To think some people are “stuck” not because of trauma, but because they’re lazy?

It can also be undiagnosed ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc etc etc. So many things, not just trauma.

Sometimes people keep going then fall apart later. Sometimes work is a break from the reality of the tragedy.

I kept going after a horrible tragedy, still got top grades in every module, still top of my year. Still volunteering and doing sport and socialising. It was because staying busy was easier than thinking.
I very much feel apart years later. Tragedy hits people in different ways at different times, and people cope in different ways. Working very hard and being busy doesn't make me impressive, it was just my coping mechanism

It's important to highlight too that trauma is different to PTSD. Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, crime, or natural disaster. It's the emotions you experience after a distressing event. Trauma can be everyday things like a bereavement or finding out about infidelity or losing your job, everyone reacts to things differently. PTSD on the other hand is a disorder that can develop after a traumatic event, and is very treatable. Trauma is a normal, run of the mill life experience for all humans, unless you're incredibly lucky and sheltered and cosseted.

@Yellowduster Look up the differences between PTSD and complex PTSD. Complex PTSD includes emotional flashbacks, and problems with emotional regulation. The problem is not that it’s treatable - it’s getting the treatment!

Yes, all humans suffer trauma like bereavements, car accidents, medical treatment; the difference is when the trauma is repetitive and the person cannot escape from it - like slavery, torture, domestic violence, etc.

@paradisecityx it affects everyone in many ways. There is the business owner who is dealing with staff who claim sickness at the slightest thing, bullying if expected to make their kpi’s or want a stupid salary without experience because they are able wish things into existence. Or the parent whose child can’t or won’t take opportunities or leave home because they can’t cope. Or the partner who ends up being on the receiving end of good old fashioned CF’ery and cock lodging tendencies because there is no sense that people should have a bit of self reliance and not sponge off other people…

I suspect the post was intended to compound the current narrative that those struggling have probably brought it on themselves and not tried hard enough.

Honestly, the world we live in now actively discourages seeking support, and at the same time expecting people who can barely function to be pro-active. I lurk alot on the bereavement board, and on here, and see post after post about the "needy" bereaved, about setting boundaries, about not expecting family or friends to be "emotional support humans", about how exhausting it is dealing with people going through demonstrably shitty experiences. I see post after post about people being unable to access professional support.

You can't have it all ways, you can't espouse what is basically toxic positivity when humans are far more complex creatures, and not just organic computers that need re-booting. Everyone is the product of upbringing, environment and circumstance, and some people get dealt a shittier hand than others. Some appear to get through it, but they're still scarred and perhaps just hide it well. How they get there may be a rocky road of self harm and self medication, and some people can't find their way off that road.

And yes, I am taking this all "too personally" because it is personal.

Hugs to all in the shitty club of being "stuck" or having been stuck for a time.

The big point is that when you are stuck, trauma is like industrial strength super glue, and you feel like a solitary goldfish swimming round a bowl wondering if your brain will ever let you out to swim in the big aquarium again.

How do you tell the difference when there is no help for mental health issues

🍿👀

That’s really sad.
Are you okay now?

I’m torn. I’ve been there where I was stuck. I was thriving, I was only 20 - I had my own flat, my own car, my own job that I was moving up and succeeding in. I had a social life, I had hobbies and I was just loving life. Then I met my abuser, I ended up been abused to the point that I had severe anxiety and depression, I was suicidal and I couldn’t see a point to life anymore. I was off sick at work for months and months because I physically couldn’t get out of bed. I wasn’t lazy, but if you have ever been so depressed - you have no physical or mental energy and you cannot physically do anything: the basic tasks like even bathing you’re unable to cope with. I couldn’t even brush my hair and had to cut chunks from my hair where it had matted so bad. Everything felt heavy. So unless you experience it - you can call it lazy all you want but I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

that being said, I do know people who claim mental health and take away the resources from people who need it. This one woman openly bragged about conning the system and whilst I think she was mentally unwell in the fact that she had NPD - she openly admitted she told pip and uc that her anxiety was so severe that she couldn’t leave the house. So she didn’t work and got the adjacent benefits but it was because she was lazy and either sat in her home all day smoking weed or sitting in the pub all day drinking and going out partying every weekend.

so there are genuine people who struggle with mental health but there are also the people who make the genuine people look like liars because they’re frauding the system

This exactly!
Laziness, bloody cheek!!!

What’s your skin in the game? Why do you care?

No and hell no.
Coping with and recovering from trauma is hard. Laziness!!

Since you don't know people's individual circumstances it's pointless.

Its a difficult conversation and relative to your own life i suppose. Having had real trauma if we want to call it that, i could be stuck and at times it has been debilitating but my mindset from the off is life still goes on. Therapy has helped but as has already been pointed out, unless you can afford private, it's limited resources.

I'm in no way fixed but from the outside my life looks pretty normal, even within days and weeks of the trauma i'm confident people would have said the same. You can't stay still and even if you could i'm not sure it would do you any good.

That being said someone i know is going through a difficult time that they consider a trauma. They are self sabotaging massively and continue to do so even though they know they are because through all the therapy they have had they seem to have concluded that that's ok to do that because of their trauma. I can't see them ever moving forward with that state of mind. So i can understand how that can be perceived that way.

I went through something less than 2 weeks ago, that was pretty traumatic to me. I nearly died, I needed emergency surgery, lost 2ltrs of blood. I've actually spent the day today crying on the sofa and I'm not even sure why. I'm sure I will move on from it, it's early days yet and my body is still sore but I don't know how I feel about someone else deciding what is 'actually traumatic' and what isn't. To me, my experience was traumatic, even if to someone else it might be a 'regular life event'.

I think to make hard changes or do uncomfortable work covers a huge spectrum of possibilities.

I have a diagnosis of ptsd and have had 2 years of therapy on the NHS. I have come a long way but I still have days when I want to die, where getting out of bed feels impossible and where I feel everyone can see how useless and damaged I am.

I'd love to go back to work properly but I've yet to figure out how to turn off the self sabotaging voices in my head. The anxiety I feel about being less than perfect and of actually being seen. The lack of sleep, the nightmares and the jumpiness are all still very present. Also the fields in which I used to work and ideally would return to, I'd need to disclose my diagnosis and we all know stigma is absolutely a thing. Plus I don't really like discussing it. Most people including mental health professionals fail to hide the look of pity and horror which slides across their faces when they hear what led to the diagnosis.

I've tried medication (SSRIs made me very ill, psychiatrist refused to prescribe any others). I've tried multiple types of therapy. I even got a psychology degree to try and better understand my issues. I run and I cook mostly from scratch. I don't know what else to try to be honest. All of the above were hard and uncomfortable. Therapy was horrendous. I'd leave feeling wrung out and so emotionally vulnerable. Then when I perhaps needed the support the most, they suspended it for 6 months because my father had just died (I was also 6 months pregnant at the time).

So yes I think I'm stuck. I understand the principles of varying types of therapy but can't seem to wrap my head around applying unjudgementally to myself. I can't take drugs they won't prescribe. I already exercise and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. I do lots of volunteering across the week so if I do reach the stage of being stable enough to work...I have lots of uptodate practical examples to give on an application.

Who gets to make that assessment though, no one knows everything about someone else. You may not see any obvious trauma but it can still be there, I’ve seen the most apparently innocent situations trigger an extreme trauma response in someone. To the outside it looked like an extreme response to nothing but in the context of that persons experience it had a whole different meaning and impact.

Accessing decent trauma therapy is no easy thing, and even then something can catch you completely off guard. Instead of judging others, I’d be thankful life hadn’t dealt me such a hand.

The Economist had an article on how the obsession with mental health has taken resources away from those who genuinely need it and lead to the pathologising of ordinary sadness, ennui, boredom.

I wish I could find it. Made some good points.

YANBU. Unfortunately, normal life experiences and people's emotional responses to these have become hyper-medicalised. I have seen people receive a diagnosis of depression for example, and throw their hands up saying 'well, that's that, I won't/can't ever get better, there's nothing I can do about this, this is permanent, I will apply for benefits based on it' lol. Same with other mental health problems. For all of the talk of normalising and destigmatising, it has become taboo to point out that many mental health problems have evidence-based treatments and people can recover from them.

I think most people have been through a traumatic incident, many people multiple, many people multiple traumas just in childhood alone. Completing the ACE questionnaire https://www.acesaware.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ACE-Questionnaire-for-Adults-Identified-English-rev.7.26.22.pdf is quite enlightening.

For some people there's a safety net and so they can sink. Others, there isn't, and they have no choice but to swim. Personally I'm glad that I had no safety net and had to swim, as it taught me early on that nobody is going to come and save you and live and progress for you, it's only you that can do that.

It's important to highlight too that trauma is different to PTSD. Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, crime, or natural disaster. It's the emotions you experience after a distressing event. Trauma can be everyday things like a bereavement or finding out about infidelity or losing your job, everyone reacts to things differently. PTSD on the other hand is a disorder that can develop after a traumatic event, and is very treatable. Trauma is a normal, run of the mill life experience for all humans, unless you're incredibly lucky and sheltered and cosseted.

@ThatRealPinkTraybake have you posted this because of social media ads saying that "procrastination is a trauma response" and stuff like that?

And then what? When the compulsive thoughts go round and round in your head, until they are driving you insane. Nothing family, friends, GPs, therapists say, can make the compulsive thoughts stop. People say distract yourself, so you sit down to watch a film and within 10 minutes, the compulsive thoughts are obliterating everything else, you try to think about? The constant reliving of the emotions when the trauma happened.

It wouldn’t be complex post traumatic stress disorder if mere words from people, who mainly don’t know what they are doing, could make it go away. The clue is in the name of”complex”!

Why is it, people recognise a serious physical condition, like cancer needs treatment from experts; but all it takes is some effort and advice from any Tom, Dick or Harry to get over a serious mental health condition? Waiting lists round here for things like trauma focused CBT can be 2 - 3 years apparently?

It's a huge privilege to have enough self-awareness and to be introspective enough to reflect on your own trauma, internal world, the way you relate to others, and enact change. It's a bit different if you've experienced something traumatic as an adult (e.g. a car crash).

It's not comparable to the impact on your psyche that significant childhood trauma has. Many people just don't have to psychological resources to deal with it alone. And how can they, if they've been abused and neglected by their own care givers? Our early years form our ability to deal with change, form relationships, affect our self-esteem, and so on. Some people get 'stuck' in their trauma, because they've spent an entire childhood flooded with stress hormones and hypervigilance. They need support and compassion to change. It would be like telling a diabetic to just try harder and produce more insulin.

And yes, some people are avoidant, but that's literally a psychological defence, that some people need support to overcome. Unconsciously, it won't feel safe for everyone to do hard work, make change, and address trauma. You need to feel psychologically safe to make any kind of change.

I'm a mental health nurse with older adults. I get people aged 80 who are still suffering with their mental health due to traumas that happened years ago. It's not something that goes away. You just live with it somehow. I've also had private therapy for years for my own childhood trauma, and it took a good couple of years of building trust and relational safety with my therapist before I could even begin to do the actual 'hard work'.

Also, and I say this working in them, mental health services are difficult to access and are not equipped to deal with significant trauma, which can take years.

I have a diagnosis of PTSD and also ASD. My trauma severely affects me and I have FND due to it. There’s no lack of effort or laziness I’m debilitated and it’s beyond my control

I’ve been diagnosed with 2 cancers. One S4 and the other, growing fast. Yep, I’m stuck. Off work due to chemo, no idea if treatment will work, no idea if I can return to work, can’t look for a different job ( due to ongoing treatment)

Definitely stuck right now.
Call it want you want, it’s fucking shite!