You are not traumatized

How overusing psychological language does more harm than good

Already triggered? Great. 

Education about our own psyche and our own nervous systems is amazing. We should all know more about how humans function, how communication works and what it actually takes to be healthy, mentally and physically and how these two go hand in hand. It has however spiraled into this self-absorbed, self-care, boundary-setting BS bubble where everything is turned into a problem, everything seems to be a traumatic event and everyone feels offended and “triggered” and offended all the fucking time. People turn something that happened to them into a traumatic event, and morph it into a part of their identity. Chances are you are not traumatized. You just experience discomfort as an inevitable part of life. We might not need more “safe spaces”, we might need to take responsibility, train our resilience or simply stay away from shit. Is that fair? No, it is not. Here’s some news. Life is not fair. Should we try to make it fairer? Absolutely. Do we achieve that by whining, complaining and victimizing ourselves? Absolutely not. 

Let me make it perfectly clear. It is needless to say that psychological triggers and assholes exist, that trauma is real. Nobody doubts that and this is not the point I am making here. But the current development does only one thing. It does a horrendous disservice to everyone. Let me explain. 

I am introverted. This is a part of my personality. Period. I will never be the person who entertains a group of people at a table. I love listening, watching and analyzing. I am quiet. I am not as comfortable in social situations as others. People have often mistaken that as arrogance. Basically all of the friends I made during adulthood told me that they first thought I did not like them, that I was somehow a bit aloof or, like I said, arrogant. But all these people stuck around long enough to figure out that I am none of these things. I am just quiet. And it just takes time for me to warm up when I meet new people. I am not a group person at all, I thrive in 1:1 situations. 

And I am so glad I was born in the early 80ies and grew up in the 90ies when it was just accepted as a fact that people are different. Today, I am sure I would have been diagnosed with “social anxiety” or whatever. Which I clearly do not have. I was just a shy child, it was harder for me to come out of my shell than it was for others. That was the challenge I had, while other kids had other challenges. Let’s just accept that everyone is struggling with something and that’s okay. It is called growing up, developing your own unique personality and figuring out this thing called life. And yes, this is hard. And we need some guiding lights for that, parents, family, peers. Not necessarily a therapist. Not every difficult person is a toxic narcissist. Not everything is a result of toxic patriarchal structures. Not every little insecurity, not every uncomfortable situation requires as much attention. 

“You’ll live.”

If you - like me - grew up in the 80ies, you probably heard the phrase: “You’ll live” as a kid. This might feel harsh sometimes, and of course, it is not always appropriate. But as a guiding principle, it teaches you the power of resilience. Could parents have been more empathetic back then? Jup. Talk more to their kids about how they feel instead of brushing things off? Absolutely. That’s not what I mean. I mean that the frame of reference that society provided was different. The frame of reference was to trust that you’ll be fine. That life goes on. That the world doesn’t revolve around you. Let me give you an example. In many European countries, kids that scratch their knees will hear a version of “It’s okay. It’ll be gone by the time you get married.” Now that doesn’t mean that marriage is the solution to pain, it is a metaphor. That many years down the line, looking at the grand scheme of your life, the little scratch will just be that. A little scratch. It won’t matter, you won’t remember it, you will be fine. 

And this is true for most things in life, with the exception of the actually disturbing, traumatizing, harmful events. These events, and most importantly, the adverse effects on us, however are much rarer than we tend to believe in today’s pop psychology culture. We all experience potentially traumatizing events during our lifetime. This is true and it is inevitable. Kids might experience conflicts at school, they might fail exams, lose a pet. A family member or close friend might get sick. Everyone loses loved ones during their lifetime. There is no way to protect yourself from having these experiences. No way to avoid any of that. It does however not mean that every potential turns into actual trauma.

Why cancel culture is a dangerous trend

My feeling is that there are two trends. One is to try and shelter kids (or yourself, depending on your generation) from having these experiences and negative emotions in the first place. Cancel culture is one expression of that, it is a way to compartmentalize and shut out negativity. It is the attempt to avoid negative feelings. That’s why so many people request safe zones now. And this is a problem, not only on a personal level, but on a societal level. Donald Kalsched, a Jungian analyst, describes this problem in a podcast (“This Jungian Life: Can running our minds like a democracy save us?”, listen to the full episode here) very eloquently and on point: “Cancel culture is dissociation. It is the attempt to avoid negative feelings. If we don‘t have a big enough ego and strong enough shoulders, we split up our parts and project them onto others. A functioning democracy however needs friction between people.” And for us to have friction, we have to expose ourselves to other peoples’ opinions. Opinions that we might share or not. Things we might want to hear or not. People that make us think differently, that might make us feel uncomfortable and challenge our own views. Experiences that show us the value of positive experiences. Why is it that so many people after having a major illness (including myself) say that they now value their health and the fact that they are alive so much more? It is exactly that. The contrasts. If you remove the contrasts, you’ll remove the clarity. 

On a societal level, it is a huge issue when people aren’t used to putting in effort and tolerating failure. When it’s no longer normal that people have different opinions and personalities. When kids are no longer educated to form their egos in a healthy way, to compete with each other and build stronger shoulders. Learn about their own strengths by comparing themselves with other kids. When everyone gets handed an award for showing up, when kids crumble under normal amounts of pressure and need help with normal human experiences like losing a football match, when kids feel traumatized by getting a bad mark in math class, we are in trouble. You can’t have success without failure. We need friction to learn. Life is unfair and it can be hard. Disappointing. Sad. Ask literally any entrepreneur. Any athlete. Any musician. You will suck and fail at things countless times before it gets easier. Before you master something, you’ll suck at it, you’ll be frustrated most of the time. Mastering anything takes time and effort. And it requires resilience. And resilience is something we have to train. By getting back up after falling, by developing the stamina to keep going even when it sucks, by getting over things that didn’t work out as planned. By having to deal with difficult people, by learning how to solve conflicts with people we don’t like, by dealing with unexpected challenges. Having negative experiences is part of the game. If you refuse to play, you can’t win in life. Ever. And the earlier in life you learn that, the better. I honestly believe that there is nothing worse than growing up in a middle-class, privileged household with parents who never let you fail. Who never allow you to be exposed to - age-appropriate - adversity, never let you solve your own issues, never let you struggle. And it seems that this is exactly where most of the loudest voices in the “trauma industrial complex”, as many people call it nowadays, come from. Spoiled brats with no exposure to friction.

Here’s one benign example. The other day, I was having a coffee here in Vietnam where I currently live. When I looked around me, I found myself sitting next to a bunch of 20-something kids in this vegan café that plays Jazz music. That sheer fact just shows me that these kids can not have had the chance to experience real-life adversity in the same way my generation has. If you are at that age, and you are able to hop on a plane to a country like this and you can afford to eat at a place like this on a regular basis, your life is easy, man. I don’t mean to pick on vegan kids, you go and eat or don’t eat whatever you want. And I, as a person who unfortunately cannot digest any dairy, am absolutely happy about vegan cafés. But it is a totally different game if you can expect every restaurant in the remotest places to accommodate your ideological lifestyle choices. My expectation is to simply drink black coffee and basta. Your problem, your problem. Never in a million years would I expect anyone to serve me coffee with oat milk in a country where oat crops don’t even grow. But these kids can just travel the world with entitlement nowadays, knowing they won’t face many circumstances that challenge their first-world lifestyle choices. And this starts with vegan cafés, goes on with the need for safe zones in public places and ends with comedians getting canceled for doing their jobs, which is making fun of things. Jokes are so out. Because no, people can’t be ridiculed anymore, they might feel offended. 

How pathologizing makes us unhappy

The other trend I observe is to overanalyze adverse events and reactions to them. It is now common to put a huge spotlight on them and dwell on them for much longer than necessary. Access to therapy is great. Those who need it, those whose lives are truly affected by their struggles, should absolutely go get it. And sometimes, it can be good to just talk to a neutral stranger about things. Because sometimes, it’s the other people who would need therapy, not you ;). I totally understand that. They are not the people I am talking about here. I am talking about the other 90% of the population. The assumption should not be that everyone in this group needs therapy for everything to begin with. Especially not kids. Look, I agree that everyone is struggling more or less sometimes, and we all need support from other people. We are social beings. But we should be very careful to pathologize the experience of normal life circumstances. And focus more on teaching confidence and resilience, rather than turning everything we experience into a mental health crisis. Not every potentially traumatic event actually results in trauma. And sometimes, seemingly benign things do. Our psyche and our nervous systems are not machines, they react in unpredictable ways sometimes. But if we’re using the term trauma too lightly, it pathologizes people and turns them into patients, into victims of the circumstances that need external help. When they would just need a friend to talk to or a Mom telling them that they’ll live. And that does a disservice to people who actually need help. And it does a disservice to the people who have been wrongfully diagnosed - or self-diagnosed which is even worse - with trauma or “anxiety”, because it directs their attention, time and energy to the wrong place. While they could use that time and energy to live. 

Let me wrap this up on a positive note. It is absolutely great that there is more awareness around mental health. For many decades, people just pretended that the psyche didn’t matter. And you should just pull yourself together and get on with things. While we know - hello, Placebo effect - that our psyche is incredibly powerful. We can talk and feel ourselves into basically anything.

We can make ourselves healthy or sick, happy or sad. And as soon as we put a label on something, we start to look for coherence.  That’s why I have always felt that way! Because I am a Manifesting Generator. Human design, anyone? We love coherence. And the same is true for diagnoses. They can be a tremendous relief. They remove the uncertainty. On the flipside, we can convince ourselves of the wildest things. With words and thoughts. And create an entire story around it, make it bigger than it actually is or even turn fixable problems into a personality trait.

So this is a blessing and a curse at the same time. And an incredible power. So, like all the powerful things in the world, handle it with care, take responsibility and make sure you get the dosage right. ;)