and this isn't even getting into harm that's genuinely necessary! i read a book recently that was intended to educate people in healthcare about medical trauma, written by a medical professional who found that there weren't existing resources to help her cope with the aftermath of the extremely traumatic c section that saved her life. the whole tone of the book was "i know you've never thought about this before, but walk with me through this case study" and it's aimed at other medical professionals! it's aimed at the people who are doing this harm, and so many of them think that people aren't allowed to find it harmful just because it's necessary!
so many trauma resources assume that your trauma is from a specific person or people who treated you in a way that society deems unacceptable. if your trauma doesn't fit that profile then you're left sitting there like. idk i dont think most of this stuff applies to me. where are the resources for people like me.
if you were ever scared or in pain and were told that you had to grin and bear it because it's necessary for you to do the thing that scares and hurts you, you are allowed to say that that was traumatic. you are allowed to say that you were scared and in pain and that even if this was the least bad option, even if it was lifesaving, it still was not okay. something being necessary does not inherently make it okay.
#i know this is not NEARLY the same thing#but i had to get braces against my will as a teen#i HATED them#i hated that i had them i didnt understand why i had to have them i loved my teeth how they were before#they hurt like a motherfucker and tore the shit out of my mouth#and the orthodontists never told me what they were doing to me or why#it sucked. it was awful.#unfortunately medically necessary i was never gonna get my canines because they were trapped in the roof of my mouth.#but this post feels kinda validating#because if i had any agency over myself i wouldnt have agreed to have braces#and wouldnt have agreed until someone explained the reasoning and process in a way i could understand (via @xx-riffraff-xx)
medical professionals love to not explain things to minors. i think it's because minors are functionally the legal property of their parents/guardians, and therefore treated as an extension of their parents/guardians rather than an entire separate person. therefore, if you explain the situation to the parents/guardians, and the parents/guardians understand and agree that it's necessary, it's simply not required to explain anything to the minor beyond "this is necessary".
your experience is the same thing. even if you weren't traumatized by it, you were still put at a higher risk of being traumatized because you were not given the support you needed to process and understand what you were going through. i believe the point of view that says "this is necessary, so it can't be harmful" is directly related to the point of view that says "this person is lesser than me, so i don't have to explain to them what i'm doing that affects them". they are both paternalistic thought processes that don't take into account the experience of the person being spoken over and acted upon.
#my therapist likes to describe this distinction as ''Capital-T Trauma'' and ''lowercase-t trauma''#not in the sense that one is objectively worse than the other—just in the sense that ''Capital-T Traumas'' are more obvious#in terms of both the root cause as well as the symptoms typically being more overt—flashbacks and the like—#whereas ''lowercase-t traumas'' are more often accumulated from longterm patterns of relatively subtle harm.#for example ''undiagnosed untreated neurodivergent condition for 30 years'' or ''forced to get braces for no apparent reason''#unfortunately trauma intervention is still a pretty new field so it's historically focused on treating Capital-T Traumas#and researchers have only just begun exploring ways to adapt Capital-T interventions for lowercase-t symptoms. (via @ekho-ekho-ekho)
see, i don't love this, because i feel like the way in which it's pointing out "some of these traumatic experiences are more legible than others" is also legitimizing the idea that the legible traumas are bigger or more impactful than the illegible ones. when you hear "capital-T tsomething" you think "oh, this is a big one, this is an important one" and when you hear "lowercase-t tsomething" you're more likely to think "oh, this is being included even though it's not that important". i would be extremely offended if my big trauma was called lowercase-t trauma just because no one put the dots together for 20 years. i was very fundamentally damaged by it! i would like it to be framed as important, or at least not as unimportant, especially in the context of discussing the fact that cases like mine are frequently missed or dismissed.