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I think trauma-skepticism is responding to a very strong case for trauma. "Everyone must find their trauma." "I just started going to therapy, and I _had no idea_ I had so much unresolved childhood trauma." "My parents weren't emotionally fulfilling 100% of the time and that counts as trauma." etc. I'm being a bit flippant, but this view is pushed a LOT.

I think it's correct to push back against the hard case for the "past trauma construction of personality," however it's also ridiculous to suggest that real trauma does not exist and does not really leave a mark on people. In the general sense, this is a problem that nearly every ideological movement faces: in correctly noting the problems with the old view, they overcorrect and assume the old view must be full expunged rather than modified.



ACEs are a specific events during childhood. Like 10-15 very specific things like abuse, divorce, etc.

I'm sure in the same way "triggered" has been hijacked, people now call everything "trauma" when its not so.


This sounds like a problem with learned definitions. Like how the word racism is misunderstood between different participants in culture war clashes - for some it needs to be intentional and malicious, for others it's an expression of systemic structural issues that's not even always an individuals fault.

Sometimes such distinctions are made larger than they have to be in an attempt to legitimize one as more important. This is pretty common among some people who have Autism/MPD/DID/ADHD or are trans - where out of fear of being seen as less legitimate (or being denied medical care) facing widening diagnostic criteria, higher incidence (or general visibility; trans people are still rare - they are just a great culture war target) or depathologization a "true, legacy criteria diagnosed" and "fashionable self-dx on tiktok" (I'm really exaggerating to set the max bounds here) group are constructed.

Often that really isn't needed. These groups shouldn't be competing for space with each other. But sometimes they're made to - speaking from experience, people who don't believe trans people are "real" love to use the existence of nonbinary people to also attack those who fit into the "classical" strictly binary diagnostic criteria.


>I'm being a bit flippant, but this view is pushed a LOT.

Really? That seems like a big stretch.


No, this is definitely a thing in certain crowds. Not everyone, definitely not everywhere, but some circles really love this stuff.


That's a bit different from the view being pushed "A LOT"


Maybe you and others would be less flippant if you had any idea how trivial these forces are compared to the pressures of denial and gaslighting survivors of sexual abuse face e.g. from their entire families.


Gaslighting has ceased to be a meaningful term, and has aggressively drifted to mean "this person didn't agree with my view on things."


It's not. You provided a wrong definition.




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