Thread by @mykola

I want to speak to this: my expertise is personal. I've been studying and working through and dealing with my own trauma for years, now, and I've learned a lot. I've improved my own life significantly, and I've heard from hundreds of folks that I've improved theirs.

But.

https://twitter.com/chudsommeleir/status/1413105404733579265

Mr. @chudsommeleir is correct that I'm just a software engineer. I'm not a medical professional.

My question to them is, so what? Medical professionals have mostly let most of us down when it comes to dealing with this stuff.

I've got a trauma therapist who specializes in IFS and EMDR and it took me a year of working with him to start to make inroads in my own trauma responses.

But I also have a psychiatrist who scoffs at me and says I don't have "real" trauma. It's invalidating and hurtful.

He told me that going to trauma therapy would be a waste of time and money, that talk therapy can't help, that "real" traumatized people may benefit but that my ACE score wasn't high enough etc.

He's so full of shit, trauma therapy is the only thing that's EVER helped me.

So when I see people gatekeeping this stuff, accusing me of misleading people for attention?

I look back on the work I've done, how much I personally would have benefited from hearing all of this stuff DECADES AGO and realize people like them kept me from the help I needed.

So yeah, I'm just some autistic person on the internet writing about my experiences. Lots of people seem to share these experiences. Some of them are spared decades of pain.

Worth it to me.

(Hey, if you hear "I have trauma" and your response is "no you don't" then consider whether you're so deeply invested in invalidating other peoples' trauma because you're so used to invalidating your own?

It's okay to need help and support, this stuff is hard.)

Last note, because this did hit a nerve apparently -- I really hope nobody is seriously reading any of the last few threads on CPTSD I've written and saying "Oh I stubbed my toe once as a kid, I must have CPTSD."

You have it if you have the symptoms. Start there.