Comment by WizardClickBoy
1 year ago
Telling victims of trauma that they are "allowing something external to defeat you daily" comes perilously close to blaming the victim, doesn't it?
1 year ago
Telling victims of trauma that they are "allowing something external to defeat you daily" comes perilously close to blaming the victim, doesn't it?
But.. what else can you even say? The alternative is remaining in misery for the rest of your life. And internalising your pain into a characteristic of your personality is among the worst ways to process it.
I feel like there's a misunderstanding here of there being a choice for victims of complex trauma to make between "suffering" and "coping". It is not as binary as this and I know people to whom this advice would be not only unhelpful but actively destructive.
> What else can you even say?
Try: nothing.
If the answer is nothing, we might as well not have this and the parent discussion at all then. Do you not see how that's directly analogous to supporting moving on silently?
1 reply →
No, the alternative is working through it, processing it, and integrating it into your story of yourself as something you've overcome.
"Letting it go" lands the same as "excise it from your life," which isn't possible. Your body and your mind were shaped by it whether you wanted them to be or not. You have to find a way to integrate it or you'll just keep fighting a losing battle for the rest of your life.
Sorry, but "integrating it into your story" sounds a lot like forcing victimhood down yourself unnecessarily. It is unfair - both to the present and future you, and to everyone around you who had no hand in the tragedy. Wounds heal and leave behind negligible scars that don't hurt the same; they don't shape your body and mind unless you keep "processing" them and make them fester.
6 replies →
> But.. what else can you even say?
The truth. That there is and never will be any solution.
That's still the same as "move on".
No, because you're teaching someone how to frame their problem so that they can start to work their way out of it. No blaming is taking place.
No. Why would I blame myself?