The Fantasy vs. the Trauma-Informed USA

Imagine you’re asked to just hold on financially for a month. No income, just expenses. Could you hold on for two? Or five? For a year? We ask people to do that very often, especially if you have a disability or a history of mental illness.

Does the thought seem scary? Would doing this cause anxiety daily? This may be because there is no rock bottom in America to hit — there’s no real commitment to keeping you from being homeless, no real commitment to ensuring you receive community support, no real commitment to make sure you don’t drown in debt. Nothing that says you shouldn’t starve, and die, with your family on the streets.

When we advocate for affordable housing and homeless support, harm reduction and trauma-informed care, it’s only because we refuse to turn away from these truths. This country isn’t a magical fantasy land, people are suffering and in very real fear of this constantly.

The USA is not a society that understands when you are sick, or impaired, or have one terrible-out-of-your-control life event… or months of them. We are not a country with compassion for people that are hurt, and bottom-out. Instead, we are a country so okay with mass death that the toll grows every day and our representatives can decide to take the rest of the month off. Businesses struggle and shutter, families are kicked out by their landlords, and that is literally it for them.

When are we going to stop worrying about this horrible lack of support in our very worst moments? When are we going to look around us and think, “When I’m in a dire place, I’d like someone to help when I ask.”

This is one of those strange situations where being altruistic is also selfish: helping to ensure there is helps for those in need guarantees that there will be space for you too when you’re in need. And if you’ve never in need across your life, you are both lucky and privileged.

One bad day and it may all come utterly crashing down. How far down? That’s something we need to think about more now than ever.

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One final point, there is a fantasy “hero” narrative in our society that involves “overcoming adversity,” even in the face of painful traumas, and then “toughening up” to tackle future traumas with more capability.

But it is a fantasy, a pure fantasy: trauma does not create resilience. Soldiers will tell you that. So will rape survivors.

Trauma does not create resilience.

Again: Trauma. Does Not. Create. Resilience. Trauma is only horrible and debilitating.

And past trauma stresses do not create resilience to future traumas. Anyone who says so is being disingenuous at best, perpetuating and normalizing trauma at worst. This has been shown in many studies. Trauma only sensitizes you even more to future stress, debilitating people further.

American society does not want to understand this, but our current times are so stressful that they are debilitating us. Trauma is built into this country — someone has always been forced to endure terrible trauma while others ignored that pain. This is why we need more support now. This is why we’ll always need more support.

Article originally published on Medium.com