CW as the subject matter might be heavy for some.
To begin with I’ll clarify that I have been the recipient of a lot of vulnerable people confiding in me in my life. I know what it is like to have people suddenly dump very serious and upsetting problems on me, unsolicited. I also suffer from a lot of trauma myself, and so being trauma dumped on can be triggering of my own trauma. So yes, I can understand why trauma dumping is frowned upon and considered toxic.
However, perhaps in the age old tradition of terms being taken by the general public and misinterpreted into something almost the opposite of it’s meaning, I see the term now constantly thrown in a harmful way around by the general pubic. The term “Trauma dumping” is now used to shame those with trauma who are reaching out for help at their lowest. It’s used in any situation where someone opens up about their traumas.
There is something very messed up about a society that pretends that “You shouldn’t keep everything to yourself, it’s okay to ask for help.” That in turn punishes and shames people who finally do ask for help as “Eww, stop trauma dumping. Your problems are a burden on me actually, so shut up and suffer in silence or pay someone to fix you! You’re selfishly dragging down us healthy normal people!”. I think this will lead to a lot of people in society being taught to hide their problems out of fear and shame. It feels wrong.
Anyway, I can understand if this is a hot take and maybe I am projecting. I can understand both sides, but ultimately it leaves a sad pit in my stomach thinking that vulnerable people are made to think no one cares about them.
The demonising of empathy is scary. Real “Don’t show pity for the homeless, they’re just taking advantage of your kindness.” hours.
[cont.]
[As above, big CW for all things mental health and suicide related. If any of this shit is difficult to approach then do yourself a favor and skip this comment.]
…imagine if you were having car trouble and when you brought your car in the mechanic said “Have you thought about tinting the windows? What about cycling - that could be fun!” then you’d feel pretty helpless, right? Except when it comes to mental health services you’re probably already feeling despondent and it’s not just car troubles that you’re experiencing, so it’s not like the fix is in any way easier and if the professionals you talk to seemingly have no idea then it’s no surprise to me that when people eventually reach out and they get really insensitive, useless advice they end up clocking out early. I can also imagine that your colleague sought help and the clinician directed them to go to emergency but when you’re saying “This is intolerable and I need a long-term strategy to address this because otherwise I’m done” and the professional you’re saying that to says “Lol idk, you’re too difficult to deal with because your suicidality is too severe - just go check yourself into a ward for a few days and then keep doing that over and over until you aren’t as suicidal. That’ll probably work I guess - not like I’d know anyway since your case is too difficult for me to work with. Okay, bye!” then you’re gonna feel pretty helpless.
So all of this is to say that there’s a suicide crisis and a broader mental health crisis and it routinely gets pushed onto spouses and partners, particularly women and femme people one way or another (if you know what I’m talking about, you know) and the people who are suffering from poor mental health themselves and that services that do exist have this ridiculous Goldilocks approach where you have to be this unwell and at this level of risk to work with.
Too severe? No thanks, seeya later.
Not severe enough? Try meditation or pet a puppy or something.
Very severe but not showing “sufficient” signs of distress? Lol ok, probably not worth the time - come back when it’s really bad.
Assessed as not being severe enough but showing “too much” distress? You need to learn ways to shut up and internalize this more.
It’s infuriating and the thing is that psychiatry has had centuries to get its shit in order and psychology has had about a century an era of incredible scientific progress and yet they tend to either be capable of preventing the most severe, acute episodes of suicidality through the basics like monitoring people and chemical restraint or they are able to yap about “building connection” and “creating meaning” like Martin Seligman has created an entire career out of by, essentially, grifting national governments (while he isn’t consulting with the CIA to develop more effective torture programs.)
All of this is speaking as a longtime survivor of suicide and psychiatric services. I’d venture a guess that the only real difference between myself and someone like your colleague is that I’m more boneheaded. There isn’t any special qualities in particular that I possess that others should learn from or embody, I’m pretty sure I’m just a product of the survivorship bias. But psychiatry and psychology absolutely love patients like me, when they don’t hate me, because they can hold people like me up as a case study to claim legitimacy and to “prove” that their disciplines work. But honestly, if you catch me on a bad day and you press me for my honest opinion, most of the time I’m going to tell you that these services function mostly as a filter.
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I’m Seligman’s #1 hater. The reason why I think he’s so popular is because he poses absolutely no threat to the status quo - his advice is really individualistic (typical for psychology) and a government can adopt the language and borrow some of the aura of legitimacy through his work in psychology and his frameworks to act like they’re doing something about improving mental health except without actually making any changes to the way that the political economy works. His stuff is very bourgeois oriented too. I know that’s a typical communist slur to fling around but what the fuck sort of meaning does a gig worker who can’t afford healthcare have the opportunity to create? (Of course, they still have the capacity for making meaning, as we all do, but if you’re pulling 20 hour shifts at the ball-crushing factory just to barely cover rent and insulin then you’re structurally cut off from meaning making in any significant way by design.)
Anhedonia is really pernicious. I think it’s a bit of a silent killer, honestly. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem that bad - you don’t feel much joy. No biggie. Just keep at it and it’ll be fine, right? In reality, serious anhedonia can stop people from eating enough because they don’t even get any intrinsic reward from eating. For anyone who isn’t really across this experience. anhedonia can feel like how it is to fold laundry except it’s every task. Or like every meal is porridge or an unflavored protein shake. It’s hard to imagine for a lot of people (blessed) but how long would it take before you snap if every little thing you did in life felt like the weekly meeting on Monday morning at your office job - even the things that you used to enjoy? Anhedonia can be a slow grinding down but when it goes far enough, there is nothing left to grind away. But it never really feels urgent, at least to people on the outside.
I’m really glad to hear that you’re making progress on this front. It’s a heck of a battle.
I’m really glad to hear that. For all of my criticisms of therapy, it comes from a place of wanting it to live up to what it has the potential to be - good therapy saves lives. It’s just so, so hard to find good therapy.
I’m really sorry to hear about your friend’s passing. I can relate to the feelings of inadequacy that lead to self-loathing because, at least in my case, I had a lot of experiences where I was invalidated. (I say a lot but really it was just one long stream of it rather than being discrete events.) It’s hard not to learn to feel wrong or broken or inadequate if you’ve only ever learned that how you feel is wrong and that you need to do better (especially when the “better” is vague and unspecified.)
One of the things that I try to use as a counterbalance to this is to consider how I’d feel about my spouse if they were feeling more sorrow than joy on their wedding because of the recent, tragic passing of a best friend or what I’d say to my best friend if they were in my shoes if I had passed away unexpectedly. Approaching it from that angle can be really helpful to reframe how I relate to myself by encouraging self-compassion and gently highlighting my own hypocrisy but not in a way that aggravates my perfectionism or feelings of inadequacy. Because that’s always the trap with feelings of inadequacy - the more you examine it and work on it, the more it can amplify those feelings of inadequacy. Of course there are ways to work through this but it’s unhelpful to try and resolve feelings of inadequacy by adding an extra layer by making yourself feel inadequate for being inadequate. And then you start adding another layer by feeling inadequate because you aren’t dealing with these feelings of inadequacy “properly”; you can get yourself into one heck of a mess trying to work your way out of that, especially if it’s a deep-seated part of how you relate to yourself. Which is where a good therapist can be invaluable.
I definitely took a potshot at CBT and ACT and DBT in that comment above, although I didn’t name them directly. If they work for you then I’m genuinely happy for that. But I also have some big criticisms of them. CBT in particular is a dirty word for me lol. There’s a whole CBT racket running in my country, and I suspect this is probably the case for lots of western countries because it appears to be a model. But that’s a story for a different day.
Agreed.