Video on "why forcing positivity after trauma doesn't build resilience" (Big Think website)

[josepdelafuente]

I've just started watching this video and it looks really interesting, and relevant to a lot of discussions we have here on S4ME regarding unscientific beliefs regarding trauma and the body.

The speaker is a professor of clinical psychology from the USA called George Bonanno.

This is the blurb for the video:
"We may think that trauma leaves irreversible scars, reshaping our brain and emotional regulation permanently. The science, however, shows the opposite, says psychologist George Bonanno. Our biology is much more resilient than we give it credit for.

Bonanno dismantles common myths surrounding trauma and PTSD, and shares a practical mindset shift to navigate difficult experiences."

Why forcing positivity after trauma doesn't build resilience

“There are at least three very much interrelated misconceptions about trauma right now.”

bigthink.com

There is also a transcript there. Mods - please move if this is in the wrong place.

 

[RedFox]

I am extremely skeptical that trauma is not permanent, at least if it happened in childhood. (And there's increasing evidence adolescence is another critical period for neurdevelopment.) It doesn't line up with what we understand about neurodevelopment. People who are unable to learn language (such as Genie) or see as children (such as people born with cataracts, and for whom surgery became available late in life) end up with lifelong impairments in those areas because their brains never develop the circuitry from them. Someone whose emotional needs were never met in childhood because of abuse or neglect will also develop lifelong social and emotional impairments. This includes emotional abuse or neglect. intergenerational cycles of trauma and abuse in families make that glaringly obvious.

I suspect a major reason we talk about "resillience" over protecting children from adverse childhood experiences is because it's easier to blame the victim for not making themself 100% better instead of providing them the extensive supports to perhaps make them 20% better. There are strong parallels to ME/CFS, plus child maltreatment is far more common.

 

[RedFox]

I watched as much as I could bother (I'm not hatewatching an hour-and-a-half long video). Disappointingly, his discussion is entirely focused on simple PTSD and ignores complex trauma which is at least as common (albeit far more insidious). For example, he talks about folks' trajectories after trauma, but people with cPTSD don't have a proper "before" because the trauma happened while their brain was still developing. He denies hidden trauma exists. That simply isn't true when the trauma was too early to remember, or if the abuse or neglect is normalized. It can be like a fish discovering they're in water.