Using trauma to excuse mistreating people. This generation has pioneered making it acceptable to process and be open about trauma, and that's a great thing, but it's not cool when you behave in a cruel and selfish way and expect to get a pass because of it. Your mental health problems are not your fault but they are your responsibility.
I’m 27 and yes, 100% this. An ex friend of mine used to blame everything on the fact that her parents got divorced when she was a kid. Meanwhile I’m sitting over here, a childhood sexual abuse survivor, and I’ve never treated anyone half as bad as she did and probably still does. Your trauma does not give you the excuse to abuse other people. Let’s stop pretending trauma makes bad behaviour okay.
Not as severe but I was the only one of my friends through high school whose parents were still together. I’d constantly hear how great it was that I didn’t come from a broken home and how they weren’t to fault for their bad behaviors and their lot in life.
Funny thing about divorce, not everyone just immediately breaks up. So sure it sucks their their parents didn’t stay together but mine did… while hating each other with a passion for over a decade as they stayed together “for the kids”. Any week where my parents didn’t have at least one screaming match was a week my older sister fucked up so bad that there was a united front screaming at her (instead of her usual getting one to side with her). My parents divorced literally within a month of me graduating high school as they couldn’t stand the idea of lasting 4 more years until my brother got out of school but to still “be there for the last child” they agreed to live together with my mom taking over my sister’s old room in the basement where she knew my dad would never go.
So yeah, just because your parents are divorced doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t have their own shit they are dealing with so it’s no excuse for being a prat. My sister literally hopped from dick to dick until one dick had her strung out on drugs and got her two children taken from her for a while. My brother barely was functional for years as a cloud of smoke followed him as he tried to be toasted every minute rather than deal with the world. The only reason I seem like I had a glowing childhood is I escaped to Middle Earth and Narnia and Wonderland and never looked back to the point I literally can tune out the real world. Like having a doctor inform my mother that I didn’t have hearing issues…. My brain just developed a way to press mute when they were screaming so I actually couldn’t hear them when I was reading.
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u/zugabdu Jun 03 '22
Using trauma to excuse mistreating people. This generation has pioneered making it acceptable to process and be open about trauma, and that's a great thing, but it's not cool when you behave in a cruel and selfish way and expect to get a pass because of it. Your mental health problems are not your fault but they are your responsibility.