Feeling like "normal" people (ie without PTSD) are superficial/ naive/ fake/ stupid

[Weemie]

The way I see it, trauma is not necessary for character building. Human beings are naturally very intelligent and resourceful, and all of the life lessons that we learn through trauma could be learned in appropriate and nurturing environments just as well. Trauma is just trauma. There's no purpose to it. It's entropy. It's pointless suffering, and that makes it illogical and bad. So I don't resent people for not having trauma, I am grateful that they were able to learn about life in a different way.

While I do think that my trauma has enabled me to learn lessons that most people don't learn, I am fully confident I could have figured this stuff out on my own without it, since I am intelligent and interested in human rights and wellbeing. I have a lived experience that provides me with a perspective that not many people get, but I would likely have a similar perspective as I aged and learned new information.

Trauma isn't necessary, ever. It doesn't teach a life lesson. It doesn't build character. We often take positives from trauma to provide said experiences with a form of meaning, but that doesn't make it inherently meaningful. We're consciously superimposing that meaning onto it in order to make it beneficial, which is just another example of human ingenuity.

 

[cloudless]

Well, I'll admit I feel the same as you do sometimes. I get annoyed and find other peoples' problems trivial or minor in comparison to what I've been through. For instance, I have a friend who's biggest grievance was her cat dying. Sad, yes, the loss of a beloved pet is devastating. But when it's her center focus and she continually talks about her depression surrounding her cat, I have no idea what to really say because, in my mind, a pet dying isn't even a 1/16th of anything I've been through. It causes me to categorize her issue as trivial, minor, naivety to how horrific some life events can really be, and feelings of "this person could never relate to me".

I will say I'm learning that comparison is the problem. We shouldn't be comparing. All of us have our own difficulties and struggles in life, on different levels and to varying degrees. People also have different thresholds, levels, and perceptions of what they deem as stressful or traumatic events. We are not supposed to be judging someone else's trauma. What helped put this in more perspective for me personally is reading stories online (here and elsewhere) of people who have gone through severe trauma and imagining them having the same "this is soooo trivial" thoughts about me if they were to hear my trauma stories. That hurts and is invalidating to think about. I wouldn't want someone to think that about me. So I'm trying to make a conscious effort to express empathy and compassion for someone else who might be experiencing something they consider serious, even if I don't perceive it the same way. Easier said than done in some cases - I get it!

 

[Ecdysis]

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah... I'm starting to realise that my problem with this is that I had so much trauma in childhood that I was actually growing up with PTSD as a child from the earlier trauma, while the later trauma was happening.

So I think as a child, growing up, I couldn't understand why "non-trauma" people were being so superficial and so whiny about minor things... As a child, I was grappling with trying to understand the whole situation and none of it made much sense to me. I guess I grew up experiencing "non-trauma" people as weird... and then that learned belief "stuck" around, into adulthood...