Do we police trauma too much?
We have this idea that trauma is a big thing, a big singular thing.
But what about the countless microaggressions? I was reading about how people are coping with being told by their government that it’s ok to let disabled people die to keep the economy going. And what that feels like after hearing it for 6 months straight. That’s trauma.
What about always being told that you’re not meeting invisible standards that have no meaning? That’s what it feels like for neurodiverse people who will never meet standards that make them work well in an open plan office with the sensory hell that comes with that.
These things add up.
Do we take our trauma “definitions” from insurance or something? We can’t “prove” a decade of microaggressions so therefore they don’t count in the way one acute instance does? Because if we’re taking the lead from insurance on something, then we truly do have a fucked up and useless perspective on it.
We are so obsessed with personal failure – and telling people they and they alone can fix it if they try harder that we overlook systemic issues.