The trauma-informed world needs to come to terms with its ableism. I’ve had lots to say about it before and will have tons to say later. Traumatized people are not ticking time bombs who can be blamed for all the world’s ills: stop hurting the people you supposedly care to help

Which isn’t to say don’t show compassion for traumatized people who act out their trauma in destructive ways. When it happens it’s worthy of care and compassion. But stop with the stereotypes and generalizations. It doesn’t help and it isn’t accurate or fair.

When trauma-informed advocates treat the traumatized as too inherently damaged to be trustworthy, they’re doing the exact thing on a grand scale that they criticize individual practitioners for doing within the medical model. We are whole and complex. The end

It’s no different when people equate mental illness with badness. Don’t equate being traumatized with all the unhealthy things in the world either. But yes do give compassion when it happens. I’m so over this. We can be compassionate without the ableism.

This is why some may hesitate to seek help: for fear that those who view “unhealed trauma” as some kind of undifferentiated destructive force will view us with suspicion costing us jobs, relationships etc. This disproportionately impacts the marginalized who carry lots of trauma

Don’t tell people they have to heal their trauma or they’ll hurt others. This may sometimes happen but is not a fair or acceptable generalization. Stop casting traumatized people as abusers. Plenty of harm emanates from the powerful & privileged not the most traumatized.

I’ve known SO MANY traumatized people in my life many of whom don’t harm anyone all the while never being “healed.” And I’ve known utterly privileged people who cause great harm. There may be complex relationships to work out but drop the stigmatizing narratives & generalizations

Also I’ve known people who’ve “healed” themselves and caused even more harm to others to protect their healing. I’m not the arbiter of how we should talk about these things but we need to stop equating the traumatized who’ve been most harmed with the harm being done.

Stigmatizing generalizations for rhetorical effect aren’t cool. No wonder some of us hesitate to self-identify. Lest someone should react to this like this GiF which is a far too prevalent ugly attitude about the traumatized often perpetuated by those who claim to be “helpers”

And I don’t say that to those who do have “destructive” trauma responses. All of it deserves compassion. But don’t just assume that being traumatized can be equated with all violence etc. We have complexity and nuance and aren’t your scapegoats