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

[HealthyHomesMatter]

So many “personality traits” are just trauma responses.

Also, growing up in a supportive family with both parents around is a huge privilege that is never recognised or acknowledged as such.

I voted YABU as this line of thinking ultimately ends up trying to absolve everyone of any kind of personal responsibility. We are all the product of our genetics and our upbringing. Almost all of us will have experienced some trauma and have some ND traits that could lead to undesirable personality traits that adversely impact others. For society to function at all then the vast majority of us need to work on ourselves and manage these traits as much as possible. Of course there will be people too damaged from trauma or with extreme ND traits that won't be able to do this but this has to be the exception. It's not easy and it can feel very unfair that life doesn't deal us all an even hand but this is true with everything. We can't use it as an excuse to behaviour terribly and be burden on others.

I agree.

In that, my dc are very lucky materially and have a clean comfortable home, nutritious and plentiful food, appropriate clothing and plenty of books, toys etc.

However the very luckiest thing for my dc is their stable loving home with 2 present and predictably dependent and supportive parents. They have a wide extended family of interested and invested adults. They live in a community where they are included and participate.

I don't know how your even the playing field for those factors.

I’m 58 . I didn’t have an even playing field due to undiagnosed ND. That ship has sailed and nothing can be done to bring back the years and potential. But no one owes me anything. We have to play the hand we are dealt.

Hard disagree. We're all adults with control over our lives and at some point you have to make a choice and work hard to get better from trauma. My childhood was unbelievably traumatic. I also have ADHD and Bipolar Disorder. What people don't like to admit is that you have a choice, and making trauma your whole personality just makes you stuck in that moment forever. Some people will need professional help to get through this (I did) but I really believe that everyone can heal from trauma, they just need to find the right approach that works for them. What I noticed from being around a lot of "mental health bloggers" 10 years ago was that a lot of people just want to wallow and do not try to get better, and blame everyone and everything else for their problems, as well as resenting/pushing out people actively trying to heal which obviously creates a social group where people are incentivised to stay unwell. I'd imagine that's all on Tiktok etc now. Moving past that takes time and work but it can be done.

I have often thought being positive / generally happy by default is a real privilege.

I don’t think anyone gets to 40 without some kind of trauma but I don’t think ranking trauma and labelling people as privileged is helpful. I am who I am because of my trauma but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I disagree- the point isn’t absolving people of personal responsibility for what they don’t have, it’s recognising the privilege of those who do.

I agree OP. A regulated nervous system is everything. It’s not that many people who grow up that peacefully, but they are privileged

I agree that people with traumatic upbringings aren't operating on a level playing field.

But I'm uncomfortable with this line of argument because it absolves people of responsibility for their own lives. Everyone has some form of disadvantage in their lives. Who gets to decide whether the trauma is significant enough for that person to not be expected to observe the norms of decent human behaviour?

Also disadvantage isn't as straightforward as you suggest. It's possible to be comfortably off with two married parents but have physical limitations or suffer from severe mental health problems. I grew up in a very affluent town, surrounded by wealthy, superficially very privileged people and there was a very high incidence of mental illness and drug taking. At the other end of the scale there are many people who come from incredibly disadvantaged backgrounds who manage to reset their lives through bloody-mindedness. Sometimes being too comfortable can be a setback because people don't get opportunities to develop the resilience they need.

Severe trauma is definitely a handicap and not to be ignored or minimised but where do you draw the line?

Why do we need to draw a line though? Can’t we just accept that it’s nuanced but acknowledge that some people have a more privileged start than others?

Well put, @Thepeopleversuswork. When I compare my parents, for example, my Mum was the well-adjusted person, despite having a far harder upbringing than my Dad. A lot of it came down to taking responsibility and control of her own life tbh, she made the most of her opportunities.

But the privilege is almost impossible to define. Some people that have suffered immense trauma have natural resilience and it doesn't impact them anywhere near as much as objectively milder events could impact someone with a more fragile disposition. So what is the privilege? Experiencing less traumatic events or having the natural disposition or ability to work towards a state where you can deal with or even grow from trauma?

Combine this with the long list of other 'privileges' that could exist and it's clear that virtually nobody is completely privileged and we are all managing a variety of experiences and traits as part of the human condition. It's very hard to definitively state that you are more or less privileged than another person as it's completely subjective and depends on the weighting you give to various aspects that can impact someone's life. For example, it's a privilege to be able to conceive a child naturally as many people can't but if you never wanted children then it's not going to rank massively highly on your list of perceived privileges. Ultimately it can all become a complex and rather pointless exercise as there is often very little we can do to address every perceived privilege or lack of.

Blaming everyone else?
Or feeling the unfairness of a world built by nt people for nt people?

There is already a recognition that having adverse childhood experiences is a disadvantage, with some research linking multiple ACEs higher prevalence of addiction and suicide in adulthood. What other recognition do you think would help? https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html

Well I think everyone acknowledges that: some people will always have more than others. You can't avoid this. And sadly some people will experience trauma in their early childhoods and that will have an effect.

But the OP's contention is that a lot of negative personality traits are caused (and by implication, justified) by them having had a disadvantaged background. I think you do have to draw a line here: otherwise you're stuck in a constant cycle of accepting poor behaviour from people because their trauma is "bigger" than yours. You see this a lot on threads about poor behaviour from husbands/partners: an OP will detail awful behaviour and say "he had a deprived background and is really triggered by x and y" etc. It becomes a bit of a trauma Olympics which ultimately allows people to duck out of accountability.

Also "privilege" is subjective. If you come from an affluent, two-parent household where you didn't want for anything material but your parents hated one another and never spoke are you more "privileged" than someone living with a single parent who was poor but loving?

That may be true, and I think for some people trauma does impact them in ways that are hard to fathom. It can be very hard with early trauma because separating out what’s developmental and what’s behavioural is very difficult when a personality is formed in and through trauma.

In saying that, writing off every difficult personality trait as a trauma response absolves the individual from taking action to address the impact of trauma on them and on others. Trauma recovery is really, really hard work and not everyone has the resources to access appropriate help, the medicalisation of trauma hasn’t helped that any. Being able to access support and work on recovery is another form of privilege.

I consider myself well-adjusted but it has been no privilege. I have trauma from childhood in excess (death of a parent, alcoholic step parent, violence, poverty, housing insecurity, lack of attachment to living parent to name but a few)

I do think that having a parent/parents who have expectations of you, i.e., they don't continually enable you/prop you up is a huge advantage. I can already see this among DD's (21) friends.

So even having supportive parents is a complex privilege, because "too much" support can hold people back IYSWIM. We all have to take responsibility for our own lives at some point.

Everyone has a privilege if you look close enough: white, male, rich, stable home life, good looking, smart, sporty, no SN, charismatic, good family connections, etc etc

Privilege?
You have to be kidding.
What about those who worked hard to overcome their past and are now well adjusted? Is that privilege too?

I find this sort of intense navel-gazing, privilege-ranking a bit absurd tbh. Like people are always looking for an excuse they haven’t achieved xyz. As someone with several ACEs including a hasty teenage migration from a war zone without my parents, I really do not think it is mentally healthy to be ruminating constantly on negative things that happened to you. Focus on what you can control and beautiful things. It is the absolute cancer of Western civ to be obsessing with “mental health” and the unfairness of life.

I don’t think it is that simple. People who are well adjusted in the way you are suggesting are few and far between.

Almost everyone has had some negative shaping in their upbringing that has negatively impacted their personality. The very very hard truth is that for most people the source of the damage comes from what should be the source of their support because parents, extended family members, community members, partners are who generally harm people far more than the random stranger carrying out a random act on you.

The vast majority of people have some negative and damaging experiences at the hands of people who should not do that to them.

Yet so many people in spite of that have to find ways to integrate that stuff and function on in the world.

I might get ripped a new one for this but for me, a stable household with 2 loving parents is the baseline standard of what a child should be brought into the world to. Coming from a wealthy family with connections and extras such as this are the privilege. A loving stable family is a baseline.

Of course it's true that having a stable upbringing is likely to make your life easier, likewise good health, financial security etc etc. We all know this.

I think it's useful to draw a distinction between those qualities which are innately beneficial (good health and a stable family, for example) and those which are only benefits because of the society we live in (for example, being of the majority racial group in a racist society, being straight in a homophobic society, being male in a misogynist society etc). I think privilege is a more useful concept in the latter, because it's easy if you are a member of the privileged group to be (wilfully?) unaware of your own privilege.

(Of course for a lot of things there is a grey area- disability, for example.)

What you are forgetting op is that a person who has thrived in life despite going through trauma has a privilege that only those who have been through the storm can understand. Their recovery, inbuilt resilience, and understanding of themselves is a source of joy and privilege that has been won through hard work and no one can take that away from them.
We are our nervous system. It's ability to heal and respond to our thoughts and moods cannot be underestimated despite what privileges we were born into.