Thanks for articulating some of what I thought reading this post. Another issue which came up for me is: the DSM is sketchy as a final barometer of whether a term deserves to be placed under the umbrella of mental health. Surprised to see Freddie paying any fealty to it.
Part of the problem, I think, comes from the fact that the messages are disseminated as one-to-many by virtue of being posted on social media and yet, received by a person alone in their room, they're easy to mistake as individualized advice. Giving a pat on the back to a friend is a one-to-one interaction with built-in context. Patting strangers on the back at random dispenses with the context and thus loses value and, as Freddie notes, can potentially become dangerous.
That Bryant McGill quotes sounds like a prescription to stay the hell off Twatter, Instagram and all other social media. The real world is hard enough for a lot of people; the online world is worse in almost every way.
What sucks is it doesn't *have* to be this way, but yeah, at this point, the "platforms" monetize bad behavior, and we're going to be stuck in this rut until we collectively say enough is enough. I'm officially off every site except Twitter (for promoting my podcast with scheduled tweets), and it's been amazing.
It doesn't have to be this way. My introduction to online communities was USENET in the 1990s, which was entirely self-moderating (no one was banned for anything, as there was no way to ban anyone in a completely distributed model). It was non-commercial and fairly polite for the most part; and where it wasn't polite you were free to find a newsgroup more to your liking. There were hundreds or thousands of them. Today there are, what, three? Four? Run by two or three companies, and if anyone attempts to compete (Parler) they can be put out of business overnight (Parler again) by collusion among the current monopoly players.
USENET changed in the early 1990s and began a downward spiral after the "September that never ended," when vast numbers of people went online for the first time with AOL and web interfaces, demonstrating how the democratization of a culture is not necessarily a wonderful thing (maybe it never is).
I got rid of Facebook and Instagram years ago and was never active on Twatter. I'm an old fart so I guess it was easier for me. I hear that younger people have a more difficult time cutting the cord.
I'm not "young," per se, close to Freddie's age, but I'm not sure if it's really an age thing. A lot of us did grow up with the internet being "normal," even if it was dial-up, but we still see the importance of real-life relationships, face-to-face conversations, etc. And I see a lot of family members and acquaintances who are older that use social media in unhealthier ways than those in my generation. It's a mixed bag. I'd say the catch for younger generations is they feel more "understood" online, so there's a hesitancy to leave, but I'd wager it's less understood and more people are latching onto pretty shallow connections. Because I'm sure you see it as often as I do: you can be accepted, but once you make one mistake, those who were your allies a few minutes ago have now banished you from the community.
I was a bit too young for USENET, but have very fond memories of Geocities, ICQ, and the late-nineties internet. However, the early internet catered very heavily to those who were young and/or educated -- and those young, educated first-movers were able to shape an initial culture that easily withstood the addition of more young, educated users. It wasn't until the masses arrived, as Mitch points out with the famous USENET September, that things really fell apart.
It makes me feel like an asshole, but that's part of what I like about Substack communities. If you like a writer and have enough disposable income to subscribe, you can be part of the commenting community. This significantly limits the types of people who will take part, but it also makes it more likely that people will be generous with each other. You inevitably lose some valuable perspectives with this gatekeeping, but that just means you have to be diligent about seeking them out in other places, and this trade-off is very much worth it for me.
One thing I firmly believe is that, if people have access to genuine, positive social interactions in real life, they will prefer them to the shallow connections you point out, DM. Pre-COVID, I was trying to start up a bunch of IRL groups in my relatively small town and one thing I've been struggling with is how to reach people to inform them of the existence of these places where they can connect with others in person. I don't like Facebook but everyone is there, so it seems like you have to have a social media presence as a prerequisite to doing something in the real world. This just seems horribly backwards to me, but how else do you reach people who are inside on their phones all day?
"I don't like Facebook but everyone is there, so it seems like you have to have a social media presence as a prerequisite to doing something in the real world. This just seems horribly backwards to me, but how else do you reach people who are inside on their phones all day?"
Great question. I jumped back on Facebook when my family found a new church community last year, because I knew it'd be good to help connect with our fellow parishioners. But after the Capital Riots, I deactivated it for good. Once things level out a bit, I think it'll be different, but I'll take less interaction for right now if it means keeping my sanity.
As for the gatekeeping bit, every community does it. It's inevitable. In order to protect (embrace), you must keep some people out (exclusion). Miroslav Volf has a wonderful, if not dense, book about that...aptly titled "Exclusion and Embrace," albeit it's not about online communities.
Wow! I agree with you. Those aren't helpful at all. Thanks for the enlightenment this morning. I think there is too much "your truth" and not enough of THE truth going around. Therapy is a tool, not a lifestyle.
As someone who deals with depression and anxiety, memes like this drive me up the wall. I think for some people, like you mentioned, there's a desire to help people. However, even if the intent is good, there are ramifications for pop therapy like this. That said, 100% agree on the enmeshment trauma post. What in the literal crap?
As a practicing PhD therapist, I support this fully. Symptoms of trauma are complex and multi determined. Each person has a unique history, personality, family constellation and physical self.
How these interact to produce the symptoms is the issue. Not the symptoms themselves.
Until we have the needed M4A, it will continue to be difficult for many people to access qualified help. That is what drives desperate people into the clutches of these unscrupulous quacks.
I feel with depression and anxiety as well. I feel like there's something else going on too, and it has to do with this pathology of performing everything. It's never enough to work out your problems privately; you have to shout them from the rooftops on social media all the time.
I wish I knew how to say this without sounding like a right-wing pundit, but it feels like victimhood is very "in" right now. People perform it and get tons of likes and validation online for it, but does the core problem of what's ailing them ever get any better? Sure doesn't look like it.
"I wish I knew how to say this without sounding like a right-wing pundit, but it feels like victimhood is very "in" right now." It absolutely is. I've been reading through Sherry Turkle's "Reclaiming Conversation," and the only major thing I wish she'd update is people don't share just positive things online for affirmation. Now, it's sharing what you're describing, and that's what gets people their dopamine hits without actually, you know, doing anything about their actual mental health. It's easy to numb the pain when the likes and RTs are coming in.
We don't grasp as a society that there is a difference between being victimized and acknowledging it versus basing your whole identity around having been victimized. We're in a weird place where someone who simply states out loud that they were once raped is jumped on for promoting a "victim mentality" and someone else who has never constructively dealt with the fact that they were raped, who builds her whole sense of self on her experience of rape, and who is told that she might need to deal with it more constructively will strike at the advice-giver for "blaming the victim."
It's left us with no way to say something very simple, and I'll use the example of violence against women since that's what I'm most informed on: women may not be the universe's out-of-the-box inherent victims, but we sure as hell are victimized a lot. One group will cancel your ass for the first part of that statement, and one group will cancel you for the second. :-(
"Trauma and PTSD are immensely complicated, and the quality of conversation about them on social media and in digital media generally is jargon-heavy, information-poor, and generally deeply irresponsible."
Exactly like the conversations on literally everything else on social media. Social media is not a forum for true discussion and debate, it's a forum for sharing funny cat pictures for likes so you get little hits of dopamine that increase your engagement with these platforms so they get more advertising revenue. Deleting facebook, instagram, and twitter was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Person with PTSD here. I agree with so much of what you've written.
Trauma memes are part of a larger problem in which laypeople start support groups - IRL and online - without any professional training or licensing of any kind. At first, peer support sounds like a great thing. You think, what's the harm? Who doesn't want to meet people with the same kinds of experiences? But you soon find out that putting your mental health into the hands of laypeople is a very risky proposition. I have found this to be the case in such lay-led groups as 12-step groups (in which I've been told to go off my psych meds), abuse survivor groups (in which I've been told that my anger is a Bad Thing), and grief support groups (in which I've been told that I will grieve for the rest of my life). On top of that, you have survivor support groups on Facebook, in which people constantly reinforce their trauma and victimization. None of it is healthy or productive.
Leaving lay-led groups and social media has done wonders for my mental health. I will only put my trauma issues into the hands of a licensed professional, and no one else.
One thing I want to push back on a bit is the meme about enmeshment. That one rings very true to my experience, and I understand what it's saying. Of course, I learned about enmeshment from therapists and psychiatrists, not from online memes. But it resonated with me.
One of my biggest issues with professionals is that so many just don't "get" what it's like, so they are often off the mark. I will say that a pro is more likely to be correct than some random meme, but I do see why people might go outside of the medical community for assistance based on less than stellar results. (Granted, this may be because the pro is telling someone something that is correct that the patient doesn't want to hear.)
Still, I've run into this issue regularly with regards to medical issues I have. I've explained that I have pain in certain places that are triggered by certain things and been told, "that's not possible." Oh, I guess I'm cured and no longer have chronic pain then. My BF, who has PTSD from 17 years in the Army, has had similar mixed results with both mental and physical issues.
Part of the solution is finding a medical professional you can build a rapport with so you can work together. I still say that while I understand people's desire to look towards the internet and memes for help, it's not likely to end well. Especially when so many people jump on them and use them to self-diagnose.
I totally agree with you about the number of professionals who don't get it. I've met my share. I've gone through quite a bit of frustration with them before finding ones I can see eye to eye with. I'm fortunate in having access to good health insurance, which gives me access to a greater pool of licensed providers than people with poor health insurance, or none at all. Sometimes, the only people available are peers who have been there, and I definitely understand the pull of that.
But the dangers of peer support are one among a vast number of reasons to increase access to professional care. If we don't, then people are going to rely on laypeople, and the negative consequences will be long lasting.
From what I've experienced, part of the problem of peer support is just that the trauma is the whole reason for your peer group's existence. There needs to be something else. A running/biking group for trauma survivors. A musical band for trauma survivors. A woodworking club for trauma survivors, something else -- anything! -- else to attach your identity to other than "we've all been traumatized."
I mean, if your whole social circle is predicated on having been through something terrible, then once you no longer identify yourself solely by that ... you are no longer part of that social circle. And it's too much to ask of anyone that they must choose between giving up their entire circle of friends and holding onto a damaged self-image.
It's a false dichotomy -- either hold onto your pain for the rest of your life or lose all your friends -- but social groups that are created solely around trauma basically do just that.
So again -- woodworking classes for ex-soldiers with PTSD. Cycling clubs for rape survivors. Maybe that's the point, some sort of social circle that encourages growth and celebrates success that hasn't got a damned thing to do with the trauma. That way you can be around people who "get it" while not pressing the bruise all the damned time.
This is such a wise and thoughtful comment, and I agree 1000%. In fact, I might explore starting a Meetup group with one or more of your ideas. I would love to hang out with people who get it without having to talk about trauma all the damned time.
You are so right that once you start healing and you're not identified so closely with the trauma, it doesn't work to have a social circle based solely on it. Once you start healing, you lose your social circle or worse, you remain in it and keep reactivating the trauma and undoing your progress just to keep your group of friends. Sometimes, I think that these kinds of group dynamics are a holdover from when the therapeutic wisdom was to verbalize and relive the traumatic events over and over in order to gain mastery of them. Now the wisdom is that doing so only reactivates the trauma and works against healing. But reactivating trauma is exactly what PTSD-centric groups do. I think there is a place for them -- after all, we need to learn how PTSD works and the coping skills to deal with it -- but we also need something less laser focused on the pain.
One thing I've tried to teach my kids is that any statement short enough to fit onto a bumper sticker or a meme image is probably badly oversimplified at best, and more likely just BS.
Thanks for articulating some of what I thought reading this post. Another issue which came up for me is: the DSM is sketchy as a final barometer of whether a term deserves to be placed under the umbrella of mental health. Surprised to see Freddie paying any fealty to it.
Part of the problem, I think, comes from the fact that the messages are disseminated as one-to-many by virtue of being posted on social media and yet, received by a person alone in their room, they're easy to mistake as individualized advice. Giving a pat on the back to a friend is a one-to-one interaction with built-in context. Patting strangers on the back at random dispenses with the context and thus loses value and, as Freddie notes, can potentially become dangerous.
That Bryant McGill quotes sounds like a prescription to stay the hell off Twatter, Instagram and all other social media. The real world is hard enough for a lot of people; the online world is worse in almost every way.
What sucks is it doesn't *have* to be this way, but yeah, at this point, the "platforms" monetize bad behavior, and we're going to be stuck in this rut until we collectively say enough is enough. I'm officially off every site except Twitter (for promoting my podcast with scheduled tweets), and it's been amazing.
It doesn't have to be this way. My introduction to online communities was USENET in the 1990s, which was entirely self-moderating (no one was banned for anything, as there was no way to ban anyone in a completely distributed model). It was non-commercial and fairly polite for the most part; and where it wasn't polite you were free to find a newsgroup more to your liking. There were hundreds or thousands of them. Today there are, what, three? Four? Run by two or three companies, and if anyone attempts to compete (Parler) they can be put out of business overnight (Parler again) by collusion among the current monopoly players.
USENET changed in the early 1990s and began a downward spiral after the "September that never ended," when vast numbers of people went online for the first time with AOL and web interfaces, demonstrating how the democratization of a culture is not necessarily a wonderful thing (maybe it never is).
I got rid of Facebook and Instagram years ago and was never active on Twatter. I'm an old fart so I guess it was easier for me. I hear that younger people have a more difficult time cutting the cord.
I'm not "young," per se, close to Freddie's age, but I'm not sure if it's really an age thing. A lot of us did grow up with the internet being "normal," even if it was dial-up, but we still see the importance of real-life relationships, face-to-face conversations, etc. And I see a lot of family members and acquaintances who are older that use social media in unhealthier ways than those in my generation. It's a mixed bag. I'd say the catch for younger generations is they feel more "understood" online, so there's a hesitancy to leave, but I'd wager it's less understood and more people are latching onto pretty shallow connections. Because I'm sure you see it as often as I do: you can be accepted, but once you make one mistake, those who were your allies a few minutes ago have now banished you from the community.
I was a bit too young for USENET, but have very fond memories of Geocities, ICQ, and the late-nineties internet. However, the early internet catered very heavily to those who were young and/or educated -- and those young, educated first-movers were able to shape an initial culture that easily withstood the addition of more young, educated users. It wasn't until the masses arrived, as Mitch points out with the famous USENET September, that things really fell apart.
It makes me feel like an asshole, but that's part of what I like about Substack communities. If you like a writer and have enough disposable income to subscribe, you can be part of the commenting community. This significantly limits the types of people who will take part, but it also makes it more likely that people will be generous with each other. You inevitably lose some valuable perspectives with this gatekeeping, but that just means you have to be diligent about seeking them out in other places, and this trade-off is very much worth it for me.
One thing I firmly believe is that, if people have access to genuine, positive social interactions in real life, they will prefer them to the shallow connections you point out, DM. Pre-COVID, I was trying to start up a bunch of IRL groups in my relatively small town and one thing I've been struggling with is how to reach people to inform them of the existence of these places where they can connect with others in person. I don't like Facebook but everyone is there, so it seems like you have to have a social media presence as a prerequisite to doing something in the real world. This just seems horribly backwards to me, but how else do you reach people who are inside on their phones all day?
"I don't like Facebook but everyone is there, so it seems like you have to have a social media presence as a prerequisite to doing something in the real world. This just seems horribly backwards to me, but how else do you reach people who are inside on their phones all day?"
Great question. I jumped back on Facebook when my family found a new church community last year, because I knew it'd be good to help connect with our fellow parishioners. But after the Capital Riots, I deactivated it for good. Once things level out a bit, I think it'll be different, but I'll take less interaction for right now if it means keeping my sanity.
As for the gatekeeping bit, every community does it. It's inevitable. In order to protect (embrace), you must keep some people out (exclusion). Miroslav Volf has a wonderful, if not dense, book about that...aptly titled "Exclusion and Embrace," albeit it's not about online communities.
Wow! I agree with you. Those aren't helpful at all. Thanks for the enlightenment this morning. I think there is too much "your truth" and not enough of THE truth going around. Therapy is a tool, not a lifestyle.
As someone who deals with depression and anxiety, memes like this drive me up the wall. I think for some people, like you mentioned, there's a desire to help people. However, even if the intent is good, there are ramifications for pop therapy like this. That said, 100% agree on the enmeshment trauma post. What in the literal crap?
As a practicing PhD therapist, I support this fully. Symptoms of trauma are complex and multi determined. Each person has a unique history, personality, family constellation and physical self.
How these interact to produce the symptoms is the issue. Not the symptoms themselves.
Until we have the needed M4A, it will continue to be difficult for many people to access qualified help. That is what drives desperate people into the clutches of these unscrupulous quacks.
I feel with depression and anxiety as well. I feel like there's something else going on too, and it has to do with this pathology of performing everything. It's never enough to work out your problems privately; you have to shout them from the rooftops on social media all the time.
I wish I knew how to say this without sounding like a right-wing pundit, but it feels like victimhood is very "in" right now. People perform it and get tons of likes and validation online for it, but does the core problem of what's ailing them ever get any better? Sure doesn't look like it.
"I wish I knew how to say this without sounding like a right-wing pundit, but it feels like victimhood is very "in" right now." It absolutely is. I've been reading through Sherry Turkle's "Reclaiming Conversation," and the only major thing I wish she'd update is people don't share just positive things online for affirmation. Now, it's sharing what you're describing, and that's what gets people their dopamine hits without actually, you know, doing anything about their actual mental health. It's easy to numb the pain when the likes and RTs are coming in.
We don't grasp as a society that there is a difference between being victimized and acknowledging it versus basing your whole identity around having been victimized. We're in a weird place where someone who simply states out loud that they were once raped is jumped on for promoting a "victim mentality" and someone else who has never constructively dealt with the fact that they were raped, who builds her whole sense of self on her experience of rape, and who is told that she might need to deal with it more constructively will strike at the advice-giver for "blaming the victim."
It's left us with no way to say something very simple, and I'll use the example of violence against women since that's what I'm most informed on: women may not be the universe's out-of-the-box inherent victims, but we sure as hell are victimized a lot. One group will cancel your ass for the first part of that statement, and one group will cancel you for the second. :-(
"Trauma and PTSD are immensely complicated, and the quality of conversation about them on social media and in digital media generally is jargon-heavy, information-poor, and generally deeply irresponsible."
Exactly like the conversations on literally everything else on social media. Social media is not a forum for true discussion and debate, it's a forum for sharing funny cat pictures for likes so you get little hits of dopamine that increase your engagement with these platforms so they get more advertising revenue. Deleting facebook, instagram, and twitter was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Person with PTSD here. I agree with so much of what you've written.
Trauma memes are part of a larger problem in which laypeople start support groups - IRL and online - without any professional training or licensing of any kind. At first, peer support sounds like a great thing. You think, what's the harm? Who doesn't want to meet people with the same kinds of experiences? But you soon find out that putting your mental health into the hands of laypeople is a very risky proposition. I have found this to be the case in such lay-led groups as 12-step groups (in which I've been told to go off my psych meds), abuse survivor groups (in which I've been told that my anger is a Bad Thing), and grief support groups (in which I've been told that I will grieve for the rest of my life). On top of that, you have survivor support groups on Facebook, in which people constantly reinforce their trauma and victimization. None of it is healthy or productive.
Leaving lay-led groups and social media has done wonders for my mental health. I will only put my trauma issues into the hands of a licensed professional, and no one else.
One thing I want to push back on a bit is the meme about enmeshment. That one rings very true to my experience, and I understand what it's saying. Of course, I learned about enmeshment from therapists and psychiatrists, not from online memes. But it resonated with me.
One of my biggest issues with professionals is that so many just don't "get" what it's like, so they are often off the mark. I will say that a pro is more likely to be correct than some random meme, but I do see why people might go outside of the medical community for assistance based on less than stellar results. (Granted, this may be because the pro is telling someone something that is correct that the patient doesn't want to hear.)
Still, I've run into this issue regularly with regards to medical issues I have. I've explained that I have pain in certain places that are triggered by certain things and been told, "that's not possible." Oh, I guess I'm cured and no longer have chronic pain then. My BF, who has PTSD from 17 years in the Army, has had similar mixed results with both mental and physical issues.
Part of the solution is finding a medical professional you can build a rapport with so you can work together. I still say that while I understand people's desire to look towards the internet and memes for help, it's not likely to end well. Especially when so many people jump on them and use them to self-diagnose.
I totally agree with you about the number of professionals who don't get it. I've met my share. I've gone through quite a bit of frustration with them before finding ones I can see eye to eye with. I'm fortunate in having access to good health insurance, which gives me access to a greater pool of licensed providers than people with poor health insurance, or none at all. Sometimes, the only people available are peers who have been there, and I definitely understand the pull of that.
But the dangers of peer support are one among a vast number of reasons to increase access to professional care. If we don't, then people are going to rely on laypeople, and the negative consequences will be long lasting.
From what I've experienced, part of the problem of peer support is just that the trauma is the whole reason for your peer group's existence. There needs to be something else. A running/biking group for trauma survivors. A musical band for trauma survivors. A woodworking club for trauma survivors, something else -- anything! -- else to attach your identity to other than "we've all been traumatized."
I mean, if your whole social circle is predicated on having been through something terrible, then once you no longer identify yourself solely by that ... you are no longer part of that social circle. And it's too much to ask of anyone that they must choose between giving up their entire circle of friends and holding onto a damaged self-image.
It's a false dichotomy -- either hold onto your pain for the rest of your life or lose all your friends -- but social groups that are created solely around trauma basically do just that.
So again -- woodworking classes for ex-soldiers with PTSD. Cycling clubs for rape survivors. Maybe that's the point, some sort of social circle that encourages growth and celebrates success that hasn't got a damned thing to do with the trauma. That way you can be around people who "get it" while not pressing the bruise all the damned time.
This is such a wise and thoughtful comment, and I agree 1000%. In fact, I might explore starting a Meetup group with one or more of your ideas. I would love to hang out with people who get it without having to talk about trauma all the damned time.
You are so right that once you start healing and you're not identified so closely with the trauma, it doesn't work to have a social circle based solely on it. Once you start healing, you lose your social circle or worse, you remain in it and keep reactivating the trauma and undoing your progress just to keep your group of friends. Sometimes, I think that these kinds of group dynamics are a holdover from when the therapeutic wisdom was to verbalize and relive the traumatic events over and over in order to gain mastery of them. Now the wisdom is that doing so only reactivates the trauma and works against healing. But reactivating trauma is exactly what PTSD-centric groups do. I think there is a place for them -- after all, we need to learn how PTSD works and the coping skills to deal with it -- but we also need something less laser focused on the pain.
One thing I've tried to teach my kids is that any statement short enough to fit onto a bumper sticker or a meme image is probably badly oversimplified at best, and more likely just BS.