so here’s a 🧵 i’ve been sitting on for a long time: i went through several rounds of trauma therapy and all i got was this lousy awareness that a huge portion of what happens to us in life is just the result of other people’s trauma
i’m jk on the “all i got” front, of course; trauma therapy gave me a framework for understanding my mental health, the ability to identify damaging cycles, and coping skills i’ll be using for the rest of my life!! but like: wow. lotta trauma out there on the earth
“nobody helped me when things were bad for me, so why should anyone get help when things are bad for them?” hey uhhh did you know that you are perpetuating the cycle of trauma that harmed you in the first place
i take this joking tone bc that’s how i deal with things that make me sad (it’s the trauma), but this does actually make me incredibly sad all of the time! it’s a hideous tragedy that deepens every day! we don’t have to do this to each other!
here’s trauma (extremely) nutshelled: when horrible things happen to you it affects your brain; if you do not learn to identify, deal with and manage that in a healthy way you are likely to pass on your trauma to others, thus carrying on the cycle. of trauma.
i wish we all talked about this more. i wish, in fact, that talking about this was built into the foundations of society, that we learned about it in school, that acknowledgement of it was treated as an essential part of human life.
because the truth is, we all experience trauma here on earth! even in a utopian world where we’d somehow eliminated all of society’s ills, we’d still suffer pain and loss; there would still be accidents and deaths. trauma IS an essential part of human life.
and the world we live in is far from a utopian one. the harm we inflict upon each other is incalculable, comes in an endless array of different varieties, and is shaped by all the harm that came before it.
trauma leaves its mark after every kind of violence, whether physical, emotional or sexual. it is left behind in the wake of many grim events and circumstances — war, bigotry, poverty, serious illness, loss — the list is certainly longer than what could fit in a tweet.
and trauma stays within you long after what caused it has come to an end. even well-managed, it leaves a scar; unmanaged, it can control your actions and decisions without your even realizing.
let’s take “i wasn’t helped when i struggled, so no one struggling should be helped.” the idea that “no one should be helped” is what we tend to focus on when we hear someone express that concept, because, of course, it’s ludicrous.
and “no one should be helped” is what the person expressing the concept is typically focused on, too. but the actual meat of the sentence is “i wasn’t helped.” that’s the thought that is, so to speak, driving the car, whether that person knows it or not.
they weren’t helped when they struggled, and it — both struggling and not being helped — hurt them. but, for whatever reason (probably also trauma-based) they couldn’t/can’t acknowledge and manage that pain. so they perpetuate it.
it’s not on purpose. this is what they think is normal, because they’re inside the cycle. to acknowledge that it’s not normal would be to acknowledge that what happened to them wasn’t normal either, was painful and unfair and wrong.
and the thought of doing that is too hard, has too much baggage attached. when you have unmanaged trauma the idea of digging into it is very frightening; it feels like you’re going to damage the load-bearing structures of yourself.
i want to be clear at this point that thread is not going to the “be nice to people who behave horribly because you don’t know what they’ve been through” place. i don’t think that’s the answer here, and i don’t think it does anyone any favors.
the actual best thing we can do for people who behave badly due to unmanaged trauma is make it clear to them — compassionately if we can manage it — that we notice, and it isn’t normal. the goal is to drive THEM to assess what’s going on within themselves, because:
niceness is not a cure for trauma. and even if you wanted to take on the enormous task of managing someone else’s trauma for them — you couldn’t. the only person who can really manage trauma is the person whose trauma it is.
we are all responsible for our own actions. even when horrible things have been done to us. even when we’ve been through something awful and scarring. there is no amount of suffering that makes it okay to pass suffering on.
and that’s the piece that we mostly don’t learn. for better or worse, so much of the way we communicate revolves around pushing down, not expressing, and trying to ignore or pretend away our worst feelings and most intense emotions.
we talk about trying to “achieve happiness” as though it’s a permanent state we can reach, and not an emotion that comes and goes like any other. we act as though feeling bad is a sign of weakness. we set ourselves up to fail.
bc you can’t ignore or pretend away trauma. you have to acknowledge it, and let it hurt. even after many years of work, the trauma that brought me to therapy in the first place still affects me; i just learned how to manage it (lol, more or less).
and most of learning to manage trauma is just learning how to feel your emotions without them controlling your actions, words and behaviors! it’s a lot harder to do than it sounds, and it’s never a perfect practice, but that’s the basic summary.
if you don’t manage your trauma, it manages you. that’s why abuse cycles exist. it’s people dealing out pain the way it was dealt to them — bc it’s how they handle emotions; bc to maintain the lie that they’ve never been hurt, they HAVE to believe what they experienced is normal.
not everyone who experiences trauma passes it on in that way, of course. trauma is very complicated, layered, and different for everyone; some people turn it inward and harm themselves instead of others. some people simply get stuck in the moment they were hurt.
and some people do manage to ignore it for many years, though it calcifies inside of them and slips out in unexpected places. some people never manage their trauma, make it to the grave without healing, and that is the saddest thing of all.
there is one piece of good news in all of this and it is this: it is never too late. it is NEVER too late to learn how to identify, acknowledge, and manage your own trauma. every day until the day you die is a day you could be learning to do this.
i have been in support groups with people 20, 30, even 50 years out from an initial traumatizing incident. people who spent decades of their lives just acting and reacting, consumed by their trauma. people who have learned, at last, how to manage it.
trauma is an incredibly complex and complicated thing and this is a single thread of tweets by one guy: i’m not capturing all of it, and i’m not trying to. i’m trying to express, as simply as i can, the central concept at the heart of it all:
we must learn, all of us, everyone, to process and manage our trauma. we must learn how to keep from passing it on. until we do, we will never change and we will never improve and that is a promise.
and i don’t want you to misunderstand me: learning to manage your trauma will SUCK. it will be difficult and painful and imperfect and you will make mistakes. but you can survive it, bc you already survived the trauma. you’ve already proved you have the strength to do this.
is it fair, that so many abusive people who will never look inward walk this earth? of course it’s not. is it fair that we must live within societies so flawed that they traumatize us anew with every passing day? no; it’s awful. it’s terrible and horrifying and wrong.
and it’s not fair, either, that when someone or something hurts us, we must do so much work to heal, to keep from passing that pain on. but fair or not, in a world where so much is out of our control, the one thing we can learn to control is ourselves.
a final thought to keep in mind: trauma is often defined as a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. so even if you somehow made it to 2020 without experiencing it? you are, as they say, really in it now.
we are all going to come out of this year with trauma. some of us will know, whether instinctively or through previous hard work, how to manage it; some of us will try to repress it; some of us will pass it on. you get to decide which kind of person you want to be.
and, truly: i am so sorry. whoever you are and whatever trauma you’ve been through, you deserved better. we all did. but you can heal, and learn about the practice of trauma management, and find comfort in working to make sure others don’t have to suffer. it’s all we have.
if you are specifically in need of help with trauma from sexual violence or abuse, the Rape, Assualt, and Incest National Network (RAINN) has a hotline you can call right now [ https://www.rainn.org/about-national-sexual-assault-telephone-hotline]
additional help for trauma from sexual violence can also be found on the @clevelandrcc website! shout out to them for providing me not one but two rounds of trauma therapy completely free, can’t overstate the degree to which they saved my life https://clevelandrapecrisis.org/resources/resource-library/
if you have the resources for paid therapy, psychology today’s therapist search function will allow you to refine the search by region, insurance coverage, and the type of therapy you are seeking; they do indeed have a button for trauma therapy https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists 
this comic by lindsay braman is just something i like to show people when talking about trauma in general:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDPuSsYpbJx/?igshid=1r666s95hbqrc
and that’s all i’ve got to say! thanks for sticking with me; i hope this encourages you to do some more research and look inward a little. the world doesn’t have to be like this and it’s tragic that it is! but while it is, we can, at least, start with ourselves. 💜
(still unemployed; still find doing this about equivalent to swallowing a beehive; if (AND ONLY IF) you have it to spare i’d appreciate the help; if not thanks you for reading and good luck in these harsh times, i’m pulling for you!! venmo @ dylanthyme / http://ko-fi.com/dylanthyme  )
You can follow @dylan_thyme.
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