We Are Not Just Polarized. We Are Traumatized.

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/article/175311/america-polarized-traumatized-trump-violence

No paywall
https://archive.ph/lBMAT

If you’re even moderately online, you’ve likely crossed paths with TraumaTok (or its cousin, Trauma­Gram): Lots of short videos explicating how myriad hang-ups—including perfectionism and hoarding, people-pleasing and social isolation—are “trauma responses.” There’s advice, too: Stimulating the vagus nerve can be a good self-soothing mechanism. What about “tapping”? That’s when you tap certain pressure points of your body. Or “grounding”? That’s when you wriggle your toes in the bare earth. These videos have hundreds of thousands, even millions of views.

Like any decently sized cultural trend, TraumaTok has its jokey meme side as well. I’m personally fond of the In­stagram account @softcore_trauma, which overlays images of cute animals with tonally discordant therapy jargon.

You’ve probably seen these things because you’ve left a digital trail about what’s bothering you these days. Is the aforementioned perfectionism interfering with your productivity? Maybe you feel as if your memory is going and want to do something about it. (Forgetfulness is also a trauma response!) You mentioned to someone the way that you still haven’t been able to get back into the groove of “weekdays,” and they told you “time slippage” is a trauma response, and so you finally ordered Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (as this goes to press, it is in its 156th week on The New York Times’ bestseller list).

I am not the first person for whom the popularity of trauma content on social media triggers both recognition and suspicion. (Oversharing on social media? That’s “trauma dumping,” another—yes—trauma response.) Inquisitive, gently skeptical articles about a generalized “Trump trauma” that were keyed to viral tweets and, well, vibes started appearing during the 2016 campaign. Writing two weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency, an editor at Yahoo might as well have created a macro for the rest of the field: “while invoking ‘trauma’ ... may seem like an overreach to some, experts say it makes sense.”

*snip*