You Cannot Take This Away From Me Anymore

 "So, you said that you've experienced childhood trauma, right? It doesn't seem like it comes from your home, though, because as far as I've understood it, you're relatively close with your parents. So what do you mean when you say 'childhood trauma'?"

This summer, I spent a total of five weeks at the psych ward, and the previous quote is what my psychiatrist asked me the first time I met him after signing in. The nurses had told him that I was living with my parents and that my relationship with them was healthy and fulfilling, so obviously, he was a bit confused. How could I claim that I had childhood trauma when clearly my childhood home had been a safe environment for me to grow in, when I still kept in touch with my parents and chose to live with them in my current situation? What could that childhood trauma be then?

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not a word for you to use.

In conversations, childhood trauma is usually synonymous with familial trauma or sexual abuse. Childhood trauma takes place at home, among family members. The child is being abused by their parents, siblings, cousins, extended family members. Because home is the foundation of a child's life; everything starts from there, and if home is not a safe place for the child, that will cause life-long damage.

Home IS the foundation of a healthy childhood, yes, there is no questioning that. But what if every other place in the child's life is unsafe except home? What if every time the child steps out of their safe place, among their peers, they get abused? Doesn't that create a sense of insecurity as well? You'd think that it does, but for some reason, that option is rarely even considered. 

When you say you have childhood trauma, you never have to specify that it took place at your home. You never have to explain what it was that happened that traumatized you as a child when there's a general understanding that it came from your own family. People don't want to pry, they think it's too private. They don't have to know everything to be able to sympathize: no child deserves to be brought up in an unsafe environment. They will understand you, always. 

Except when they figure out that your trauma was not caused by you family. That is when they start to ask questions.

Doctors, I understand. They have to know more than other outsiders. When my psychiatrist asked me that question, I didn't think it was unreasonable for him to ask it. The only reason it stuck out to me is because I knew that if my trauma had been familial, he wouldn't probably have had asked me about it like that. It is the presupposition that whenever a trauma survivor talks about their childhood trauma, they don't have to specify that hey, it was my family who did that to me. But every other type of childhood trauma survivor – we do.

And maybe it's not really even about the need to specify. Because sometimes, it is about taking the word 'childhood trauma' away from us and tearing it into pieces because it is not a word for us to use. Because it is a sacred word that only belongs to the real victims of child abuse. You can't just take it and apply it to your own situation when you haven't faced actual childhood trauma. 

But who decides what is and what isn't "actual childhood trauma"? Who has the authority over me to dangle a label right in front of me and before I'm able to reach it take it away from me and carve the word 'bullied' on my forehead instead? Who gets to decide what did and didn't traumatize me?

I'd like to think my psychiatrist is one of those people. When I answered to his question, he replied with,

"Yeah, the psychological effects severe bullying can have on the development of the brain are very greatly undermined in the public and the medical field alike."

I had finally reclaimed the word that was wrongly taken away from me.

Thinking about words,

ichigonya