People always talk about healing your triggers, but when nobody fails to understand when it comes to trauma is that sometimes your triggers can be a warning. You guys can't treat someone's reaction like an inconvenience. This doesn't mean that reaction can't hurt you.

If I just gaslighted myself about certain shit when everything in my core was letting me know I was being manipulated or violated, I would have people controlling me like a puppet at my big age.

This is also how I kind of know people don't really understand trauma-based illnesses. Is someone got into a near fatal car accident and their whole body tenses and they grab onto the handle every time you brake hard (BECAUSE Y'ALL BE OUT HERE BRAKING HARD), why judge them

Say that the person survives in the near fatal car accident, but their loved one dies. Now they act strange about even getting into cars. Are you going to tell that person that they need to heal and who's convenience is that for? Yours so you can ride around with them? Or theirs?

Telling someone they need to heal their triggers actually sounds a lot like, "Get over it," which is very hard to do with trauma-based illnesses.

Trauma doesn't just affect the mind, it affects the body and an extended read on this is, "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk. If you guys want somebody to feel safe around you, be a safe space.

You can't tell them to heal because you sound exasperated and and at your wit's end, but imagine how they feel, still be affected by something they don't want to be affected by.

And let's be honest, they may not even know where to start.

You guys have to be emotionally intelligent in supporting people who they're healing. Someone who used to be a heroin addict said to me that they're in recovery FOREVER. They have to maintain their recovery FOREVER They don't just wake up one day and no longer have that craving.

This is really important for me to even note because drug and alcohol addiction can easily stem from trauma. To many people, they go hand in hand.

We always talk about depression and anxiety, which also go hand in hand with trauma, but that's not enough for the people who end up relapsing after being retraumatized. Now, they're back at square one.

Ultimately, throwing the word healing around can often make somebody feel ashamed, which leads into those vicious cycles of someone blaming themselves because they may feel incapable of ever being "normal," which the usage of the word healing implies. Being normal again.

Nothing is ever normal after events like that. Healing isn't linear. You run into walls you have to climb and sometimes you're too tired to climb them, via depression.

Healing isn't some endgame, it's being in recovery forever like that person said to me. Addicts in recovery and survivors have 10 times the workload than neurotypical people and put in 100 times more effort than neurotypical people to be okay, day after day.

Other people don't see this which is why they respond to them like that. You get shamed for all types of shit from people lacking emotional intelligence. And you already shame yourself enough. It feels like this: