this post hasn’t left my mind since i’ve first saw it
people jest but this is literally how i worked out i was gaslit for like 15 years of my life
People who “want trauma” are recognizing, on some level, that they were traumatized but in a way that’s not “socially recognized” as trauma. What they really want is for people to see that they’ve been traumatized and be on their side
Hold up
I wanna expand on that for a moment. I’ve talked to a lot of trauma survivors about their backgrounds. And two things that are damn near universally true?
1. We almost all say “It wasn’t that bad” at first. 2. That statement is pretty much always a lie, be it to others or to yourself.
By the way, it’s also common for people with mental illnesses (including ptsd) to “wish” they were suffering from a physical illness such as cancer— because then they’d get some kind of acknowledgement that their body was hurting them in a way they could not control.
This can also be part of the motivation behind self harm. It’s an attempt to “prove” the seriousness of the mental or emotional damage by causing it to manifest into something with equally serious physical symptoms.
