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

[HealthyHomesMatter]

So many “personality traits” are just trauma responses.

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.

@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.

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

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.

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?

@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.

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

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 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.

Sadly, all too true.

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.

Just out of interest, how do these addicts access this treatment?

@lilyofthevaIIey I am not arguing for one moment that someone who has been the subject of a traumatic experience or traumatic childhood should take on a victim mentality and just sit back and think "fuck it, I was abused, I'm a victim and that's my lot in life". How many traumatised people ever start out like that? Very few I would imagine.

However, for many abused children the hardwired, instinctual patterns of behaviour they learned to keep themselves safe, to self-comfort, to survive in the absence of any safe dependable adult can lead to harmful and dysfunctional behaviours in adult life that are incredibly difficult to re-programme. I've never met an addict who loved their life and wished they could remain addicted. All of them want something better for themselves but without years of support and encouragement and surroundings that are conducive to recovery, they fail or relapse. And that's just addiction, there are of course plenty of other damaging behaviours out there that occur as a result of traumatic childhoods.

I went to a series of lectures by one of the Chief Medical Officers in Scotland who spent years researching why the poorest socio-economic groups in Scotland had such shockingly poor life expectancy and it boiled down to generational trauma. With intense intervention, he believed the cycle could be broken in 3 generations. Gabor Mate, a doctor who has spent decades treating addicts, says the same thing.

Sounds like a fascinating series of lectures

This is veru poignant for me right now. Currently seeking ( more emdr) for childhood trauma. Violent mum with severe mh issues.
Mind you i do think she was parented by parents who lived tbrough the war ...grandad was in pow camp in suffered terribly. They were violent to her...i expect through their trauma.
I do love them all and miss them. Mum died. I forgive them.
I am doing ok now ...job, house, car, dh, dd but i am scarred, haunted by a vicious inner critic that tells me im useless and reminds me of my troubled past.( single mum, lots of bad relationships, eating disorders and the rest%) I carry shame with me. Seeking treatment but no matter now succesful i ami will always criticise myself. That is down to trauma.

I truly believe inter generational trauma is very prevalent and destabalising.

YABU. Not everything is about 'privilege. That sounds like yet another excuse for people to take no responsibility for their own lives.

It was quite apparently very similar, without going into details.

YANBU. I realised this mid twenties when I brought a friend home and she was amazed at the relationship I had with my father. She couldn't believe he'd listen to me and have a debate about things. She had a very difficult background. Up to that moment I took it for granted that this was what fathers were like. It really made me think.

I agree.

Love a mn humble brag

This.

Many people are totally unaware of this. They might therefore say you are being unreasonable due to their ignorance of trauma response.

Our teens know having their utterly soft and devoted mum and dad together is better instinctively!

On the odd occasion we have a bicker they tiptoe around offering to make teas to check the marriage is still intact! (As they have got older more of their friends live with separated parents and we think they think it sounds “less good).

It’s one of the few cute things they still do.

Sorry. It wasn't meant to be insufferable.

It is something I ponder a lot. My dc have had it handed to them on a plate. It isn't fair. It seems unreasonable that school is set up to reward and praise those who have it easy.

I genuinely mean it when I say I don't know how you level these things up. The things that give the greatest advantage are v difficult to share out in a way that material stuff can be ie food banks, libraries. You can't even out not being scared or never knowing true fear or pain.

I was not bragging as such. I was agreeing that it is a privilege and luck.

My dc grandparents had horrendous childhoods and there was a lot of grief and loss and physical punishment.

I do think turning it around in a couple of generations is an achievement.

IMO, it's important , if you know you are fortunate as a family, that you should bring up your children to appreciate this and understand how much easier things are for them than for others.
Albeit a long time ago, I went to a small girls' school in a very middle class area. Most people were very comfortably off (not rich). I do remember some smug attitutes , where the children had somehow picked up the idea that they had 'earned' their comfortable lives through their own virtues. Hard to describe but rather insufferable to experience.

I son't know much about the posh public schools but often think it must be a problem in those places. I wonder if anyone is telling children in public schools how much they have to be grateful for?