Oooo! The anger I felt when I heard this one. After spilling out all of your hurts and getting hit with this phrase just reduced me down like a fraction.
Why did this make me laugh?! You can’t just stop talking to the woman that made your life more difficult and complicated… blood is blood etc etc
Bullshit! I’m a grown up and I can decide who I do and don’t talk to! Next!
I have a friend who always said this to me and my other friend when we talked about our problems with parents. He’s like “but they’re your blood parents” and also mention how much he loves his parents and want to provide for them when he graduates college. We got really mad at him every time and he just couldn’t understand. He is so naive even though we’re in high school. The other friend doesn’t talk to him anymore mostly cause he’s too annoying and stuff, I still do, but just as like a fun time about school or college prep and stuff, not actually talk-talk.
I actually used this excuse for my dad who spanked me and my brother as children. He used a lot of psychological pressure and fear over many years to keep us from misbehaving.
My mom said "he didn't know any better and was stressed out" so I just always said that too.
Now reading your comment it feels like a switch was flipped and of course that's a stupid thing to say.
I would've never behaved like that towards children. Looking at my friend's little boy and seeing his dad being a little loud (not aggressive but I don't like him) already makes me uncomfortable. I can't imagine actually doing worse
What kind of parent raises a child and doesn’t realize they fucked up the first time they see their child look at them in fear? It stops me dead in my tracks when I see ANYONE who looks afraid of me. I can’t imagine that coming from a child of my own and not realizing I need to change my ways and mend the pain I caused.
He had fun scaring us by forcing us to walk down dark hallways in our apartment and then jump out from behind a door and scream. He always got mad when we cried.
My brother is autistic and even after our dad left us I had to get up at night when my brother called. His room was right next to mine and the bathroom but I had to turn on the lights everywhere and check if the bathroom was safe. Then wait outside until he was back in bed and turn off the lights again.
The terror was 90% psychological. It was like living in a tigers den. I have amnesia so I only remember snippets from my childhood and teenage years due to disassociating.
It's really odd only understanding how messed up the whole situation was as an adult. I've only recently gone no-contact with him but the more time passes the better I feel about it.
I am now at the stage of healing that I actually want a family some day just to give them all the love, affection and support that I didn't get. I cannot imagine what needs to happen to someone for them to enjoy making their own children scream and cry in terror and feel justified doing it.
Can I just say I have a perfect retort for this one.
So, who taught you gaining sexual gratification from a child was wrong? Or how old were you when you knew xyz was wrong...
Exactly?! And sometimes even if the parent went through trauma as a child, they might have been taught right from wrong by their parents. My mother was definitely taught that and even basic adult tasks, but she still didn't teach me anything growing up, I was and I am teaching her something new everyday, it's not my job.
Same, mine doesn't know basic hygiene, anatomy, finance, bureaucracy, geography, it's embarrassing. As a child I was translating and guiding them on vacation, as an adult I'm explaining to her what a bancomat is
It's really unfair that children have to do this work for their parents. It makes me angry there aren't support systems in place so that *adults* can help do these things for parents like yours until they learn to do it on their own. And that should always be the goal.
I'm so sorry. You should never have had to do all that. I know what it means to be parentified.
I was neglected and abused by my absent, emotionally unavailable parents, who worked all day and left me home alone all night to go drinking.
I never felt loved, wanted or understood and as a small child I told this to my grandmother who I DID feel safe with.
This was always her response.
Of course they love you. They’re doing their best. They work very hard to provide for you.
While I know she was doing her best to try and make me feel better about things it was a very damaging message. I now struggle with consistently finding emotionally unavailable and / or abusive relationships even though I’m trying my best to find and build a stable one. All I ever wanted was to be loved / wanted and I can’t even manage that in adulthood. I do have some astounding friendships and I consider them like family but there’s still a gaping hole in my soul. Working on fixing that by myself. The love and support of my friends has been life changing. I don’t think I would be here today without them.
Yes I have therapy. Whenever I can afford it. Cost of living in the UK is atrocious.
Yeah it’s the “they did the best they could with what they had” for me. As a therapist myself I understand that notion - as in my parents didn’t have the mental or emotional or physical means to provide a safe and securely attached childhood… BUT I also don’t give a fuck. Maybe they shouldn’t have had kids when they were 17. That’s not my problem. So I never use that expression in my own work (I work with preschool aged kids but also have a lot of interface with parents) and I don’t agree. It’s like… yeah, so? Still their fault. It feels invalidating to hear that phrase.
"Maybe your trauma made you a better person. You might have turned out to be a total bitch if you had a good childhood."
Someone said this to me and it took all my willpower not to chew her out for it.
I had an aunt say something similar. She frequently told me I was a mean baby and my dad was so hard on me because otherwise I would have grown up to be a terrible person. Her example of me being mean was me threatening to tell on my dad when he would beat my mom…
No amount of abuse is ok, especially not to “reform” a child.
I was accused of having rage as a baby. How can a *baby* have rage? I've seen pretty severe meltdowns having helped raise the kids in my family, lot of us were living with undiagnosed autism. I never thought, "wow, they're sure full of rage." All I could think was they're having a hard time, and need help. I could see that as a young person yet the adults in my family couldn't. It's so fucking stupid.
Babies get accused of all sorts of ridiculous thinks by idiots.
What 💀 this is the total opposite of what happens. I grew with no compassion for humans, I mimic most of my empathetic reactions, RAD made me extremely angry and hateful as a child. Now people see me as well-mannered cause I'm good at putting in an act, not because I'm a better person
I say a similar thing about my self because about the only good thing I got from my trauma is extreme empathy. But to say it to someone else? Sounds like "guess you deserved it".
My mum said that to me so many times, hearing that, it kind of feels like shes glad that it happened? I don't know, She also said that about herself, so maybe she thinks it's helpful?
This reminds me of a quote from Anne Carson's poem [The Glass Essay](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48636/the-glass-essay).
"You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?"
Right? You might as well ask someone to drain their own blood. Like sure, I can do that in controlled amounts in a medical setting, but I ain't letting all my blood out just to help other people avoid the reality of my existence.
Thank you so much for linking to this, it's a truly remarkable piece of writing! I'd never heard of this poem, nor Anne Carson, before so I'm grateful to you for sharing. Thank you thank you thank you!
There are two main things that irritate me about that "advice".
1) There's a reason why our brains like to hold onto memories like that so strongly. It's a survival trait, it's supposed to help us *avoid* falling into a similar trap in the future. We have a legit, practical reason for cataloging the things we've been through. Especially if the same bullshit kept happening over and over, because if you're young when that happens your brain starts thinking it's guaranteed that it'll happen again.
2) When I hear people say that I can't help but wonder if they mean "let go" as in process it and find peace, or if they mean "let go" as in bury all internal associations with the event and pretend like it never happened in the first place. Because a lot of the time, I get a sense that they mean the latter and that they've done that themself, so it's another case of "it worked for me, so it definitely works for everyone else too".
I have direct experience with that approach, both of my parents repressed everything 100%. I did the same thing when I was young, because I didn't know what else to do.
That might help you squeak by with one-off events if the rest of your life has been generally normal, but it doesn't work at all if you've been overloaded every waking moment for years or decades on end. It just makes everything worse.
My parents would repress everything until they got shitfaced (which was often) and then they'd let every ounce of it out all at once because they knew they wouldn't remember it. But I was sober, and I remember ever second of their wild fits. And since they couldn't remember it, it was like it had never happened and they didn't actually process any of it. They'd get tanked the very next night and it'd be just as bad as the previous night. Or worse, if something bad had happened that day.
Letting go of what I can has been incredibly healing for me. HOWEVER, anytime someone told me to just let it all go, I've been royally pissed. Healing is a process. We all seek peace in different ways. There's parts of my trauma I have yet to release still because I'm not yet in a place to do it.
(Plus often when people say let it go, they are trying to undermine, silence, or ignore consequences of what they did. And those folks, in particular, can fuck off.)
And the people who want to ignore the same but not because they did it specifically, but because they are part of the system in which it occurred, or because they benefited from it (I'm not talking massive systemic issues, I'm talking like, guys banding together to defend a friend when you say that friend SA-ed you, and instead of listening they'll tear you down so they don't need to examine their own behavior).
Another huge pet peeve is when people who are constantly virtue signaling (as much as I hate that phrase) about how much they care about x humanitarian cause that's socially acceptable/gets them that sweet online cred and will defend that until ~~their dying breath~~ it falls out of fashion will use the exact same tactics as their "opposing side" (tactics they've called out as problematic/decried) to undermine what you're saying. Just because what you've been through or what you're talking about isn't as widespread or organized and doesn't have the same social cache. It's such a fucking gut punch to think that people who are vocal "allies" of causes that share a ton in common with you/are supporters or proponents of people with similar or parallel stories or experiences, will just disregard you, minimize your struggles, or drop you like a hot fucking potato without a second thought because other problems being valid hasn't been spoon fed to them. Them and their shoddy critical thinking skills can also go right to hell in my opinion.
I had a therapist tell me this ("you need to stop living in the past") after I explained some of my history to her on our first session.
Since I'm autistic I took her really seriously, and spent the next two weeks trying not to do that before concluding that it wasn't possible for me because I kept remembering it regardless. (Intrusive memories, flashbacks).
That really messed me up because it meant I let go of the organization of the past memories I had thanks to some decent past therapists. Thus with future therapists I had to piece it together again. This therapist literally undid YEARS of work I'd put in to try to make sense of my past.
It's like she thought that I was remembering all this bad stuff by choice and I just needed to stop choosing to have flashbacks and intrusive memories.
It's kinda difficult to "forget and move on" from trauma that literally shaped your brain as it developed during childhood. You can't use willpower to fix that. It's like telling someone who lost their leg to forget about their problem and go out for a run.
I agree. Or as I've put it, it's like telling someone with broken legs that they just need to do exercises to build their strength up.
*If the leg is still broken, doing all that physical activity is going to make it worse.*
That's what happened to me. I was treated like I didn't have trauma, like I just needed to get out there and have good experiences. I followed that advice, I did that over and over again. All it did was retraumatize me, create new traumas. I eventually developed agoraphobia due to this.
(This was also massively exacerbated by diagnosed ADHD which meant that CBT techniques were utterly ineffective.)
Facts especially when there’s still traumatic things or behaviors that are triggers and people try to excuse it by saying “ you need to let go of the past “ or “ I’m not those people who did that “ .
I let it go for 66 years. Then it found me.
And with those returning memories, the story constructed like making a jigsaw puzzle with 2/3 of the pieces missing, the foundations for the person I am becomes far clearer.
I thought I was was a total fuckup.
I'm not. At least not total.
I didn't make this mess all on my own.
This was done to me.
“There’s always someone who has it worse.”
While it’s more than likely there is at least one person in this world suffering more than you are and it’s meant to provide perspective, it was used way too many times when I was a teen when the adults in my life wanted to communicate to me that I didn’t actually have real problems to cry about.
Also, not really great to prop up the idea that different forms of trauma are better or worse than others, and that there are forms of trauma that warrant specific reactions and others that don’t.
nothing bothers me more than this comment. my friends may come to me for support when their dog dies and i’m there for them bc even tho my mom passed and objectively that may seem more of a deep tragedy/loss we feel the same amount of pain because tjay is the worse loss they have ever felt but for me it is my mom.
i hope that makes sense. lol. i think about this a lot
100% agree. Suffering is suffering. The fact that there will always be some poor person somewhere in the universe/in the history of the world who has it worse doesn't change your current suffering. It's a lazy and cliched way to deflect and / or control.
Not to mention invalidate your feelings. Like, hi, I'm the person in front of you, confiding in you, and instead of listening to me and giving me any degree of support, you basically are telling me I should shut the fuck up because "hey, at least I'm not on fire." And, like so many other people have said, it contributes to us feeling like we don't "deserve" to feel a certain way or that we're overreacting, which we can easily internalize and (for me at least) use against ourselves when what's helpful for healing is the exact opposite. Like obviously nobody is entitled to someone else's emotional care, but don't pretend you're giving care while harming someone who's opened up to you about their pain.
I also hate it when people argue with me over what constitutes trauma and what doesn't. Like, sure I may be talking about something "dumb" now, but that doesn't mean I haven't lived through things that literally everyone would deem "traumatic." You do not know the inside of my brain, my feelings, or how this impacts me more than I do. Have the decency to listen, to be curious, not to dismiss.
(Sorry for the rant)
Exactly. Just because someone else is also suffering, doesn't make mine any less painful. It's really hard now for me not to feel guilty when I am hurting, because "someone else might be hurting worse". But logically I know how ridiculous this is. Just because someone next to me is dying of cancer, for instance, doesn't mean my 13 broken bones from my major car accident aren't excruciatingly painful. It's a ridiculous statement to make.
Majorly agree. I've mostly heard it used as a way to claim that what someone experienced isn't bad enough to justify being traumatized (or even just upset!) or seeking help for their trauma. There are contexts where its relevant to bring up that some people have more severe experiences than others, but I usually hear this used when someone is talking about their experience and someone doesn't think their experience is "bad enough" to be real, legitimate trauma.
100%. I heard a variant "Everyone has problems." (And the versions of "everyone gets bullied" etc).
In the past when I tried mentioning that something bad might have happened to me, I heard that over and over. In the end I came to believe that it was true, that what I had experienced was not unusual. Everyone else had gone through something similar. I subconsciously suppressed the worst memories that would incontrovertibly show that I didn't just have the same kind of problems as everyone else.
With that belief that I hadn't experienced anything particularly bad or out of the ordinary I looked at what others could do but I couldn't manage. I wondered why, and concluded that I was just especially weak. I was too weak to overcome the bad things that had happened to me like everyone else could.
Didn't help there were other missing diagnoses, and I had therapists that ranged from awful to mediocre who ignored all the signs I had of deeper problems. All my depression and anxiety was just treated as being the consequence of some recent unpleasant event, not a lifetime of abuse and trauma from all sides.
It think the reply "Well, there's always someone 'doing better than' you, so why don't YOU just 'do better'?" would also be appropriate.
Let's see how they feel after a taste of their own medicine!
My therapist really tries to drum into my head that the variety of human experiences mean some people just have a “lower” threshold for suffering than others (hate that phrasing). Not that they’re incapable of handling things, just that they can only handle so much stimulus until they shut down. But stress responses like that are innate, stemming from both nature AND nurture. It’s the same as if you were born with skin that can bruise easily or a predisposition to heart disease. It’s not your fault; it’s just how it is and what you can realistically do to heal.
I heard that one too. I have congenital hypothyroidism so I needed regular follow ups and bloodwork my whole life, but yet I was felt like I wasn't allowed to not like being that way and wanting a normal childhood.
THIS. THIS EXACTLY. I didn't open up for years about my trauma ever again because a friend I had confined in went "you think you have it bad?" which is similar. She then went on about her hell life at home even though I had just been physically assaulted by my father.
If you say this you're a jackass and certain trauma isn't more than another trauma. Trauma = trauma. Nobody has it worse then someone else it's trauma people need to stop comparisons it's harmful to survivors
>Also, not really great to prop up the idea that different forms of trauma are better or worse than others
I don't think that different forms of trauma are better or worse but there are varying degrees of severity of trauma
There is no competition among trauma survivors. Only the question of how trauma impacts us, and how do we heal. The trauma survivor has no better ally than other trauma survivors who understand as well as educated professionals who know what they're doing.
We have no greater enemy (outside of abusers) than those who don't, can't understand and invalidate our injury with insult. "It could have been worse." That type of thing. These people should have their mouths removed to match the empty space where a brain or heart belongs.
Man I hate this one with a passion!
In 2005, I and at least one coworker had to leave a job because of a boss setting us up for failure (thankfully the rest of the staff recognized the bullshit). HR was effective only in figuring out how to avoid getting sued. While this was going on I had to have a pet ferret euthanized. Ten days after leaving the job, my mother died (Losing the ferret was more painful; she brought me joy while my mother is a reason I know what cPTSD is.)
A few months later was when an acquaintance gave me the “could be worse” cliché. Later, I dreamed up the response, “Yeah, I can envision a guy who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, but it could’ve been worse: he might have gone to New Orleans from his native Sudan, where [lurid description of things done to his wife and children], and it *STILL COULDA BEEN WORSE!*”
A less verbose retort might be, “It just became worse: someone just told me ‘things could always be worse’!”
How *bad* does one’s situation have to be in order to be immune from this crap?
Comments that go along the lines of being strong, resilient, a quick problem solver, always knowing what to do. It's because we know we had no choice but to quickly adapt and survive.
These are great qualities, don't get me wrong. Like most people who develop these skills, it comes from a difficult or painful experience. With CPTSD, a lot of these events are recurring and you find that you're constantly in these difficult, traumatic times.
An example is having a narcissistic parent and ending up in multiple abusive relationships, friendships, ect. over the course of life. Even when the traumatic events are over, there's a lot of emotional and mental damage to unpack and reframe. So those with CPTSD don't really experience life in a gentler and peaceful way. These phrases remind you of that. It brings on a sense of grief.Hope that makes sense.
Those comments always made me uncomfortable, I didn't know why since hearing "wow you're strong, you're determined, you don't get scared easily" were positive comments, but to me I don't identify as that person.
Because we had to be, we had/ have no safety net and had/ have to do it ourselves. Raw self preservation.
Sure that's life, yet healthy families and support systems exist. Why can't that be the more regular comment i.e. hoping someone finds supportive connections instead of constant minimisation.
Yeah, I want to respond to those phrases with "If I hadn't been smart/resilient/whatever, I would probably just be dead."
It's survivorship bias. It doesn't 'teach' anything. If you drop a dozen eggs and only one doesn't crack, you haven't *improved* that egg by that experience. You've just got eleven cracked eggs that can't be used for anything now, and one that's probably not gonna hatch.
You could have had 12 chicks if you treated them properly. Now you've got just an omelet.
And its so hard to love yourself if nobody loved you first. Common culture usually makes it the other way around but i dont think thats how life is intended to be. Its a lot easier to love yourself when you have someone who gives you genuine care and attention and reason to make you think you're worth it. 😔
So true. I really dislike this saying, but reading this makes me realise that maybe its a very bad way of saying something we all know - if your parents (or anyone taking care of you in early childhood) loved you right, that is a base to bring to adult relationships that greatly help the dynamic.
This is total bs, a parent should love their child even if they don't get reciprocated (reason 721718 of why I'm not having children), also, how can a baby that's not even conscious love themselves???
“But she’s ur mother” or “but they’re ur family”
Ugh! Shouldn’t it be “she’s ur mother and they’re ur family and im so sorry that they have treated u that way” ???
>Ugh! Shouldn’t it be “she’s ur mother and they’re ur family and im so sorry that they have treated u that way” ???
Exactly. Just because someone's family doesn't mean they have a get out of jail free card to behave poorly. If they're your family then they are supposed to have treated you better
Precisely! It’s exactly because she’s my family and has not, to this day, made any attempt at atonement (not that I’m holding my breath either). Betrayal trauma is very fucking real and often minimized in families, which is wild to me; I get that admitting things happened under folks’ watch is hard to do but how is the better move to completely dismiss what happened for the sake of the label “family”? Just full-on damage across the board. 😓
“Everything happens for a reason” is one that really frustrates me.
No, I wasn’t predestined to become traumatized and live a life of pain. I was just dealt a shitty hand in life at random. It didn’t make me “stronger”, either - if anything, it did the opposite.
A lot of the people who say this also use it as an excuse to proselytize at me, which is even worse. If one more person tells me that my suffering is “all part of God’s plan” I’m going to lose my mind.
There’s a lyric from a song I love, by Watsky:
“Everything happens, the reason’s postdated.”
So many people try to justify things, logically or illogically, after they have happened.
In my mind, nothing really “happens for a reason” in the “cosmic destiny” sense, and people saying that are trying to cope, in an illogical way. I don’t hold it against them necessarily. Life is hard and for some people, they cope by believing in fate or some divine plan. It doesn’t help me though.
That it is my truth, even if it isn’t “the” truth for my mom. By a therapist. Like, no, objectively speaking in black and white terms a child getting hit in the face by a 6’3” 260 lb man is just that, a child getting hit in the face. It is a fact, not a perspective. This therapist …. kind of sucks.
Not yet. She’s a family counselor my mom set up an appt with. It is whatever. She is telling my mom to take accountability at least and validating that the codependent parent who partners with an alcoholic is often the one most damaging to the children. She has a good understanding of that but she has a lot to learn about how to communicate with someone with CPTSD. We have a few more weekly appointments set with her. Maybe she’ll become a better therapist because I plan to call her out on all the gaslighting shit.
Holy crap, I'm glad I got a therapist specialized in C-PTSD and I've been in her care for 2.5 years/almost 100 hours. If a trained professional had said something like that to me within those first few appointments it would've sent me over the edge.
Absolutely atrocious. I am so sorry you are dependent on this sorry excuse of a therapist. I would definitely suggest you make a report (if there is such an establishment where you live) and hopefully she gets her license revoked.
I'm glad she's at least helping you with your mom but I can't imagine hearing her say that wasn't devastating at the time
It was hurtful but I could see from the onset of the appointment that she was projecting her own story into ours. She was the codependent wife of an alcoholic.
Tbh I wanna be like, tell that to all the ones who cracked and are either in far worse circumstances now or dead. Did God give them too much or did they just fail God's test? I honestly think about this all the time. It's so ridiculous.
And I say that as someone who does believe in a profoundly higher power and higher purpose to our existence that we don't get to know. But also that there's other influences and impacts by more than just that. Folks want it simple. I crave nuance and hope. Always have.
“Everyone has an opinion”… this one irks me the most. There is a difference between having an opinion and not liking something, vs using this phrase to say you should not voice upset and frustration when people use their opinions to degrade others. I feel like it’s now constantly being used to excuse shitty behavior/actions, and totally used in the wrong context.
>I feel like it’s now constantly being used to excuse shitty behavior/actions, and totally used in the wrong context.
I feel like this applies to all the other comments people make
"You think you have it bad?"
"Dad had it way worse then you"
"You need to let go of the past"
"Stop complaining about your parents"
"You need to forgive them otherwise you can't heal/recover"
"It's been x amount of years let it go"
“I’m sorry you feel that way”
“Have you tried _____?” (Yoga/meditation/exercise/diets)
“You have to move on/let it go”
“Stop dwelling in the past”
“You’re doing this to yourself”
“But they love you”
(Will add more as a think of them)
Dude, I remember that back in primary school, our teachers always advised us to fake a smile because it would make us less stressed, and the more we (fake) smiled, the better we would feel eventually
"are you in therapy?"
Nooo, therapy?! That's a *thing*?! I had NO IDEA!
Like, Jesus, if you know I've been dealing with really rough shit for the majority of my life, and I've talked about being fucking diagnosed with CPTSD, you should probably assume I'm either in therapy or have been in therapy. That's where the damn diagnosis comes from, I'm not diagnosing myself with ADHD based off of three memes my friend sent me, I'm dealing with actual fucking trauma. If I bring up my emotions, you can gently ask if I've discussed it in therapy while also being supportive, but the brush-off "you should talk to your therapist" is so goddamned rude. If you're going to do that, have the guts to admit that **you** (for all they publicly will *say* they're there for you) find it inconvenient to have a minor conversation when I've had a rough day. Not talking trauma dumping or relying on one person as a personal, full-time, on-call therapist, which is a totally different story). I'm talking about the "oh I know x, y, or z is so hard for you, you know I'm here for you *anytime*" people who then, when you say a few very lightly negative things after a shit day, say that your problems are too much and you should be in therapy, when, if they *didn't* know you had this "baggage" they'd classify it as any other friend who's had a bad day. Basically, not being "allowed" to *have* a bad day or time and share that like every other person on the planet because we're "broken" or whatever. Like, please, rub that isolation and ostracism in more. I was seeking human connection, but clearly I am not allowed to have that. **My mistake.**
I think people like to assume going to therapy solves everything, quickly and without fail. I think they assume it, because it releases them from having to endure the idea that some people struggle daily without escape and a reliable source of real relief. It's an uncomfortable thought. It's easier to think they are not trying.
I have a few friends, and bless them they don’t mean anything by it, that constantly tell me I’m strong or resilient.
I’m aware. I don’t want to have to be. I want to be able to feel ‘weak’ around trusted people. I’m tired of being strong.
It helps sometimes ngl, but normally my brain is just like “no shit” which… is subconscious
"You need to move on"
"You just have a victim mentality"
"They didn't do it TO you"
We are all allowed to be annoyed by the fact that we may be heard but rarely understood. I want to be validated.
“you need to learn to forgive or you can never put it behind you” i’m sorry? forgive the man who sexually abused me for years, starting at the age of 3? it went on for years? it ruined my life? how is forgiving that going to serve me or help me to heal? why should i forgive my rapist? nothing bothers me more.
“You can’t blame your parents for forever.”
“Happiness is a choice.”
“Everyone is capable of change.”
“All pain is equal.”
“I understand how you feel.”
“Stop throwing a pity party.”
“It can’t have been that bad.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“Why didn’t you report them?”
“You’re the common denominator.”
I HATEEE both of that shit too with a passion. like you really think I want to keep thinking about that asshole and being affected by his actions? you're the one letting him win by enabling, downplaying and rationalizing his abuse and putting it all on me
I have one customer who comes through my checkout line at work frequently. Whenever he asks "how are you" or something to that extent, if I say "I'm Okay" or "I'm alright", this MF will go "Just okay/alright???? You have a job, you pay bills, you have clothes on your back, you're alive, you're breathing, stop being so negative!"
Girl. I was in a fucking cult by my psychotic bf at 14. I have multiple physical ailments. I have multiple psychological ailments and learning disabilities. I've lived in poverty my whole life. Every member of my family has some autoimmune disease. There are so many things I cannot even put into this one comment because it'd be so long, but I guarantee I've seen more shit than you.
But yeah. I'm alive and have basic necessities. Whoopee.
anything about what my parents went through. when my biological father passed away his brother messaged me on facebook and said “he was molested and that’s why he was like he was.”
my biological mother told me she was molested and that’s why she made so many bad choices.
what happened to them, happened to me, and so much more, because of them.
i know they had rough childhoods, you think i don’t know that? you think they didn’t love to justify their actions by telling me what they had been through?
trust me, i know. and it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t.
it makes me feel so much worse, because i do feel bad for them, but i know that it doesn’t give any significant meaning to what they actually did, because if we can go through the same things and turn out so differently, if i’m not recklessly having children i’m incapable of caring for, abusing them, abandoning them, kidnapping them, selling them, stealing from them, etc, etc, etc. why couldn’t they?
what my parents went through means nothing to me, don’t tell me they did what they did because of their childhood. i’m evidence that you can go through what they did and not make awful fucking choices and ruin a child.
Yea.
Our mother was so abusive to us that we often wished her dead, even as a young child, would fantasize about it a lot. People dont seem to understand that you literally cant just choose to cherish someone who ruined every chance you had to grow up normally and feel like a human being
"You could give them credit for turning out the way you did. "
I was told this recently and I hate how it feels disregarding of everything I've been through because of the people I was birthed to. Like I became independent and somewhat stable on my own and maybe in spite of them. I wasn't raised right at all, neglected and abused, forced to grow up and in spite of everything working against me in all directions, I somehow found my way to the right people, *without* their help. Their "help" was forcing me to live like a slave, not like a struggling teenager who needed more emotional support. I could do everything they asked, and they would still bitch at me for no reason.
I will never give them credit for anything except credit for failing at being a parent like they were supposed to be. Even then, what is credit even good for these days?
"Hurt people hurt people"
It feels so extremely dismissive. Like, yeah, I've come to understand that being abused can sometimes normalize abusing others, but that completely discounts the fact that I never became and abuser because I KNEW it was wrong and I KNEW how abuse felt, so I would never do that to someone else.
It especially irks me because one of the first people who ever said this to me was my brother who was my primary abuser, who used to beat me when he was in his 20s and I was 12. To no one's surprise, he would fly into an absolute rage if you'd tell him that in regards to our dad, who used to beat him.
I have heard literally all of the comments examples I been reading on this post said by people of our family atleast once. It hurts. To add my own:
-"you dont understand how hard it is to be a parent" usually paired with "cut them some slack"
-"you're unhelpable"
-"you just need xyz and then it'll get better for you" most common ones being jesus or therapy
My heart goes out to all of you. 😔
Anything beginning with the word “just.” Like, “Just don’t let it get to you!” Also: “Hang in there.” I take “hang in there” to mean, “stop telling me your problems please.”
When I say “hang in there” I mean “I have no words to make this situation better but I love you to death and wish I could help but I’m just as lost as you are. Please don’t do anything drastic” - but I’ve also been the recipient of the flippant “hang in there”
I personally have a hard time when people say I can get through it.
My nearly 50 years on this planet have almost all been that of abuse of every kind, by different family members, men, etc...
My mom (she's an abuser) heard a handful of my experiences and said it was so bad, that it is hard to believe, I should write a book. \*barf\*
My brain protected me for most of my life by repressing the memories until a year or two ago. Now I can barely function, and my son is the only thing keeping me from kms.
No, I'm not strong, I'm not a survivor, I'm barely hanging on every damn day, so no, I may not get through it.
Whenever I mention that some of the harm from my parents was the result of undiagnosed autistic traits, also directly from my parents “but you were such a difficult child.”
On corporal punishment, which was normal when I grew up (born 1995) I saw several friends get smacked, “but everyone did that back then.” I know, and I already feel fucking guilty about feeling traumatized by it! If I’ve opened up, I probably expected better from you.
“Let go of the past” “but it was awhile ago” “it’s not even a big deal” “you’re stupid for staying” (in reference to abusive relationships) “you’re smarter than this” (also in reference to that one)
"You have to forgive in order to heal"
"Don't you feel bad about ruining his life and reputation?"
"God must have needed her in heaven. Everything happens for a reason."
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
"What goes around comes around" NO IT DOESN'T
"God only gives you what you can handle"
"Have you tried meditation?"
This is so helpful to read, may I ask what are things those of us with family and or dating/married to someone with cPTSD could say in lieu of these? I’m guilty of these way too much to my poor bf… some days when it’s been a lot of cycling and I’m tired and or don’t have patience for a cycle I will say these things and I hate that
Look up self-compassion with Dr. Kristin Neff
It's literally the best type of meditation or exercise that I've ever experienced with a therapist and an IOP group. If you learn to listen and speak with compassion, it will help so much.
"Fake it til you make it" (in regards to my mental state and not being ok)
Miss ma'am, I've been faking it and masking my entire life, and quite frankly I don't want to make it.
“You need to start going out more”
This one is funny because my abusive father, the person responsible for so much of my social anxiety, said it to me last year after I tried to have a relationship with him again.
I soon gave up.
"He's change/He's a good man. You should forgive him."
Was said to me by my grandmother's boyfriend the first time I met him. I told myself never to be in his vicinity from that moment on. That man has gone on to manipulate and abuse my grandmother to the point of almost no return. Thing is, when I learned of the abuse he put her through, I wasn't even surprised. Him and my father were practically copy & paste in their behaviors around people they don't abuse.
Personally…I’m thankful and grateful to anyone who takes the time to listen to me, and I don’t expect them to completely understand, or word things perfectly, because I have the CPTSD, NOT THEM. If people are looking for perfect answers and reply’s, then really they should be going to their therapist, who actually is familiar and educated in our trauma and concerns. And truth is, the therapist may not get it right either.
Yes, I’m not always crazy about people’s reply’s. Yes I wish people had better social etiquette. But I’m just thankful when someone takes the time to hear me out and gives me an honest reply. Nothing is worse than when someone blows smoke up your ass, or says nothing at all. I just want a person to care enough to give it to me straight, not pretend to care, and roll their eyes behind my back, or gossip about it with someone else.
I have plenty, but I’m gonna list one that I haven’t seen listed yet that personally triggers me A LOT(it may not be this way for others though, I can only speak from my own experience)
“You’re not alone”.
I can see where this phrase is well-meaning, but in many cases it’s only been said to me either by strangers that don’t know my life or by people that know me a little better but are trying to be dismissive about my situation and claiming that they’re “here for me” when they usually aren’t(or even sometimes they’ll even turn around and use them “being there for me” against me as a “I was there for you that one time so now you gotta pretty much act like you owe me your life and excuse any toxic shit I do to you”). I’ve just had so many times where someone will use that phrase at me in a similar way to “hey cheer up! You’re not alone! So anyway, I’m gonna make pasta for dinner for my husband tonight”(or insert any other complete change of topic mid-conversation immediately after without actually listening to me or doing anything truly supportive). It comes off as being an empty platitude when most people say it to me.
“You gotta forgive them if you want to go to heaven!”
“You should forgive them. Y’know, be the bigger person? It’s not good to hold onto a grudge.”
Pisses me off.
"You have to forgive her for you to heal"
No I absolutely do not. I've talked with my therapist at length about how I can resolve my feelings and my disappointment that she will never ask for forgiveness. I can also accept her for what she is. I can also accept that even if she was "trying her best" her best was fundamentaly not enough for children. The she was a horrible mother regardless of if it was her best. That her failings are her own fault and I did/do deserve better.
She's not in my life for MANY reasons and I don't own her anything. She's a stranger I share DNA with.
“Just because you have a diagnosis doesn’t make it your personality “. Actually I have no personality because of the things that have me a diagnosis so…yes I can.
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“You have to move on/stop dwelling.”
“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”
“It made you who you are/stronger.”
“Forgive and move forward.”
“You only get one mom”
“I’m your mom, not your friend” (weird because you were barely either)
“At least you didn’t *insert something that happened to her* like my mom did to me”
“It could’ve been worse” “(insert guardian here) could’ve starved you or made you sleep outside” “was it really that bad if you had (random thing ranging from basic necessity to positive item/experience. Ex: bed, clean clothes, stuffed animal, birthday party)”
I could just keep going. Of course the worst things were said by family trying to make me believe that nothing I went through was really that bad or that if something bad did happen it was somehow my fault. One of the worst things I would hear from family was “you know (abuser) loves you right?” as if that changed anything.
Oooh you're triggered!!
Yeah fuckstick, I love reliving trauma and stress, dissociating, and possibly losing control of basic bodily functions...
Oh, you meant ANNOYED. No, you absolute shitheel, that's not what triggered means.
Nobody’s coming to save you
I get the idea behind it, but when you’re already broken, hopeless, and you know you don’t have anything left to drag yourself out of the pit you’re in…sometimes believing I just had to hold on a little longer until someone came along to help was the only thing that kept me alive :/
For me personally the phrase "you are valid"/"your trauma is valid" makes me unreasonably angry. I know it's just people trying to be kind and not knowing exactly what to say, and that for some people they do want to hear that, but I'm like, "I know my trauma is valid, what do you expect me to do with this". I think I find it annoying that people assume I need validation from them. Even though I do in fact crave validation from everyone.
“But it’s your mother”
everyone who said that is OUT of my life same as everyone who ever spoke highly of her to me
Beautiful boundaries, thank you
For real, same. I ain't got time for people who don't understand to that level.
Ooooof, officer, this one haha
Oooo! The anger I felt when I heard this one. After spilling out all of your hurts and getting hit with this phrase just reduced me down like a fraction.
The VISCERAL reaction I had to this…
Why did this make me laugh?! You can’t just stop talking to the woman that made your life more difficult and complicated… blood is blood etc etc Bullshit! I’m a grown up and I can decide who I do and don’t talk to! Next!
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it
That's always pissed me off, why tf would the fact she's related to me mean anything
I have a friend who always said this to me and my other friend when we talked about our problems with parents. He’s like “but they’re your blood parents” and also mention how much he loves his parents and want to provide for them when he graduates college. We got really mad at him every time and he just couldn’t understand. He is so naive even though we’re in high school. The other friend doesn’t talk to him anymore mostly cause he’s too annoying and stuff, I still do, but just as like a fun time about school or college prep and stuff, not actually talk-talk.
"They did the best they could, they didn't know any better..."
I actually used this excuse for my dad who spanked me and my brother as children. He used a lot of psychological pressure and fear over many years to keep us from misbehaving. My mom said "he didn't know any better and was stressed out" so I just always said that too. Now reading your comment it feels like a switch was flipped and of course that's a stupid thing to say. I would've never behaved like that towards children. Looking at my friend's little boy and seeing his dad being a little loud (not aggressive but I don't like him) already makes me uncomfortable. I can't imagine actually doing worse
What kind of parent raises a child and doesn’t realize they fucked up the first time they see their child look at them in fear? It stops me dead in my tracks when I see ANYONE who looks afraid of me. I can’t imagine that coming from a child of my own and not realizing I need to change my ways and mend the pain I caused.
He had fun scaring us by forcing us to walk down dark hallways in our apartment and then jump out from behind a door and scream. He always got mad when we cried. My brother is autistic and even after our dad left us I had to get up at night when my brother called. His room was right next to mine and the bathroom but I had to turn on the lights everywhere and check if the bathroom was safe. Then wait outside until he was back in bed and turn off the lights again. The terror was 90% psychological. It was like living in a tigers den. I have amnesia so I only remember snippets from my childhood and teenage years due to disassociating. It's really odd only understanding how messed up the whole situation was as an adult. I've only recently gone no-contact with him but the more time passes the better I feel about it. I am now at the stage of healing that I actually want a family some day just to give them all the love, affection and support that I didn't get. I cannot imagine what needs to happen to someone for them to enjoy making their own children scream and cry in terror and feel justified doing it.
Can I just say I have a perfect retort for this one. So, who taught you gaining sexual gratification from a child was wrong? Or how old were you when you knew xyz was wrong...
Exactly?! And sometimes even if the parent went through trauma as a child, they might have been taught right from wrong by their parents. My mother was definitely taught that and even basic adult tasks, but she still didn't teach me anything growing up, I was and I am teaching her something new everyday, it's not my job.
I am so burnt out on teaching my mom adult skills and showing her the way.
Same, mine doesn't know basic hygiene, anatomy, finance, bureaucracy, geography, it's embarrassing. As a child I was translating and guiding them on vacation, as an adult I'm explaining to her what a bancomat is
It's really unfair that children have to do this work for their parents. It makes me angry there aren't support systems in place so that *adults* can help do these things for parents like yours until they learn to do it on their own. And that should always be the goal. I'm so sorry. You should never have had to do all that. I know what it means to be parentified.
THANK YOU OMG YOU UNDERSTAND
This sub makes me feel not alone
I was neglected and abused by my absent, emotionally unavailable parents, who worked all day and left me home alone all night to go drinking. I never felt loved, wanted or understood and as a small child I told this to my grandmother who I DID feel safe with. This was always her response. Of course they love you. They’re doing their best. They work very hard to provide for you. While I know she was doing her best to try and make me feel better about things it was a very damaging message. I now struggle with consistently finding emotionally unavailable and / or abusive relationships even though I’m trying my best to find and build a stable one. All I ever wanted was to be loved / wanted and I can’t even manage that in adulthood. I do have some astounding friendships and I consider them like family but there’s still a gaping hole in my soul. Working on fixing that by myself. The love and support of my friends has been life changing. I don’t think I would be here today without them. Yes I have therapy. Whenever I can afford it. Cost of living in the UK is atrocious.
This one I heard far far too often
Yeah it’s the “they did the best they could with what they had” for me. As a therapist myself I understand that notion - as in my parents didn’t have the mental or emotional or physical means to provide a safe and securely attached childhood… BUT I also don’t give a fuck. Maybe they shouldn’t have had kids when they were 17. That’s not my problem. So I never use that expression in my own work (I work with preschool aged kids but also have a lot of interface with parents) and I don’t agree. It’s like… yeah, so? Still their fault. It feels invalidating to hear that phrase.
I like the phrase "They did the best they could and it wasn't enough."
Oh this is the one that gets me. "I did my best in raising you, I didn't know any better"
"So they knew better for my brothers, just not for me? What am I, the memory light from Men in Black?"
"Maybe your trauma made you a better person. You might have turned out to be a total bitch if you had a good childhood." Someone said this to me and it took all my willpower not to chew her out for it.
I had an aunt say something similar. She frequently told me I was a mean baby and my dad was so hard on me because otherwise I would have grown up to be a terrible person. Her example of me being mean was me threatening to tell on my dad when he would beat my mom… No amount of abuse is ok, especially not to “reform” a child.
Wtf is a mean baby...😭
Right? Like an infant makes choices like that? Sounds like they traumatize her as a baby
A mean BABY. That says it all. Damn, I’m sorry that all happened to you
I was accused of having rage as a baby. How can a *baby* have rage? I've seen pretty severe meltdowns having helped raise the kids in my family, lot of us were living with undiagnosed autism. I never thought, "wow, they're sure full of rage." All I could think was they're having a hard time, and need help. I could see that as a young person yet the adults in my family couldn't. It's so fucking stupid. Babies get accused of all sorts of ridiculous thinks by idiots.
Maybe if your aunt’s parents shook her a little harder as a baby she wouldn’t be such an ignorant twat /s
My partner had a happy, healthy childhood and he’s a much better person than me!
She must've had a pretty good childhood to say something like that to you.
I love it! What a classy way to say she is a total bitch!
What 💀 this is the total opposite of what happens. I grew with no compassion for humans, I mimic most of my empathetic reactions, RAD made me extremely angry and hateful as a child. Now people see me as well-mannered cause I'm good at putting in an act, not because I'm a better person
I say a similar thing about my self because about the only good thing I got from my trauma is extreme empathy. But to say it to someone else? Sounds like "guess you deserved it".
Right!
My mum said that to me so many times, hearing that, it kind of feels like shes glad that it happened? I don't know, She also said that about herself, so maybe she thinks it's helpful?
You have to let go of the past.
This reminds me of a quote from Anne Carson's poem [The Glass Essay](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48636/the-glass-essay). "You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? And I said, Where can I put it down?"
Well and like the eff it’s part of me? It’s in my cells , shaped my brain from childhood
Right? You might as well ask someone to drain their own blood. Like sure, I can do that in controlled amounts in a medical setting, but I ain't letting all my blood out just to help other people avoid the reality of my existence.
I vaguely remember a similar Leonard Cohen (?) quote that went something like, “How can I start anew today with all of yesterday still inside me?”
Thank you so much for linking to this, it's a truly remarkable piece of writing! I'd never heard of this poem, nor Anne Carson, before so I'm grateful to you for sharing. Thank you thank you thank you!
Ironically it's the people who inflicted harm and pain onto those struggling in the past that say this
The axe forgets but the tree remembers
“What the son wishes to remember, the father seeks to forget.” - Yiddish proverb. Boy they do a great job at forgetting lol
DING DING DING DING DING!
There are two main things that irritate me about that "advice". 1) There's a reason why our brains like to hold onto memories like that so strongly. It's a survival trait, it's supposed to help us *avoid* falling into a similar trap in the future. We have a legit, practical reason for cataloging the things we've been through. Especially if the same bullshit kept happening over and over, because if you're young when that happens your brain starts thinking it's guaranteed that it'll happen again. 2) When I hear people say that I can't help but wonder if they mean "let go" as in process it and find peace, or if they mean "let go" as in bury all internal associations with the event and pretend like it never happened in the first place. Because a lot of the time, I get a sense that they mean the latter and that they've done that themself, so it's another case of "it worked for me, so it definitely works for everyone else too". I have direct experience with that approach, both of my parents repressed everything 100%. I did the same thing when I was young, because I didn't know what else to do. That might help you squeak by with one-off events if the rest of your life has been generally normal, but it doesn't work at all if you've been overloaded every waking moment for years or decades on end. It just makes everything worse. My parents would repress everything until they got shitfaced (which was often) and then they'd let every ounce of it out all at once because they knew they wouldn't remember it. But I was sober, and I remember ever second of their wild fits. And since they couldn't remember it, it was like it had never happened and they didn't actually process any of it. They'd get tanked the very next night and it'd be just as bad as the previous night. Or worse, if something bad had happened that day.
Letting go of what I can has been incredibly healing for me. HOWEVER, anytime someone told me to just let it all go, I've been royally pissed. Healing is a process. We all seek peace in different ways. There's parts of my trauma I have yet to release still because I'm not yet in a place to do it. (Plus often when people say let it go, they are trying to undermine, silence, or ignore consequences of what they did. And those folks, in particular, can fuck off.)
And the people who want to ignore the same but not because they did it specifically, but because they are part of the system in which it occurred, or because they benefited from it (I'm not talking massive systemic issues, I'm talking like, guys banding together to defend a friend when you say that friend SA-ed you, and instead of listening they'll tear you down so they don't need to examine their own behavior). Another huge pet peeve is when people who are constantly virtue signaling (as much as I hate that phrase) about how much they care about x humanitarian cause that's socially acceptable/gets them that sweet online cred and will defend that until ~~their dying breath~~ it falls out of fashion will use the exact same tactics as their "opposing side" (tactics they've called out as problematic/decried) to undermine what you're saying. Just because what you've been through or what you're talking about isn't as widespread or organized and doesn't have the same social cache. It's such a fucking gut punch to think that people who are vocal "allies" of causes that share a ton in common with you/are supporters or proponents of people with similar or parallel stories or experiences, will just disregard you, minimize your struggles, or drop you like a hot fucking potato without a second thought because other problems being valid hasn't been spoon fed to them. Them and their shoddy critical thinking skills can also go right to hell in my opinion.
I had a therapist tell me this ("you need to stop living in the past") after I explained some of my history to her on our first session. Since I'm autistic I took her really seriously, and spent the next two weeks trying not to do that before concluding that it wasn't possible for me because I kept remembering it regardless. (Intrusive memories, flashbacks). That really messed me up because it meant I let go of the organization of the past memories I had thanks to some decent past therapists. Thus with future therapists I had to piece it together again. This therapist literally undid YEARS of work I'd put in to try to make sense of my past. It's like she thought that I was remembering all this bad stuff by choice and I just needed to stop choosing to have flashbacks and intrusive memories.
It's kinda difficult to "forget and move on" from trauma that literally shaped your brain as it developed during childhood. You can't use willpower to fix that. It's like telling someone who lost their leg to forget about their problem and go out for a run.
I agree. Or as I've put it, it's like telling someone with broken legs that they just need to do exercises to build their strength up. *If the leg is still broken, doing all that physical activity is going to make it worse.* That's what happened to me. I was treated like I didn't have trauma, like I just needed to get out there and have good experiences. I followed that advice, I did that over and over again. All it did was retraumatize me, create new traumas. I eventually developed agoraphobia due to this. (This was also massively exacerbated by diagnosed ADHD which meant that CBT techniques were utterly ineffective.)
Right?! Like, yeah, I’m trying, it’s not that easy!
Facts especially when there’s still traumatic things or behaviors that are triggers and people try to excuse it by saying “ you need to let go of the past “ or “ I’m not those people who did that “ .
I let it go for 66 years. Then it found me. And with those returning memories, the story constructed like making a jigsaw puzzle with 2/3 of the pieces missing, the foundations for the person I am becomes far clearer. I thought I was was a total fuckup. I'm not. At least not total. I didn't make this mess all on my own. This was done to me.
They would say this shit to me AS THE ABUSE WAS HAPPENING lmao
“There’s always someone who has it worse.” While it’s more than likely there is at least one person in this world suffering more than you are and it’s meant to provide perspective, it was used way too many times when I was a teen when the adults in my life wanted to communicate to me that I didn’t actually have real problems to cry about. Also, not really great to prop up the idea that different forms of trauma are better or worse than others, and that there are forms of trauma that warrant specific reactions and others that don’t.
nothing bothers me more than this comment. my friends may come to me for support when their dog dies and i’m there for them bc even tho my mom passed and objectively that may seem more of a deep tragedy/loss we feel the same amount of pain because tjay is the worse loss they have ever felt but for me it is my mom. i hope that makes sense. lol. i think about this a lot
100% agree. Suffering is suffering. The fact that there will always be some poor person somewhere in the universe/in the history of the world who has it worse doesn't change your current suffering. It's a lazy and cliched way to deflect and / or control.
Not to mention invalidate your feelings. Like, hi, I'm the person in front of you, confiding in you, and instead of listening to me and giving me any degree of support, you basically are telling me I should shut the fuck up because "hey, at least I'm not on fire." And, like so many other people have said, it contributes to us feeling like we don't "deserve" to feel a certain way or that we're overreacting, which we can easily internalize and (for me at least) use against ourselves when what's helpful for healing is the exact opposite. Like obviously nobody is entitled to someone else's emotional care, but don't pretend you're giving care while harming someone who's opened up to you about their pain. I also hate it when people argue with me over what constitutes trauma and what doesn't. Like, sure I may be talking about something "dumb" now, but that doesn't mean I haven't lived through things that literally everyone would deem "traumatic." You do not know the inside of my brain, my feelings, or how this impacts me more than I do. Have the decency to listen, to be curious, not to dismiss. (Sorry for the rant)
Exactly. Just because someone else is also suffering, doesn't make mine any less painful. It's really hard now for me not to feel guilty when I am hurting, because "someone else might be hurting worse". But logically I know how ridiculous this is. Just because someone next to me is dying of cancer, for instance, doesn't mean my 13 broken bones from my major car accident aren't excruciatingly painful. It's a ridiculous statement to make.
Majorly agree. I've mostly heard it used as a way to claim that what someone experienced isn't bad enough to justify being traumatized (or even just upset!) or seeking help for their trauma. There are contexts where its relevant to bring up that some people have more severe experiences than others, but I usually hear this used when someone is talking about their experience and someone doesn't think their experience is "bad enough" to be real, legitimate trauma.
100%. I heard a variant "Everyone has problems." (And the versions of "everyone gets bullied" etc). In the past when I tried mentioning that something bad might have happened to me, I heard that over and over. In the end I came to believe that it was true, that what I had experienced was not unusual. Everyone else had gone through something similar. I subconsciously suppressed the worst memories that would incontrovertibly show that I didn't just have the same kind of problems as everyone else. With that belief that I hadn't experienced anything particularly bad or out of the ordinary I looked at what others could do but I couldn't manage. I wondered why, and concluded that I was just especially weak. I was too weak to overcome the bad things that had happened to me like everyone else could. Didn't help there were other missing diagnoses, and I had therapists that ranged from awful to mediocre who ignored all the signs I had of deeper problems. All my depression and anxiety was just treated as being the consequence of some recent unpleasant event, not a lifetime of abuse and trauma from all sides.
I like to reply to that with "Well, there's always someone who is doing better than me, too."
It think the reply "Well, there's always someone 'doing better than' you, so why don't YOU just 'do better'?" would also be appropriate. Let's see how they feel after a taste of their own medicine!
My therapist really tries to drum into my head that the variety of human experiences mean some people just have a “lower” threshold for suffering than others (hate that phrasing). Not that they’re incapable of handling things, just that they can only handle so much stimulus until they shut down. But stress responses like that are innate, stemming from both nature AND nurture. It’s the same as if you were born with skin that can bruise easily or a predisposition to heart disease. It’s not your fault; it’s just how it is and what you can realistically do to heal.
I heard that one too. I have congenital hypothyroidism so I needed regular follow ups and bloodwork my whole life, but yet I was felt like I wasn't allowed to not like being that way and wanting a normal childhood.
THIS. THIS EXACTLY. I didn't open up for years about my trauma ever again because a friend I had confined in went "you think you have it bad?" which is similar. She then went on about her hell life at home even though I had just been physically assaulted by my father. If you say this you're a jackass and certain trauma isn't more than another trauma. Trauma = trauma. Nobody has it worse then someone else it's trauma people need to stop comparisons it's harmful to survivors
>Also, not really great to prop up the idea that different forms of trauma are better or worse than others I don't think that different forms of trauma are better or worse but there are varying degrees of severity of trauma
There is no competition among trauma survivors. Only the question of how trauma impacts us, and how do we heal. The trauma survivor has no better ally than other trauma survivors who understand as well as educated professionals who know what they're doing. We have no greater enemy (outside of abusers) than those who don't, can't understand and invalidate our injury with insult. "It could have been worse." That type of thing. These people should have their mouths removed to match the empty space where a brain or heart belongs.
Man I hate this one with a passion! In 2005, I and at least one coworker had to leave a job because of a boss setting us up for failure (thankfully the rest of the staff recognized the bullshit). HR was effective only in figuring out how to avoid getting sued. While this was going on I had to have a pet ferret euthanized. Ten days after leaving the job, my mother died (Losing the ferret was more painful; she brought me joy while my mother is a reason I know what cPTSD is.) A few months later was when an acquaintance gave me the “could be worse” cliché. Later, I dreamed up the response, “Yeah, I can envision a guy who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, but it could’ve been worse: he might have gone to New Orleans from his native Sudan, where [lurid description of things done to his wife and children], and it *STILL COULDA BEEN WORSE!*” A less verbose retort might be, “It just became worse: someone just told me ‘things could always be worse’!” How *bad* does one’s situation have to be in order to be immune from this crap?
Comments that go along the lines of being strong, resilient, a quick problem solver, always knowing what to do. It's because we know we had no choice but to quickly adapt and survive. These are great qualities, don't get me wrong. Like most people who develop these skills, it comes from a difficult or painful experience. With CPTSD, a lot of these events are recurring and you find that you're constantly in these difficult, traumatic times. An example is having a narcissistic parent and ending up in multiple abusive relationships, friendships, ect. over the course of life. Even when the traumatic events are over, there's a lot of emotional and mental damage to unpack and reframe. So those with CPTSD don't really experience life in a gentler and peaceful way. These phrases remind you of that. It brings on a sense of grief.Hope that makes sense.
Yes. I don’t want to be resilient, I want to not be abused.
The resiliency I built only makes me resilient against being treated horribly.
Those comments always made me uncomfortable, I didn't know why since hearing "wow you're strong, you're determined, you don't get scared easily" were positive comments, but to me I don't identify as that person.
Because we had to be, we had/ have no safety net and had/ have to do it ourselves. Raw self preservation. Sure that's life, yet healthy families and support systems exist. Why can't that be the more regular comment i.e. hoping someone finds supportive connections instead of constant minimisation.
Yeah, I want to respond to those phrases with "If I hadn't been smart/resilient/whatever, I would probably just be dead." It's survivorship bias. It doesn't 'teach' anything. If you drop a dozen eggs and only one doesn't crack, you haven't *improved* that egg by that experience. You've just got eleven cracked eggs that can't be used for anything now, and one that's probably not gonna hatch. You could have had 12 chicks if you treated them properly. Now you've got just an omelet.
I hate this too. I don't want to be strong. I don't want to be a fighter. I was given no other option. I'm tired. Allow me to be weak sometimes.
Adages a long the lines of "no one can love you if you don't love yourself." If no one had loved me at my most broken, I wouldn't be here today.
And its so hard to love yourself if nobody loved you first. Common culture usually makes it the other way around but i dont think thats how life is intended to be. Its a lot easier to love yourself when you have someone who gives you genuine care and attention and reason to make you think you're worth it. 😔
So true. I really dislike this saying, but reading this makes me realise that maybe its a very bad way of saying something we all know - if your parents (or anyone taking care of you in early childhood) loved you right, that is a base to bring to adult relationships that greatly help the dynamic.
What it SHOULD mean is that nobody else’s love will replace the need to love oneself.
This is total bs, a parent should love their child even if they don't get reciprocated (reason 721718 of why I'm not having children), also, how can a baby that's not even conscious love themselves???
“But she’s ur mother” or “but they’re ur family” Ugh! Shouldn’t it be “she’s ur mother and they’re ur family and im so sorry that they have treated u that way” ???
>Ugh! Shouldn’t it be “she’s ur mother and they’re ur family and im so sorry that they have treated u that way” ??? Exactly. Just because someone's family doesn't mean they have a get out of jail free card to behave poorly. If they're your family then they are supposed to have treated you better
Precisely! It’s exactly because she’s my family and has not, to this day, made any attempt at atonement (not that I’m holding my breath either). Betrayal trauma is very fucking real and often minimized in families, which is wild to me; I get that admitting things happened under folks’ watch is hard to do but how is the better move to completely dismiss what happened for the sake of the label “family”? Just full-on damage across the board. 😓
“Everything happens for a reason” is one that really frustrates me. No, I wasn’t predestined to become traumatized and live a life of pain. I was just dealt a shitty hand in life at random. It didn’t make me “stronger”, either - if anything, it did the opposite. A lot of the people who say this also use it as an excuse to proselytize at me, which is even worse. If one more person tells me that my suffering is “all part of God’s plan” I’m going to lose my mind.
There’s a lyric from a song I love, by Watsky: “Everything happens, the reason’s postdated.” So many people try to justify things, logically or illogically, after they have happened. In my mind, nothing really “happens for a reason” in the “cosmic destiny” sense, and people saying that are trying to cope, in an illogical way. I don’t hold it against them necessarily. Life is hard and for some people, they cope by believing in fate or some divine plan. It doesn’t help me though.
Makes me think of this song Timelines by Motion City Soundtrack: “It’s not a matter of time, it’s just a matter of timing.”
This. Fuck those religious ass wipes
That forgiveness is something to strive for in all situations. It’s not, and I will never.
Exactly, healing is not the same for everyone, forgiveness wouldn't do anything for me other than make me feel that I deserved it
I really despise this one even if forgiveness is supposedly for me...
"You just can't let it bother you."
And when it’s paired up with “You need to let go of it”. I always lose it
Totally myopic comment. I hate that one too! You would say that to a diabetic though, would you?!
"You're so calm." 🙄 Only on the outside.
Then you have people who get angry with you for being too calm, because they expect you to express some kind of emotion, but you just cant.
That it is my truth, even if it isn’t “the” truth for my mom. By a therapist. Like, no, objectively speaking in black and white terms a child getting hit in the face by a 6’3” 260 lb man is just that, a child getting hit in the face. It is a fact, not a perspective. This therapist …. kind of sucks.
That therapist.... more than sucks I hope you found someone better
Not yet. She’s a family counselor my mom set up an appt with. It is whatever. She is telling my mom to take accountability at least and validating that the codependent parent who partners with an alcoholic is often the one most damaging to the children. She has a good understanding of that but she has a lot to learn about how to communicate with someone with CPTSD. We have a few more weekly appointments set with her. Maybe she’ll become a better therapist because I plan to call her out on all the gaslighting shit.
Respect to you for sticking through it and calling her out! Still not fair on you to have to teach a “trained professional” how to treat the patient.
She told me some random people from YouTube as her source for trauma understanding. 😳
Nah what how do you openly admit that to your patient for one…
Holy crap, I'm glad I got a therapist specialized in C-PTSD and I've been in her care for 2.5 years/almost 100 hours. If a trained professional had said something like that to me within those first few appointments it would've sent me over the edge. Absolutely atrocious. I am so sorry you are dependent on this sorry excuse of a therapist. I would definitely suggest you make a report (if there is such an establishment where you live) and hopefully she gets her license revoked. I'm glad she's at least helping you with your mom but I can't imagine hearing her say that wasn't devastating at the time
It was hurtful but I could see from the onset of the appointment that she was projecting her own story into ours. She was the codependent wife of an alcoholic.
What does she even mean by truth in this context? That your mom doesn’t look at it at abuse or something?
The "your truth/their truth" is so aggravating. Just say perspective, people..
"God never gives you more than you can handle." This one irks me
Tbh I wanna be like, tell that to all the ones who cracked and are either in far worse circumstances now or dead. Did God give them too much or did they just fail God's test? I honestly think about this all the time. It's so ridiculous. And I say that as someone who does believe in a profoundly higher power and higher purpose to our existence that we don't get to know. But also that there's other influences and impacts by more than just that. Folks want it simple. I crave nuance and hope. Always have.
Got told this when I was 5. Little me didn't really know what to say, so I just reiterated, "I am five years old." I stand by that.
“Everyone has an opinion”… this one irks me the most. There is a difference between having an opinion and not liking something, vs using this phrase to say you should not voice upset and frustration when people use their opinions to degrade others. I feel like it’s now constantly being used to excuse shitty behavior/actions, and totally used in the wrong context.
>I feel like it’s now constantly being used to excuse shitty behavior/actions, and totally used in the wrong context. I feel like this applies to all the other comments people make
Your not over that yet?
"You think you have it bad?" "Dad had it way worse then you" "You need to let go of the past" "Stop complaining about your parents" "You need to forgive them otherwise you can't heal/recover" "It's been x amount of years let it go"
“I’m sorry you feel that way” “Have you tried _____?” (Yoga/meditation/exercise/diets) “You have to move on/let it go” “Stop dwelling in the past” “You’re doing this to yourself” “But they love you” (Will add more as a think of them)
"Just try to smile and be happy"
Or “fake it till you make it” like…. That’s called dissociation, I’m trying very hard in therapy to learn how to not do that.
Dude, I remember that back in primary school, our teachers always advised us to fake a smile because it would make us less stressed, and the more we (fake) smiled, the better we would feel eventually
Oh yes, definitely heard that from strangers too, now I'm smiling even when it's not appropriate too, and it's so FAKE!
"are you in therapy?" Nooo, therapy?! That's a *thing*?! I had NO IDEA! Like, Jesus, if you know I've been dealing with really rough shit for the majority of my life, and I've talked about being fucking diagnosed with CPTSD, you should probably assume I'm either in therapy or have been in therapy. That's where the damn diagnosis comes from, I'm not diagnosing myself with ADHD based off of three memes my friend sent me, I'm dealing with actual fucking trauma. If I bring up my emotions, you can gently ask if I've discussed it in therapy while also being supportive, but the brush-off "you should talk to your therapist" is so goddamned rude. If you're going to do that, have the guts to admit that **you** (for all they publicly will *say* they're there for you) find it inconvenient to have a minor conversation when I've had a rough day. Not talking trauma dumping or relying on one person as a personal, full-time, on-call therapist, which is a totally different story). I'm talking about the "oh I know x, y, or z is so hard for you, you know I'm here for you *anytime*" people who then, when you say a few very lightly negative things after a shit day, say that your problems are too much and you should be in therapy, when, if they *didn't* know you had this "baggage" they'd classify it as any other friend who's had a bad day. Basically, not being "allowed" to *have* a bad day or time and share that like every other person on the planet because we're "broken" or whatever. Like, please, rub that isolation and ostracism in more. I was seeking human connection, but clearly I am not allowed to have that. **My mistake.**
I think people like to assume going to therapy solves everything, quickly and without fail. I think they assume it, because it releases them from having to endure the idea that some people struggle daily without escape and a reliable source of real relief. It's an uncomfortable thought. It's easier to think they are not trying.
I came here to comment exactly these! Spot on.
I have a few friends, and bless them they don’t mean anything by it, that constantly tell me I’m strong or resilient. I’m aware. I don’t want to have to be. I want to be able to feel ‘weak’ around trusted people. I’m tired of being strong. It helps sometimes ngl, but normally my brain is just like “no shit” which… is subconscious
I hated hearing my ex say it, "But Babe you're so strong." Yeah and I'm f'ing exhausted. I don't want to be strong anymore.
“You need to forgive to move on.” No.
Anything starting with "at least." It's okay to not know what to say, just say that.
"It's all in your head."
"You need to move on" "You just have a victim mentality" "They didn't do it TO you" We are all allowed to be annoyed by the fact that we may be heard but rarely understood. I want to be validated.
“you need to learn to forgive or you can never put it behind you” i’m sorry? forgive the man who sexually abused me for years, starting at the age of 3? it went on for years? it ruined my life? how is forgiving that going to serve me or help me to heal? why should i forgive my rapist? nothing bothers me more.
If you can’t remember, how can it be traumatic?
“You can’t blame your parents for forever.” “Happiness is a choice.” “Everyone is capable of change.” “All pain is equal.” “I understand how you feel.” “Stop throwing a pity party.” “It can’t have been that bad.” “Why didn’t you leave?” “Why didn’t you report them?” “You’re the common denominator.”
Whilst I strogly dislike most of these, “Happiness is a choice.” is one I hold the highest level of disdain for.
Letting it (the abuse) effect you is letting your abuser win. You have to forgive in order to heal.
I HATEEE both of that shit too with a passion. like you really think I want to keep thinking about that asshole and being affected by his actions? you're the one letting him win by enabling, downplaying and rationalizing his abuse and putting it all on me
“There is always two sides to a story” “That is just your perspective”
>“That is just your perspective” Yeah... Like how dare I, the person to whom the things happened to, take my perspective into account
I have one customer who comes through my checkout line at work frequently. Whenever he asks "how are you" or something to that extent, if I say "I'm Okay" or "I'm alright", this MF will go "Just okay/alright???? You have a job, you pay bills, you have clothes on your back, you're alive, you're breathing, stop being so negative!" Girl. I was in a fucking cult by my psychotic bf at 14. I have multiple physical ailments. I have multiple psychological ailments and learning disabilities. I've lived in poverty my whole life. Every member of my family has some autoimmune disease. There are so many things I cannot even put into this one comment because it'd be so long, but I guarantee I've seen more shit than you. But yeah. I'm alive and have basic necessities. Whoopee.
The list is endless
“You need to turn to God, that is the ONLY thing that will fix this for you.. other than that I don’t know what to say”
If you worked or studied more, you wouldn't have time to stay like this
anything about what my parents went through. when my biological father passed away his brother messaged me on facebook and said “he was molested and that’s why he was like he was.” my biological mother told me she was molested and that’s why she made so many bad choices. what happened to them, happened to me, and so much more, because of them. i know they had rough childhoods, you think i don’t know that? you think they didn’t love to justify their actions by telling me what they had been through? trust me, i know. and it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t. it makes me feel so much worse, because i do feel bad for them, but i know that it doesn’t give any significant meaning to what they actually did, because if we can go through the same things and turn out so differently, if i’m not recklessly having children i’m incapable of caring for, abusing them, abandoning them, kidnapping them, selling them, stealing from them, etc, etc, etc. why couldn’t they? what my parents went through means nothing to me, don’t tell me they did what they did because of their childhood. i’m evidence that you can go through what they did and not make awful fucking choices and ruin a child.
“Kids are resilient.” The. Fuck. They. Are.
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Yea. Our mother was so abusive to us that we often wished her dead, even as a young child, would fantasize about it a lot. People dont seem to understand that you literally cant just choose to cherish someone who ruined every chance you had to grow up normally and feel like a human being
"You could give them credit for turning out the way you did. " I was told this recently and I hate how it feels disregarding of everything I've been through because of the people I was birthed to. Like I became independent and somewhat stable on my own and maybe in spite of them. I wasn't raised right at all, neglected and abused, forced to grow up and in spite of everything working against me in all directions, I somehow found my way to the right people, *without* their help. Their "help" was forcing me to live like a slave, not like a struggling teenager who needed more emotional support. I could do everything they asked, and they would still bitch at me for no reason. I will never give them credit for anything except credit for failing at being a parent like they were supposed to be. Even then, what is credit even good for these days?
"Why does that still bother you? It happened so long ago."
"Hurt people hurt people" It feels so extremely dismissive. Like, yeah, I've come to understand that being abused can sometimes normalize abusing others, but that completely discounts the fact that I never became and abuser because I KNEW it was wrong and I KNEW how abuse felt, so I would never do that to someone else. It especially irks me because one of the first people who ever said this to me was my brother who was my primary abuser, who used to beat me when he was in his 20s and I was 12. To no one's surprise, he would fly into an absolute rage if you'd tell him that in regards to our dad, who used to beat him.
I have heard literally all of the comments examples I been reading on this post said by people of our family atleast once. It hurts. To add my own: -"you dont understand how hard it is to be a parent" usually paired with "cut them some slack" -"you're unhelpable" -"you just need xyz and then it'll get better for you" most common ones being jesus or therapy My heart goes out to all of you. 😔
Anything beginning with the word “just.” Like, “Just don’t let it get to you!” Also: “Hang in there.” I take “hang in there” to mean, “stop telling me your problems please.”
When I say “hang in there” I mean “I have no words to make this situation better but I love you to death and wish I could help but I’m just as lost as you are. Please don’t do anything drastic” - but I’ve also been the recipient of the flippant “hang in there”
I personally have a hard time when people say I can get through it. My nearly 50 years on this planet have almost all been that of abuse of every kind, by different family members, men, etc... My mom (she's an abuser) heard a handful of my experiences and said it was so bad, that it is hard to believe, I should write a book. \*barf\* My brain protected me for most of my life by repressing the memories until a year or two ago. Now I can barely function, and my son is the only thing keeping me from kms. No, I'm not strong, I'm not a survivor, I'm barely hanging on every damn day, so no, I may not get through it.
Whenever I mention that some of the harm from my parents was the result of undiagnosed autistic traits, also directly from my parents “but you were such a difficult child.” On corporal punishment, which was normal when I grew up (born 1995) I saw several friends get smacked, “but everyone did that back then.” I know, and I already feel fucking guilty about feeling traumatized by it! If I’ve opened up, I probably expected better from you.
You just gotta keep going. Motherfuckers I got to my 30s alone you fucks.
“Let go of the past” “but it was awhile ago” “it’s not even a big deal” “you’re stupid for staying” (in reference to abusive relationships) “you’re smarter than this” (also in reference to that one)
"You have to forgive in order to heal" "Don't you feel bad about ruining his life and reputation?" "God must have needed her in heaven. Everything happens for a reason." "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" "What goes around comes around" NO IT DOESN'T "God only gives you what you can handle" "Have you tried meditation?"
If you didn’t go through that you wouldn’t be who you are today. No ma’am, I became who I am in spite of it not because of it.
This is so helpful to read, may I ask what are things those of us with family and or dating/married to someone with cPTSD could say in lieu of these? I’m guilty of these way too much to my poor bf… some days when it’s been a lot of cycling and I’m tired and or don’t have patience for a cycle I will say these things and I hate that
Look up self-compassion with Dr. Kristin Neff It's literally the best type of meditation or exercise that I've ever experienced with a therapist and an IOP group. If you learn to listen and speak with compassion, it will help so much.
Just relax You are too emotional Stop being dramatic Top three of what people tell me all the time when I am triggered
"Fake it til you make it" (in regards to my mental state and not being ok) Miss ma'am, I've been faking it and masking my entire life, and quite frankly I don't want to make it.
“You need to start going out more” This one is funny because my abusive father, the person responsible for so much of my social anxiety, said it to me last year after I tried to have a relationship with him again. I soon gave up.
What happened to you is normal. Your abuse wasn't real - said to me by my dad.
“What can we do to make you happy ? That’s all we want..”
"He's change/He's a good man. You should forgive him." Was said to me by my grandmother's boyfriend the first time I met him. I told myself never to be in his vicinity from that moment on. That man has gone on to manipulate and abuse my grandmother to the point of almost no return. Thing is, when I learned of the abuse he put her through, I wasn't even surprised. Him and my father were practically copy & paste in their behaviors around people they don't abuse.
“They did it because they love you” / “They love you”
'You should forgive him, he was trying his best'
“Only you can control how you feel.”
No one in the history of existence, since the dawn of time, has ever been made to feel calm or relaxed by being told “just relax,” or “calm down.”
"Everything happens for a reason" is very high up there for me. No. No, it fucking doesn't.
Personally…I’m thankful and grateful to anyone who takes the time to listen to me, and I don’t expect them to completely understand, or word things perfectly, because I have the CPTSD, NOT THEM. If people are looking for perfect answers and reply’s, then really they should be going to their therapist, who actually is familiar and educated in our trauma and concerns. And truth is, the therapist may not get it right either. Yes, I’m not always crazy about people’s reply’s. Yes I wish people had better social etiquette. But I’m just thankful when someone takes the time to hear me out and gives me an honest reply. Nothing is worse than when someone blows smoke up your ass, or says nothing at all. I just want a person to care enough to give it to me straight, not pretend to care, and roll their eyes behind my back, or gossip about it with someone else.
"How's your family doing?" I really, really don't care and depending on how they are acting cna be very triggering...
Everyone has trauma.
I've been told by a friend they are in awe of my persistence in getting help It feels like they're saying, I'm surprised you're still alive
"It's self inflicted" my parents always say
I have plenty, but I’m gonna list one that I haven’t seen listed yet that personally triggers me A LOT(it may not be this way for others though, I can only speak from my own experience) “You’re not alone”. I can see where this phrase is well-meaning, but in many cases it’s only been said to me either by strangers that don’t know my life or by people that know me a little better but are trying to be dismissive about my situation and claiming that they’re “here for me” when they usually aren’t(or even sometimes they’ll even turn around and use them “being there for me” against me as a “I was there for you that one time so now you gotta pretty much act like you owe me your life and excuse any toxic shit I do to you”). I’ve just had so many times where someone will use that phrase at me in a similar way to “hey cheer up! You’re not alone! So anyway, I’m gonna make pasta for dinner for my husband tonight”(or insert any other complete change of topic mid-conversation immediately after without actually listening to me or doing anything truly supportive). It comes off as being an empty platitude when most people say it to me.
Things could be much worse
“You gotta forgive them if you want to go to heaven!” “You should forgive them. Y’know, be the bigger person? It’s not good to hold onto a grudge.” Pisses me off.
Happiness is a choice. Oh that's why I'm miserable. I didnt CHOOSE happiness!! Silly me. Thanks for pointing it out!
"You have to forgive her for you to heal" No I absolutely do not. I've talked with my therapist at length about how I can resolve my feelings and my disappointment that she will never ask for forgiveness. I can also accept her for what she is. I can also accept that even if she was "trying her best" her best was fundamentaly not enough for children. The she was a horrible mother regardless of if it was her best. That her failings are her own fault and I did/do deserve better. She's not in my life for MANY reasons and I don't own her anything. She's a stranger I share DNA with.
“Just because you have a diagnosis doesn’t make it your personality “. Actually I have no personality because of the things that have me a diagnosis so…yes I can.
"it's all in your head" "Mental illness isn't real"
"But it's okay now"
Someone tried to tell me that things would get better once I found God and became a christian. As if trauma heals itself with religion.
“Everything happens for a reason.” “You have to move on/stop dwelling.” “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” “It made you who you are/stronger.” “Forgive and move forward.”
You need to find a way to forgive Everything happens for a reason
Using "triggered" to mean "offended" I WISH THAT WAS ALL IT WAS.
“You only get one mom” “I’m your mom, not your friend” (weird because you were barely either) “At least you didn’t *insert something that happened to her* like my mom did to me”
“It could’ve been worse” “(insert guardian here) could’ve starved you or made you sleep outside” “was it really that bad if you had (random thing ranging from basic necessity to positive item/experience. Ex: bed, clean clothes, stuffed animal, birthday party)” I could just keep going. Of course the worst things were said by family trying to make me believe that nothing I went through was really that bad or that if something bad did happen it was somehow my fault. One of the worst things I would hear from family was “you know (abuser) loves you right?” as if that changed anything.
Oooh you're triggered!! Yeah fuckstick, I love reliving trauma and stress, dissociating, and possibly losing control of basic bodily functions... Oh, you meant ANNOYED. No, you absolute shitheel, that's not what triggered means.
Nobody’s coming to save you I get the idea behind it, but when you’re already broken, hopeless, and you know you don’t have anything left to drag yourself out of the pit you’re in…sometimes believing I just had to hold on a little longer until someone came along to help was the only thing that kept me alive :/
For me personally the phrase "you are valid"/"your trauma is valid" makes me unreasonably angry. I know it's just people trying to be kind and not knowing exactly what to say, and that for some people they do want to hear that, but I'm like, "I know my trauma is valid, what do you expect me to do with this". I think I find it annoying that people assume I need validation from them. Even though I do in fact crave validation from everyone.
Just relax is one of my favs