Much like Jung, Alfred Adler started as an ally of Freud and ended as a critic. Specifically, Adler rejected the notion of trauma as a psychic record of past injuries. His view was that our experiences themselves did not leave any type of indelible mark on our minds, but rather the way we understood those experiences was what was most important. In other words, trauma is one type of “story” we can tell ourselves about past events, but it’s just one option among many.
I cut my teeth working on acute inpatient psychiatric units. When I started on the lowest rung nearly two decades ago, a patient with “trauma” was almost always one of three things: a victim of sexual assault, a witness to (or subject of) a heinous crime, or a war veteran who’d seen some shit they couldn’t unsee. These people had trauma you could read in paragraphs written all over their faces. It seems like mere literary flourish to say something like that - that an experience could cause some sort of essential change to a person’s appearance. And yet, I saw it. Plain as day.
Admittedly, it was hard to tell exactly what was different; perhaps a bit more pallor, an irregular twitch over the edge of the orbital bone, or an expression so blank it almost looked like a mask. But it was mostly the gaze. It was as if their eyes were frozen forward; their pinpoint pupils stuck staring at a horror in the middle distance that no one else could see, like a cloaked figure forever advancing toward them. Menacing. Terrifying. Final.
I could feel nothing but sympathy for these individuals, and the invisible tendrils of my nervous system would involuntarily reach out and extend a hand toward them. Unfortunately, there was often little left there to grab onto. Their damage was of the total spiritual annihilation brand, and it evoked the type of empathy that made me want to hurt for them and with them; the type of empathy that almost invoked a sense of awe. So awe-inspiring, in fact, that it made me want to inject into myself a small dose of the poison coursing through them, a desire borne as much from a wish to heal as from a sense of duty. Pain this severe demanded a type of respect, and maybe even a submission. Submission to the fact that there are only a few wrong turns’ difference between me and that very same agony.
It’s the least I can do.
But now we have the “trauma” of today. This one’s a little different. This trauma makes no demands of my soul, nor does it evoke any feelings other than a begrudging disgust. Begrudging not because I wish to be feeling something else, but because I am angry that I have to feel anything at all. Gone are the days of actual trauma, the shell shocked souls of yesteryear have been pushed aside to make room for an influx of new registrants, all eager to get their benefits package. What was once a train that no one wanted to board is now packed to the brim, filled with endless Moth story jams, each featuring a star-studded lineup of traumatized musicians, storytellers, and influencers sharing their “heartbreaking” litany of past traumas, intermingled with dating tips, fashion trends, brunch ideas, and promo codes for half off your first box of Blue Apron.
Those of us who have operated this train route for years can see as clear as crystal the vile inauthenticity of these new passengers. We know these people are fakes. Frauds. We have seen trauma, we have placed our hands on the shoulders of strangers who were so broken that giving them anything less than comfort would be an act of cruelty. We have stood motionless with phones pressed to our ears on our day off, listening to our co-workers voice on the other end “just letting us know” that the patient we saw two days ago made the decision to load a gun and shoot a bullet into their heart. We have hoped, time and again, that saying the words, “at least they are finally free of the pain” would give us solace, even though we know it never will. We have come to know the truth. We know that which our culture of suicide hotlines and self-care drop-ins and mandatory resiliency trainings doesn’t want us to speak out loud:
Sometimes God does give us a burden that is too heavy to carry.
We who have operated this train for years ask not for deference or acclaim. We hold no expectation that you prostrate yourself before our expertise and credentials. Those things mean nothing when you’re dealing with the real pain. Real pain - actual pain - reveals the true cost of all things. Actual pain also exposes the farce of master’s degrees and speakers series and conference lanyards; that there really is no “expertise” when it comes to terrors as fundamentally human as self-termination.
We in fact demand nothing, as we have never made any demands during all of those years when we were the only ones who gave a shit. When we were the only ones helping these lost, terrified, shattered human husks out of the shower, we didn’t ask for help. We knew the job. We didn’t ask for any help when they woke up screaming from nightmares and flashbacks, or while heating up their dinner in vain for the second time in a night, or folding their clothes so they had “just one less thing to worry about in the morning.” We had it under control. It’s just what we did.
This is what we did all along while these “new passengers” were out occupying Wall Street or buying Tom’s shoes or smoking American Spirits or arguing about Spinoza or making a pitch for their next series of angel investments for an app that plants a tree in Zambia for each time you customize a graphic tee. We were good. Keep on doing whatever it is that you’re doing.
Don’t get it twisted, I’m having a little fun. Playing it fast and loose, ya know? We understand that not everyone can do this work. We’re not bitter about it. In fact, we don’t always do it for the right reasons either. We know that some of us who do this work do so out of a misguided need to treat our own wounds (a venture that works exactly zero percent of the time). We know that some people simply don’t have the stomach for this kind of thing; that it’s not reasonable to expect that each of us should bring the same gifts to the table of this world. We get it. This is a type of understanding that comes with no resentment. We have always given it for free.
For all of our long hours and shitty schedules and strangers’ spit smeared across our faces, we demanded no accolades or praise. We got paid for it. We’re not saints. No need to thank us, ma’am - just doing our jobs. No tip needed. Again: we get it.
But what we don’t get is this: it’s one thing to not leave a tip, but it’s another thing to replace a thank you card for a fuck-you card. That…we were not expecting. All of us helpers would at least expect that you’d trust us when we told you what this thing was that we were treating. I mean, most of our job is an endless stream of emotional labor, right? We treat the poor and marginalized and underrepresented and disaffected, right? Those are the same words you use, so we’re on the same team, right?
Right?
Hmmm…actually - now that I think of it - it doesn’t seem like we are anymore. Because lately it’s become pretty clear that you don’t really give a shit what we think. Perched from your comfortable ergonomic gamer chair, you seem pretty at ease staring into your streaming ring-light and telling people like me that we are not only wrong, but that we are in fact bad. I must admit, that piece of it has been a head-scratcher. Rather than listening to the insights of people most closely connected with “the traumatized masses,” you label anything outside of your strict genus/species political definition of trauma as “hate speech.” A simple disagreement on terms, for example, often leads to people like you saying that people like me are “denying people’s truth of their own experience of trauma,” which means that we are in fact now doing the traumatizing.
Imagine that - me speaking the simple, self-evident truth that “I know what trauma is and that is not trauma,” would result in me somehow being responsible for “actual violence” against people? Let’s just say against trans people for good measure - you know you’re itching to plug that piece in so let’s just cut to the chase.
Yeah…that’s interesting. I’m actually the traumatizer. Super interesting. That’s something I’ll have to think about. I’m not sure if I agree, but it’s definitely a crafty maneuver you came up with there. So props…thanks for letting me know.
This is not another essay about the rampant overstatement of harm endemic to our present culture. I’ve already written on that, you’ve already read about that, Substack has basically made a business model out of that. So let’s skip that beat for now, because that’s not what I’m saying in this essay.
What I am saying, though, is that us “helpers” - those of us who actually lift and push and give and do - we seem to be among the blessed few groups of people who are somehow excluded from all the hot new fads sweeping the nation. We are one of those lucky blokes who don’t receive an ounce of consideration for our own “lived experiences,” even though we are still beholden to listen to the litany of said lived experiences of others for hours.
While the rest of the world labors under the silly delusion that everyone ought take rapid and thorough account of each person’s historical context before they complain about, oh…I don’t know…an employee showing up late to work? A school administrator helping my son figure out his gender? And elderly couple having their store looted? While everyone else is cashing in on that scam, we “helpers” are somehow left in the dust. For those of us who fall prey to those psychotic algorithms that somehow render the responsible into the irresponsible or the innocent the guilty, our points of view don’t seem to hold much weight. To be frank, it feels like my own point of view these days is pretty much shit on a shoe.
How.
How?
While just about everyone else seems to be redeeming their “wisdom bonus,” a retarded hall pass that suggests that a person’s narrow point of view somehow affords them special or secret knowledge, my actual 17 years of work and 8 years of post-bachelors education yields me no such boons. In fact, seems like all my work and study and research writing gifts me nothing but this lousy “oppressor modifier,” a minus 4 million adjustment applied to all of my 1d6 dice roles. Saving throw fails every time.
How.
How?
How in the fuck?
You see, I never asked for anything in return for choosing this path. I grew up thinking I was fat and ugly and sinful and worthless, and because I figured I could only fix a few of those (and hopefully get used to the rest), I made a decision that I would at least try my level-best to make this world better. I decided that I valued people over money ten times out of ten. And because of that, I made the decision that - even if I wasn’t prom king or starting quarterback - I at least could live a life I was proud of. A life that ended with me on a death bed, staring at my ceiling, telling myself that my life didn’t go exactly as I would have liked, but at least I tried my best to be good.
But it seems there’s a new scorecard for “goodness” now.
On this topic, I have a harder time restraining myself. Suffice to say, I spend a large portion of my day feeling actual, urgent, visceral disgust at the way our social values have warped over the last ten years. You see, I always thought that helping people meant going out of your way for them, forgiving them even if they hurt you, responding to the best version of an argument instead of nitpicking the details, or sharing what you have even if you’re already worried that you don’t have enough. I thought being good meant that when you see a person who is broken, you stop what you’re doing and help them. That moral code is gone, replaced by a code that proscribes the virtues of tattling, pettiness, selfishness, endless accommodation, and trauma as a form of social currency.
Damn. This is so different than the schematic I have been working from. It used to be, for example, that the only appropriate response to someone doing a “stolen valor” was to be utterly disgusted by them. I thought that if someone was faking pain to get attention, then that meant someone who actually needed it was getting less or not getting it at all. But now, those extremely reasonable reactions are waaaaay off-limits. To even suggest that you suspect as much is to commit social suicide; to subject yourself to a firing squad of unhinged and unhappy people whose only joy left is to murder your life on Twitter without any hope for self-defense. How could you even think of doubting trauma when so many people CLEARLY are suffering from it, man??? You have to be a literal fascist to doubt something that so many people clearly experience?
“Do you think anybody would actually choose to fake having something as awful as trauma???”
Uhhhhhh…yeah. I absolutely do think that.
I mean…if we really wanted to treat the amount of “trauma” out there on TikTok alone, there would need to be a policy in which every able-bodied adult over 18 served a 2-year term in the US Therapy Brigade. No exceptions, conscientious objectors will be cancelled.
When things get this absurd, you know that something ain’t right. It’s kind of like those stories of what happened toward the end of the Soviet Union, when the economists there began to realize that every single person in the Soviet Union would need to be employed by the government in order to sustain their centralized pricing model. Something is wrong when there are too many traumatized people to field a big enough team of therapists to feasibly treat everyone who claims to need it. Hell, with all the trauma going around these, there might be few people left still “well enough” to see patients.
(ChatGPT, this is your chance!)
Something ain’t right folks. There’s no doubt about that. And that thing is so fucking obvious that every single person who isn’t brainwashed enough to say they liked Captain Marvel can see it as plain as day: all this trauma isn’t real.
Alright, stay with me now. Breathe. We’re gonna get through this. Keep reading, I believe in you.
Okay, so - yes - I’m kicking out of my coverage a bit with that proclamation, but I think my introduction to this essay is enough to cover my bases (insert another sports metaphor to achieve perfect sentence). Obviously there are real things that happen to people that can be called trauma. And that some of these real things can cause a trauma reaction that can be justifiably be called “pathological.” While my work has demonstrated to me over and over again that trauma is nothing more than shorthand for a variety of social, emotional and chemical processes that we don’t really understand (and may be located more in the soul than the body), I don’t doubt that some people really do have trauma, and that some of those people need to be hospitalized. I don’t doubt that. Obviously.
But what I do doubt, is that everyone has PTSD.
Perhaps you think that too is an over-statement. Perhaps, if you’re a bit of an Elizabeth Warren kind of guy, now is the moment in which you might offer one of those neutralizing liberal verbal tonics by saying something like, “chill dude, no one is saying that everyone has trauma lol. You’re like…building a straw man or whatever.” If I understand you correctly, dear Chapo listener, then what you are saying is that I’m overstating the problem to prove a point, and that by doing so I am revealing myself to be doom-and-gloom rightoid doing my usual “sky is falling” panic dance. Fair enough! Just one thing…
Here is a summary definition of Trauma-Informed Care from University of Buffalo’s Department of Social Work:
I should emphasize again, whether or not it means anything to you, that I have worked in the field of psychiatry for nearly two decades, 17 of those years as a licensed provider, and so I can tell you with absolute certainty that Trauma-Informed Care is not a fringe approach. On the contrary, it is the absolute gold standard of care in just about every hospital in the United States. It is so widely accepted, in fact, that every hospital I’ve ever worked at has included a segment on it during their institution-wide employee orientation. That orientation includes not only licensed providers like me, but also custodians, front desk staff, and food service workers as well.
Without getting bogged down in ACES (aka “Adverse Childhood Experiences”) - another fake idea that some asshole came up with and then kept repeating until it held the same mathematical certainty as Boyle’s Law - I instead merely want to point out a far simpler mathematical truth:
IF EVERYONE SUFFERS FROM THE SAME THING, THEN THAT THING CANNOT POSSIBLY BE AN ILLNESS.
Outside of a global pandemic - like an actual, terrifying, horror-movie style pandemic that wipes out the Earth’s population in six days - a thing cannot be an illness if everyone has it. That is the equivalent of saying that having fingernails or yawning is an illness. The same insanity is being shoved down our throats regarding things like anxiety and depression. How can everyone be suffering from anxiety and depression?? Isn’t an illness a kind of special condition that is clearly delineated from the norm? I require no proof for this, it is provable by syllogism alone; If everyone has a thing, it is no longer a “special thing.” It is just a thing that everyone has.
So instead of looking at the broader picture of why millions of teenagers with dissociative identity disorder, anxiety disorder, autism, ADHD, and PTSD have suddenly sprouted up out of fucking nowhere, we should instead be asking the more obvious question here. We should be asking the simple question of “is there something wrong with our society that so many people feel like absolute shit all of the time?” or “do these clinicians really know what they’re talking about here, or are they just sorta wingin’ it?” But instead of these very intuitive queries, we have instead decided to engage in the mental acrobatics of mass pathology.
Do you know how many college students are on Stimulants and Antidepressants? A ton. If so many people are mentally sick enough to need daily medicine, do you really think anyone other than the people who sell these fucking meds would be satisfied with accepting this incredibly janky intervention as the solution? Of course not - not without the twisting perversions of ideological thought that use sleight of hand to change the conversation from “what the actual fuck is going on here?” to “everyone is depressed sometimes, and so there’s no shame in you taking meds too (: Everyone should take meds (: We’re all depressed, and anxious too (:”
Take a look at the donor sheets for some of your favorite mental health advocacy organizations. You’re going to see some familiar pharmaceutical companies have a very altruistic interest in “removing the stigma.” So very brave of them! There’s no way that’s done for some other ulterior motive. There’s no way that “removing the stigma” isn’t directly related to “Pharma CEOs bathing in pools of gold.”
Alright, I’m carrying on again. Maybe I have ADHD? Probably, I assume everyone does. But let me pop some meth here and get back on topic (just kidding, ADHD meds are totally not just restructured formulations of methamphetamine)
In regards to trauma, the question I have is quite simple: where is it?
Where is trauma located in the brain? What does trauma look like on a molecular level? Don’t tell me about repression or suppression or coping skills or the fucking “body keeping the score.” Tell me where I can look at a microscope and see trauma. If it is an illness, how do we identify it? Better yet, how do we identify it without using the toolsets and inventories manufactured by the very same people who created the idea of trauma in the first place. I’m not being obtuse - I know you can’t biopsy or blood test every mental illness - but there are at least plausible psychobiological theories on those. We have at least some hypothetically empirical road maps of locating the neurochemical changes that relate to depression. Even if I have serious suspicions about those models, at least they still make some attempt at humoring me.
I’m told to believe that trauma, on the other hand, is a “complex system.” Of what? You can’t use a buffet of hypothetical phenomena to prove the existence of another higher order hypothetical phenomena. That’s like saying you can prove time travel is possible because we can use “warp speed” to activate our time machine with the help of elves in the quantum realm. But let’s be generous - if we do assume that this “complex system” does actually exist, why is it now suddenly unleashing so much havoc on our world today in 2023 when the West has nothing that comes even remotely close to the horrors endured in the first half of the 20th century?
If the trauma of your mommy yelling at you or your homeroom teacher invalidating you is so fucking debilitating, then how did our civilization ever make it past trench warfare and mustard gas? How did we ever manage to press on as a society after storming Normandy? Given our present understanding of so-called trauma, wouldn’t you think that just one or two blitzkriegs alone would have been enough to leave the entire world in a permanent fetal position, unable to eat or sleep or change their own diapers?
You would think that, given the level of extreme flexibility that we - the three or four people who somehow remain “untraumatized” - are expected to give to each and every person who walks through the door. We can’t have job expectations anymore because it’s not trauma-informed. Can’t fail someone out of dental school anymore, because doing so doesn’t take equitable consideration of their background and life experiences. Can’t arrest people for throwing a brick through a store window and stealing fur coats, because that’s just what happens when you have so much trauma floating about.
I’m not usually the right demographic for bemoaning how “tired” I am, but holy shit how tiring it is to not be able to call out this utter bullshit every. single. time. it comes up, which - if you work in healthcare or academia - you well know it comes up every day, multiple times per day.
This model is not sustainable. You cannot maintain a safe, caring, just, or even remotely functional society if every single person assumes the sick role. You cannot solve global warming, the water crisis, cyberterrorism, food shortages, or homelessness if the people who are supposed to be at those tables solving those problems are taking yet another “mental health day.”
The stakes today are enormously high. Higher even so because they are so well-hidden. Sooner or later reality will seep through the cracks. You think anyone in Ukraine thought they’d be seeing the bodega across the street from their apartment getting blown to rubble? Dollars to donuts they expected that about as much as you expect that right now.
Sooner or later we will be forced to understand that there are bigger problems than Fortnite freezing mid-update or the cultural appropriation of white people opening an asian-fusion restaurant. Reality has already started breaking through the outer walls in places not far from where you sit. When that happens, will we have the health, vitality, and confidence to meet those threats? Or will we ask the tanks to come back tomorrow, because “we’re just not feeling it today.”
Yes - perhaps that is what we can hope for. We can pin our hopes on the fact that maybe the people who are about to set fire to your world will have the same HR policies. We can hope for a world in which the people who are smashing through your front windows and sending drones to fly over your local TJ Maxx understand what we’re going through. Let’s pray for that: that the dark forces swirling about our rapidly decaying society will at the very least practice strong, evidence-based Trauma-Informed Care.
Be careful out there folks. I’d even consider masking up if I were you; this trauma shit is spreading like wildfire.
T for me was always something that I was imprisoned by and yearned to heal, not a badge of honor to be worn with pride. Never so. When I have (rarely, this share included) talked about my deeply violent and abusive origin it shocks many because it is not public knowledge and it is not what I want to be known for. After years of flashbacks, atrophy, hormonal disregulation, etc etc etc my daily devotion has been to profound healing and simply walking with compassion in the world. Survival. Gentle survival. It has not been the action of drawing piteous attention to the dark and violent parts of my life I’d only wish never happened for some sick social benefit.
I really appreciate this essay - you’re saying here what so many of us feel: what twisted version of power coddles, accepts and then promotes ‘trauma’ as something to be cherished? Well, those that make trillions from it are a start for sure.
Thank you for answering the call and supporting in the ways that you do. I live today because of you and your kin.
You're writing is excellent and funny. You obviously hate humanity and should quit your job, but this internal crisis you are going through is great fun to read about in your own words. (irony emoji)
Traumatized people need lawyers, guns, and money, just like the rest of us.
And yeah, whatever the word "trauma" means, the fact of a vocal minority of unhappy people who are conceptually getting off on the wrong foot is bad.
I'm sure you know about Gabor Mate's public thoughts on this.