once, in a class that I was taking, my teacher had us all do this exercise. you got ten cards and you had to write on each one, five of the most important things in your life, and five of the most important people in your life. after these were all written down, the teacher said we had to give up one of our most important things. we also had to give up one of our most important people.
even though it was only an exercise and they were literally just pieces of paper, it was very painful to have to choose who to give up. it made everyone in the room feel guilty and awful. we also had to hold up our cards so the person next to us couldn’t see what they said, and they had to pick a card to take away. that also hurt. nobody felt good during or after class that day, and at the end, our teacher explained why we were doing this.
she said this exercise is sometimes used in cancer treatment centers, as a way of exploring loss and how we cope with it. the exercise also would result in conversations like “hey, I had to lose my mom! you only had to lose your swimming coach!”
the real point of this exercise was to teach empathy. maybe for this other person, losing their swim coach was just as bad as you losing your mom. you don’t know. you can never know what someone else’s struggle is really like, all you can do is KNOW that you don’t know, and accept that your feelings aren’t more or less important than anyone else’s. there is no “my hard is harder than your hard”, there is only hard.
so why did I tell this story? because I keep seeing posts from people expressing their grim disbelief that it isn’t universally accepted that the things they find most upsetting are equally upsetting to everyone.
maybe for you, the most triggering, horrible topic imaginable is incest. maybe for someone else, it’s reading about having a miscarriage. it could be ANYTHING. there are pretty universally accepted “sensitive topics”, but this whole “I can’t believe I have to tell you all that incest ships are wrong” type attitude reminds me of the empathy exercise more and more often lately.
the people who express their disgust with everyone else’s lack of disgust over THEIR triggers think they’re being empathetic people, but they’re not. they aren’t practicing empathy at all, because they can’t accept that maybe what’s triggering to them is a coping mechanism for someone else, or that things they consider normal and okay might be someone else’s worst nightmare. empathy only for people who think and feel what you think and feel isn’t empathy.
I’m a strong advocate for tagging sensitive and triggering material, don’t misconstrue that. but I’m also an advocate for just closing the browser window and moving on rather than attacking and shaming compete strangers. you don’t know them, you don’t know their story, you don’t know their reasons…you just don’t know.
“Is there a wrong way to grieve?”
No
“Is there a wrong way to experience trauma?”
No
“Can it feel invalidating when someone doesn’t react the same way as you?”
YES.
This was a conversation my husband and I had with a couple’s counselor while coping with aftermath of a shooting at our apartment complex in which as friend of ours lost a parent.
We are both survivors of child abuse and have PTSD. As trauma survivors, our past influences how we respond to the present. Gunshots are a trigger for me. So is the feeling of loss of control.
I was not ok after the hearing the gunshots and even more distressed after learning what had happened and trying to be there to support our friend who nearly died herself.
My husband was emotionless, it seemed like he didn’t care at all. That hurt.
I felt like he didn’t care about what happened, and felt that meant he didn’t care about our friend and didn’t care about me either. He hadn’t offered comfort or mirrored my distress, so I felt invalidated.
Feeling invalidated hurts. Especially for trauma survivors, as abusers often invalidate their victims and others may not understand what PTSD means and invalidate survivors (’get over it’). A history of repeated invalidation makes feeling invalidated like reopening a wound. ‘I am hurt and someone should care about that!’
That said: Feelings ARE NOT Facts
It is true I felt my husband did not care, insofar as that is what I was feeling, but it wasn’t an objective fact that he did not care.
The fact, which I learned by talking to him with the assistance of our therapist, is that in crisis he freezes and ignores it and pretends everything is fine, because as a child he was beaten if he cried or failed to pretend that everything was fine (if other adults noticed he wasn’t all right and questioned his parents, he would be punished).
He was trained to not show his emotions and punished for being vulnerable. This is not behavior that can be unlearned instantly.
Was he wrong to react to something recent trauma and triggers by becoming distant and emotionless?
NO
Because there is no wrong way to react to trauma.
Was I wrong to feel hurt by his seeming in difference to the situation and pain?
NO
Because there is no wrong way to feel.
Actions are what counts, because actions have an effect on others.
I wanted him to comfort me and to validate how I was feeling. That was the action I needed. He could do that without having to share my reaction/freaking out himself and communicating his position.
‘I know you’re freaked out. That must have been really scary? Is there anything I can do for you? I am trying to be ok, but I’m not really in a place to process this right now, but I’ll try to be there for you.”
He wanted to withdraw and process what had happened. He wanted to go on and pretend things were fine, because that helped him cope with it. He should have been able to do that without me yelling at him for not caring. I could do have been supportive by recognizing my feelings aren’t facts and describing my feelings rather than acting on them.
Instead of screaming “I don’t matter to you! My triggers don’t matter, my feelings don’t matter, our friend doesn’t matter!’
I could say:
“I feel invalidated because you seem not to be effected by what happened in the same way I am. I need assurance that what I am feeling is valid and that you care.’
When someone doesn’t seem to be effected by something that upsets you, it can make you feel that your feelings aren’t valid and what matters to you doesn’t matter to them, and therefor you don’t matter.
This is emotional reasoning. Fact check.
My mother was a drug dealer and addict, most of the abuse I suffered stemmed from her drug abuse. I hate drugs. Drugs are a trigger.
I got really mad when I saw Breaking Bad memes on my dash, like cook candy meth, because to me, meth wasn’t a joke. Meth was something I was born with in my system because my mother used while pregnant. It was something done to me, something that took my mother from me and led to a lot of harm.
It was easy to feel people joking about it or enjoying Breaking Bad didn’t understand that and didn’t care about me. It felt like they were laughing at my trauma.
Those were feelings, not facts.
The fact is it’s a TV show, it’s dark humor, candy meth no different than a jello brain mold at a Walking Dead themed party or food prepared to look like body parts at Halloween.
Just because other people don’t react the way I react or always feel the way I feel, doesn’t mean they don’t care about my feelings or that my feelings are invalid.
“Given your history, it makes sense you don’t want to be reminded of drug use. I understand why you don’t watch Breaking Bad. It’s a good show, and I enjoy it, but I understand how you feel. I can tag anything you need so you can blacklist triggers. Even though I enjoy it as a work of fiction, I know that drug addiction is a terrible problem in real life and lots of people are hurt by the drug trade. It’s a show about a bad guy doing bad things, and while dark fiction can be entertaining for some, I understand why it’s painful for you, especially if it feels like people don’t take real drug abuse seriously. Your experiences are serious, what happened to you was wrong, and no one should ever make light of them and I’m sure no one who likes Breaking Bad means too…they like a fictional show about bad things and find a villain protagonist interesting, there are a lot of factors in drug abuse and the drug problem in this country and while people liking breaking bad might feel like it’s part of the problem, but it’s not real. What is real is you, you are real, your feelings are real, and I’m here for you if you need to talk”.
This is a lot of posturing and using mental illness as an excuse to say “You shouldn’t tell someone it’s bad to write about incest or pedophilia”…
you /shouldn’t/ tell people not to write about ANY topic that’s dark or taboo, you should let people write about the things they feel compelled to write about and if it bothers you you can not read it. writing has been used as a tool to explore the dark and scary aspects of life since the invention of the written word and if you don’t wanna be a part of it, you don’t have to be, but leave others alone. the entire post was about empathy and a willingness to understand that your gut reaction to something may be to call someone gross and evil, but the reality is that there’s a million reasons why they might be writing about topics that upset you, and YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE, and being upset by those topics and throwing vitriol at the folks that explore them is not empathetic. understanding that they have their own reasons and you are welcome to ignore them and leave them be is empathetic. I’m sorry you decided to take that and water it down to “this post uses mental illness as an excuse to write about incest”. that’s a very predictable way to miss the point.
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