Trauma is Trauma
There might be but, ifs, or ands that might affect how I want to interact with the abusers carrying forwards. There might be but, ifs, or ands that might affect how I carry forward interacting with the system and the trauma. HOWEVER, there are no amount of but, ifs, or ands that changes the fact that the abuse was there, that it was not comfortable, that it breached many boundaries, and that it caused trauma.
Context has little place in the existence trauma from my experience. Context has place in processing the trauma, but in terms of if the trauma was traumatic? If the actions caused really bad harm?
No. Context isn’t needed.
Context when talking about the existence of trauma, when assessing the damage of an event on a person, almost always is used to start internalized or externalized victim blaming.
Comparing it to physical damage, if someone wore a swimsuit and poked at a rattlesnake in dry mountainous area, and they ended up getting bit - the doctor wouldn’t take context into diagnosing if you were bit. He wouldn’t ask what you wore or use the fact you poked the stick to determine if you were bit and bleeding or not. He would look at the damage and say “This was a bite, and now you are bleeding.” Yes, the context might help you go “Okay moving forward I should dress properly and not poke snakes” and the doctor might use context to figure out how to best treat the bite - venom and similar - but the context means little in the fact that you are now wounded and that you now need care for the wound.
It doesn’t matter if all the context says it was a misunderstanding and that context says you can’t blame the abuser. Yes, that might come into play on fixing your situation and healing from it, but in the end, your brain registered it as a trauma. There isn’t an if or a but. If it hurt you, if it developed to stick in your brain as a trauma, if it still hurts you - context doesn’t change that.
A snake bite is a snake bite.
A trauma is a trauma.