destroying the laws of our being, of our conception of a self, of our ability to project something good for ourselves into the future, it is actively choosing what to replace it with. What does it replace it with? An entity that digs a deeper hole. You are dealing with people that know they have been parasitized by the changes people intended to invoke in them with a subtle trauma. They are dealing with an uprising in their own mind against an ontic fascism which, if they are dealing with family members or really any being which we socially derive "self" from, will seem impossible to get out of. That means losing their innocence again. It means realizing that they weren't necessarily doing the right thing by staying with an abuser. This is especially true if the abuse is subtle. This is especially true when society measures the degree to which one must suffer before they are right in turning towards their environment with violent intention. It was their environment that parasitized them, as it too was parasitized upon its own conception within the parasitized thing. By encouraging people to view themselves not as being parasitized by their environment (their free-will and comportation towards prioritized entities high-jacked) but as being in total control, you are ignoring the very physical nature of their "stuckness" and cause them to pick at themselves anxiously. Your words become an extension of the violent entity/context. We need to admit to ourselves that it is not our selves, but our environment that nourishes us, that becomes us, not some divine calm which might somehow manifest in us if we're lucky. This is playing the lottery with the soul, saying, "just think upon it," like it would be safe to send a long adopted dog out into a bustling city in search of its own mother. We must not search ourselves, but our environment, for a gracious god. The divinely good entity. We must avoid any entities that do not nourish it and our way of living in accordance with it well. This includes parents. This includes siblings. This includes spouses. This includes everyone!!
@@IsaacWstawac Thanks for your long and thoughtful response. If it sounds as if I am dismissing people’s experiences, then I have not expressed myself carefully enough. The experiences matter, but I am trying to alert people to the fact that they are often allowing these experiences to let themselves be drawn into that void, you speak of and thus becoming part of the problem. instead of building new strength and being agents for change towards the good you speak of. There is more good in the world than many fear but it only comes to us when we set out to find and strengthen it.
You are so pretty
Are you a psychologist?
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You are beautiful
Don't take the sack and ash for more than a day.
No. This is wrong and damaging. Trauma can come from insidious events over a long period of time. Narcissist abuse for example, is a good example of a traumatic impact on a person. Its actually right to tell trusted friends youre traumatised by what you experienced, it takes a load off, and that validation you get back is valuable, when part of the traumatising cycle is so much invalidation. Dont be part of that invalidation, please. And that doesnt mean youre not resilient, or wont work to heal yourself as much as possible.
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Sorry but i don't agree with you , if you didn't live something please do not talk about it i lived my whole life scared, feeling not worthy, and feeling a deep feeling of shame, my experience with school was traumatized my mom insulting me because i wasn't as good as she want and also if i get bad marks she is beating me and compare me to others and That's why now i have a low self esteem i use to hate study a lot and i became more anxious and angry i feel like I'm in danger if i would study or pass an exam and to avoid all this feeling i start daydreaming and i waste all my life i didn't learn any skill because i have a low self esteem and the fear stops me to do anything, first i didn't know about this but now i feel like I'm more free in life and that makes me discover my real self
@@jihanblm Very glad to hear that you have figured things out for yourself and that you are beginning to find more freedom in your life and are getting to know yourself. Stay strong and find good people to be with. Remember that the biggest factor of change and improvement of confidence is education. The more you learn and the more you are able to think critically and clearly the easier life becomes. Take good care, my friend.
Funny how these messages from those who got offended just 'screams' victim mentality :') how is that helpful to argue: "you can't say me calling my self a victim is bad for me!! Look how sad and poor I am!!!" ?
What a ridiculous and borderline nonsensical take
I disagree. I think coming from a place of absolute stigma I think we need to allow people to look at themselves deeply and visualize their trauma and understand it. Otherwise people will keep on suppressing their emotions and they will not be able to get the help they need. I come from a society where mental health is deeply stigmatized. When I was struggling I did not get help and that led to several health issues. If we keep our traumas modest we will never get to understand their impact on our health and wellbeing and its impact on the health of our families and societies.
@@sunriselotus I am in complete agreement with you. We need to feel the pain deeply in order to heal. My words were meant as a warning against getting trapped in the rabbit hole of the trauma industry. They are not meant to deny pain and injury.
The thing is once you understand what led to your trauma you're supposed to drop it. Not share it with a lot of peope, not keep looking for people to relate to, not consume trauma related content. Understand, acknowledge and move past it. Nowadays trauma is a trendy topic and people know they can make a lot of money being "relatable" for traumatised people. This is the road to nowhere. They make money, you stay stuck. As someone wrote in a comment I read some time ago "Straingers mining for your trauma is never a good thing. Ultimately you have to get up and move on.
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You obviously didn’t accept your own attachment trauma, yet.
Obviously not!
I see, you get triggered easily.
Weaponsing psychological jargon does not make you an expert. You are not doing yourself any favours. @@marinamarini3254
Deflecting, that doesn’t make you an expert either. The point remains that you felt compelled to spread disinformation on what constitutes trauma or not, disregarding all knowledge acquired in this field the last 40 years. I may not be doing myself any favours in spending my time talking to you, but you certainly have proven yourself ignorant.
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