I Need A Name

-"it only hurts a little" is still pain

-"I can ignore it" is still pain

-"I can cope with/manage it" is still pain

-"it's bearable" is still pain

-"I can push through it" is still pain

-"it doesn't hurt that much" is still pain

-"it doesn't stop me from doing x" is still pain

Smilodon’s teeth, on the other hand, stick much farther down from the chin than any of these guys.

Now, we do have extant animals with big pointy teeth that point that far down from the chin! And their fangs are exposed.

How badly injured would you have to be to say “fuck it” to washing dishes?

How bad would you mental health have to be to give up on brushing your teeth?

How much grief would you have to be in to stop making yourself meals?

I don’t even mean wealthy people. I mean regular, middle-class (including upper middle), everyday people. It is utterly inconceivable to some that they wouldn’t always have every bit of support they needed, when they needed it, and that it wouldn’t get done one way or another. “Well, I would never…” they say, because some in that world have so little imagination that even when faced with hypothetically answering “But what would it take?” there is no way for them to think that it wouldn’t always be possible, in some way, to keep their hair washed or their house clean or xyz. There are even those, who, having answered the question, immediately follow it up with, “But that would never happen! It would never get that bad!”

And there is nothing we can do to convince them otherwise. For a person in that kind of world, there is no threshold at which they are so disabled by any circumstances that those tasks remain undone. I think more people like that exist than we realise. What’s more, I’m not even sure how to help them, because I don’t think it’s a failure of compassion—though it often leads to it—it’s a failure of imagination. How do you approach someone so convinced that their personal world is the only version that can even exist, and ask them to consider other possibilities? It would be like asking a squirrel to live underwater.

i was sa'd twice as a kid, and both times i was assaulted by a cis woman.

She ruined my childhood and adolescence. She would've ruined my adulthood, too. Gods know, she tried hard to ruin my marriage.

I was in therapy with a therapist who specializes in trauma for 3 years because of her. I have her to thank for my CPTSD and my wide variety of trauma related psychological problems.

Anybody who cares to ask, my answer is the same: I hate her. I don't care if the next time I see her is to check and make sure she's dead in her coffin.

And there are so many other women, and men, who share similar stories.

Because it is too easy for cis women to play the poor, delicate damsels. They know exactly how to weaponize women's victimhood, to manipulate everyone into believing they're vulnerable and helpless, while they make others' lives utter living hells.

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.