To think that words like trauma/ disfunction are over used?

[rockingribena]

Firstly I will say that I know trauma is not something you can compare I truly know that and agree with it.

But I can't help but think that because people use those words so frequently that when people (me) experience extreme trauma it seems less?

I am now in my 30s so this has been around a long time. But I remember really, really trying to get help in my teens and being told, oh all families have their issues. Everyone 'goes through things' - I will point out I didn't go to a school teacher, a club did ask once. I tried to approach some family members.

Some of the things I went through I really did not know were wrong. Well I thought they weren't great but thought ya I guess everyone has life stuff, some things I knew were just awful, but a lot of the things now I look back and think wow who treats a child like that! I also still blame myself for a lot of things that happened to me.

I was recently in with the GP, who is a very good one. I am exhausted, beyond tired. Physically I am fine. She said she thinks it could be mental fatigue. She said 'you could be a case study on childhood trauma, abuse and neglect'

The thing is on the outside I looked 'normal' I went to school, I was clean, I was a bubbly 'happy' outgoing person. I did well in school and at uni but I truly know I could have done a lot better if I had been supported. I have seen seeing a psychologist for a few months now she said I have ADHD but she can't diagnose it officially. She also said I have C-PTSD

Slightly mixed feelings as it's about how one reacts to an event and the intensity of the reaction can vary wildly, not necessarily relates to how bad the event appears to be. Also it's not a competition. Lastly, a small event can hit a very protected person harder than a 'worse' event hits a less protected, more resilient person.

All that said, I know what you mean and mostly agree. There was a time when a young person mentioned something similar to being traumatised by seeing a dead hedgehog and I found it rather hard not to say 'get a damn grip'.

People love a bit of therapy speech. It's like a magic armour that you aren't allowed to argue against.

I was scrolling through DS's school Facebook page earlier today. They have tweaked the break times by a few minutes. Every other comment from parents was about how it will be devastating for the kids mental health.

I'm sometimes alarmed at how many women on MN seem to have had 'traumatic births'. I mean, birth isn't a walk in the park on a normal day, and many women need a bit of intervention to help baby out. The 'trauma' is rarely elaborated on, so I wonder whether things are just crap these days in maternity care.

There is a medical definition of trauma - I can’t remember off the top of my head what it is but it’s something like experiencing near death or death of a loved one in sudden and horrific circumstances. IIRC, the definition does include extreme sexual violence also.

I agree, people use the word trauma too readily when what they really experienced was distress.

To answer your question and as someone who had a very traumatic birth. Yes, things are crap on many maternity wards. Services are extremely overstretched with many staff suffering burnout. Research has shown that the way one is treated during birth is a large predictive factor in birth trauma. Unfortunately, from what I have experienced and seen, women are often treated in a dehumanising way. Look into the work MP Theo Clarke is doing around traumatic birth and her own birth story. Not to take anything away from the many compassionate and caring maternity staff that also exist. Add this to other factors such as major medical events such as haemorrhages, issues with baby, crash c sections etc., the invasiveness of the birthing process in general, survivors of sexual violence and previous medical trauma having to undergo procedures reminiscent of their trauma (to name but a few), it really isn’t surprising that roughly 45% of women report experiencing childbirth as traumatic.

I agree the terms can be overused, but trauma is all about the response to the event not the event itself. Lots of people can appear bubbly and confident, but experienced emotional neglect or other forms of childhood abuse. The level of functioning doesn’t negate severity.

I don’t think your GP should have said that to you though.

The most recent ONS estimate for the UK population is that about 20% experienced childhood abuse.

that does not include adult trauma which will push the figures up substantially - a surprisingly high number of people have been personally subjected to some kind of assault sexual or otherwise.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/childabuseinenglandandwales/march2020#what-do-we-know-about-the-prevalence-of-child-abuse-

For a lot of women, its the loss of control in the birth and helping a baby out generally means the baby is in difficulty, that is very alarming during any birth especially when its hard to even see what's going on. Unfortunately my babies died , stillbirth and neonatal death within 4 days of each other [twins] it's a trauma I'll never recover from. I never question though any woman who says their birth was traumatic, the majority of women I've spoken to are usually gushing about their babies, so if someone says they are triggered by a birth, I tend to believe them. It's never given me any joy describing what happened to me and my twin boys.

Quite often the care is just fine but the circumstances are not. Babies get ill or the mother after or before a perfect birth even when the birth was fine. Birth trauma has lots of variables

PTSD is another word so over-used it’s offensive to those who actually have it.

Sometimes the problem is not having the right language and reaching for the nearest thing.

I have this childhood memory of accidentally squeezing a frube all over my face, it wasn't a traumatic incident and I still enjoy eating yogurt but its a really intense memory. I'm not sure how to describe it so as a shorthand I might say that I had a traumatic frube incident as a child.

that's something of a joke mind you @WhatNoRaisins and people'd take it that way!

Actually I think that childbirth can be traumatic. Women's experiences vary hugely but for some it's profound unrelenting pain, unimaginable beforehand. It's still not 100% safe and you so utterly desperately want that little baby to be 1) safe and 2) born. If anything goes wrong, you are completely dependent on others at that point. People can be washing in and out of the room, staff changes, things potentially going wrong. And the pain, that you just can't do anything about. If you are lucky enough to have an easy and safe birth, no trauma. If you don't, it's very understandable that trauma can occur.

So everyone else’s trauma is not actually trauma or just superficial stuff, except for yours? How does that work?

Not quite.

Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as harmful or life threatening. While unique to the individual, generally the experience of trauma can cause lasting adverse effects, limiting the ability to function and achieve mental, physical, social, emotional or spiritual well-being. From the gov website.

Trauma refers to an overwhelmingly distressing, negative or intense event that overwhelms a person’s capacity to cope. NHS

That's not what she said.

I have genuine trauma from serious childhood sexual abuse. I've seen people on here (very seriously) describe having trauma from a bad dream, from having a MIL they don't like and from being fired. I've seen people throw the word around over the most minor things, not just here, everywhere.

I had to have a gynae op a few years ago and was terrified, and because I now feel like noone takes the word trauma seriously, I had to instead go into details of what happened to me as a child in order to convey how serious it was in the hope they'd understand how scared I was.

The problem is trauma is both a specific term used by doctors in the context you described and a word that is used colloquially to describe something a bit upsetting. And a whole range of things in between. There is also a grey area where people will use the word trauma to elicit sympathy for something upsetting, but which isn't actually something they have actual trauma from. So it gets very muddy.

Maybe it shouldn't be used colloquially but I don't know how you could stop it and I think it's due to how the word originated. I think it's different to someone saying "I have PTSD from that" when they don't - in the same way people say "I have totally got OCD" when they don't. Both of those are trivialising actual medical terms and it's annoying. But I think the word trauma/traumatised on its own just has different meanings. Same as someone saying "I am starving". Starvation is a serious horrible issue, but out of context it doesn't mean the speaker is downplaying famine.

The issue is, sometimes people find “small” things (don’t know the specific threads you mean) traumatic BECAUSE they come on top of previous trauma. Not just that, but a lot of people also describe smaller events /instances because they’re not ready to share the big stuff . Or they use (sometimes dark) humour as a coping mechanism and it’s all oh so funny. You just don’t know, especially on here.

Abuse can cause trauma, so can workplace bullying, so can infidelity. It’s not the trauma olympics. Everyone’s feelings are valid. It is not the event itself that is considered the trauma, but rather the reaction to the event. It doesn’t need to be life threatening, it needs to threaten your sense of self - this is what trauma does, it changes you.

Of course there are recognised differences between adverse experiences, single incident trauma / PTSD and repeat trauma / complex PTSD.

No things like dreams do not result in trauma. Not every bad or upsetting experience can be labelled as trauma.

People do indeed experience trauma differently, that I agree with, but that tends to be more along the lines of one person being traumatised by being raped for example and another not. I was raped at 15, wasn't traumatised at all, and i do put that down to having been through worse.

Having said all this though, whilst I agree with you OP, we can't change or control how others use language, so instead we just have to find a way to accept it.

Yes definitely. I also get very frustrated at the use of 'triggers / triggering'. I experience this occasionally due to witnessing severe violence against my mother regularly in childhood, but I feel like I can't talk about it at all because the whole concept has become a joke due to appropriation by over-privileged twentysomethings who have naff all experience of genuine trauma.

And don't get me started on the 'trigger warning' phenomenon. No, they don't help. Yes, they need to get in the bin. Yes, I judge the intelligence of people who use them. Yes, they are patronising.

Well when I had very vivid dreams about (one of ) my sexual assault, it was literally like relieving it. It was a very vivid dream, smells, sounds, words , feelings, touch every single thing. So much so that I wake up and don’t know when or where I am . Not only does it take ages to figure out it’s not real and get those feelings to go away and it hasn’t just happened but my stupid brain keeps replaying it over and over again despite being awake. The thing is… it IS just a bad dream. My experience of it isn’t though.

But everyone's feelings AREN'T valid are they? We all know people IRL who can't self-regulate emotionally, have no sense of perspective, suffer from oviously irrational anxiety issues or over-dramatise absolutely everything. I'm aware that my perception of certain things has been distorted by some awful childhood experiences, and this gives rise to feelings that are wildly irrational at times. I've had to learn to identify and manage those, because that's what adults do?

I'm sorry that you are struggling and I'm glad that your GP is helping you. Sending you lots of love!

Those feelings are still valid. That doesn’t mean people can’t learn skills to better regulate their emotions, gain insight, problem solve, etc.

Also no, that’s not what ‘adults do’. There are plenty of people out there who are emotionally dysregulated, engaging in self defeating and self harming behaviours, endlessly frustrate themselves and those around them likely because of their experiences of trauma and invalidation. It is incredibly hard to re-learn ways of feeling, thinking and relating. Often people can be stuck in a perpetual vicious cycle state of crisis.

It’s brilliant you learnt ways of managing but it isn’t easy, or even possible for a lot of people without professional help. And considering how hard it is to see a therapist/psychologist within the NHS, it’s no wonder things are as they are.

But WHY are they like that?