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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]#1 Stop calling it PTSD because you are minimalizing the experiences of those who truly have PTSD.[/quote]

STFU![/quote]

+1. Repeatedly addressed and you’re incorrect. Recovering and clinically diagnosed C-PTSD patient.[/quote]

Stop minimizing other people's pain and suffering. If you "truly" have PTSD I'm sure you would want to help anybody dealing with a similar situation. Stop trying to corner the market on pain and suffering.[/quote]

Oh, come ON. It’s not like OP is a Yazidi refugee. [/quote]

So, I was waiting for someone to say this (or something like it).  I speak as someone who worked with severely traumatized women who were raped, held prisoner, had family members disappeared, witnessed mass killings, and other crimes against humanity and war crimes.  The thing is that every single person who is a victim of trauma says what you are saying -- I often heard them say my brother disappeared but I am still alive, I lost my home and was expelled but my kids are still alive, I was raped but I didn't get pregnant, etc.  Every traumatic experience can be topped by something else.  And every victim of trauma is silenced and shamed by someone, sadly.

When you make this argument.... X was worse..... you are engaging in a form of minimization that denies the crime and the trauma.

It is well known that complex post traumatic stress can stem from a wide range of incidents -- family incest, domestic violence, car accidents, institutional betrayal, intra-familial betrayal, etc.  Infidelity, particularly infidelity that happens repeatedly over time, where the victim is trapped in some way (as many married women with kids feel they are), and the perpetrator engages in other forms of emotional or verbal abuse such as gaslighting, criticism and financial control, etc.

I am a victim of such infidelity, and I say that even though I know many women who were kidnapped and raped as a consequence of war.  We are all victims; the fact that the methods of misogyny vary doesn't diminish or eliminate our trauma.

Please read up on trauma.  Two classic texts are Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score, and Judith Lewis Herman's "Trauma and Recovery: the Aftermath of Violence -- from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror".  It was Herman's books that made me see the connection between my own experiences with domestic violence and my exDH's sexual abuse of me and how it related to the political violence experienced by the women I worked with.

Also, Jennifer Freyd has written a lot about betrayal trauma -- infidelity is one form of that.  In general, trauma can arise when your normal expectations of how the world works and how or whether you are protected by institutions and people are broken.

Please stop engaging in judgment as if life is some kind of pain olympics and the only people who deserve any sympathy or support are the ones who have lost so much it's difficult to see how they can even be alive. [/quote]

Thank you for this, PP.[/quote]
+1

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