#traumatization

[dorianbrightmusic]

Since the lovely @river-neurodivergent-willow asked about the definition of trauma in the DSM-5, here I am with a big ol' block of text for you all

So the question I'm responding to is:

That's very kind of you to explain thank you. I am confused wouldn't things like when a person witnesses death, or is involved in death, witnesses like a very bad car crash or things like witnessing something be something PTSD can be diagnosed? I thought witnessing does count for DSM does it not? And also things like someone just their like partner dying or their loved one dying is that not traumatic count in DSM? Sorry if this is too many questions I don't know much about this but you know a lot! You don't have to answer!

River and Willow you're really sweet. It is absolutely no trouble to answer.

Disclaimer: I am not a clinical psychologist. My main qualifications are a) I'm halfway through a psychology degree, and b) I own a copy of the DSM-5-TR and have it open right in front of me.

So – the trauma in PTSD criterion A doesn’t have to be something you’ve experienced firsthand! Trauma is, in DSM terms, something you can be exposed to in one of four different ways. First, direct experience. Second, witnessing the event in person (e.g. seeing someone else in a car crash). Third, leaning that a close family  member or close friend was involved in a traumatic event. If this traumatic event was actual/threatened death, this has to be due to violence or an accident… so, apparently, having your parent be stabbed is traumatic, but having them unexpectedly die of cancer isn’t. And finally, being repeatedly or intensely exposed to trauma details (the DSM provides the example of ‘first responders collecting human remains’).

(Warning: trauma dump ahead, with mentions of parental death, neurodegenerative disease, surgical complications, and brain injuries. Skip this paragraph if this is triggering.)

Whether ‘loved one or partner dying’ counts as traumatic in DSM terms apparently hinges on ‘was it violence or an accident��. I think this is a pretty weird distinction, especially since ‘accidental’ is a weird term.  For example, when my grandfather had his oesophagus removed, the surgery went wrong, causing a hypoxic brain injury that led to his death three weeks later. I’ve seen my mother’s reaction to this – it was clearly a VERY traumatic event – and I’m fairly sure it counts as ‘accidental’. On the other hand, my father’s youngest brother also died unexpectedly – he had a heart attack, and was gone very quickly. And I don’t know if this is accidental in the DSM sense. But the thing is, even if my father doesn’t seem traumatised by this, I don’t see how a sudden death in a hospital is necessarily ‘more traumatic’ than a sudden death at home. Both are still devastating in different ways. Moreover, I do not like the fact that the DSM-5 definition, by nature, excludes certain deaths by disease. While it is true that death is a natural part of life, it could be pretty damn traumatic to watch a relative die an excruciating death by cancer. Likewise, I have a friend whose father died of Huntington’s Disease… yeah, I can’t imagine how that could have not been traumatic. 

In DSM-5-TR, if you’re having an intense and prolonged reaction to a loved one’s death, and this bereavement results in a psychological wellbeing decline that gets in the way of life, school, work, and/or family, it might be classified as Prolonged Grief Disorder. Technically, Prolonged Grief Disorder is in the ‘trauma and stressor-related disorders’ chapter. I think that some of the overlap between PTSD symptoms and Prolong Grief Disorder symptoms is… interesting. For example:

Prolonged Grief Disorder Criterion C3: ‘Avoidance of reminders that the person is dead (in children and adolescents, may be characterised by efforts to avoid reminders’… vs PTSD Criterion C2: ‘Avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders[…] that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s)’.

Prolonged Grief Disorder Criterion C6: ‘Emotional numbness (absence or marked reduction of emotional experience) as a result of the death’… vs PTSD Criterion C7: ‘Persistent inability to experience positive emotions’ (i’m aware there’s a difference with the persistent negative feeling of PTSD as opposed to the persistent numbness of prolonged grief, buttttt)

I don’t wanna say they’re the same disorder, as there are some significant differences, but I also think that the DSM-5’s arbitrary definition of what constitutes a traumatic death seems limited. If someone is showing PTSD symptoms in response to a relative’s nonviolent, nonaccidental death, then Prolonged Grief ain’t gonna fit, but it also still isn’t officially PTSD. Officially, the DSM-5 says that if PTSD symptoms occur in response to something that isn’t ‘traumatic’ (e.g. a parent dying nonviolently and non-suddenly), then that’s Adjustment Disorder. However, Adjustment Disorder is basically a catch-all term for ‘you are doing badly because of a stressor, but let’s not call it trauma’. I would argue that this is a really stupid diagnostic  distinction, since if you have PTSD symptoms, surely it’s better to diagnose PTSD instead of ‘not sick enough, so less specific diagnosis that functionally is almost never used outside of crisis scenarios anyway’?

So: in conclusion, a loved one dying is always considered a massive stressor by DSM-5 standards… but not necessarily traumatic unless it meets some (slightly arbitrary) criteria. 

Hope this is useful! Please lemme know if you have more questions – I seriously love looking into these things and sharing this kind of information.

[criminalcinnamon]

It's New PFP Time Chat.

So, I had three ideas and since I'm indecisive I've decided to do a poll (because as previously stated I'm indecisive)

Hehe pick one

[soracities]

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

[scribefindegil]

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

[inkskinned]

my brother got covid because he's a college professor and there's not much he can do to mitigate exposure when he has 200+ students per lecture. he's got a baby at home, so he does his best, but.

the governmental website for covid information is now propaganda. not a joke, not hyperbole, not an exaggeration: it's genuinely the definition of propaganda. this is biased misinformation determined to push a political stance. it is being hosted on a government server. it looks like something you'd find in a "top 10 weird internet conspiracy stories (and their origins)" youtube video.

my brother called me when he saw it. he had me type it into google. for a second i legitimately thought that i had typed something wrong. we have both taught college: we have both said "a .gov site is usually a reliable resource." i just stared at my phone for a long, long time.

i thought about how when i was a kid, conspiracy theories were mostly fun and a little spooky. unserious. i remember reading some long, complicated website about how avril lavigne is dead. how bigfoot is real. it used to be funny-and-a-joke.

over seven million people (globally) have died from covid. america has the highest death rate with over 1.2 million people.

the thing is - every time a person dies from something like a mass shooting or poverty or treatable illness - we are told don't make it political. we are told it's just something that can happen. we are told it's sad but what can you do!

the president of the united states is using a government website to try to erase the very-real deaths that he personally caused due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. the president of the united states is using a government server to host propaganda, undermine science and medicine, and encourage distrust amongst his followers.

nothing is going to happen. nobody's gonna, like, do anything about it. it's a thursday today, and we are just going to move on from this like we have been moving on from everything else.

yesterday my brother was outside walking his dog, mask included. a guy in a truck pulls up and shouts something about covid and whatever the fuck else. my brother has a good sense of humor, described it to me as enthusiastic! i hadn't ever been catcalled before, this was new and therefore thrilling! i do see why you hate it, though. like. i have actual covid, does he want me to cough on him?

my brother doesn't get extra time off work anymore, because the cdc practically doesn't exist. my brother said i'm not exposing 200 students to covid. his boss shrugged and said: who cares? they're going to get it eventually anyway. like it isn't a pandemic.

like it's just a fucking thursday, and who cares about it.

[ifriqiyyah]

"unlikable protagonist" and it's just a woman who's a regular human being with flaws

[panoo]

lol

i have no idea what completely random interest i gonna draw after this

[doc-anders]

Hood: “How was I supposed to know that 8-year-old girl wasn’t the Riddler?! It was dark! THEY HAVE THE SAME BUILD.”

[thedeafprophet]

I love when trauma makes characters messy. I love when characters don't know how to show love. I love when they lash out. I love when they're vile and break down. I love characters who aren't perfect victims. I love when stories don't excuse behaviour but allow you to understand it

[balrogballs]

What’s your core memory of watching the Lord of the Rings films for the first time because I will never forget how my extremely South Asian dad — during the emotionally climatic scene where Arwen is riding to the Havens and sees a vision of her son — paused, pointed, and said “Mashallah, Sister Arwen has accepted the hijab, alhamdulillah, praise be to god” and giggled for a good five minutes 😭

last time i shared this in a uni tolkien club someone called him a misogynistic fundamentalist because irl tolkien clubs are fucking deranged so please let me clarify that he was, in fact, joking.

[mumblingsage]

I'm wondering if, as a society who cares about vulnerable people, we could stop saying "traumatize" when we truly mean "upset"?

I am sick of hearing sad books or movies "traumatize" their readers. I simply do not believe that happens. A traumatic experience might be adjacent to books (I have vivid memories of books I was reading around certain experiences and even how the contents of those books affected my processing of the experiences). But it's not caused by the book. And, y'know. The weather is Christofascist Censorship Attempts outside.

Meanwhile from the other side I continue to be surprised at just how badly people fail to understand trauma and traumatic experiences in general. Watering down the term isn't helping. Find other hyperbole to express that The Bridge to Terebithia gutted you, chewed on your heartstrings, and made you cry your first pair of contact lenses right out of your preteen eyes.

(ETA here although it's impossible to edit reblogs: over the months since this post really took off, there has been valuable discussion in the comments. I stand by the passion with which I wrote this post and with the general message, but not all the exact wording. I talk more about the way I'd re-write this post in a response here, replying to an addition that added a ton of useful context [other additions touched on similar themes, but that person had it all together in one reblog]. With that said, I am muting this post.)

[jiguurten]

Dark eyes meet under the sky The stars are out, we're alive in the night

Absolutely nothing to see here. Just a dad waiting for his kids to show up so they can go on a little hunt together.

[skyrigel]

“That ship is toxic ! They're so unhealthy—”

[nightmaretour]

"Brain damage" only sounds like a harsh and offensive way to describe brain injuries because people constantly use it as an insult. It's a totally neutral descriptor of what it is. I have brain damage. My brain is damaged. It's not ableist to call it that, it's ableist to call people you don't like brain damaged because you think it's an inherently bad thing to be.

(Yes abled bodied neurodivergents, that includes you)

[ID: a dark red banner with the words "This post is about physical disabilities, do not derail." in grey font. Either side of it is a lighter grey wheelchair user symbol with the user leaning forward with the arms raised and back, giving the appearance of wheeling fast. End ID.]

[australet789]

Penelope: *strained in her room, depressed*

Odysseus: *has ptsd, on the verge of throwing himself off of a cliff*

Telemachus: "I didn't die! Best day ever :D"

Someone help this family