Yeah, reading the deepest well, then reading all my increased chances for...just about every disease imaginable was grim. There isn't really a 'cure' or real treatment for it either.
I just realized, if I was at a much greater risk for health problems, I'd need to counterbalance that with lifestyle changes. I got treatment for an autoimmune condition. I started using exercise over alcohol to deal with stress. I improved my diet. I'm trying to get more sleep but that one I still struggle with.
I've purposefully made changes to lower the amounts of stress in my life. This is everything from choosing an employer with good WLB, to leaving extra time for myself to get places, to saying the 'serenity prayer' and focusing on things in my control. I cannot control everything that happens to me. I can control my reaction to it, or at least attempt to.
It's all good in the end. For 25 years of my life I thought everyone faked being happy. I now know that it actually is possible to be happy :).
For me, I've always struggled with being overly cynical. I can't let nice moments be, and I can't let accomplishments lie.
I feel like I'm somewhere on the journey you are on, and I hope to get to the same destination.
I'm fairly sure I'm in the avoidant quadrant; as to what caused it, I'm not entirely sure but the things that fit are that my mother was very ill when I was 3 (thrombosis, she spent a few days in ER), and that a friend who sort of "saved" me from being all alone at school just left one day (her parents moved), which re-emphasized my already present feeling of "shouldn't get too attached". The rest was probably self-inflicted, feelings of superiority / being more mature than the other kids, fear of rejection, etc. But it adds up and resulted in growing up awkward, immature, single, boring, etc. I'm 38 now and have been through some mental health stuff, but it's expensive (since it's not clinical) and ultimately pointless unless I throw my life around, become a more social person, and get a lot more reinforcement that I'm wrong and my cynicism is not justified. But instead I get reinforcement that I'm not wrong. To a point that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, but at the same time society is going through a loneliness crisis and focused on individuality, so... I'm not wrong?
Anyway; avoidant attachment theory, have a look.
I might sometimes get triggered by certain textures while I am eating, but I am able to trust people and tolerate being hurt without totally shutting down and enjoy my family and work and leisure.
Some people are tremendously evil, but most people are surprisingly resilient. We didn't get thru human history without being able to overcome a lot.
And the other part - the consequences - need to be addressed too. Many people I know are in a mental health program of sorts, myself included although that was mostly last year and nothing major. But a lot of people in their 30's finally have the awareness that something is not right, the time/means to pursue it, and the access to mental health, and get a lot of epiphanies on themselves - be it trauma, neurodiversity such as ADHD/ASD, etc. At least four adults I know have started on ADHD medication and have had an emotional moment where for the first times in their life their head emptied and they could think straight or not go through a dozen mood swings a day.
But we're in a mental health crisis; a lot of people grew up with "just suck it up", "deal with it", "there's others that have it worse", or "this is normal", but thanks to awareness, the internet, and reduced stigma to talk about mental health, there's a lot of people now who realize they need help, which is overloading the mental health systems. In my country there's at least a year long wait period for some of the most vulnerable people (teenagers), which is a big problem because teenagers are also more neuroplastic still, so they would benefit the most from mental health help compared to people in their 30's.
TL;DR, while the root causes from an older generation will be difficult to solve, I have high hopes for a younger generation that has more awareness and access to mental health problems and who can hopefully resolve their own issues growing up and not pass it on to the younger generation.
However, I'm also aware that the above is a very "western" point of view; there's plenty of situations worldwide, right now, that will result in generational trauma for decades to come yet. The people currently living in warzones, poverty, etc will never be the same again. "Our" generation is the children and grandchildren of people who lived through WW2, who themselves or whose parents lived through WW1 and the Great Depression, and this generational trauma is still very much affecting "us" today to lesser or greater degrees.
I wonder sometimes whether I'll have missed out on some things permanently because of it. For instance, every year my odds of carrying a healthy child to term drop farther, and I'm already considered "geriatric" for pregnancy purposes.
I really don't see how it could have happened any earlier than it did, and I'm grateful it happened at all because I can easily see how it could have been worse, but there's still a grief journey involved even though I try not to dwell on the things lost.
I have no regrets but parenthood is a fork in the road in life and there is "missing out" on both sides of it.
I missed out on a lot of young adult stuff, partying, traveling, sleeping around, and I can't seem to get over it. I have lots of money but I can't seem to buy my way out of resentment and envy for people who had a more ordinary life
And in my experience, if you have money you'll have no trouble finding people to party with you, if that's what you want to do. Go to the nearest bar and start buying rounds.
I missed out on those things too, but it doesn't bother me at all, because they're not things I wanted to experience, whereas parenthood feels to me like a big loss.
(I know it's not necessarily final, and there are lots of kids in the world in need of people who want to be parents. I'm not without hope that something like this is still in my future. That's not really the point here though.)
I think of my own parents' experience. My brother is an addict (thankfully sober for a decade now, but it was a long journey). My sister died suddenly and with no warning when she was only 29, and she was 8 months pregnant. My parents' experience, by any account, has been devastating.
But if you ask them whether they would rather never have had my siblings at all? Not a chance. Not even the flicker of a consideration.
I don't think the actually quite high chance that it will be heartbreaking deters me from wanting it. But I also don't consider keeping my heart unbroken a priority. My heart only manages to break when I love, and I'd rather live a life full of both love and heartbreak than forego the former in hopes of avoiding the latter.
I'll give an example. I once rented at a house where the landlady and her partner were (eventually both) poly.
They were starbucks baristas that went clubbing/dating/etc far more frequently than me, I was getting back on my feet after finally being able to work on my childhood and 20s trauma.
Every new outfit, every new partner, was it's own show-off or conversation.
When I got a promotion, I did the 'got-a-promotion' thing and bought myself a 'decent' lens. My landlady's partner was a photographer and we had spoken about the topic in the past. As soon as I brought it up as a friendly shared interest topic? 'You are bragging/waving privilege'.
They were still, of course, happy to flaunt during 'game nights' that the majority of the group was going for all sorts of 'shenanigans' while myself and the other person that got driven out before me...
essentially realized they were narcissists. Well, really just the one and the Landlady was being manipulated by her partner. Fun talks with housemates, right?
But that is the bigger warning for those who have early trauma.
There are those who may or may not have their own trauma, some of them may actually mean well, but a -lot- of them will look at you as an easy target to beat down or manipulate to their own ends. When they get the 'win-win' of "This person has made better life choices than me, 'but I am smarter than them and am taking advantage of them'" is when it gets dangerous.
Smart people know. But they are trying to be polite or patient.
(Which, on the part of my former landlady's partner, is kinda sad. The only way she could feel better about themself was by taking someone they called a friend and trying to 'neg' them... I wasn't the only victim but I might have been the most gullible back then...)
Like honestly, should we prevent suicides then continue treating people the way they were treated pre attempt?
Weird idea of empathy.
They work in mental health, but intentionally to a degree much higher than neglect, and over recent and long periods of time: kick people while they’re down, not limited to me.
Personally I think every child needs some sort of effective therapy to help heal the trauma of their formative years.
I use trauma freely here, there’s quite a big difference between someone who was bullied a couple of times and is naturally quite resilient vs someone who was mercilessly bullied for years on end pushing them to the brink of life.
I classify both as trauma, very different degrees though.
As well, people react very differently to similar events.
We generally have more resources and knowledge now. People tend to want to raise the bar when that becomes possible.
When kids suffered or died because humans lacked food security, reliable medical treatments etc, it was also generally not really the parent's fault. Knowing you could have been treated better and your parents/the world just didn't actually care about you is scarring in ways that "No one has enough." aren't.
Abuse of children is isolating for the child victim in a way that suffering hardship as a family unit or community isn't. There's no sense of "I'm as safe as it gets here, at home, with these people (even if that's not very safe)." There is no place of feeling even relative safety, no sense that anyone is even trying to care for or defend you.
My guess is that in the past child mortality was higher and children traumatised enough just didn't survived. And because of such high mortality no one cared to find out why.
Under certain circumstances people can experiences horrible stuff with barely any ill effect while other times really trivial small things can totally break them.
Just having one stable positive relationship with an adult can make a child significantly more resilient while the child that lacks that relationship might break at a minor problem. There are many factors that determine resilience and it can vary greatly from person to person. And it is situational. Someone might be a hardened war veteran having seen it all but totally break when seeing a child getting a minor wound.
So children today might be objectively better off than in the past but it does not necessary mean their struggles are less valid, they are just different. So hard to say whether they are less traumatized or not, maybe a little bit but mostly probably just in different ways.
But yeah, the main thing is that we are much better at recognizing signs of trauma these days and people can be more open of their struggles so it might seem like there is more traumatized people when probably there is the same amount or less.
The earlier trauma happens, the more amplified the effect is. Sometime in the 1950s it became a common parenting approach in the US at least to "not coddle children". That creates trauma for a sensitive child to not have their emotional needs met (an insensitive child may be just fine). There are different degrees of trauma- others that fight wars may experience a much deeper trauma later in life. The trauma to the ignored baby is not as traumatic of an event, but the baby does not have any abilities to cope and the effects are amplified in early developmental stages.
There is less community today to help with the coping process and emotionally distant parenting styles also make coping harder. And there is less religion today- religion both provided community and sometimes specifically helps people deal with trauma.
Trauma can be generational- someone that suffers trauma is much more likely to have difficulties raising their children. Consider someone that survived war but lost their home and witnessed horrors. They may turn to drugs to cope with the psychological pain. Being drug dependent, they have difficulty raising their own children. Those children don't have their emotional needs met, and a cycle of trauma can continue.
From Mate's point of view addiction rates would probably be one way to measure the trauma of society. Drug addiction is a way of coping with severe psychological pain. Drug overdosing is becoming a leading killer in some age groups.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201120/ search for "Evidence for a Decline in Physical and Sexual Abuse"
(searched for that to post this, and they cite %60 since the 1990s).
Freud himself discovered a tremendous amount of horrible abuse in his patients; depending on the culture, most people just turn a blind eye. People that haven't experienced it and recovered from it a bit are really good at not believing how common it is.
Also, for people who have experienced it, it's often the last thing they'd ever want to talk about. With anyone, including people they are really close to.
There's a good chance you could have a close personal friend or even your partner and never know they had gone through something like that.
These kinds of things fester in darkness and loneliness. I think bringing them out into the light where we can find out we're not alone is helping.
'Get over it' is the most common response. That's why they shut up about it. People who are close to them are only close because of something positive that is being offered. Nobody wants to deal with anyone else's issues.
I knew someone that was abused as a child. Had trouble with drugs and went into rehab. He said that ALL the people he met in rehab had been abused.
His offhand theory is that the increase in the prevalence of restaurants and hyperpalatable foods gave people an outlet to feel safe (a third place in public where the whole family goes and acts their best) and the hyperpalatable food gave an easy and cheap dopamine boost during hard times leading to a spiral.
That raises the question of why contemporary attention to trauma is so elevated, if the problem is actually smaller now than it used to be. There's an easy answer though: this is first moment in (recent) history where we finally have a chance to begin dealing with it.
In the past much more than today, kids had defined roles and work to do in families. The stronger sense of identity may have lessened the trauma. As may the knowledge that their peers in neighboring familes were going through the exact same things.
I organized a large group of trauma experts last week (church pastors), and although they were amazing and had clearly overcome trauma; residual selfishness and power grabbing meant a child got ignored
The same last night: a bible study with the homeless. A happy and peaceful place, though one member was throwing trauma bombs
There's not a simple switch, though having lived in war zones and done churches of, for instance Syrian refugees, unconditional love of God, and letting trauma be presented in the middle of that is deeply powerful
Not true that it's increasing. It peaked in the 70s and has decreased since.
[1] https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/lo...
"The share of children born outside of marriage has increased substantially in almost all OECD countries"
https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces
But you are right divorce rates vary, for instance decreasing post covid. I was thinking on the century scale. But also percentage of people entering stable commitment, and so even the possibility of divorce is much lower
This seems like it's unrelated to divorce.
I don't think it's fair to look at divorces on a century basis given that no fault divorce only became possible in the United States in 1969 - before that you needed to prove there was some sort of abuse or infidelity involved.
It certainly becomes more complicated to try and draw trends, and impossible to assume it was stronger family value that held them together before that point - in fact, the peak in the early 70s indicates that once it became possible it was used with gusto.
I already noted you corrected me on divorce varying. Thankyou. You cleared that up, so let me be clearer:
In this thread someone stated abuse was easily less damaging to them than separation from their parents
That reflects my experience of seeing children get through war better than family breakdown
My central point is that family breakdown causes trauma
Correlating that with stats becomes interesting, and your point on divorce is interesting, but marriage being at the lowest levels in recorded history and i would assume single parent families being at the highest levels is indicative of increased family breakdown
That is my point
Given that marriage has decreased so much, you might assume commitment has decreased. Presumably only the committed to it are taking the plunge. Hence less divorce. Hence more trauma
As with many things like this, getting hard numbers would be extremely difficult because it's the sort of thing where peoples' inclination to answer surveys honestly changes with social norms.
I was wrongfully taken into foster care for a couple months (due to police being called in a false accusation; the police took me without any investigation and handed me over to DFCS — my parents are actually wonderful and I couldn't have asked for a more supportive childhood), and it's positively ridiculous how severely it affected me.
My brother and my uncle both died when I was eight years old, and I was threatened, stalked, and assaulted by an obsessive ex-boyfriend in my early 20s (which ultimately led me to immigrate overseas to hide from him because nothing else worked) — and yet my brief stint in foster care was FAR more traumatic and affects me much more deeply to this day. Everything else barely rates a mention next to foster care. I don't expect I will ever again experience something as psychologically damaging.
I wasn't abused. My parents did everything right both before and after foster care, and my foster parents were fine. It was simply the forcible separation from my family at a young age that messed me up.
Of course, most kids who are taken into foster care aren't like me; they experience abuse at home and are in danger, and foster care is necessary to protect them. But how do you solve childhood trauma in these kids when saving them from abuse is, itself, a source of severe childhood trauma?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33413909-the-deepest-wel...