Trauma is not bad

[OliveJewel]

This is kind of an aha for me. And I welcome anyone who would like to weigh in. I feel like this might be kind of a “duh” statement for some of you, and this might be common knowledge. Or it might provoke a reaction.

Trauma itself is not bad. There is nothing inherently bad about trauma. It just is. To be alive is to experience traumatic events. Trauma is an event that slows down the progress of getting to a goal.

The bad-ness comes from the feelings associated with the event or the fall-out. Which is why the same traumatic event happening at the same time to multiple people can lead to a multitude of feelings and perceptions.

So I don’t need to associate trauma with bad. (Although I understand that people do that and why.)

Furthermore here are some other concepts which are not inherently bad:
Victim
Persecute
Co-dependence
Drama
Loss
Immature

The badness is the judgement which comes loaded with a host of feelings, likely from early conditioning.

I want to break free from my assumptions in order to have breathing room around these concepts.

That said, I understand why I felt bad about my traumas, it was a way to recognize that I was worthy of something better, I just didn’t know how to hold onto that worth—a whole other topic.

 

[Friday]

Trauma itself is not bad. There is nothing inherently bad about trauma. It just is.

I would have to disagree, entirely.

I’ve tried and I cannot think of a single trauma that ISNT bad. Maybe one exists. But out of the thousands my mind has flipped through? I’m not finding one.

Sounds like maaaaaybe you’re attempting to reframe a bad things happen to bad people, paradigm? Or if bad things happen in life, then life itself is bad?

***

- There’s nothing inherently bad about trauma.
- There’s nothing inherantly bad about ___insert trauma here___
- There’s nothing inherently bad about swinging a baby like a baseball bat to shatter it’s ooey gooey head against the wall, before raping its mother to death, and setting the building on fire after chaining the doors.
- There’s nothing inherently bad about murder.
- There’s nothing inherantly bad about rape, sex trafficking, sexual assault.
- There’s nothing inherently bad about torture, or torturing someone to death.
- There’s nothing inherantly bad about giving a toddler a grenade and sending them into a crowd.
- There’s nothing inherently bad about listening to the people you love scream as they’re burned alive.
- There’s nothing inherantly bad about abusing children.
- There’s nothing inherantly bad about genocide.
- There’s nothing inherently bad about a collapsed building with hundreds dead and dying.
- There’s nothing inherently bad about a terror attack
- There’s nothing inherently bad about domestic violence
- There’s nothing inherently bad about lynching black people, gassing Jews, stoning women, flaying homosexuals, raping muslims, burning witches, using the children of your enemies to clear minefields, etc.

What MAKES something trauma? Is that it is inherently bad.

Regardless of how I feel -or don’t feel- about it, at the time, or later.

I would very much agree (if I’m making the correct inferences, and if not, I would posit) that:
- surviving trauma is not what makes a person good or bad
- trauma existing is not what makes life itself good or bad / there is far more to life than the worst parts of it.
- feeling good doesn’t make it right, and feeling bad doesn’t make it wrong, & vice versa, feeling good doesn’t make it wrong, and feeling bad doesn’t make it right.
- bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people & vice versa.

 

[Movingforward10]

I agree with @Friday.
I wonder what is driving this for you at the moment @OliveJewel ? As it seems counter to implicit and explicit thoughts of yours? (Or at least my interpretation of your comments).

Trauma itself is not bad. There is nothing inherently bad about trauma. It just is. To be alive is to experience traumatic events. Trauma is an event that slows down the progress of getting to a goal.

Not everyone experiences big T trauma though. They may experience loss and death and I'll health etc, but not big T trauma. Take for example, this training thing I am in where everyone shares their life experiences. So far everyone is sharing their positive parenting and the foundations and morals and values they were brought up with. All positive stories. No one has shared a trauma based story. Either they are lieing about their experiences or like me, choosing to remain silent.

Which is why the same traumatic event happening at the same time to multiple people can lead to a multitude of feelings and perceptions.

But I think the above accounts for that. That people have different foundations and experiences coming into the trauma that makes them more or less likely to respond in certain ways.

I think if trauma wasn't inherently bad, we wouldn't be here? Struggling in the way we all are? Because it would just be.

It is bad.

 

[OliveJewel]

@Friday you bring up a good point. Most of the examples you listed are traumatic events that have strong elements of what many people would call evil. I think it’s common for evil to be associated with trauma but I don’t think they are exclusively linked.

As a small example the term revenge can seem on the surface bad. Particularly from a Christian perspective. But many families of violent crime victims feel relief when the perp is put to death, which others in society protest as murder. Evil can be applied to any of the parties (even the victim sometimes depending on their lifestyle). Trauma is also generally applied to all parties. The thoughts and importance given to particulars are where the badness comes from—that’s the idea I’m exploring.

They may experience loss and death and I'll health etc, but not big T trauma

The bigness is related to

different foundations and experiences coming into the trauma that makes them more or less likely to respond in certain ways.

This. The response, based on what you mentioned, determines the size.

All of us here placed importance on our traumas. This is not good or bad from a global perspective but is good or bad to us. The good/bad is our internal barometer for motivation to make personal changes

My purpose is not to shit on anyone, though I realize that it may be coming across that way, so I apologize for the uncomfortable feelings I may be provoking. I am exploring this to look for breathing room around ideas that I held tightly.

 

[OliveJewel]

I wonder what is driving this for you at the moment

I wonder if what I’m getting at is the idea of ownership of trauma. As in, “My experience of trauma was horrible. This trauma that happened affected me very badly.”

Because how many of us on here deeply struggle with discounting and dismissal and comparing? Which I think comes from a place of judging trauma as bad and not only that but levels of bad. As in, “Mine wasn’t that bad.”

So the trauma in itself isn’t bad or good. But an individual’s experience of the trauma and perceptions of it based on their foundations and environment can be very very bad—and their thoughts and feelings about it are very important to their overall well-being.

And as compassionate witnesses observing someone dealing with their reactions and fallout—by understanding their story, their foundations and environment leading up to the trauma as well as the trauma itself (with the evil component) we can empathize and share understanding of how someone could become so badly affected.

 

[chihayafuru]

I thought trauma was how you responded to an event, not the event itself

 

[wabisabiman]

Not sure if I'm grokking you, but what you wrote sounds a bit like Gabor Mate...

"Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you're acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you're acting out of fear. Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you."

 

[Weemie]

Trauma is an event that slows down the progress of getting to a goal.

Trauma also induces suffering, which most people qualify as harmful. It is true that most things in life are only good or bad if we assign those judgments to them and every person will define that differently, but objectively speaking, trauma is destructive which increases entropy and increased entropy results in a higher likelihood of suffering.

Suffering is irrational because it represents chaos, outside of reason. It represents something outside our capacity to control, outside of reason. In many cases it represents interpersonal breakdowns and loss of group cohesion and cohesiveness of self by being inflicted deliberately. This is harmful, and interrupts our existence because it is harmful.

Whether you personally view suffering as bad will be relative, but I think the idea that there's "nothing inherently bad" about intentionally inflicting harm on others or about people suffering from events beyond their capacity to cope is more than likely your own perception about yourself and your experiences rather than reflecting your opinions about "trauma" as a whole entity.

 

[OliveJewel]

Interesting.
I like this discussion.

Trauma as the event
versus
trauma as the response to the event

Makes me think if the concept of:

Post Traumatic Growth Response
versus
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Both have a baseline condition of trauma, which induced pain and fear. Each is a different metabolic process within the body, probably based on foundations and environment.

How the body reacts, thinks, processes, ruminates, acts out, and so on can be the good or bad, from the person in the body’s perspective.

suffering as bad

I think suffering is not the same as pain and fear.

trauma is destructive which increases entropy and increased entropy results in a higher likelihood of suffering.

I agree with the first part. I agree there is a higher likelihood of suffering. But again I think suffering is one way a body metabolizes the pain and fear. A completely understandable way, but not inevitable, therefore releasing the term trauma from being enmeshed with the word bad. Which potentially frees an individual to focus on their reactions and thoughts at some point in their recovery. That’s the perspective I’m exploring this from.

 

[Charbella]

I am exploring this to look for breathing room around ideas that I held tightly.

What are the ideas and what do you think breathing room accomplishes? How will seeing trauma as not necessarily bad help you with that, or at least what hope do you have?

Which I think comes from a place of judging trauma as bad and not only that but levels of bad.

I think the level of judging actually comes from not having gotten the support we needed to deal with the trauma in its aftermath. Our heads being left to their own devices caused the problem and sometimes the people we reached out to who were unsupportive contributed to this trauma.

For many CSA survivors it’s also the taboo of sex involved, the way society views being tainted.

 

[Weemie]

I think suffering is not the same as pain and fear.

Pain and fear are a form of suffering, but they are separate concepts (one is broader and definitive and one is descriptive), yes. I'm just not certain how meaningful it really is to separate pain and fear from the concept of suffering. At a certain point we are beholden to our physiology, which is only capable of enduring so much painful stimulus before it ceases to function.

I've seen multiple people approach that event horizon and it is definitely a natural occurrence (pain beyond reason, begging for death, anguish), not simply a value judgment that the person is exerting over their circumstances. I'm not really trying to argue one way or another.

I don't view things in terms of "good/evil" either, but what is harmful and what increases entropy and suffering and damage is where I create my barometer to determine what is acceptable behavior and what isn't. If trauma is truly neutral then there is really no reason to moderate our behavior and try not to hurt people.

 

[OliveJewel]

What are the ideas

The title of the post is the idea. Like Shakespeare’s quote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

not simply a value judgment

I want to be clear that I do see space for value judgments from an individual perspective as a form of motivation to escape pain and fear and other negative feelings. And unconscious visceral judgments too that are hidden from analysis as long as necessary. By no means am I suggesting that anyone in a chaotic critical situation consider this perspective. Which begs the question

what do you think breathing room accomplishes?

For me it provides a handhold for climbing out of suffering. It lessens the weight of the idea and allows me to look at it from various perspectives.

Our heads being left to their own devices caused the problem and sometimes the people we reached out to who were unsupportive contributed to this trauma.

Agree. The foundations and environment at the time of the traumatic event contribute significantly to the suffering of PTSD which in real time originates from self-judgment in the head.