AIBU to think we're all a bit bloody traumatised?

[FarmerXmas]

Not sure what the solution is, but AIBU to think we've all had a sustained period of uncertainty, difficulty and grief?

Maybe considering where we go from here, politics wise, society wise, education wise etc, if people just think that to themselves first, quietly, it would be a good thing.

Ahh, Brexit. Remember when that was the worst thing that ever happened rather than just a wee shit covered footnote? Man, I miss those days.

Maybe for some folks it's better for them than thinking about the Covid? You know, like, a distraction.

@Lostinacloud

I think we’ve been treated horrifically, especially our children and I hope every day that enough people will soon come together to say - NO MORE! No more restrictions, no more masks, school and business closures, quarantine, testing, vaccine mandates or passports.

Covid has all but turned into a regular cold virus, a vaccine exists to protect those vulnerable to it, end of story. We all know how to live a normal life and how to keep our kids at home if they’re ill or cancel the trip to the in-laws if we have the flu so let us get on with our own lives fgs!

For Fuck sake. Are you living under a tree? The vaccine does nothing to protect those who are most at risk of death from Covid. That's those who have had solid organ transplants and those with certain blood cancers. Hundreds of thousands of people who have been told by their consultants to continue to shield with no government support apart from a letter from the health minister last week telling us to follow our doctors guidance and shield if they tell us we need to. We even have to pay for our own bloody antibody tests because there isn't a budget for them.

Trauma is perhaps a strong term to use. But I don't think a lot of people haven't quite fully grasped the scope the effect Covid has had. I think we will look back and see that this has been a defining moment of a generation. It will be equivalent to a world war regarding the scale of the impact it has had and just how far reaching reaching change on the world has been.

So many people talk about getting back to normal and I don't think there is a normal to go back to IYSWIM. I absolutely refuse to say new normal or challenging times

'... in THESE unprecedented times ...' 😜

Maybe we need a task force of therapists and counsellors to get us back on our feet rather than armies driving round with petrol tankers?

Maybe we need to pull ourselves together and just get on with it like people always used to. We’ve had a really shit 18 months, it’s been much worse for some than others but it hasn’t been great for anyone. Nothing will be achieved by feeling sorry for ourselves. Shit happens and we just have to deal with it.

I would not say we have all been traumatised at all.

Many of us have been inconvenienced

Some of us have been upset

A very few have been traumatised.

Please don't minimise trauma, it doesn't help anyone

YABU.

For people who have been through actual trauma, the last few months have been nothing.

Queuing for food or fuel hasnt caused trauma.
My kids have been off school. They will get over it. I've tried my best with homeschooling it's all anyone can do.

I wouldn't call myself traumatised. I've been through a lot worse.

The glimpse from the boris interview I saw was boris saying we have enough food fuel and supplies to last until Christmas and beyond as long as everyone is sensible the person interviewing him turned around and said so your saying after Christmas we will have problems? literally not what he waffled and more ways to scaremonger people

I'm politically homeless and the last person to defend him usually but I was like WTF? he cannot win

I do feel traumatised by the last few few years, and I don't think it is reasonable for anyone else to tell me that I don't feel that way. The months of uncertainty, the fear of what might happen, and the loss of previous ways of living are all having an impact. In some ways, now that the imminent 'threat' of the pandemic has receded (I mean the fear that we will all surely die and that the NHS will implode imminently), the effects are coming out more and more as I have space to reflect.

I think people using terms like "actual trauma" or "real trauma" are being incredibly unfrair.
Trauma is something different people live auffer in different events. Some people end up with effects of it, some won't. Everyone deals with things differently. But there will have been lots of people going through a trauma in last few years.
Just not your trauma.

This shouldn't be a competition about "i had real trauma this is nothing"...

Last time I was traumatised was when my dad died 6 years ago, so if someone is going through the same or to do with serious illness, they gave my utmost sympathy.

Personally this has been a time of uncertainty and difficulty but it hasn't been traumatic. Same for my family and most, if not all, of my friends. Inconvenient and frustrating but not traumatic. So although I'm sure there will be many who have suffered trauma, I think its wrong to say everyone or even the majority have.

@AudTheDeepMinded yes exactly! For me there was an element of 'just get the fuck on with it' but now things aren't so bad I've got stuff coming at me through the old memory banks.

Eg this morning I was doing my morning yoga and looking out the window at the sun coming up (lovely moment btw) and I all of a sudden remembered a morning deep in pandemic lockdown when I'd woke up and looked out of the same window. My friend had just died. He was only in his fifties and it was really unexpected.

That morning I had to go to work, I was worried about my elderly parents, I was leaving my kids at home (they're teenagers, it's how it went), I thought well Christ if that friend is dead, who's next? He was healthy. Am I going to lose everyone I love? And suddenly a phrase came into my head: 'I lift mine eyes to the hills'. Because it really felt like we were all just battling this terrible thing and maybe the only succour was to pray. Even though I don't pray. But there wasn't anything on the telly that helped me or my friend's mum when she called an ambulance and it didn't come.

I didn't think about it for the longest time, that moment, when I looked out of the window wondering who would die next, but for some reason I did today when I was doing my yoga.

So it's stuff like that, that makes me think we're all a bit skewhiff rn. Or maybe it's just me.

Being an old fart in my mid 50s, and having lived through several recessions, and through the 1970s and 1980s, I have seen/been through worse. So have many others. People have been through wars, recessions, depressions, bankruptcy, home loss, the works.... This is no worse than what many older people have been though.

I'm not traumatised, and think honestly, it is only going to be the young (under 30,) who are going to be badly affected/traumatised.

Not because they're weak or anything, but because they haven't been through the same stuff as us oldies have.

I have been thinking that a huge percentage of society must have suffered a bereavment over the last 1.5 years, (me included) and that has to have had an effect of us as a society. It was also pretty scary to be told to stay at home and that getting too close to someone could kill you! I feel (probably cynically) that this fear has been used against us somehow to blame our neighbours for everything and not the government! 'Covidiots' for instance and the current petrol crises which most of society seems to blame on the media or their neighbours for a supply chain issue. It seems so crappy. I wish we could use this collective covid experience to all pull together a bit more.

@Wazzzzzzzup

I think people using terms like "actual trauma" or "real trauma" are being incredibly unfrair. Trauma is something different people live auffer in different events. Some people end up with effects of it, some won't. Everyone deals with things differently. But there will have been lots of people going through a trauma in last few years. Just not your trauma.

This shouldn't be a competition about "i had real trauma this is nothing"...

But calling being made to stay home, or home schooling, or infection control innately traumatic is actually quite insulting.

None of those things that have happened to most people are remotely traumatic.

You may have been upset, annoyed, angry, inconvenienced, but unless something traumatic has happened to you, or you have had a major mental health breakdown, you have not been "traumatised" - and if you are traumatised by a mental health episode, that is not directly related to the pandemic, that is your own personal mental health.

AS a sufferer of PTSD, I do get a bit sick of people using the word "trauma" when it isn't justified.

Trauma usually involves direct experience of violence or death coupled with reasonable fear of your own imminent violent death, or that of someone close to you.

Not homeschooling and queuing for petrol

YANBU. The last 18 months have been a brain’s worst nightmare: a perceived (if not real) and sustained existential threat, and loss of control. These are the conditions that can be the seeds for conditions such as PTSD - no matter what people say, it’s not something that’s limited to those who’ve been in war zones. I would say that Covid has not been dissimilar to a war in the toll it’s taken in terms of extreme uncertainty and fear.

I think this has been one of the driving forces behind the petrol/diesel crisis, and how we are feeling generally in the re-entry to normal life. Our brains have been scared and anxious for so long we - as a society and on an individual level for some - don’t know how not to be scared/anxious any more and it doesn’t take much now to send us into a panic again. We’ve been told that things were going to be bad and they WERE bad. Now we’re hardwired to see anything bad as an automatic threat. This won’t last for most people, but it’s why - if you ask me - we all feel so fucking frazzled at the moment.

Add in the crap news - politics, Brexit effects, Afghanistan, shortages - and frankly it’s just a miracle we’re not all rocking in a corner!

Think about the miracle that is people who are clever working tirelessly to create a vaccine. As I sit here double-jabbed there is a lot to be thankful for.

@GloomAndDoom

According to the front page headlines, he's here to save Christmas AGAIN. he should probably stop.

As soon as I heard that I thought we might as well write Christmas off. He did such a brilliant job last time. I wish he'd just shut up.

Every single bloody thing is just that bit harder than it should be.
Petrol thing is stupid
People gluing themselves to the m25 is stupid
Getting nhs letters saying their waiting list is "in the multiple of years" is stupid
Expecting children who have missed 26 weeks of school in 18 months to just magically catch up is stupid

@MyPatronusIsACat

Being an old fart in my mid 50s, and having lived through several recessions, and through the 1970s and 1980s, I have seen/been through worse. So have many others. People have been through wars, recessions, depressions, bankruptcy, home loss, the works.... This is no worse than what many older people have been though.

I'm not traumatised, and think honestly, it is only going to be the young (under 30,) who are going to be badly affected/traumatised.

Not because they're weak or anything, but because they haven't been through the same stuff as us oldies have.

I'm nearly 70, maybe my memory is going but I don't remember the 70s and 80s being as bloody miserable and depressing as now.

@Hdhdjejdj

Think about the miracle that is people who are clever working tirelessly to create a vaccine. As I sit here double-jabbed there is a lot to be thankful for.

Even that got stressful though, which jab did you have, is yours as good as the other one, what are the side effects. I can never remember anyone having the slightest interest in who made a vaccine before covid. Now everyone seems to have a favourite.

But calling being made to stay home, or home schooling, or infection control innately traumatic is actually quite insulting. None of those things that have happened to most people are remotely traumatic.

The trauma a brain will have interpreted is nothing to do with homeschooling, petrol queues or staying at home, that’s disingenuous twaddle. It’s to do with loss of control, fear, and a perceived threat. As someone who has been clinically diagnosed with PTSD, I bloody learned this the hard way. Anyone who thinks they have the right to judge anyone else’s trauma as “not real” or “not justified” really IS insulting and can fuck right off.

And just so you’re aware, genuine trauma can be have absolutely nothing to do with violence.

There were a lot of posters on the 'one thing from the pandemic which will stay with you' that probably are legitimately traumatised, the stories were utterly heartbreaking.

We've been pretty much unscathed as a family but there are things I don't think I'll ever forget

Trauma usually involves direct experience of violence or death coupled with reasonable fear of your own imminent violent death, or that of someone close to you.

Traumatic event doesn't have to be death or violence. It can absolutely be living through a worldwide pandemic and seing the effects of it with own prolonged insecurity, temporary cut off from support and so on. There is the death element aa well anyway. Seeing deathcount all the time, losing friends/family and so on. Many people have absolutely right to say the last nearly 2 years were traumatic.
Pandemic is what I would consider an extreme stressor for many people

@Blossomtoes

Maybe we need a task force of therapists and counsellors to get us back on our feet rather than armies driving round with petrol tankers?

Maybe we need to pull ourselves together and just get on with it like people always used to. We’ve had a really shit 18 months, it’s been much worse for some than others but it hasn’t been great for anyone. Nothing will be achieved by feeling sorry for ourselves. Shit happens and we just have to deal with it.

Yes. This.

Thank God our parents/grandparents/great grandparents were a little more resilient and just got on with things following WW1/WW2.