this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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Mental Health
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I think there are two ways of reading the claim that a traumatized person can't be responsible for other peoples' comfort. The first is reasonable: nobody is really responsible for anyone else's comfort. We have to take care of ourselves at the end of the day, so mentally healthy people especially shouldn't rely on traumatized people to make them comfortable.
The second is unreasonable: traumatized people, more than anyone, have no obligation to do the basic things that make other people comfortable, in virtue of their trauma.
I think the post just makes it sound a little too much like the second interpretation, because otherwise why focus on traumatized people in the first place? I think that's what's getting under most peoples' skin.
I'm still trying to get a hold of my feelings about it but I think it's more that some people treat their own trauma as a kind of privilege, like it excuses how they might treat others. I've had enough experiences with friends, coworkers and customers being careless or hurtful and imo it's an uncomfortable truth that traumatized people can be harmful if they haven't learned effective coping strategies for their own trauma.
I hate engaging in that kind of social triage though and there are a large, increasing number of traumatized people in the world, and it's hard to access the kind of care that would help someone move past maladaptive behaviors that harm others as the result of their trauma.
For myself, at the moment, I will be maintaining boundaries and trying to avoid traumatized people in general, so as to not become more traumatized myself. This is the opposite of how I've previously engaged with people too, I'm consciously trying another strategy. Also apologies for being vague but I think it applies to a lot of situations.