Survivor subjectivity, for those who aren’t familiar with the language, refers to the internal reality of a person who has survived trauma. It’s the worldview that belongs to and is shaped by the experiences of the survivor. It is how many survivors learn to identify potential and actual danger, how we keep ourselves safe. Survivor subjectivity is the beginning point, for many survivors, of identifying as such. It is not shaped or molded by an outside gaze. This makes it unique to each person, even when trauma is shared. Each of us has a perspective, each of us has insight. More often than not, survivor subjectivity is an important tool in the recovery processes of people who have experienced trauma.
That being said, survivor subjectivity is not the only useful tool when one recovers. Why? Because we don’t live in the world alone. Our stuff — good, bad, or otherwise — has an impact on others, especially people close to us. It matters that trauma is unaddressed and/ or unresolved. It matters when we are well adjusted, working on some things, etc. You don’t live in a vacuum. What you’re doing or not doing with yourself post trauma has results. To be clear, you owe healing to no one. It is not on your to-do list, the way groceries and bills might be; healing isn’t like a bar tab or credit card bill. At the same time, if you want to have meaningful or even decent relationships with other humans, you don’t get to spew your bile and anguish all over everyone. You don’t get to stew in or grow your pain and then give it to everyone else. It’s not as simple as, “I’m hurting/ have been hurt; you have to take whatever treatment I dole out.” Why? Because it’s abusive to do so. If you are not sure about that, ask yourself some questions about equitable, fair, healthy, loving relationships. What do they look like to you? How do they feel? If it’s okay to you that one person absorb all of the other’s shit, then it might be time for you to stop reading. This post isn’t for or about you. Go with the higher power or pop star of your choice. I’ll wait.
Okay. Is it just us now? We folks who wanna think through some of these things we do and experience? I say “we,” because I am not exempt from needing to check in with my process and behaviors. I don’t owe anyone my healing, yet I believe very strongly that I am responsible for the way I am in the world. I don’t think of the people in my life as trivial, disposable, or subject to whatever I want to put on them. Simply put, they matter. I owe it to them to treat them accordingly. What does this treatment look like? How do I demonstrate to people in my life that they matter? It means using my survivor subjectivity to be a good steward of my relationships while accepting and utilizing feedback as best I can.
I ask myself a lot of questions: What is the best way to express being triggered by something a loved one has said or done? How do I get space from the interaction without shutting them down? The answers are varied, often situational; they depend on me and the other person(s), because there is no one size fits all approach. Surely, there are rules I follow: “do no harm while taking no shit,” “act like you got some damn sense,” “don’t make it about you when it’s not.” That’s not the same as “if I can’t get you to burn my ex’s house down, you don’t love me,” or “anyone who says no to me is against me.” My desire for equitable, healthy, loving relationships is impacted by my survivor subjectivity. I choose my behaviors according to, above all, what keeps me as safe as possible. I desire the safety of people with whom I’m in relationship (and even those I’m not), while not prioritizing them over myself. How many survivors can say they have been in a situation where the whims and needs of the primary aggressor/ abuser have taken up all of the space and resources available to all involved parties? My bet is that a lot of us can say that, and that we struggle with it when we separate from abusive situations.
Trauma can occur at any point in our lifetimes, in virtually any situation. It’s safe to say all human beings carry some kind of trauma within. There are levels and specific contexts that exist, based on life circumstances — there’s the trauma of antiblack racism, the trauma of transmisogyny, the trauma of ableism, and so much more that white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal society visits upon us. On the personal level, people experience abuse within this greater context and stand at intersections of circumstance and oppression. It’s not hard to imagine that some folks suffer abuse that is magnified by their social positions. Why? Because of limits to access to the resources that could possibly help them through (or even out of) traumatic circumstances. In some cases, no resources exist at all. This leaves some folks stranded, so to speak. Without resources or social support to manage one’s life during ongoing or after trauma, fending for oneself emotionally/ psychologically while also managing basic living can be unspeakably difficult. For some, this is something close to impossible.
Having established that damn near every person you’ll encounter has experienced or will experience trauma means one thing: your survivor subjectivity and theirs very well may clash. It’s unavoidable. The longer I live on this earth, the more apparent it is to me that people cannot escape their shit bumping into other folks’ shit. What do you do when this happens? Well . . . a lot of people find the healthiest way possible to disengage. Give each other the benediction of your choice, check on yourselves, and keep it pushing. It’s not always an easy thing to do, especially if you’re just learning how to create relationships that are not sites of deep trauma. Actually, I fathom it might be easier to build a house from toothpicks and superglue. It can happen, though. It’s a practice.
On the other side of folks’ survivor subjectivity clashing, so to speak, you have people who recreate trauma, people who trigger and abuse because they haven’t learned and/ or practiced a different way of being. Unfortunately, this isn’t an anomalous circumstance. We know this. There are always stories (mass media and anecdotes alike) of an abuser who suffered on their own, long before their victim(s) came into the picture, not to mention studies about people who abuse. Over and over again, there is evidence that people who cause trauma have plenty of their own. This isn’t a reason to permit unacceptable treatment. This isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a reason to forgo one’s self-preservation because so-and-so hasn’t gotten “there” yet. Most importantly, it isn’t a reason to fall back and let someone take up all the damn space because they’ve been hurt, too. Easier said than done. This I know for sure. Also, one person is not always the receiver of harm. That may change from moment to moment, from day to day. Your individual situation may vary greatly from what’s described here; in any event, nobody’s wrong or bad for not yet knowing/ doing better. They are harmful, however, and that’s not up for debate, no matter how badly they themselves are hurting.
Survivor subjectivity is not a shield from being held responsible for what we do. It’s not a get out of jail free card. Behaviors can be informed by trauma. Survival mode is a real place from which people operate, myself included. I have had the pleasure of loving and being loved by plenty of folks in my life: friends, family, romantic partners. As I have worked through my stuff, I have learned some very important lessons about relying on survivor subjectivity, especially my own.
Sometimes, the lessons we learn about ourselves as survivors come at an unfortunate cost. Speaking from personal experience, I have lost professional and personal relationships, among other things, because of my own inability to check in with what I was experiencing. This does not mean my survivor subjectivity is bad or wrong. It means it’s not the sole source of necessary information. It means it’s not all I need to get by. That can be hard to accept under most circumstances, even harder when the wounds are fresh or being poked at. My internal conversation has had to shift from, “I didn’t do anything wrong! I’ve been hurt/ I was scared/ I was triggered,” to “It’s important that I remain mindful of my triggers and feelings when I interact with myself and others.” I don’t get to act without consequences. Nobody does.
