But.. what else can you even say? The alternative is remaining in misery for the rest of your life. And internalising your pain into a characteristic of your personality is among the worst ways to process it.
I feel like there's a misunderstanding here of there being a choice for victims of complex trauma to make between "suffering" and "coping". It is not as binary as this and I know people to whom this advice would be not only unhelpful but actively destructive.
If the answer is nothing, we might as well not have this and the parent discussion at all then. Do you not see how that's directly analogous to supporting moving on silently?
No, the alternative is working through it, processing it, and integrating it into your story of yourself as something you've overcome.
"Letting it go" lands the same as "excise it from your life," which isn't possible. Your body and your mind were shaped by it whether you wanted them to be or not. You have to find a way to integrate it or you'll just keep fighting a losing battle for the rest of your life.
Sorry, but "integrating it into your story" sounds a lot like forcing victimhood down yourself unnecessarily. It is unfair - both to the present and future you, and to everyone around you who had no hand in the tragedy. Wounds heal and leave behind negligible scars that don't hurt the same; they don't shape your body and mind unless you keep "processing" them and make them fester.
This is...so oblivious to trauma that it's hard to respond.
The perpetrator (or the situation, in cases of unforeseeable accidents) makes you a victim. You do not.
Many, many wounds are debilitating for life. Body parts don't grow back, and the fact that the scar doesn't hurt as much as the gaping wound when your arm came off doesn't give you the ability to use the arm. You have to learn how to function in a world designed around two-armed people even though you can't have yours back.
Neural pathways that didn't form correctly because your childhood lacked safety similarly aren't replaceable. There is no amount of thinking about it differently that undoes what happened.
You can never be a person these things didn't happen to. You can become someone who understands that they did happen in the past, that they changed you, but that they are not happening now.
You will always have to approach reality as someone who went through what you went through, but that isn't the same as living your whole life as though it's still happening in the present.
You are perhaps describing prolonged abuse, but we were talking about typical one-shot tragedies or losses one has to endure. They don't maim you for life unless you choose to hold on to the pain extensively. Though it is true that "moving on" by itself does involve you adapting to the new normal, which can concur to the notion of "integrating it to your story".
I apologize if my replies sounded unnecessarily oblivious or insensitive; it is true that each trauma and pain is unique and we can't possibly know what other people are going through.
> You are perhaps describing prolonged abuse, but we were talking about typical one-shot tragedies or losses one has to endure. They don't maim you for life unless you choose to hold on to the pain extensively.
No, I'm even very literally talking about things like an industrial accident that yanks your arm off, or a problem that arises in surgery that leaves someone you love without any of their previous mental faculties (see original post). I'm talking about major tragedies, major losses, major grief.
If you're talking about the death of your childhood hamster or something, fine, maybe we're talking past each other, but I'm talking about the kinds of losses where you are not the same afterward as you were before, and you have to do the hard work of learning how to be your new self in the world.
How many people have to reply and tell you you're completely and totally wrong about this before you'll at least take a step back and consider that you've missed something important?
Serious question. I'm genuinely wondering if there's a number.
This crosses into personal attack. That's not allowed here.
I'm sure what you wrote here is coming from your own learning and experience, and those are good things. If you want to talk about your own experience with difficult things, that's welcome.
However, when someone else does do, please don't reply with judgmental abstractions and supercilious advice—it's definitely not in the intended spirit of this site (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). No doubt you didn't intend to come across that way, but effects matter more than intent.
I can't tell if this is a joke or not but does helping people who have had the same problems as you count as a personal attack here?
That's bizarre to say the least.
It's not "judgmental abstractions and supercilious advice". Jesus.
Man, the replies here make me sick to my stomach and yours is especially bad dang. What an absolutely pathetic response from a moderator.
Edit: Just read your bio and the quote from Milner. I now think you just exude hypocritical thinking on the daily now, or maybe that quote was added a long, long time ago. Gave me a laugh.
I'm not sure what action I took besides commenting?
It would be nice to find a way out of this tangle, but I'm not sure I know how to do that. However, I'd like to try.
The reason I posted my original reply to you (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39045053) is that when someone is suffering and a person tells them what they "should" do, it tends to come across as unhelpful. For example, if someone is suffering from insomnia and I tell them they should just get a good night's sleep, that can easily come across as glib. Or if someone is suffering from anxiety and I tell them they should just breathe more deeply, or do yoga, or whatever it may be—even though those things may well be helpful in some cases, responding this way comes across as taking a superior position toward the other person. It is as if I am saying: I've been through all this and I know what the solution is and now that I tell it to you, you have no further reason to suffer.
This is unhelpful for two reasons: one is that when people are suffering, what they need most from others is not advice, but connection. There needs first to be a felt sense of human contact, like the other person cares about being with them in their pain. If you jump straight to offering advice, that skips the essential step and feels disconnecting rather than connecting.
The other reason is that when it comes to deep human challenges like trauma, each person's experience is unique and what works for one doesn't always apply to another. If I find something that works for me, it doesn't necessarily generalize to everyone else. Maybe in some cases there's overlap and I can share helpful information about my own path; but maybe not. It's necessary to tread delicately, because advice can be useful if it actually fits the other person's experience, but it can also be hurtful if it doesn't.
I have no idea if sharing this will make things better or worse—probably worse, to judge by my track record so far!—but my hope is that it's clarifying.
> The best thing to do with trauma as a kid is to let it go.
Makes it sound like you have a choice. If you could let go it wouldn't be trauma ?
A psych I saw told me to "just stop thinking about it" when I told her about my problems. Bitch I'm here for sole reason that I can't stop thinking about it.
I’m sorry you had to go through that. I would like to advice that finding the right therapist takes time but don’t give up on finding one.
My last psych laughed at me while I was trying to open up about the trauma and tell him about it in more detail. Some people don’t deserve to be therapists and are probably doing more harm than good to the society. He came as most recommended btw in my city.
I had a grief therapist start out by telling me the first thing we needed to address was my "pathological belief that my sister and my nephew were still alive somewhere."
Baffled, I was like, "In heaven? My...very mainstream religious belief in an afterlife with God? It's not like I told you I thought they were inhabiting dolls on my mantle or something."
He insisted, so I just stood up and told him I wouldn't be wasting any more of his time, because this was neither the time nor the place to have that argument with me and I left.
At least he had the good sense not to try to charge me for those three minutes.
Suggesting a seemingly easy solution to a debilitating problem someone is having might cause them to feel less about themselves. I believe the point is to offer sympathy to a reader who reads your post and sort of goes “if it’s just that, why can’t I seem to do it?”.
I can tell you mean well, but there’s an asterisk to your advice your commenters seem to point out. Your advice might require years and finding a good therapist or purpose for some. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.
Disagreement is not malice. People taking issue with your suggested solution doesn’t mean they’re trying to stop people from helping themselves or enabling self-destructive behaviors (at least not intentionally).
I intend to leave this conversation here, though I will read and consider any response you might have even if I’m not responding to it.
They are indeed enabling self-destructive behaviours intentionally. Even the moderator dang has claimed that not enabling someones self-destructive behaviours counts as a personal attack on that person... so yes. Intentionally and disruptively hurting people with malice.
This conversation can be left wherever you want. Many people here are clearly in no hurry to help the above comment author.
I feel sorry for all of you and for the people who have been hurt who are left in their state of hurt because no one wants to actually help them help themselves.
> integrating the trauma into your personality and by extension your life.
You were not wrong here and to be honest 9 hours later I feel ashamed to have made the original comment and no disrespect to the author obviously.
I’ve been having a few bad days lately and what the author and his family are going through took me back to a time when I thought could relate not as the author but someone as a family member who was affected.
I should have been more empathetic rather than making the comment about me (although I was trying not to).
I tend to not do this as therapy is working for me mostly, but times like these it brings back emotions that you cannot control.
Of course I'm not wrong. People getting upset at the truth because they aren't strong enough to try it themselves are wrong.
No one cares if you comment about yourself. People support those that talk about themselves but apparently they support people harming themselves like you continue to do.
It makes me ashamed to think that you're being guided by these absolutely abhorrent people in this thread. You can help yourself. Don't let them stop you.
"Integrating the trauma into your personality and by extension your life" isn't optional. Biologically, the trauma changed both your body and your mind. Your neurological and endocrine systems do not respond to stimuli as they would have if you had not experienced the trauma.
It's highly analogous to a deeply damaging physical wound. It is part of you now, whether you want it to be or not. You can't undo it, and denying the reality of it won't actually help you live a healthy life without it.
What's your understanding of how a body heals a major wound, like the loss of an arm? It has to integrate this into a reshaped understanding of itself. That's what healing is.
The core muscles have to rebalance to compensate for the missing weight. The neural pathways have to change in realization that, for example, instinctively trying to move that arm to catch a fall won't work anymore. The whole body has to relearn how to function now that it's different, now that the traumatic thing has happened.
This is integrating. Trying to function the way it did before actually prolongs the suffering. Only healing and integration is the path forward.
It's not flippant. It's apparently classed as a personal attack to dang though. That's hilarious. Helping others attack themselves? OK. Helping others prevent self harm? BAD BOY.
I don't have to convey that. It's on you if you fail to understand the text.
It has been a learning experience. I learnt that there are people who really hate others improving their life to the point where they claim that help is a form of personal attack. I am just so glad that I didn't get enabled by people like those in this comment thread when I deal with my own trauma.
Recently I listened to David Goggins on Huberman. He talks a lot about confronting your traumas, and as far as I can tell, it really is the only solution.
> Being molested shouldn't stop you getting a good education, finding someone you like or earning well for yourself
You are being downvoted (I guess) because people mistake this kind of attitude for apathy, but I think it is a valid statement, and there is research to show this attitude can be very helpful
Except if you get the disease and then cry about it and woe is me instead of taking the medicine.... then that's apparently the only course of action? What.
So you're saying if we cured cancer people would still willingly die of cancer because it's "too hard" to take the right approach to curing it?
I agree it's totally necessary to do this to live a fulfilling life, however it's unrealistic for most. It usually takes hundreds of hours of psychoanalysis to even come close to "getting over it", or even discovering what "it" is in the first place. Unfortunately most countries healthcare systems and/or peoples' wallets aren't equipped to deal with that.
It's more about the money situation, or the availability of it at all. Most countries in the world do not have treatment for this. The US still has it to some degree but has tried to wipe it out
