I developed a personal rule as a trauma-informed SWer: Don’t project trauma onto people

Even when I recognize it as such, the trauma of a person registering trauma is often heavy. You have to be prepared to support them in ways many of you are not. And yet, you still force it.

I’ll give an example
(TW sexual assault)

A brother tells me he “lost his virginity” at 8 to a 15 y/o babysitter

If I was one way, my response would be “You were raped!!” “That’s sexual assault!!”

I used to be that way so I recognize it and I acknowledge the harm in it

What I learned was that, for many reasons, it is better for some to not download that truth. Of course there are societal contexts and nuances, but I err on the side of “Is this person able to process this truth? Can I adequately support them through it?”

If I keep pushing and force him to accept this trauma, now at 36 years old, he has to sit with having been raped at 8...what happens next?

I think that’s the part a lot of you get stuck with

You don’t know what’s next or how to continue past that point

If he says “Yeah it’s whatever. No big deal”, then I have the skills and training to guide him further along. It may be a long journey but I won’t force him to hear “you were raped!” until he’s open to even exploring that idea

I think social media facilitates traumatizing because there are few boundaries, a lot of people who lack socialization skills, a massive lack of compassion, fabricated expertise, and deflection from people’s own trauma

A major reason why it’s become so damaging to so many peoples mental health and why we are experiencing societal and cultural shifts in how we “manage life” is bc our psyches haven’t caught up to being able to handle so much at once

So many people
So many things
So many topics
So much news
So many opportunities to cross boundaries, disregard humanity, and fabricate intimate connections with others based on things like trauma, mutual hatred, social awkwardness, ignorance, etc

So every day, something new happens and we have to figure out how to process it/ adjust to it. Before all of this, we had time to do these things. We had time to work things out. But with the rapid pace at which things are thrown at us, we don’t have the necessary time to adjust.

For some people, the desire to be heard and the need to be right trumps any concern for other people’s experiences, their traumas, and their humanity.

If we don’t figure out a way to collectively divest from this cesspool of trauma, it will destroy us from within. We have allowed entirely too much, too many people and too many things, to permeate our psyche. It’s eating us alive.

I’ve been working on an exit plan, and it’s been coming together. This is not sustainable for anybody who is trying to retain their humanity. We have to figure out another way of going forward with life before we destroy each other.

And I feel incredibly grateful, happy, and relieved that I was able to develop social skills, understand rules of rational engagement, and learn how to erect boundaries long before any of this existed.

Because I cannot fathom being someone who walks around thinking it’s perfectly OK to project and dump trauma on to other people unsolicited, unwarranted, and unnecessarily. And yet, here we are. People do this shit every day all day long.