Trauma is not bad

[Friday]

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

If someone asks me for my trauma history, I don’t think they’re asking for my reaction history.

But? Definitions vary depending on context.

Trauma =

Colloquially/Slang/Poetry - Trauma is anything the speaker wants it to be
Dictionary - Trauma is a distressing experience/event
Medically - Trauma is physical injury
Psychologically - Trauma is a stressful event
PTSD - Trauma is “Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways: Directly experiencing the traumatic event(s). Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others.”

Psychological Trauma / Emotional Trauma =

- Damage or injury to the psyche after living through an extremely frightening or distressing event that may result in challenges in functioning or coping normally after the event, regardless of whether the individual finds the event frightening, distressing, or damaging.

- A response to an event the individual finds stressful, distressing, or emotionally/physically damaging. Not everyone who experience a traumatic event will go on to experience psychological trauma, nor does an event need to be considered traumatic by anyone else except the individual suffering from the effects of it.

^^^

So trauma would be the event & psychological trauma would be one possible response to the event.

English. The language of diplomacy (not science!) for a reeeeason.

 

[Weemie]

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

When I first started doing psilocybin therapy I engaged in a lot of thought like this and for me it really came down to wanting the right answer and refining my values and beliefs about the world and what is true or false.

Ultimately I ended up rejecting a viewpoint that was very similar to yours because I believe in objective morality - value judgments will be individual, but there are right and wrong things and those answers can be figured out by applying logic. (We talked about this "decision-tree" a while ago!) But what we understand to be right and wrong and how we apply logic and what logical process we use is going to be distinct to each person.

In my view "just because two different people have different morals, doesn't make morality subjective. It makes one of them wrong." I've gained more nuance to this position over time as I learn more about logic and reason and cognition but the premise is still there - and it does definitely tie into distortions for me as well.

If I can just figure out the life, universe and everything I will be healed! Every situation has an objectively right answer (or a least-wrong answer!) which goes to OCD and morality and compulsions and confession and "existing ethically" and all this stuff.

The things that we understand to be true are a lot less comprehensive than what our brain tricks us into believing, and the uncomfortable fact is that the fundamental nature of our reality is malleable.

(I suppose this certainly provides more evidence to subjective morality but if nothing really matters, I choose to believe that we must have sign-posts by which to guide our behavior and those should be universal and we should be upset when others violate our rights, because it is objectively bad.)

 

[Rose White]

@Weemie I generally agree with you. And this is not my concrete view, this is a concept that I’m exploring for the purpose of pulling back the layers of entangled beliefs and reorganizing them within my head.

I think you are helping me get down to the nitty gritty by positing subjective vs objective morality. I held a liberal subjective morality mindset prior to my recovery. Then I had my worldview flipped and generally embraced objective morality as it made the most sense for moving forward in facing the CPTSD from the neglect and abuse of my caregivers and for recovering myself.

And now I’m allowing myself to be curious about and pick up ideas from my pre-recovery self.

For me this statement is concerning though

we should be upset when

Because it has a whole history of unintended collateral. Do I think that cases of human rights violations should be investigated and those who commit such aggravations receive consequences? Yes!! But I am currently shying away from objective statements that remove challenging viewpoints in their entirety. Again, do I think people should be given free reign to spew hateful garbage? No!! But, again, cleaving what should and shouldn’t exist (belief-wise or other) has unintended consequences and can erase legitimate experiences and voices.

I think you nailed the root of my pondering when you brought up subjective versus objective morality.

And in this discussion I think what I’m stumbling up against is that the word trauma has been saturated in societal discourse and so there are different hats a person must wear in order to discuss it, as @Friday elucidated in their post.

I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of this belief that I wanted to explore. I see where to categorize it (subjective morality) and I see a major limitation to discourse (the many ways the term trauma can be interpreted.)

 

[Deleted member 42984]

I agree with you [sort of], in the context of PTSD healing.

Trauma isn't inherently bad. The harm caused by others is bad (the action(s)), but the trauma itself is just your reaction to it. I would argue that it is infact very healing to consciously embrace all your so-called symptoms with compassion.
Healing is not 'fighting' PTSD. It's allowing the wounds to heal.

Rephrase what I just said as my experience only. To not antagonize anyone having different perspectives.

 

[Weemie]

And now I’m allowing myself to be curious about and pick up ideas from my pre-recovery self.

I think this is great! (I also agree that prescribing how people should feel is not necessary and is potentially harmful, I just did not know how else to word it. I don't really mean in the scope of the emotion as much as I mean it should matter.)

As far as I understand, most of the people I enjoy speaking with tend to believe in subjective morality as well - objectivism is more rooted with religion and social conservatism and I take a more liberal, non-judgmental approach that is more commonly found in subjective ethics.

(It's not always wrong to do xyz, it is situational, there just is a right way or least-wrong way to maneuver. And if there isn't, toss a coin? If there isn't, the situation was never about morality at all.)

Ultimately the cool thing about it all and what I really appreciate about this thread as it is so descriptive of this process - is that we generally can, and I think it's important that we do - choose what we believe.

 

[Rose White]

Something I’m realizing from reflecting upon this thread is that one way I’ve grown is that I now believe in and am comfortable qualifying people, intentions, behaviors, etc. as evil or bad. Pre-recovery I was so liberal-minded (not using that term in its political sense) that I didn’t believe in evil or bad—*everything* was subjective. I now think that was a way for my body-mind to cope with my situation and the relationships that I engaged in.

Embracing an objective mindset was part of gaining autonomy of my self and finally individuating from my enmeshment with my caregivers and my husband. (“This is good, that’s bad. I want this, I don’t want that. I like this, I don’t like that.”). It was so important to give myself permission to say words like “no” and “bad”.

The weight of objective morality is grounding but the plasticity of subjective morality is liberating. Perhaps this exploration is about balancing. Seems like that word “balance” is on blast for me lately.

 

[Deleted member 42984]

The weight of objective morality is grounding but the plasticity of subjective morality is liberating

Yeah, what if both are true? What if there's room for both Kant and Nietzsche? The debate on ethics and morality is neverending, there's no definite answer. Except perhaps for "42"

 

[Rose White]

@ziter exactly!

 

[Friday]

The weight of objective morality is grounding but the plasticity of subjective morality is liberating.

The ease of letting someone else tell you what’s right & wrong, versus having to decide for yourself what is right & what is wrong.

 

[Friday]

(Also) On the subject of subjective/objective morality?

There’s a psychometric that I cannot for the life of me remember it’s name, but the premise is asking a person whether or not stealing is wrong. There are 4 stages, beginning in the black and white, progressing more grey as it goes on. The last stage being a question of letting someone die vs stealing the medicine necessary to save their life.

It is DEEPLY correlated by age group… up until the last stage. Where people tend to be very evenly split.

 

[Rose White]

someone else tell you what’s right & wrong, versus having to decide for yourself

I don’t see it that way because an objective view can be self-created and counter-cultural, and a subjective view can be deeply socially conditioned—but this is a rather modern phenomenon, some call it post-modern.

but the premise is asking a person whether or not stealing is wrong.

I know what you’re talking about! My high school Social Studies teacher told us about it. The version presented to me had a religious flavor in that the levels of morality correlated with spiritual ascension as well as age, therefore showing how an old person could have the morals of a child if they were not spiritually developed.