Trauma is Not a Catchy Title

The posts that get the most reposts are always slapped with the word, you guessed it, Trauma. Modern day lexicon has individualized to a point of Gen Zers casually introducing psychobabble into their quotidian diction. This newfound ability to over-intellectualize emotions for many has provided avenues in which their feelings of abandonment and neglect as a child, or as a lover, can be verbalized into existence. But has the word lost its value due to the law of supply and demand? Trauma has thus been appropriated in everyday lingo that it has now not only reduced its clinical weight but produced iatrogenic effects in the associations of trauma care.

Trauma in its very core as referred to by the Diagnostic Statistics Manual - 5 entails the experience of viewing or taking part in an event that poses a possibility or occurrence of death, injury, or sexual violence (Center, 2014). However, trauma can now be interchangeably used whether it be through a figure of speech or taken as the literal.

The lack of thought behind the use of this word in social media as a form of “content baiting” as a buzzword has produced significant misuse of the word (Magazine, 2022). Humans respond the best to emotional content, and what is more emotionally charged than the word “trauma”? Social media algorithms now favour any sort of content that promotes any emotional weight, as it produces longer watch times, in turn feeding the algorithm the idea that those videos should be promoted. Trauma is now one of the trending hashtags on TikTok, with #traumadumping becoming a challenge where people share stories about their hookups to stories about their bent toenails. Not only so, people are often taken aback by any sort of vulnerable content online, especially with platforms such as TikTok that promote authenticity and intimacy which tangentially induce parasocial relationships - a critical driver of social media use. When trying to foster a relationship online, trauma provides a stream of available content ideas for creators to max out their content on. As these factors align, trauma ridden content floods social media as a key buzzword that can describe a horrible meal, death of a loved one, or even an atrocious haircut.

But these posts all call for one call to action: validation. Validation provides a common ground amongst two different entities while providing support and understanding of the graveness of their situation. But validation can be incrementally given to different degrees of sincerity: condolences given to one who just survived domestic violence and one who just stepped on a lego are polarized reactions.

“ But people don't seem to understand that using trauma so lightly is devaluing the reality of actual trauma ‒ what it means and how it can affect those who experience it.”

- Joanne Docherty, Brainz Magazine

But seeing the word “trauma” refer to both situations then downplays the significance of one of them, providing the user of the previous scenario with a lesser form of grievance and validation than one they could be looking for. This desensitization of the word “trauma” correlates with the lack of validation people may feel when they actually choose to verbalize their emotions and make themselves vulnerable to the world, whether it be online or offline. When people can get away with not providing a reaction, or ignoring, or even devaluing a clinically significant traumatic experience, it breeds an environment of invalidation in the spheres of the online community. People learn through their reinforcements in their environment- if they are not positively reinforced when they talk about a difficult moment, their behavior will thus be inhibited in the future. This produces a culture of silence for those who truly are reaching out for help.

When met with dismissive comments online regarding a difficult situation rather than caring responses that encourage individuals to seek out help, those who struggle begin to normalize their trauma and stop themselves from reaching out to professionals in times of need. The word is used to glaze over a condition in its totality rather than truly “feeling” the word and its power. This does not just generalize to trauma, but many diagnostic terms that are thrown around nowadays, “ADHD”, “PTSD”, “Autistic”, and more. Many begin to use these terms to comment on symptoms of these disorders rather than when they are clinically diagnosable, thus creating a culture of ignorance against these disorders and their true extent of difficulties they may produce for a group of people.

References

Center. (2014). Exhibit 1.3-4, DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD. Retrieved October 30, 2023, from Nih.gov website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/box/part1_ch3.box16/#:~:text=Exposure%20to%20actual%20or%20threatened,family%20member%20or%20close%20friend. Lexi Pandell. (2022, January 17). How trauma became the word of the decade — and the Covid-19 pandemic. Retrieved October 30, 2023, from Vox website: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22876522/trauma-covid-word-origin-mental-health Magazine, B. (2022, December 21). “Trauma” Has Become The Most Overused Word On Social Media. Retrieved October 30, 2023, from Brainz Magazine website: https://www.brainzmagazine.com/post/trauma-has-become-the-most-overused-word-on-social-media