The TRUTH About TRAUMA?! | PTSD, CPTSD, OSDD and Dissociative Identity Disorder

Hello everybody, welcome back to another video by Dissociated. This is a channel that helps to de-stigmatise dissociative identity disorder and other mental health disorders like it. Today I'm going to be responding to something that we've been asked constantly ever since we created this channel. Now, I know it isn't just us who's affected by people asking questions like this. Lots of people come up to us and say, How can I tell them please don't do that? Now, I'm sure that as well as from a scientific and psychological standpoint this is interesting, as well as from general human curiosity and our desire to empathise with others, asking about somebody's trauma is generally a bad idea and not always going to be well received. Some of you may think, well okay, for example in our case, you're online, you're talking about your disorder, why would talking about your trauma be any different? So, what was your trauma? There are a few reasons why you shouldn't ask someone this question. It's generally not a good idea to ask anyone this at all unless you know them very well, you're in a safe place or that they've already let you know that they are explicitly happy to talk about that with you. Never bring trauma up out of the blue, especially not if you don't know the person well. You also shouldn't expect anyone to divulge information about their trauma in order to see their experiences with trauma disorders as valid. Their disorder will be valid whether they have or haven't explained to you the specific details of how they got it. If you feel like it's acceptable for someone to cause themselves extreme distress in order to recount specific details of something deeply traumatic and difficult that they went through, in order for you to see them as valid and needing of care and respecting the reality and validity of that disorder, then I think it's really important that you should question why you feel so entitled to such personal information. If someone tells you they have a trauma disorder like DID, OSDD, PTSD, CPTSD, that does not mean that they owe you an explanation on how they got that disorder in order for it to be valid. They don't owe you an explanation or details as to why. If they do choose to share that information with you, that is a privilege and something that you should take very seriously. Hopefully you'll feel humbled and grateful that they chose to share such personal and intense information with you. So let's come to the first reason. Why is talking about trauma so upsetting? Other than the obvious reason of the fact that remembering something upsetting can be disturbing and unpleasant for that individual. For example, maybe you're trying to sleep at night and you remember something really embarrassing you did five years ago and it just makes you feel horrible and burnt or you remember a time somebody said something really cruel about you and it makes you feel really rubbish. If you have PTSD from your trauma, then bringing up the subject of that trauma could trigger a flashback and in the case of someone with PTSD they won't experience that as a memory at all. PTSD is essentially a memory filing error and the cause of this is the traumatic event itself. When you experience something extremely traumatic, for example a physical attack, an assault, witnessing death, a large injury, very very shocking news such as being given news that you have a terminal illness, natural disasters, a car crash, a miscarriage, anything like that can be a trauma. In response to that trauma your body will suspend many of its normal operations including memory processing just temporarily to get you through that situation. You may go into a fight or flight response and your brain is probably thinking something along the lines of this is far too important, we can deal with the processing of this later, right now what's important is this event that's happening and getting out of it safely and alive. Getting ready to run, raising your heart rate, getting your stamina ready to go is what's important right now, we can deal with processing this event later on. Because of this until the danger passes your brain doesn't create a memory of this event in the normal way that it would with any other situation. When you're in a safe place and your mind eventually goes back to this experience and presents it as ready for memory processing, ready to file it away as a memory into a part of your mind, this can be very very traumatic. The reason this is traumatic and distressing in itself is because as this memory hasn't been processed yet and that's why it's being brought back up to try and process it as a memory, the person's brain who's having this information presented to them won't experience that event as a memory, they'll experience that as something that's happening right now. The brain doesn't recognize it as a memory as it hasn't been processed as one, it's processing it as an event that's happening right now. This is a flashback which is when you re-experience everything that came along with that trauma. This can be smells, sights, sounds, physical feelings of touch, emotions and sensations that are tied to the trauma re-experienced as if they were happening in that very moment. And because this is all because of a memory processing error you can't just snap out of it, your brain believes this is happening right now. This is what a flashback is and talking about trauma or seeing things related to the trauma or something that may have been involved in your trauma for example if you were assaulted by someone who was drinking, perhaps the smell of alcohol could trigger this. The brain thinks oh what's the closest file I have to this smell? What's the first thing I have in my brain? Oh this memory hasn't been filed yet, let's bring this up so I can process it and then you re-experience the whole thing. That's a flashback. So if you ask someone about their trauma it can be very very triggering and can cause flashbacks and sometimes it takes a very long while to process a memory properly and this is what PTSD is. Now you may know that this channel is mainly about dissociative identity disorder and when it comes to things like this it's very important to remember that PTSD can be developed at any time in life. However DID can only be formed in childhood before the ages of seven to nine as this is when the personality integrates. If repeated trauma like this happens to a child along with some other factors that are involved in creating DID then this trauma will disrupt the normal integration of a singular personality which ends up in the individual developing multiple personalities which is what DID is. So DID is essentially a very complex form of CPTSD. Everybody with DID will suffer from PTSD. Not all alters will suffer from PTSD because some alters are trauma free or may not be affected by the trauma but everybody with DID will experience PTSD but not everyone with PTSD will have DID. It's very important to distinguish the two. They are separate disorders in their own right. Some people may have both but not everybody will. Okay so maybe someone doesn't have PTSD surrounding their trauma. Why else should you not ask about it? Not everybody will want to open themselves up to skepticism on the subject of their trauma. The pressure of not knowing how someone will react to you explaining your trauma can be very very difficult to deal with and very hard weight to hold. Lots of trauma survivors themselves really struggle to accept what happened to them and especially when it comes to DID denial is so common. Because it's so distressing and is caused to a memory processing error essentially you may not remember everything that happened or you may not be able to recall specific details and to a lot of people that makes them feel as though they're faking or their PTSD isn't valid or isn't strong enough or really enough to be debilitating. It can be very invalidating if someone doesn't respond well to another person explaining their trauma even if they don't mean to be. 90% of the way you communicate something to someone is through micro expressions and body language. Your words only make up around 10% of the messages that the other person is receiving. So even though you may be saying all the right things your body language may not and it can be very hard for somebody who's experienced trauma to get a bad or unsympathetic response to somebody that they're bearing their soul to. Another reason is that it's a very private experience, private information and a very vulnerable experience to open yourself up to. Once you've shared that information with someone you can't then take it back or control what they'll do with it. Once that happens it's completely out of your hands. Obviously this can be intensely frightening. No one wants anyone to define them by their trauma or for it to affect the way that they see them as a person. Especially if you're asking someone to share something so personal online you need to remember that this is something that can't be revoked. That information will be out there forever. Additionally sometimes people repress their trauma or especially in the cases of DID may have amnesia surrounding the event. Not everyone in a DID system, which means all the alters in one body, will have memory of trauma. Some may have a vague idea of what happened or amnesia in general and others may not be able to remember anything at all. Others will know exactly what happened in excruciating detail. Sometimes it's not safe to process a memory that's traumatic until a later date which is essentially why DID forms in the first place. Processing a trauma is an extremely difficult thing to do and it can cause a massive disturbance to that individual's life. There's no guarantee that the person you want to ask about their trauma has processed it yet or that they're in a safe enough mental, physical, or emotional place in their life to be able to deal with it. The final thing I'd like to mention is that another DID YouTuber known as The Entropy System made a video called 4 Reasons Why I Don't Talk About My Trauma. There's something specific that she mentioned in this video that I'd like to shed some light on as well. In that video, Wynne, who is the host of The Entropy System, said my trauma does not define me. Now trauma can affect you, definitely, and in some cases will completely overhaul your life. In other cases it will kickstart a disorder like DID or PTSD, but that does not mean that that traumatic experience has shaped you and is all that you are. People are still capable of growing, learning, changing, healing after trauma. Even in the case of someone with DID whose alters are specifically formed to handle or in response to a trauma, they're learning and experiencing new things all the time. You're not defined by what created you in the same way that no one is defined by where they were born. If you were born into a poor family, that doesn't necessarily mean that you will be poor for the rest of your life. If you were born in America, that doesn't mean that you're going to live in America for the rest of your life. If the genes you got from your parents mean that you were born with blonde hair, that doesn't mean that later on down the road you won't dye it black. You wouldn't define someone by the details of their birth, I would hope, and the same situation applies here. People and personalities are fluid and constantly changing and expressing themselves to face different, unique experiences and situations. You are as wholly yourself as you would have been if you had never experienced trauma. Yes, it may have changed your life, your brain, your mental state, but you are more than just that. You're an independent person living their own life, and other people should be accepting of that fact. And the quote that I wanted to end this video on from Wynne in the video that I mentioned, which you can find in the description box below, was, I think that that was an incredibly powerful quote, and something that I hadn't considered until I watched that video, but rings very, very true. So, please think twice when you ask someone about their trauma. I would not advise even going there unless they have made it very clear that It's extremely private information that is very difficult and can be traumatic in itself. To re-experience, think about, adjust to, and attune your mind to. So, please be delicate when asking people about their trauma. Thank you, and I hope that you have a wonderful evening. I hope that you will like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video, and if you'd like to learn more about DID, that is what our channel is about. We also have other videos on PTSD that are either coming soon, or depending on when you watch this, are already out. So, please feel free to go and have a look on that, and learn more about psychology and science behind mental illness, why it forms, and how you can help people through their experiences. Hope you enjoyed your time Lots of love, everybody. Bye!