A common complaint on /r/CPTSD is that people claim the smallest pains as traumas. You’ll see these claims all over various trauma communities, where people will say that virtually any of life’s frictions are causing them trauma, anything from a rude comment to a bad grade in school. The complaint states with some anger, “Trauma won’t mean anything anymore!”
Someone inevitably fires back, “Don’t gatekeep trauma!” They’re feeling it from the other end of the spectrum, where someone in their past minimized their suffering over and over again, and now they assert the right to suffer. A heartbreaking genre of posts on /r/CPTSD demonstrates how difficult this can be: Someone will write a few hundred words describing awful emotional, verbal, even sexual abuse, and meekly ask at the end, “Is this trauma?” The response is a resounding YES.
This conflict is solved readily by a firm definition of trauma — just not so firm that it excludes the variability in what traumatizes who. Because we do all have our own levels of vulnerability. But that line can be defined, too.
How to define Trauma
One of the simplest definitions of trauma is too much, too fast, too soon.
Another, by Janina Fisher, is that “Trauma … is an overwhelming experience that exceeds our capacity to make sense…
