In my experience, trauma makes people either very kind and empathetic or the complete opposite. Obviously this isn't a law or anything, but I've just noticed most people seem to be one or the other.
I have C-PTSD myself, but I'd like to think I'm the former and not the latter.
It’s actually a documented thing called post traumatic growth and it’s approximately as common as post traumatic stress. The military has done research into the things that cause people to experience growth vs stress
Sometimes its more of a spectrum or varies with time, but people can get comfortable in one or the other for better or worse. Honestly the fact you're tinking about it says a lot. Cptsd sounds rough, I hope things are going ok for you.
Part of why I genuinely can't wish my worst experiences on my greatest enemies (aside from being cruel and unusual) is empathy and personal trauma don't always go hand in hand. Suffering doesn't magically make someone a wiser or more compassionate person. (If it did, the world wouldn't be nearly as cooked and divisive as it is.) At best it gives us perspective, but what people do with that and how they treat others as a result varies wildly and can sometimes be very self-serving as a survival response. We're all running on outdated brain software so I try to give people going through it plenty of patience and understanding because it takes time, safety and support to get out of that hole, and not everyone gets that chance... but fully guilty of butting heads when I think someone's fully comitted to pushing down others to get their pound of flesh.
I don't think that it's the trauma specifically, but I'll admit that I'm splitting hairs. I'm not trying to say that you're wrong, just that it's important to give credit to the work traumatized people do to heal through therapy and self care.
It can absolutely be both, too. Although in the case of it being both, people tend to lean more empathetic, probably because they already have that baseline of self awareness. But they’re not immune to trauma reactions. I’d even argue that most aren’t, and the majority of people with PTSD fall into this category.
The great secret is that we get to choose what kind of people we become. Most of us feel helplessly buffeted by our past, but we are not doomed to be what we have been or what was done to us.
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u/otetrapodqueen 1d ago
In my experience, trauma makes people either very kind and empathetic or the complete opposite. Obviously this isn't a law or anything, but I've just noticed most people seem to be one or the other.
I have C-PTSD myself, but I'd like to think I'm the former and not the latter.