I am of the opinion that many people have experienced childhood trauma in one form or another, and generally speaking few people want to admit to or have grown up without tragedy. Is there a particular type of "trauma" here? Are we saying those who've been abused physically, mentally or sexually? Are we saying someone who had a loved one die before their time?
A common metric is the ACE test. Consider how many ACEs a child has experienced, over what time periods they occurred, and how their family responded to them. A child with many ACEs and a family that didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t respond to these experiences is worse off than a kid whose family immediately took corrective action, generally.
>Abuse includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in childhood. Household dysfunction includes growing up with domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness in the home, parental divorce or separation, and incarceration.
The other thing that tends to go unnoticed is that many people at a very young age experience the death of a dear loved one they were deeply bonded with. This can have profound and unimaginable effects on the stability of their psychology in ways that are poorly understood. It’s very possible for ones own internal primitive neural structures to permanently throw themselves completely out of chemical balance through self inflicted damage through stress mechanisms caused by the activity of these structure.
The reason this is possible is because the most physiologically potent aspects of the limbic system develop well before the prefrontal and other more modern structures can completely solidify. Because these structures are grow slower and are more elaborate, the homeostasis necessary for their stable growth is much more delicate.
There are likely periods of chemical vulnerability during development that can act as transformation pathways of the entire development of the advanced structures. They will continue to express their growth/maturation genes and develop in some way but it leads to a completely different operational configuration and also one that relies heavily on conceptual and even chemical aspects of the external environment for internal conceptual and chemical stability.
The one of the main functions of limbic system is the main component in the fear/flight/fright mechanism. This system exists because its operation of generating chaotic action and bias of reaction has in some way granted its host a significant increased statistical advantage toward surviving and reproducing whereas, although it can make a big difference, the more advanced structures have not adapted the capability of continued existence as a species on its own.
Natural selection favors whatever social genetic traits confer an increased rate of survival of an organism to reproductive maturity and then what personally governing traits lead the individual to reproduce. It is fair to presume that all traits of the human mind developed completely for only two purposes, to reproduce and to behave in ways that ensure your offsprings survival which unintentionally contributes to widespread survival advantage of humans outside ones family, increasing the chances that there will be similar individuals to confer a symmetrical advantage in return. Pretty much a cloud of increased likelihood for the species as a whole in that area to survive. Pretty much everything we think is important in society can be traced down the bias in the limbic systems chaos system
If you only had that, then you have a low ACE score, which reduces the risk for all, compared to someone with a higher ACE score, as that paper explains.
>A traumatic experience in a person’s life occurring before theageof18thatthepersonrecallsasanadult.
The ACE score is a measure of cumulative exposure to particular adverse childhood conditions. Exposure to any single ACE condition is counted as one point. Points are then totaled for a final ACE score. It is important to note that the ACE score does not capture the frequency or severity of any given ACE in a person’s life, focusing instead on the number of ACE categories experienced. In addition, the ACE categories used in the ACE study reflect only a select list of experiences
>Note: two categories from the original ACE study, physical and emotional neglect, were not included in the BRFSS survey. In addition, drug and alcohol use by someone living in the home were counted as separate ACEs in the Minnesota BRFSS analysis and not combined into one as in the BRFSS analyses conducted in other state
From page 13
>This study confirms that a majority of Minnesotans are experiencing ACEs in childhood. As in other states, ACEs tend to occur together. This study also confirms that there is an association between the number of ACEs and health and social outcomes so that the more ACEs a person has the greater the effect on physical
and mental health and social well-being.
>Table 1 shows the distribution of ACE scores for all Minnesotans and by gender. Table 1 indicates that 21 percent of Minnesotans reported three or more ACEs and 8 percent reported five or more ACEs.
>Consistent with other states’ results, women experience even greater numbers of ACEs. In Minnesota, 57 percent of women and 54 percent of men reported experiencing one or more ACE in childhood. Almost a quarter of women (24 percent) reported experiencing three or more ACEs in childhood compared to 19 percent of men.
> ACEsalsotendtooccurtogether,meaning that those Minnesotans reporting one ACE are more likely to report other ACEs. This is consistent with the ACE findings from other states. Table 2 illustrates that of the 55 percent of Minnesota adults with one ACE, 40 percent have one ACE and 60 percent have two or more ACEs. This graph also shows that among those having at least one ACE, 15 percent have five or more ACEs.
>Table3showstheprevalence
of each ACE among Minnesota adults. The three most common ACEs reported by Minnesota adults include emotional abuse with 28 percent of Minnesotans indicating that a parent or adult in their home swore, insulted or put them down in their youth; living with a problem drinker or alcoholic (24 percent); and separation or divorce of
a parent (21 percent).
> The results from the Minnesota Student Survey show that differences among racial/ethnic groups have
been very consistent over the last 15 years. In every year the survey has been administered since 1995, African American, American Indian and Hispanic 9th graders have been at least twice as likely as White students to report
three or more kinds of adverse experiences. In every year, Asian students have been slightly more likely than White students to report three or more adverse experiences.
The pdf is quite short and uses plain language. I encourage anyone interested to read it in full.
Most people start from a place where they say "I am completely normal and everything I do is normal" and reason from there.
For a person to acknowledge their trauma they must be wanting to be free of it and at least be able to see them themselves for who they truly are.
Your idea that most people have experienced trauma growing up of some form, but few want to admit to such really does not surprise me.
What is with the "particular type of trauma" idea? While they are not the same at all I don't see the value in any hierarchy of trauma. Trauma is an individual's inability to cope with an experience.
I haven’t yet read the study but one thing I would assume should have great effects is:
Anything that causes long lasting ptsd like simptoms, where you are constantly afraid, or have triggers which make you afraid.
This exposes you to a lot of adrenaline and other who-knows-what hormones in a period where your brain is still in heavy development.
I have little idea about these things, apart from the fact that I had a traumatic childhood, and developed MS, which is a disease that also has some link with what happens to you before the age 15 (how far you live to the equator therefore in theory how D3 deficient you grow up before the age 15 is significantly correlated with the chance of developing the disease)
This is just a random thought I cannot back it with anything.
Scientists have a hard time figuring out the cause, maybe because the slow vague onset of the disease?
When I first had my symptoms which made diadnosis possible I already had a couple of demyelinated lesions. Did they show up the days before? Or years ago? Who knows.
You cannot do daily mri scans of a large enough population to catch even 1 patient at exactly the beginning of their disease, and even if you catch it, how can you gather useful information non-invasively?
Anyways, I try reading scientific papers, and avoid the overhyped “eat this to cure your MS” type articles.
They are so confident in everything, but of the 100 of real studies I’ve looked at, almost none of them had any surefire way to slow disease progression, some of the findings even contradict popular belief.
For example eating whole grains, drinking wine in moderation and drinking coffe may have a small positive effect, instead of cutting out all gluten.
Or it might just be a currelation in a way that wine drinkers have a higher socioeconomical status, which they tried correcting for, but they missed some unknown factor anyway?
Just try doing the regular healthy lifestyle; good food, some moderate excercise, no stress.. Because you can still get all the other lifestyle diseases ontop of MS as anyone else, and as we are more vulnerable we need to be more careful.
> Are we saying someone who had a loved one die before their time?
I hope not. Death is something you have to learn to cope with at some point. If we call that already a trauma, I think we have a rather big problem. And I am saying this because I have experience with it. I had my father and my aunt die in their 30s, when I was around 13. That was unpleasant, but still from the "such is life" category.
We all experience trauma eventually. Death is one we'll all see. Saying it is not traumatic is unhelpful. Acknowledging that it is traumatic, and helping people out who are experiencing it for the first time is exactly how people "learn to cope with it".
Having your father die at such a young age is certainly considered to be traumatic but a lot depends on your feeling if safety and connection to another adult.
I had almost no connection to my mother, so you might like to call it traumatic. However, I was not telling my whole story. The reality is, I have a disability since childhood, so I always had "more complicated" problems then death to deal with. Thats why I insist calling the death of a family member trauma is exaggregation. There are things in life which are far more problematic to deal with.
> few people want to admit to or have grown up without tragedy.
Did you indeed mean "without"? (Or did you mean "with", as in: "few people want to admit to have grown up with tragedy"?)
(Not a native speaker, maybe I'm missing something)
If so, I wonder, what are reasons people want to tell others that they grew up with tragedy?
(I wonder what "tragedy" means in your text, eg an alcoholic parent or getting beaten or ... A grandparent died? Quite different things, the word can mean)
They actually do the opposite: they boast of the harsh conditions of their childhood, not as victims but as survirvors/tough self-made people. And of course their traumas/tough conditions are made up to be actually hard (to the point of absurdity).
So in both cases, they do the opposite of what I claimed people commonly stoop to today:
(a) presenting lesser, irrelevant issues and "slights" as "traumas"
(b) focusing on how traumatised they were by those (that is, playing the victim, not taking pride in overcoming them or at least pretending to be a tough survivor like the four Yorkshiremen).
I understand that you are now saying that you accept people talking about their traumas, if you personally agree that they have suffered, and if you personally understand and recognise what they are saying within your own narrative: one of overcoming and having power, as these four successful parodies are claiming.
But that's not the reality of trauma for many people. Some people are never going to be quaffing wine in a fancy restaurant and reminiscing with their aged school-chums. Some people will suffer evident psychological harm that they may never fully recover from.
The four yorkshiremen's tales centre on a factual recounting, not touching upon feelings or harm done or how the situation was dealt with. [it was presented in this way with the effect of parodying this attitude.]
I think this deserves the pushback you are getting. It has damaged generations, to not be able to talk about their subjective experiences of objective harm.
I think your attitude is selfish (in the sense that you're making it about yourself). It does you no harm for people to tell their stories, in their own terms. Why not let folks be?
>I understand that you are now saying that you accept people talking about their traumas, if you personally agree that they have suffered
Whereas there are people who don't do that? Who are OK with people talking about their traumas if they thing those people are faking it/overblown them?
You dressed the description up to make me sound like some exception. But I think everybody (except perhaps the totally indifferent) only accept others talking about their traumas if they believe those other are genuine and talk the truth. Else, they consider them hypocrites or liars or opportunists, and so on. Isn't that the case?
Let's make it perfectly clear what I mean:
(a) I'm totally fine with people talking about their real traumas as traumas
(b) I'm also totally fine with people talking about their real traumas as things they brushed off/soldiered through
(c) I believe many people have real traumas
(d) I believe many more overblow or make-up traumas to play the victims, score sympathy points, get a leverage, etc.
(e) I don't like the latter category - I consider them hypocrites, and I think they cheapen real trauma for everybody
(f) I use my own opinion to consider who belongs to (a) and is legit or who belongs to (e) and is thus a hypocrite. What's the alternative? Taking whatever everybody says as necessarily true even if I have doubts about their honesty or history?
(g) who am I to judge other people's stories? Well, I'm the arbiter of my opinion. Shouldn't I judge for myself (including whether another is a hypocrite or not)?
If the parent's example was what I was talking about, then a "plus 20" years adjustment on my part wouldn't fix anything, since people have been doing the "four yorkshiremen" style thing not just 70 years ago, but since forever (and still do).
But that (the parent's example) is not what I claimed people didn't do 50 years ago. If anything, it's the opposite.
In the "four workshiremen" sketch they take pride in their traumas/harsh situations that they went through, and compete to exaggerate even greater traumatic/harsh situations. Today many people exaggreate irrelevant slights as traumas, and do so in order play the victim, not the tough survivor.
Nice cynical, cruel take. It says more about you that you believe people who speak about their trauma are only doing it to play victim.
You ever wonder how trauma is passed through generations? Because of the premise you are saying: people in denial about a trauma they experienced. They assume the shitty experiences they had are normal and then repeat the same acts that were visited upon them.
In my reading about cptsd during my counseling (uh oh, am I playing a victim?) one of the most common thoughts identified in childhood trauma is downplaying the severity and assuming it is common. That leads to people not seeking treatment.
Try showing some compassion and assume good faith.
>Nice cynical, cruel take. It says more about you that you believe people who speak about their trauma are only doing it to play victim
That would be a very valid critique - but only if I had said anything of the sort.
I never said that "people who speak about their trauma are only doing it to play victim", as if it's somehow impossible to speak about trauma and not doy to play victim.
What I said that people today (meaning, lots of people today, which is neither the same as "everybody", nor even the same as "everybody who talks about trauma") overblow insignifant "traumas" to play the victim.
There are, of course, also people with real traumas (real abuse, parent loss, and so on). Those, by definition, don't have to overblow BS "traumas", and, by extension, are not those I criticized.
So, I can't really answer your points, any other way, expect to say that they don't actually respond to what I did say.
It did address what you said. You are demeaning people with trauma when you say “lots” have “BS” traumas. It ties in with people doubting their trauma.
You don’t get to decide what is and isn’t trauma. You aren’t the arbiter of what is trauma.
Respect what people say or just keep your thoughts to yourself. It’s not hard.
I think we are talking about a link that can be observed on some statistical analysis done on survey results from samples without blinds. Pointing out the link isn't quite enough to publish anything, so we add some of the buzzwords that trend well, RNA here and there usually satisfies demand. It doesn't demonstrate anything but it justifies research spendings, salary and stipends of those two researchers groups, the universities also got to be mentioned, given what they are going through it may help acquire more leads to occupy next terms seats.
