you're loved, you fool

i recognize that this didn't happen in a vacuum, and a lot of us are responding to a culture that doesn't take our pain or discomfort seriously and has denied or downplayed real trauma for generations.

however, i strongly recommend trying out some of these framings and phrases in order to develop some healthier, more resilient understandings of ourselves and our relationships:

I would prefer not to

I had a bad experience

I don't like that

I would need more support to be able to do that

I'm not in the mood

That bothers me

I worry about [specific negative outcome]

I'm not up for that today

I'd rather do/talk about something else

I'm not the right audience for that

I need more information first

That doesn't seem worth the time/energy

not every personal preference or unpleasant emotion must be linked to a psychiatric diagnosis or a trauma trigger. constantly interpreting your experiences through this pathologized lens is not good for anyone.

if you are surrounded by people who do not take your "i'd rather not" seriously unless you can cite DSM chapter and verse, you have shitty friends and need to hang out with different people.

also, no matter who you are or how traumatized you are, you do not need to avoid every discomfort. it is true that for someone with severe trauma, a ptsd flashback can derail their whole day and cause genuine physical and psychological suffering. however. this is different than "someone mentioned a tv show that my shitty ex liked" or "someone at an event made me feel socially awkward." we all go through negative experiences, and convincing yourself that you are so damaged that the only safe way to live is by demanding protection from anything that could make you feel bad is extremely unhealthy.

you need to be able to function as a human being even when the world includes things that are unpleasant or even painful. if you train your brain to experience everything you don't like as a "trauma trigger," you will create a reality for yourself where you are constantly under threat and develop an identity as someone who cannot manage any situation not completely under your control. you are capable of feeling sad, startled, annoyed, offended, disgusted, or nervous. i promise.

movie nights

I remember my dad picking me up to sit on his shoulders (possibly one of the last times he did that because I was getting too big to hold there for long) so I could be close to it's flipper because he wanted to show me something. He had me hold up my arm parallel to the whale's, and explained that we had the same bones, pointing to it's scapula and humerus and radius and ulna and so on while poking the same bones in my skinny little arm, all they way down to the tips of my fingers and it's own.

And in that moment, I could suddenly see how the whale and I were the same animal, just stretched and shrunk into different proportions by nature. There was an entire exhibit with skeletons of different animals and we went through all of them, picking out the hands and faces of all of them on myself.

I had never felt such a profound connection to the world around me before as I realized on a visceral level that not only was I related to all these creatures, they were very literally my distant cousins, and that in a way, they were me from back then and I was them from now, and we all were others still from the future.

Every living thing on earth is your cousin. The most distantly related humans are your 50th cousins. Chimps are your several thousandth cousins. An octopus is your 25 millionth cousin. Trees are your billionth cousins. You and I are surrounded by family. And that makes me feel profoundly loved.