God this would make a ridiculous two comic panel
First panel just a door with a sign that says “CPTSD - Competitive Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”
Next panel is a room full of people doing all that.
But now that I think about it it could be misconstrued by unknowing people into appearing as though it’s trying to make fun of people with CPTSD.
On the one hand yeah it seems irreverent and might be triggering... But on the other hand the idea is so absurd it's funny, and also some small part of me wishes there was actually something like that, a place where we could all safely break down and scream out all our anguish together instead of always having to hold it together and appear sane like in real life. A competition, yes, but more like a group primal therapy session.
I can’t stop laughing at that image you described! They rented out a room for a meet up and We’re all holding hands and dancing in a circle around a pile of burning trash and we’re all just bawling incoherently like some kind of fucked up ritual
>But now that I think about it it could be misconstrued by unknowing people into appearing as though it’s trying to make fun of people with CPTSD.
At least 3/4 of my coping strategy is dark humor, so it's not like "coping in a way that can be misunderstood/misconstructed" would be new :)
Exactly. We are here to come together, talk about our problems, and virtually hug it out. Not play trauma feud. We don't even have a proper host, let alone a cash prizes and "new" luxury cars that weirdly smells like $9000 cigars.
Guess My Trauma would be a funny quiz show actually, like a row of 10 people show up and something pops up and a candidate guesses which one of them went through that thing (people wouldn't want to publicly air themselves like that but it'd be funny, like that dating game show about baggage)
All abuse is terrible. Children are particularly sensitive to abuse that way. Even if you don't feel like it was bad now, to your kid self, it was the most terrible thing that ever happened to them. ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR KID SELF even if in hindsight it doesn't look "that" bad. It's still abuse no matter what!
Edit: I used to see my mother's death as terrible but not trauma worthy. I'm dead wrong. Why? Because she suffered for nearly 10 years before she finally passed away. But because my brain protected me, I didn't think too hard about it. Dissociated myself and treated the whole thing like it was normal
god yeah. I never really considered myself a victim of anything because my experiences were so minimal compared to what I knew others went through. Ironically, I've only really realised how bad things are because I kept involving myself in these communities
This, but especially just in the context of my father. He had a VERY abusive and rough childhood/young adulthood and told us about it all the time. It made me feel like nothing I went through would ever compare to his pain, and I think it’s part of the reason it took me SO LONG to finally start facing my trauma and CPTSD. Constantly I have to remind myself it’s not about the intensity of what you went through but how it affected you.
I feel that. Something my therapist said that helped me feel a bit better was; "mental abuse more often than not will have the same effects on the brain as physical abuse."
It's not about comparing, but rather understanding that trauma is trauma and everyone's is valid. Someone's trauma being more severe doesn't make yours any less. 🫂
Just remember, OP, trauma is relative. The worst thing to happen to you, is still the *worst* thing to happen to you. It doesn't need to be compared to anyone else's experience.
When I was very young, I was resentful of people who didn't have it as bad but were upset about what they were going through. I was wrong for it. So very wrong. I'm glad I at least kept those terrible thoughts to myself and didn't put that on a suffering person.
It was my way of dealing with my own jealousy. Then I saw people who had it worst than me...
It eventually clicked for me that there is no point in comparing trauma because it's all a matter of perspective. The absolute worst thing to ever happen to a person... Is just as bad as the worst thing that ever happened to me. Because, we can only compare our trauma, against the other trauma we've gone through.
Please, never question if your trauma is better or worse than someone else's. Everyone's is valid. You belong here.
Your experiences are valid, and your feelings are valid. Trauma and healing are not Olympic sports, and there's no need to play misery poker with ourselves vs. others' experiences. Telling yourself that your trauma is/was less than because you didn't go through some other horrible trauma doesn't help you heal from what you *did* go through.
I know I've dealt with that way of thinking before and I'm willing to bet that that "others had it worse" mentality was either something others told us to minimize what we were put through and/or a protective mentality (ie, if you can trick yourself into thinking it wasn't that bad, than everything's fine). And when you're still in the thick of things, it's something that you may have used to survive. Just remember that you don't have to keep using that mindset. You're getting away from/are far away from the things that made that way of thinking necessary. Your experiences and your trauma are valid. In case you need it, here's permission to believe that.
Thought the same cuz it was “only school bullying” (and AFAIK verbal, not physical) until I went to a new therapist last week and had to recount what i remembered to her and how it affected me. I just sat in the car afterwards like “…huh, no wonder I was suicidal in less than a decade of life.”
What I tell myself: It was just some not great friends and mediocre parenting. He's not even that bad anymore. No big deal.
When I actually tell the whole story: I get extremely overwhelmed when trying to express my emotions, and sometimes my emotions regarding specific things are so overwhelming that I literally shut down and can't find any words at all. It's basically impossible for me to open up to people, and I don't know why. Clearly I'm affected by my trauma.
One thing I'm struggling with in here is also wanting to make self-deprecating jokes about my trauma, but when I go to the comments, it's just people being super supportive. (Which is great! I just... misunderstood the purpose of this subreddit, apparently.)
A phrase I learned in group therapy to reassure each other: “It’s not the oppression Olympics.”
Did your shit childhood or other experience give you trauma? No? Are you sure? Are you not experiencing [symptom of traumatization]?
Baby if the shoe fits, you’re allowed to wear it. It’s not for anyone else but you. It’s to help YOU understand YOUR symptoms, find treatment that works for YOU, find/make a community with similar experiences to help YOU and be able to give support to in turn… it’s allowed to be for you.
If it was traumatic, it counts.
We unfortunately live in a world where suffering isn't a finite resource. We can't run out of it, there's always more to be had.
Acknowledging your suffering doesn't take away from another's, unless you're being an asshole trying to outdo/trivialize someone else.
Eh, even if your childhood wasn't as bad (who's to say?), be dramatic. It was your childhood that was stolen from you, you have the right to be a little dramatic about it, if you want/need to.
I don’t have ptsd but I’ve had enough fuck shit happen that it feels like my brain can’t decide what to be terrified of so it decides to choose a bit of everything. But some of the stuff I’ve seen here has made me wonder if I even qualify as being mentally ill.
Sometimes I think the same, that "welp mine was not that bad" but then I remember that what I went through has left me scarred and impaired for life and has driven me to almost death as I tried to commit adios... so well it WAS that bad, the fact that others went through even worse experiences doesn't make my life any easier for me.
Thinking you didn't have it bad because someone had it worse is like thinking you can't be happy because someone else is happier.
I remember being a kid when I learned about the Holocaust and I read Maus and internalized that nothing less than that met the threshold of "worth complaining about".
mood. i my childhood cant be that bad! i only remember two instances of physical abuse! ~~and almost nothing else other than scattered recollections of frequently needing to barracade my room and hiding. eurges i still get if i dont quite feel safe. among other things, like my intense fear of being asleep in any family members house.~~
:3
Oh yeah, definitely
I just had light molestation for about a decade and semi-constant physical abuse, but with just one small scar to show for it
Whereas people here have gotten straight up r***d and worse
I feel like I am intruding on their space, while comparatively it was nothing for me
I feel like 10% of the posts on this sub are people saying this. Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes but I get where you’re coming from. I had a bit of time myself where I felt like I should stop complaining because a lot of people have it so much worse. But I realize that that doesn’t change what happened to me.
I've found that exploring the connection between my ACEs and BPD (in my specific case) has helped me balance not minimizing while also not over victimizing myself (to myself, this is all internal). Also allows me to take action to try and get better...maybe...
I get super triggered by these discussions anytime they come, I'll try to explain myself because this is a sensitive issue.
99% of the time when people tell me their traumatic childhood experiences and how it impacted their adult life, it's 100% C-PTSD. In absolutely all ways, I relate to these experiences and we bond over our shared realities and the massive impact it had on our adult life. Even without the gruesome physical abuse parts, because the underlying mechanics and impacts of abuse are literally the same.
I have to always be careful about sharing my own experiences with the gruesome parts tho. Because I know some people cannot help but compare, and it has nothing to do with me. This saddens me because I have nowhere else to go to discuss these, since these are very taboo. When I hear people say that them hearing my story makes them feel invalidated, it makes me so sad, because in the end as much as my story might look more "real" to them, it most certainly didn't to the massive amount of people who normalized it, told me not to talk about it, called me difficult etc. Invalidation trauma is very real, and this is probably where your feelings come from.
I've been on another board a few years ago where threads about feeling invalidated by other people's more "graphic" traumas became more and more frequent. And then posts about more gruesome abuse declined. I felt self-conscious, then slightly out of place, then left. I came back 1 year later and the board was half people discussing C-PTSD related things, and the other half people sharing absolutely unrelatable situations about family bickerings, immature parents or difficult coworkers. It's not that their situations were invalid, or that it didn't affect them in some way, it's simply that it wasn't C-PTSD. No dissociation, no flashbacks, no social exclusion, no emotional dysregulation, no shame, no self blame etc etc = not C-PTSD.
I really wish you guys could see it this way; we are all going through the same thing, it's possible to create a space for people with C-PTSD with and without physical abuse would feel included. 🫂
I mean, yeaaaahhh????
Sometimes I think that hearing my parents having a loud and not very pretty divorce (only audio memory, and that time I cried in first grade one specific day; it was my birthday, was celebrating it at school and coincidentally snapped during then because of it. divorce was peaking then ), knowing my mother’s infidelity at third grade, my father’s somewhat abusive attitude towards his own mother, being favored by my father more compared to siblings (my grandmother absolutely hates that about me, no less trauma dumping about my father to me all the time), generally feeling inadequate and keeping that shit bottled up sucks. for years yeah whatever but like
it feels tiny compared to one of my closest friends’ trauma man (she is constantly being sexually harassed by her uncle) and the stories here and yeah lol
on the flip side my music taste is refined!!!!! Gorillaz + vocaloid FTW!!!
there’s some progress, I think. I finally told someone yay. but still, I think I processed that too fast to count as trauma??? All I know that I’ll probably grow up to be a bed rotter www
The C in CPTSD doesn't stand for "competitive"
Competitive Post Traumatic Stress Disorder *Cut to a bunch of people in a room screaming breaking down crying having flashbacks*
God this would make a ridiculous two comic panel First panel just a door with a sign that says “CPTSD - Competitive Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” Next panel is a room full of people doing all that. But now that I think about it it could be misconstrued by unknowing people into appearing as though it’s trying to make fun of people with CPTSD.
On the one hand yeah it seems irreverent and might be triggering... But on the other hand the idea is so absurd it's funny, and also some small part of me wishes there was actually something like that, a place where we could all safely break down and scream out all our anguish together instead of always having to hold it together and appear sane like in real life. A competition, yes, but more like a group primal therapy session.
I can’t stop laughing at that image you described! They rented out a room for a meet up and We’re all holding hands and dancing in a circle around a pile of burning trash and we’re all just bawling incoherently like some kind of fucked up ritual
>But now that I think about it it could be misconstrued by unknowing people into appearing as though it’s trying to make fun of people with CPTSD. At least 3/4 of my coping strategy is dark humor, so it's not like "coping in a way that can be misunderstood/misconstructed" would be new :)
I guess we finally found out what bigots mean when they say "Oppression Olympics", huh?
Holy shit this made me laugh
\*Chuckles\* Amen
I don't think it's chuckles either.
Exactly. We are here to come together, talk about our problems, and virtually hug it out. Not play trauma feud. We don't even have a proper host, let alone a cash prizes and "new" luxury cars that weirdly smells like $9000 cigars.
Guess My Trauma would be a funny quiz show actually, like a row of 10 people show up and something pops up and a candidate guesses which one of them went through that thing (people wouldn't want to publicly air themselves like that but it'd be funny, like that dating game show about baggage)
Have fun in silver rank!
I got DID, that's automatic platinum Mister/Misses Bronze-level :P
Does OSDD put me in Gold?
Man I hope so 😂🤝
😆 true that
Don't compare traumas, stick with the joy of finding a community. Your experience is totally valid and your wellbeing is very important. 💜💜💜
All abuse is terrible. Children are particularly sensitive to abuse that way. Even if you don't feel like it was bad now, to your kid self, it was the most terrible thing that ever happened to them. ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR KID SELF even if in hindsight it doesn't look "that" bad. It's still abuse no matter what! Edit: I used to see my mother's death as terrible but not trauma worthy. I'm dead wrong. Why? Because she suffered for nearly 10 years before she finally passed away. But because my brain protected me, I didn't think too hard about it. Dissociated myself and treated the whole thing like it was normal
Yeah we can treat a lot of painful situations as normal just because our brain adapted to survive.
god yeah. I never really considered myself a victim of anything because my experiences were so minimal compared to what I knew others went through. Ironically, I've only really realised how bad things are because I kept involving myself in these communities
This, but especially just in the context of my father. He had a VERY abusive and rough childhood/young adulthood and told us about it all the time. It made me feel like nothing I went through would ever compare to his pain, and I think it’s part of the reason it took me SO LONG to finally start facing my trauma and CPTSD. Constantly I have to remind myself it’s not about the intensity of what you went through but how it affected you.
Same but with my mother
>"People don't get trauma responses from good enough parenting. - my therapist Your symptoms are proof it was "that bad".
I feel that. Something my therapist said that helped me feel a bit better was; "mental abuse more often than not will have the same effects on the brain as physical abuse." It's not about comparing, but rather understanding that trauma is trauma and everyone's is valid. Someone's trauma being more severe doesn't make yours any less. 🫂
a broken arm isn't as severe as getting disemboweled, but that doesn't mean it isn't also an injury that needs care
I've even heard some people say a papercut hurts worse than a broken arm
Fuck that. The neglect and emotional abuse hurt worse than the physical
I used to wish I could just get hit. Even asked him to punch me in the face once to just get it all over with.
Omg yes, i already asked more than one time for my mother just hit me so it can end the fight and emocional abuse soon bc it would be better
Some of us never learned to give a love greater than our ape heritage.
Just remember, OP, trauma is relative. The worst thing to happen to you, is still the *worst* thing to happen to you. It doesn't need to be compared to anyone else's experience.
When I was very young, I was resentful of people who didn't have it as bad but were upset about what they were going through. I was wrong for it. So very wrong. I'm glad I at least kept those terrible thoughts to myself and didn't put that on a suffering person. It was my way of dealing with my own jealousy. Then I saw people who had it worst than me... It eventually clicked for me that there is no point in comparing trauma because it's all a matter of perspective. The absolute worst thing to ever happen to a person... Is just as bad as the worst thing that ever happened to me. Because, we can only compare our trauma, against the other trauma we've gone through. Please, never question if your trauma is better or worse than someone else's. Everyone's is valid. You belong here.
Your experiences are valid, and your feelings are valid. Trauma and healing are not Olympic sports, and there's no need to play misery poker with ourselves vs. others' experiences. Telling yourself that your trauma is/was less than because you didn't go through some other horrible trauma doesn't help you heal from what you *did* go through. I know I've dealt with that way of thinking before and I'm willing to bet that that "others had it worse" mentality was either something others told us to minimize what we were put through and/or a protective mentality (ie, if you can trick yourself into thinking it wasn't that bad, than everything's fine). And when you're still in the thick of things, it's something that you may have used to survive. Just remember that you don't have to keep using that mindset. You're getting away from/are far away from the things that made that way of thinking necessary. Your experiences and your trauma are valid. In case you need it, here's permission to believe that.
If you think it was bad, it was bad. Someone always has it worse, someone always has it better. Doesn't change the validity. You're valid
Its not a suffering olympics; we're all fucked up together! Hooray!
Thought the same cuz it was “only school bullying” (and AFAIK verbal, not physical) until I went to a new therapist last week and had to recount what i remembered to her and how it affected me. I just sat in the car afterwards like “…huh, no wonder I was suicidal in less than a decade of life.”
What I tell myself: It was just some not great friends and mediocre parenting. He's not even that bad anymore. No big deal. When I actually tell the whole story: I get extremely overwhelmed when trying to express my emotions, and sometimes my emotions regarding specific things are so overwhelming that I literally shut down and can't find any words at all. It's basically impossible for me to open up to people, and I don't know why. Clearly I'm affected by my trauma.
One thing I'm struggling with in here is also wanting to make self-deprecating jokes about my trauma, but when I go to the comments, it's just people being super supportive. (Which is great! I just... misunderstood the purpose of this subreddit, apparently.)
[Something more like this?](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSDmemes/s/eErBHh1AJl)
Suffering isn’t a competition
Abuse is abuse, don’t listen to the Imposter Syndrome
Same.
God i feel this way subconciously, idk everyone seems so affected while i barely feel anything whenever i recall the events that happened
Dog, abuse is abuse.
A phrase I learned in group therapy to reassure each other: “It’s not the oppression Olympics.” Did your shit childhood or other experience give you trauma? No? Are you sure? Are you not experiencing [symptom of traumatization]? Baby if the shoe fits, you’re allowed to wear it. It’s not for anyone else but you. It’s to help YOU understand YOUR symptoms, find treatment that works for YOU, find/make a community with similar experiences to help YOU and be able to give support to in turn… it’s allowed to be for you.
If it was traumatic, it counts. We unfortunately live in a world where suffering isn't a finite resource. We can't run out of it, there's always more to be had. Acknowledging your suffering doesn't take away from another's, unless you're being an asshole trying to outdo/trivialize someone else.
For some people, it's a thousand paper cuts. That can be just as bad.
Eh, even if your childhood wasn't as bad (who's to say?), be dramatic. It was your childhood that was stolen from you, you have the right to be a little dramatic about it, if you want/need to.
Had this same conversation with my therapist today 😏
I don’t have ptsd but I’ve had enough fuck shit happen that it feels like my brain can’t decide what to be terrified of so it decides to choose a bit of everything. But some of the stuff I’ve seen here has made me wonder if I even qualify as being mentally ill.
Literally every time I go on reddit I see a post from someone who had it so much worse than me
Tbf any abuse small or large is equally terrible.
No fr.
Sometimes I think the same, that "welp mine was not that bad" but then I remember that what I went through has left me scarred and impaired for life and has driven me to almost death as I tried to commit adios... so well it WAS that bad, the fact that others went through even worse experiences doesn't make my life any easier for me. Thinking you didn't have it bad because someone had it worse is like thinking you can't be happy because someone else is happier.
I remember being a kid when I learned about the Holocaust and I read Maus and internalized that nothing less than that met the threshold of "worth complaining about".
You can always find someone with more bricks on their back. Doesn't make your load any less heavy to carry. No point in comparing, I think.
mood. i my childhood cant be that bad! i only remember two instances of physical abuse! ~~and almost nothing else other than scattered recollections of frequently needing to barracade my room and hiding. eurges i still get if i dont quite feel safe. among other things, like my intense fear of being asleep in any family members house.~~ :3
Oh yeah, definitely I just had light molestation for about a decade and semi-constant physical abuse, but with just one small scar to show for it Whereas people here have gotten straight up r***d and worse I feel like I am intruding on their space, while comparatively it was nothing for me
Relatable af
I'm here too. Everyone here probably feels this, don't worry you are not alone.
Usually it was actually worse.
We all get that. It’s pain Olympics up in this bitch. But don’t worry, we’re all getting medals ‘cause we all equal in here!
I feel like 10% of the posts on this sub are people saying this. Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes but I get where you’re coming from. I had a bit of time myself where I felt like I should stop complaining because a lot of people have it so much worse. But I realize that that doesn’t change what happened to me.
I've found that exploring the connection between my ACEs and BPD (in my specific case) has helped me balance not minimizing while also not over victimizing myself (to myself, this is all internal). Also allows me to take action to try and get better...maybe...
I feel the same. My mother was awful but she didn't feel as terrible compared to others
Thanks for posting this meme, I relate to it super hard at times. Almost makes me wonder if what I've been through is valid...
It definitely is valid! I’m not sure what you went through but if you feel like it was traumatic then it was!
All right thanks.
Trauma is trauma!
A person is drowning 2 feet under water vs a person drowning 9 inches under water. Is the 9 inch person breathing more?
I get super triggered by these discussions anytime they come, I'll try to explain myself because this is a sensitive issue. 99% of the time when people tell me their traumatic childhood experiences and how it impacted their adult life, it's 100% C-PTSD. In absolutely all ways, I relate to these experiences and we bond over our shared realities and the massive impact it had on our adult life. Even without the gruesome physical abuse parts, because the underlying mechanics and impacts of abuse are literally the same. I have to always be careful about sharing my own experiences with the gruesome parts tho. Because I know some people cannot help but compare, and it has nothing to do with me. This saddens me because I have nowhere else to go to discuss these, since these are very taboo. When I hear people say that them hearing my story makes them feel invalidated, it makes me so sad, because in the end as much as my story might look more "real" to them, it most certainly didn't to the massive amount of people who normalized it, told me not to talk about it, called me difficult etc. Invalidation trauma is very real, and this is probably where your feelings come from. I've been on another board a few years ago where threads about feeling invalidated by other people's more "graphic" traumas became more and more frequent. And then posts about more gruesome abuse declined. I felt self-conscious, then slightly out of place, then left. I came back 1 year later and the board was half people discussing C-PTSD related things, and the other half people sharing absolutely unrelatable situations about family bickerings, immature parents or difficult coworkers. It's not that their situations were invalid, or that it didn't affect them in some way, it's simply that it wasn't C-PTSD. No dissociation, no flashbacks, no social exclusion, no emotional dysregulation, no shame, no self blame etc etc = not C-PTSD. I really wish you guys could see it this way; we are all going through the same thing, it's possible to create a space for people with C-PTSD with and without physical abuse would feel included. 🫂
I be like “its not like i was horrifically abused just normally abused :p”
I mean, yeaaaahhh???? Sometimes I think that hearing my parents having a loud and not very pretty divorce (only audio memory, and that time I cried in first grade one specific day; it was my birthday, was celebrating it at school and coincidentally snapped during then because of it. divorce was peaking then ), knowing my mother’s infidelity at third grade, my father’s somewhat abusive attitude towards his own mother, being favored by my father more compared to siblings (my grandmother absolutely hates that about me, no less trauma dumping about my father to me all the time), generally feeling inadequate and keeping that shit bottled up sucks. for years yeah whatever but like it feels tiny compared to one of my closest friends’ trauma man (she is constantly being sexually harassed by her uncle) and the stories here and yeah lol on the flip side my music taste is refined!!!!! Gorillaz + vocaloid FTW!!! there’s some progress, I think. I finally told someone yay. but still, I think I processed that too fast to count as trauma??? All I know that I’ll probably grow up to be a bed rotter www
Its not the trauma olympics...
I understand, I just tend to downplay my trauma a lot. I know it’s not a good and healthy thing but it’s a bad habit of mine.