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

[HealthyHomesMatter]

So many “personality traits” are just trauma responses.

i know someone who has suffered some pretty awful things in her life but by god she is the most positive/ cheery person you have ever met. She was just born with a glass half full mentality. Is that privilege? Dunno really- just the way she was made but i’m sure I could describe it as a privilege as privilege implies some advantage over other groups but technically anyone can have a positive attitude.

Yeah - I actually commented again down thread on this point, but I think I probably just mean I feel fortunate to be positive.

I think understanding human development and acknowledging privilege is always helpful but it should never absolve anyone of accountability for their behaviour. What it can help with is helping to level the playing field and support people to meet their full potential. In an ideal world…

Agreed. Also still having both parents alive and supportive during adulthood is a massive privilege not afforded to all.

Or she has learned to mask and put on a brace face.

Reality is that we all have ups and downs. No one is happy and cheerful all the time.

I was going to make a thread on something similar.
Why is it socially acceptable to rant and hate on someone for being “stupid” when low iq is an inherent trait that they cannot help and actually basically a learning disability. But it’s (rightfully of course) unacceptable to mock someone with dyslexia for example

No honestly she just is positive. Of course she gets upset and down sometimes like we all do but she’s just a naturally positive person. I’m generally glass half full as well (which is why we get on!) . The point I was making is that we all can choose whether we look on the positive or negative side of life whether or not we have a happy or a negative childhood. Some people are naturally negative whether they actually have anything to be negative about in the grand scheme of things. Some people are just born miserable. Your outlook can’t really be described as a privilege

Should we assume being in the majority is a "privilege"?

Brought up by living parents/parent? Privileged.
Encouraged to learn and do well? Privileged
Shown love, nurture and support? Privileged

No. If you were lacking there, that's a lack of privilege.

But what does an even playing field look like? There are so many potential sources of privilege and each person has their own unique mix of these things that it becomes impossible to correct every perceived advantage or disadvantage.

Take Prince William for example. In some ways he is hugely privileged and in others I would suggest that he has an awful lot to deal with and undoubtedly suffered some trauma as a result. How do you equal the playing field for him versus someone that's grown up out of the limelight, has both parents alive and a wife that hasn't had cancer but is dirt poor? You can't bring back Prince William's mum or erase his wife's cancer

As I outlined upthread, even if you look at trauma alone it is incredibly complex. It's not just what happened to you but your ability to deal with the traumatic event will shape the impact that it actually has on you. Two people could go through an identical event and one could suffer immense trauma that has lifelong implications whilst the other person can process the event and actually grow from the experience. Is the privilege around not suffering traumatic events or having more resilience? What if the resilience came as a result of a lot of inner work. It's hardly a privilege if it is hard won.

Basically an obsession with acknowledging privilege is unhealthy and unproductive in lots of cases. Life is unfair, we all know that. We need to work on the biggest inequalities but breaking everything down into privileges is just reductive and ultimately only really works to feed into people's victim narratives and sense of helplessness.

Acknowledging doesn't equate to absolving people of responsibility though, does it?

Having a better understanding of yourself can do wonders to bring peace of mind and not beat yourself with a stick. But it doesn't mean you just roll over and give up on life, or be bitter and angry..

We will have to mass produce babies in a sterile facility where they are all treated exactly the same and handed to robots to raise them and educate them all exactly the same. To comply with equity and equality and what else.
People are people. And enough of all this level playing field.
Life is not a leveled anything. So get learning to play in it.

They're privileged because they were able to generate their own privilege. The ultimate privilege surely 😂

I absolutely agree and I actually felt this as an adolescent. Some of my peers were really resentful of me as both my parents worked - I was lower middle class and went to a state school in a deprived area. I was a mess emotionally but they could only see class privilege. I was class/materially privileged but lacked the privilege of a secure and loving family (and still do).

Trauma can be motivating though, like anger. My Dad got PTSD from the military. Went on to be really successful as more driven than most people

Jesust Christ. The amount of people who miss (or maybe avoid) the point and just want to be combative is just ridiculous.

Acknowledgement does not have to equate to excuses being made.

The point is... Get on with life!!!!
That way lays privilege.

I'm reading a book about resilience at the moment. Recommended to me by a psychologist so not some influencer waffle.

In a nutshell, it says that it's not the trauma or lack of which sets resilient people apart from those who are not, but rather how adaptible they are and how they learn and grow from adversity.

Being 'well-adjusted' isn't a privilege. The language of privilege is really misplaced here. Privilege is a right or set of rights that has been granted to some people and not others (by an institution, a nation, a powerful person or class, or in some cases by society).

It suggests social injustice, and puts the alleged privilege-bearer on the defensive, feeling the need to give way in relation to their own interests in order to compensate for the alleged moral wrong of their advantaged position.

None of this is remotely fair or accurate in relation to being 'well-adjusted'. You could call the good adjustment 'lucky' if you want, but even that is unfair, since 'well adjusted' isn't just about the absence of trauma, it is also about whatever intrinsic personal attributes helped to shape that person's response to the life events they have been through. These may include a whole range of good, bad and neutral characteristics, including, say, a willingness to keep on plugging away in the face of adversity, or just a rather unquestioning, low ambition approach to life.
Are each of these characteristics to be regarded as privilege? In that case every single one of us has a cluster of 'privileges' - personal characteristics which may help us in certain situations. It's completely absurd. None of us has free will, we are all shaped by a huge multitude of internal and external factors, many of which will help us in specific contexts and hinder us in others.

I'm so sick of this endless, endless desire on the part of so many people to find ways of creating a special victim identity for themselves, and in the process creating a myriad of 'privileged' people whose job it is to 'make allowances' and find ways to signal their allyship.

It’s obviously hugely complex, the risk/resilience arena. Two siblings growing up in the sane household will have different risk/resilience profiles because their experience is unique. One example is the sometimes protective factor of an older sibling.

Women are now (a bit) more able to access the same opportunities as men. Because we recognised the impact of the patriarchy and (white) male privilege. We raised awareness and changed systems. Still work to do but progress has been made.

Extra support for those without the same privilege as others makes sense if we want meritocracy. If we want as many people as possible to reach their potential. Prisons are full of people with varying degrees of developmental trauma. 90 % or so if I remember correctly.

That doesn’t dissolve adults of their responsibility and accountability or mean that behaviours should go without consequences. But the more we understand, the better able we are to shape a society that works for more people rather than just the privileged.

In terms of development traumas: My focus would be on peri-natal psychological support and much more resource going to families with children under three - really quality interventions that support parents with providing attuned parenting for their children despite their own traumas. Better access to high quality psychological interventions for adults. Better access to high quality psychological interventions in schools. More resource for Social Services to do more proactive and preventative work.

We spend way too much at end of a human beings life but really if we switched that the other way, we’d be far better off and we wouldn’t need so much later on. So much harm is done in the early years. I say this as someone heading towards later life at a rapid pace too. But that is what the research suggests.

Growth from trauma is absolutely possible and happens often. But for some it’s much harder than others due to a very complex picture of risk and resilience factors.

For example a baby born to parents who have unresolved childhood trauma, use drugs to self medicate, where there is horrific domestic violence, who isn’t fed well, not taken to the dentist, isn’t able to fully engage in education and spends the majority of their childhood in fight/flight/freeze has got a HUGE job ahead of them as an adult to even get the basics sorted. That person simply can’t be expected to function in the same way as someone with half their developmental trauma without a huge amount of input.

Without input, it’s highly likely the trauma will continue down through each generation.

All that child did, was be born into that family. Their brain and physiology literally wired to survive within that system

I wouldn’t use that phrase, but I definitely think secure attachment is a privilege. Insecure attachment is difficult to even understand if you have secure attachment imo

What about innate skills and personality though? Could they affect how well someone copes with trauma?

Oh look….yet another 3 word username throwing out a one sentence hot take and then leaving the room. Boring.

I often think of a couple I know. One is from a MC family, educated parents and wealthy relatives. Her partner was once an asylum seeker, constantly displaced as child and arrived alone as a young man with nothing. The woman was abandoned by her father and left with an alcoholic and emotional abusive mother. They lived in a nice house that became filthy, there was often no food. Extended family got involved and she went back and forth to an aunt's house, they ensured she was financially secure. She worked very hard to rise above this and fit in with her peer group, gained a qualification and holds down a good job. Her partner has a loving family, parents back home that he talks to all the time, constant love and moral support, 2 brothers in different countries that he visits as often as he can. He is loved in a way she is not. He worked very hard in MW jobs, paid his way through college and now has a good job and social standing. Who is the more privileged? You could debate it forever. Love v security

Very true @IslandAdventure. I couldn't agree more, great post.