Mental Health

In recent years, people have used increasingly mixed metaphors to obfuscate partisan loyalty tests and characterize objections as suspiciously avoidant or condescendingly elitist so that they can make friends with bigots online and feel a part of something bigger than their lonesome, superficial lives.

For example, the list in the meme hardly makes any sense. It's true that some people consider some harsh words to be 'violent' but there is no reason to believe they are the same people who conflate 'stress' with 'trauma'. So the question "Do you agree?" is a poor question because any straight answer risks confirming the implication inherent to the list of metaphors in the meme: That there is a specific group who believes each of those statements and that group is being "increasingly extreme".

The meme itself is a political wedge device to make people feel bad and neg on the disaffected and vulnerable in our society so that people who feel tough right now, most of whom have not been through trauma or discrimination, can also feel correct and ethically justified by virtue of not being part of the vulnerable group being called out as "increasingly extreme".

What's sad, or funny depending on how you look at them, is that this kind of meme is so awkwardly transparent to both the political left and center that it makes the right seem pathetically ignorant. That's a shame, because stress is not trauma and only certain words actually lead to violence and disagreement isn't related to gaslighting at all and being irritated is a matter of opinion while harm is most often not a matter of opinion and people who are repeatedly difficult for the sake of being difficult really are toxic personalities and really do exist in the world.

Any one of these statements make for decent conversation, but this meme turns them all into one long and fruitless gish gallop so that nobody can really discuss any of it and all we're left with is a loyalty test and virtually zero substance.

No, I do not agree. People may have better and more fitting words to describe what they suffer. It's not for me to judge.

If we take the idea as true, as it's presented in the image, why might people do that?

Could it be that people believe that unless they shout and scream, no one will hear them?

Where did they get that idea from, and to what degree is it true that only the loudest voices get heard?

I think it's a bit of both.

Some people are manipulative and will say someone is/was gaslighting them when in fact it was just a disagreement.

In other cases the person was actually gaslighting them, and could say it was just a disagreement.

What I'm saying is it depends and is complicated

Can we flip it? I think its prior to now people have been ignoring what the problems actually are.

I have literally never heard anyone interpret literal words for physical violence. Are you stupid?

There's nothing conflicting or controversial in this post. Trauma, harm, toxicity, gaslighting, verbal violence are all sadly quite ordinary experiences. This person is just pointing out the language, surely no therapist could be that careless and unempathetic.

A) mental health is becoming less of a taboo subject so people are more open about their feelings.

B)Language changes, for example literally used to mean something was real, now it means the same as figuratively in common usage.

OK? I guess it's good that we talk about things instead of surpressing them.

Yes and no. Some things are, indeed, gaslighting for example, while others are, indeed just disagreements. Saying that all things "disagreement" are gaslighting is just as lacking in nuance as saying "people are calling every disagreement 'gaslighting' nowadays."

And I think that's the main bit, the lack of nuance. It has been slowly disappearing from both everyday discourse, as well as high-level communication, reducing the greyscale to a black-white binary. There is a tendency to buzzword-ify pretty much everything, so that it's easier to fit in just the two boxes.

To be clear, I'm not defending people who, indeed, call everything "trauma," or "gaslighting," or whatever else, but I most certainly don't agree with people who say "everyone's exaggerating," either.

In recent years, malignant narcissists (the definition of a "toxic person") have literally enacted violence to cause trauma and harm. Now we have to contend with snarky social media therapists who want to tone police us. Truly, the devil shits on the biggest pile.

I've literally been shouting this for decades.

Literally anything they don't agree with: why are you a nazi/ genocide supporter? I feel it's a quick way to shut down discourse, because deep down they know their bigoted views won't hold up to scrutiny.

One word is never enough to describe an experience. People can say they're okay when something is wrong or they can over-exaggerate. The last thing we want is more people reading this is thinking their trauma is actually stress and it's in their head. They don't want to be one of the people overreacting. They're "okay". Those people need help and shouldn't second-guess theirself.

If you call in an emergency, they don't make you prove you're not lying or overreacting. The ambulance comes either way. Once they arrive and assess the situation, they react appropriately.

If you feel you need help, use language that you feel fits. Once people understand the situation, they should react appropriately.

I've had friends that were in pain, but said they were okay. Up until things got critical. I don't want people hiding their pain because they don't want to be a burden. If you are in pain and need help, express it.

this post is violence

Blowing things out of proportion is the new normal.

Yeah I kind of do actually.

Yes and no. The user's pfp is of a white cis-passing woman. Some of this feels like it could potentially be dismissive of microaggressions about race or transgender status. Especially the "harsh words are violence" line. However I do think words like gaslighting are becoming overplayed. I had a very autistic argument about trains a while back and got told I was gaslighting them for disagreeing.