To think being well-adjusted is a privilege no one acknowledges enough?

I agree to a certain extent. A happy secure childhood with parents and extend family who care and engage with you is certainly preferable to a childhood in poverty and violence at home.

However, there are plenty of successful happy adults who have had a
less than an ideal start and vice versa. There
seems to be a link to the individual’s resilience and positive reaction to challenges more than anything. If they can gain a sense of control rather than being a victim to what they can’t control, they often turn out rather well.

Sadly, all too true.

I don't see support and personal responsibility as opposites. In fact, I think both are necessary. A person isn't responsible for the trauma that happened to them, but where they have the capacity to do so, they are ultimately the only person who can engage with the support, attend the therapy, challenge the behaviours and do the work of healing.

Out of interest, what support do you think is offered to those people? For most, it’ll be 6 sessions of CBT. It doesn’t touch the sides. Nobody is recovering on the NHS.

For context, I needed four years of weekly therapy sessions which comprised of numerous therapeutic disciplines to overcome my complex trauma. That would cost around £25,000 today. Most people with high ACE scores aren’t sitting on piles of cash. They’re more likely to be addicts, prisoners, sex workers or dead.

I don't see support and personal responsibility as opposites. In fact, I think both are necessary. A person isn't responsible for the trauma that happened to them, but where they have the capacity to do so, they are ultimately the only person who can engage with the support, attend the therapy, challenge the behaviours and do the work of healing.

Acknowledging someone's agency isn't the same as pretending recovery is easy. In fact, I think the opposite can be disempowering. If we focus entirely on what trauma has done to people and not on their capacity for growth and change, we risk leaving them feeling powerless.

To me, the most compassionate position is to recognise both realities: trauma can have profound, lifelong effects, and people can still possess agency, resilience and the potential for change. I have worked with addicts and actually, taking responsibility was a far more successful approach and yielded better recovery rates than adopting a "I am helpless against my addiction approach". I have witnessed that first hand

😂 I don’t want anything from them. It’s about acknowledging privilege, not about doing anything.

@Fivebyfive2 Also, how do you identify these well-adjusted people? People can have all sorts of problems that we're completely unaware of. One of my closest friends, for example, appears so well-balanced, she's very successful and sociable, people are naturally drawn to her. Her closest friends know what she's dealing with, but I don't think that anyone else does.

But what exactly do you want from these "well adjusted" people? For them to apologise? Feel guilty? And how would you rank it all anyway?

Agree @BruFord . I am focusing on trauma, not disadvantage though.

@lilyofthevaIIey whilst I agree as adults we should all be responsible for our own behaviour and action, I think that dealing with trauma injuries can be extremely difficult. Most children brought up in households where there was repeated trauma (for example violence), end up with CPTSD, which manifests itself in a variety of mental health issues. Some of those issues are incredibly difficult to address, just by "taking responsibility". For example, most addicts come from homes where there was trauma of one kind or another. Anyone who has battled an addiction will know how incredibly difficult it is to "take responsibility" for it and cease being an addict. That's why generational family dysfunctionality is such an issue. Without proper support and intervention, it takes generations to to get away from abusive behaviours in adults that become trauma responses in children that in turn become abusive behaviours in adults. I think we need to do more as societies than just hope that individuals taking responsibility as adults can undo the harms of the past.

The definition of trauma is wider than that. Interpersonal trauma and developmental trauma absolutely can create physiological disturbance and lead to complex PTSD.

@MargoLivebetter I agree that this type of trauma is extremely difficult to overcome and move past.

But sometimes there's a tendency to equate disadvantage with real trauma - being brought up by a single parent with limited money isn't trauma, for example. It's a disadvantage, but it's not trauma. Even living through bombings like my Mum did (she could remember nights in air raid shelters as a small child and their home was destroyed one night) obviously can't be equated with severe trauma such as being violently assaulted.

If we let disadvantages define us, it can be very limiting and make us unhappy.

From a therapeutic perspective, you are absolutely not responsible for your trauma or things that have happened to you, but you are responsible for your healing. You have to be - there is noone else who can deal with it or process it on your behalf.

For example, if your parent was violent to you growing up, it doesnt mean you can then be violent with your own children- you are responsible for ensuring the cycle doesnt repeat itself and harm another generation.

@Formerdarkhorse but how can an individual take responsibility for rape, war, a car accident, etc? The point about true trauma is that it was outside of the individual's control. It is not something for which they are responsible.

Hard agree- it takes a great deal of self awareness to recognise personality traits vs ‘trauma’ responses (I put trauma in quotes as it may necessarily be something absolutely terrible) and to be equipped to take responsibility for it and make the most of life.

This post really resonates with me.

This is me, desperately trying to break that generational trauma while dealing with my own trauma because I am still finding the right tools to protect myself.

I guess it’s similar to the way in which we in the west have access to food. We don’t consider it a privilege, we take it for granted and see it as a basic human right. Whereas a person with chronic hunger would look at us with our three meals a day, being able to pick and choose what we eat, and think that we were highly privileged.

I think we are all guilty of taking things for granted.

Your mum sounds fantastic, but it’s also true that people can be affected to greater or lesser extents (ie more or less symptoms, pain, disability etc) even within the same diagnosis.

I completely agree that there are tragic cases where trauma has such a profound impact that recovery is limited or even impossible. What happened to your DM is horrific and utterly heartbreaking, and I wouldn't suggest for a second that someone in her position can simply choose a different mindset.

I think we're talking about two slightly different things, though. Your DM sounds like an extreme example of trauma causing severe, lifelong psychiatric illness. In those circumstances, the trauma and its consequences may indeed dominate a person's life.

My point was more about the general discussion around trauma and identity. For many people, trauma explains some of their behaviours and struggles, but it doesn't mean they are nothing more than their trauma or that healing and growth are impossible.
Acknowledging the impact of trauma and encouraging people not to define themselves entirely by it aren't mutually exclusive ideas.

Even in very severe cases, I think there is value in trying to find the person underneath. In fact, I think defining someone solely by their trauma can be quite depersonalising. Trauma may have profoundly shaped their life, their behaviour and their mental health, but they are still more than the worst things that happened to them.

For example- a woman with severe childhood trauma may be hypervigilant, anxious and distrustful. Those are trauma responses. But she may also be funny, creative, intelligent, compassionate, stubborn, curious, or have a love of animals and her children. If we focus only on the trauma, we risk missing the whole person and to me, thats literally robbing that person of their own sense of self.

To me, there is an important distinction between saying "this person's trauma has had a devastating impact on their life" and saying "this person is their trauma."

Absolutely, and we all need to be able to call this trauma and respect the serious impact it has and ignore Sandra who’s taking a break from work because she’s ‘traumatised’ from being fired from her job when she goes into work and basically begs them to fire her all day long by refusing to do half the job. Not a made up story.

I knew a friends mum with the same physical handicap as my mum. They all had to treat her carefully, always be considerate, do things for her, never spill things. My mum on the other hand was an extraordinarily capable superwoman and it felt like nothing was too hard for her, it was like chalk and cheese and this woman felt like a huge victim compared to my mum who was nobody’s victim ever. We aren’t just our background and our physical conditions.

I expect all the YABU are people who are "well adjusted" because they have processed trauma, which takes responsibility, time and hard work (and usually therapy).

YABU.

I agree with this. Definitely. IMO 'trauma' and 'traumatic' is being used too freely. The word has lost some meaning tbh.

How very sad,
She did nothing to deserve it. Yes, I'm happy to agree that people who have never had such things happen to them, or threatened that they might, are privileged!

@lilyofthevaIIey I don’t disagree in many cases, but unfortunately there are people whose trauma has had such a severe impact that they can never recover. They are their trauma.

My DM was repeatedly raped by her father throughout her childhood and her own DM abandoned her. She developed such severe mental health problems that she has spent half her life in psychiatric units. She’s in her 70s now, and she will never recover. She’s too broken. Her psychosis and her identity are a direct result of her trauma. She is a victim, and it’s incredibly sad. No health professional has ever come close to being able to heal her. She cannot choose to change her mindset because she isn’t in control of her mind.

Well, the "privilege" in this case would be having supportive parents and a stable home environment, which yes is a form of privlege.

@SixtySomething if it helps, trauma is defined as a very distressing event(s) outside of someone's control. It includes sexual or physical abuse or assaults, terrorist attacks, war, natural disasters, traffic collisions, serious accidents, fires, kidnap, death of a close friend or family member (especially if sudden and unexpected), and painful or frightening medical procedures.

The 'outside of a person's control' is particularly significant, as for most children most events in their life are outside of their control. Therefore children who are exposed to repeated distressing events are very likely to develop a range of mental health problems.

I go back to my point that healthy, well-adjusted people with a good support network can experience one traumatic event and cope well and not go on to develop PTSD or mental health issues. The less well-adjusted and well-supported someone is the more likely they will have difficulty processing their experience or experiences and the more likely it is to cause them ongoing trauma responses. Clearly children in abusive households where there is most likely no support or safe "good enough" parent, and they are repeatedly exposed to violence, abusive behaviours etc are very unlikely to emerge unscathed.