This rule wisely prioritizes behavioral consistency over the fragile intimacy of shared trauma, ensuring trust is earned rather than manufactured. It serves as a necessary corrective to the modern tendency to mistake immediate vulnerability for genuine character.
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You Can’t Talk to Me About Your Trauma for a YearHinzugefügt:
You cannot talk to me about topics of trauma, whether your trauma or my trauma, for at least a year from the day that we meet. This is my most controversial boundary. And anytime I mention it, people have a million questions, especially people who themselves have things like PTSD, OCD, severe triggers, things that they have to disclose in order to feel safe in a relationship or even in a conversation.
But in general, people cannot fathom how I might be able to build connection with people if we can disclose the major events that have most impacted and shaped us in our lives. And yet implementing this rule is what has allowed me to finally have the kinds of genuine, sincere, reciprocal, and intimate friendships and relationships that I never managed to have before implementing this boundary into my life.
And I feel extremely strongly that everybody could benefit from implementing some version of this rule into their life. So I've written a Substack article about it that I'm going to read out loud to you today explaining what this boundary looks like, how you can implement it, and most importantly, why it's beneficial. My name is Spencer.
I'm a lesbian, which is relevant. And today's article, which I'm going to read to you, is called You Can't Talk to Me About Your Trauma for At least a year.
Let's get started. It took me a long time to realize that being someone people could open up to wasn't a good thing. I used to pride myself in it. I used to say, "There's nothing you could tell me that I'd considered to be too much. There's nothing you could make me uncomfortable or weirded out with." I thought the fact that there were people out there who would hear someone sharing something vulnerable and intense and actually go, "Yikes, that's too much."
was absolutely insane. I couldn't fathom that being me. Well, dolls and gays, after a decade of it, that has now become me. And in all complete honesty, it has improved my life by about 200%.
So, I want to talk to you about my most controversial boundary. No one can have conversations with me about trauma, theirs or mine, for at least a year, often even a year and a half. Sonor, I know there are a few questions people usually immediately have when they hear this. What counts as trauma? What about people with PTSD triggers that you need to be aware of? How do you even bond with people at this point? What if someone just needs someone to talk to and they have nobody? Would you turn them away? Before I answer questions, let me define trauma. What counts as trauma and what doesn't count as trauma?
Trauma to me is an experience that overwhelmed your ability to cope at the time when it happened and it still carries emotional weight that hasn't been fully processed. It's not a problem that needs resolving. The emotional weight of it is the only thing that you're carrying forward. It's identity shaping and requires emotional regulation from the listener and sensitivity to triggers. It can transfer emotional weight onto the person that's hearing it. Now, let's talk about day-to-day problems. Day-to-day problems are things that I don't consider to be trauma that a person I'm just meeting for the first time can rely on me for.
These are things like stress at work, conflict with a friend, feeling stuck or unmotivated, relationship problems, decisions that you're trying to make, frustrations, annoyance, things that are presently upsetting you. The difference is that day-to-day problems are present focused rather than identity defining.
They invite discussion, problem solving, and reflection rather than just here's an emotionally charged retelling of something that I've endured. So, now that we've defined trauma and we've differentiated it from day-to-day problems that you can talk to me about, let's get into my reasoning for this personal boundary. The first one is that trauma bonding creates a false sense of connection. Trauma sharing fasttracks intimacy signals in your brain without actually helping you establish real relational safety with a person. What do I mean by that? Something that I've experienced over and over again throughout my adult life is that bonding over shared trauma has consistently given me the illusion of having connected with someone very quickly.
Within a few conversations, I felt close to that person, like I could trust them and they could trust me. It felt like we knew each other intimately. However, experience has taught me that those conversations didn't actually tell me anything about that person at all. I knew absolutely nothing about the way that they treated people, how they handled conflict, their morals or ethics, their humor, their interests, their kindness, their consideration, their social maturity. I knew a whole lot about their pain. And I knew that I shared that same pain. Outside of that, though, I knew nothing. The reason why I had the illusion that I knew a lot more was because I projected onto them the way that my own trauma has shaped me. I made the incorrect assumption that shared trauma led to similar development. I have intense trauma and I've grown to care about others. They also have intense trauma. Therefore, they must have also grown to care about others. This is a person I can trust.
The reality is that two people can experience the exact same trauma yet develop into two significantly different, even opposing people. This became glaringly obvious when time and time again I would let my guard down after bonding over sheer trauma with someone only for that person to disappoint me within a few months. I recently realized though that I had no reason to be disappointed.
Disappointment implies having knowledge that builds certain expectations which weren't met. But I never had any information that I should have built those expectations on to begin with. I realized that hearing a person's trauma didn't actually reveal any fundamental information about their personhood.
Here's what a person's trauma tells me about them. What they went through, what they're sensitive to, what hurt them, what I need to look out for to be kinder to them. Here's what someone's trauma does not tell me about them. how they treat others, how they handle conflict, whether they're capable of accountability, whether they're kind, avoidant, manipulative, grounded, or self-aware, etc. Trauma tells me none of the above. My second reason, I want to observe behavior without bias. The previous section explains why trauma doesn't tell me enough, but here's why sharing trauma simultaneously also tells me too much. Once you know someone's trauma, you don't see them neutrally anymore. You start interpreting their behavior through a lens of sympathy. You begin making excuses for them before you've even determined if they're a person that you want to keep in your life long-term to begin with. They've done nothing yet to warrant you putting in that work. They haven't yet positively contributed to your life in any way. Not enough for you to preemptively forgive them for behaviors that make you uncomfortable. But once you know their trauma, it becomes something that you can't help.
Personally, I start to doubt my own perception because I begin to excuse behavior that I normally dislike. I start rationalizing things that would normally be red flags to me and excuse boundaries that get crossed inappropriately.
Now, I want to know how someone treats me when I have no reason to defend them yet. I want to be able to observe their behaviors on their own objectively. What does this person bring into my life? How do I feel when I'm around them? Do I feel good about myself and about the world when I hang out with this person?
When I do something for them? Do they reciprocate soon after? Does my life feel improved by this person's presence?
Or does being around them leave me feeling weird, negative, or otherwise uncomfortable? If being around them leaves me feeling weird, negative, or uncomfortable, and they don't bring sufficient positive things into my life to make those negative experiences feel worth it, then that's all that I need and want to know. I do not want to take that relationship further. Caring about their trauma is something that I want to do for them only after they've shown me that they can contribute positively to my life. My next reason is that emotional labor should be earned. This is a controversial one. Let's talk about emotional labor for a second. The reason people show themselves to be off-put when they're given excessive details early on isn't because that trauma in and of itself is shameful or weird. And this was the misunderstanding that I used to have. I used to think things like people think those experiences are weird. I don't. There's no experience someone could go through that would weird me out. People are so shallow.
I've come to realize in my adult years that weirdness wasn't what people were reacting to. It was the inappropriate expectation of emotional labor. If you're an empathetic person, perhaps someone who, like me, went through a time in your life where you had absolutely no one to lean on, you might give out emotional labor very readily and very easily. Something that took me a very very long time to learn is that access to our emotional labor should be earned through demonstrated reciprocity, not granted on first contact. When someone shares trauma early, they're asking you to do the following. Hold emotional weight. Respond with care and regulation. Offer validation and attunement. Sometimes even help them process. All of that is very skilled, very draining, and very intimate. And yet at the point that they're asking these things from you, they haven't yet shown consistency, contributed to your life, demonstrated care towards you, or proven that they can hold your emotions.
They're asking for depth and care before having shown not only that they deserve that from you, but even that they'd be willing to reciprocate it. There's been no safety or trust established. That's why people act put off when someone quote unquote overshares because the response to that level of sharing requires a draining skill set that that person hasn't yet earned. It doesn't feel inappropriate because their trauma is weird. It feels inappropriate in the same way it would be inappropriate for a person you've just met to enter your house and make themselves at home without permission. I've come to realize that there's a reason why people value healthy pacing in relationships. Trauma sharing early on prevents healthy and natural pacing. Rather than building trust and then vulnerability, you jump straight into vulnerability, which leads to unearned assumed trust. It hijacks the mechanisms that build that trust and tricks you into thinking it should already be there. My next reason is the beauty of earning that moment. What people often don't realize anymore is that the bonding that comes from mutually sharing trauma isn't caused by the trauma sharing itself. It's caused by the fact that sharing is a way of saying, "I trust you." There's something profoundly different about hearing someone's story after you've built something real with them. When someone opens up to me after we've spent time learning each other's present, after we've laughed, disagreed, supported each other through ordinary daily things, then that moment feels truly intimate.
Because then I'm not just sitting there supporting someone that I know nothing about. Them sharing it with me says, "I trust you." And me listening says, "I want to know you." And vice versa, them hearing about my own trauma is the same.
It's a beautiful earned moment that brings two people who have grown to care about each other closer together. Ooh, this next one is another controversial one. Identity outside of trauma. Let's talk about it. This is where I want to be careful with how I express myself.
Before I speak on this section, I want to give a very brief summary of my own traumas. My reason for doing this is because this section often gets me accused of privilege, of having not experienced enough trauma to know what it's like to not be able to escape it.
I'm someone who has dealt with severe disability, childhood physical abuse, street homelessness in my teens, heroin addiction, self harm, PTSD, severe OCD, BPD, as well as severe poverty, and now very deep and intense financial struggles. I know trauma. I am not blind to trauma. I have never had the resources for therapy. I have never had the resources for comfort. But I still did the damn thing. I dragged my ass to my local public library and look for psychology workbooks to help me learn how to deal with my trauma in healthy ways. I do DBT at home regularly. I've taught my traumatized mom how to do it as well. Does this mean that I'm healed?
A [ __ ] course not. I will never be normal. I will always struggle. But one thing that I realized early on in my late teens is that seeking to define myself by my traumatic experiences kept me in a perpetual cycle of unhappiness.
What happened to me wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for me to need to move on from it all, having never received the help or empathy that I deserved. But it wasn't the job of new people whose lives I was entering into, to take accountability for things that happened to me when they weren't there. There was no reason for me to expect them to hold that for me when I hadn't yet proved that I was someone worth holding that for. I needed to discover who I was outside of my own trauma. At that point, that didn't amount to much because my entire life had been nothing else. So, I made it my mission to begin creating new memories and build a non-traumatic life that I could shape myself on. My trauma could inform me, but it didn't need to define me. So, how does this circle back to me? not allowing others to share their traumas with me. If I asked them not to talk about trauma for a year and they seem to physically not be capable of figuring out how to have a conversation or how to hang out for a full day without bringing up topics of trauma, that person is still defining themselves by their trauma in a way that is not healthy for me to be around. When trauma becomes someone's identity, it shapes how they relate to others in unhealthy ways. If someone doesn't have a sense of self outside of what they've been through, every single interaction starts orbiting around their wounds.
Their identity becomes reactive rather than self-defined. They relate to people exclusively through validation, caretaking, and emotional intensity.
Conversations become repetitive and heavy and centered on past harm, never on present-day autonomy. A person who only knows themselves through their trauma often doesn't know how to show up in a relationship outside of being hurt.
I know this because I have been this.
Trauma is what happened to you, but I want to know who you are. If you genuinely still believe that your trauma is who you are, you still need to do work that I can't be there for. Which brings me to my next point. Trauma talk feels meaningful, but often isn't. I sprinkled this throughout the article so far, but I want to say it a bit more directly now. Trauma talk can create the illusion of depth without substance.
These conversations feel deep because they're vulnerable, but vulnerability alone doesn't lead to any real understanding. Trauma talk gives you emotional intensity, sympathy, and a sense of closeness. These are all the markers of what we would consider to be a deep conversation. But it often skips things like how someone thinks, how they make decisions, what they value, how they interpret the world, what they're building in their life. There are a million other conversations I would rather be having with someone that I'm just getting to know for the first time to actually really see them. Here's a list of what those things could be.
Interests and curiosities. What are they drawn to? What excites them? What do they choose to engage with? Current problems. What are struggles that they're dealing with that are impacting them right now? How do they approach challenges? Do they take responsibility or do they externalize? How are they at problem solving? And how do they react to receiving help solving those problems? Opinions and interpretations.
How do they think? Are they rigid, nuanced, reactive, thoughtful? What's their worldview? Daily habits and lifestyle. What does their life actually look like? Are they a consistent or a chaotic person? Do they show up when they say that they will? Do they follow through on promises? How they talk about other people? Do they take accountability? Do they villainize everyone? Do they show empathy and boundaries? Do they seem to always interpret the absolute worst version of people's intentions? Are they good at regulating or are they reactive? If they're reactive, are they aware of it?
Humor and fun. Very important one. Can we have fun together? Does our humor match? Something people don't realize the importance of. Can we have fun if we're not talking about our trauma? Are we capable of keeping each other entertained in one another's presence?
Can we share space together and feel good regardless of what we're doing? Do we match energies when we share an activity? Overall, I learn much more about someone from how they talk about a frustrating Tuesday that they had than I do from the absolute worst thing that's ever happened to them. It's the mundane day-to-day life that will allow you to see someone for who they are. Which is exactly why relationships built on trauma fall apart at around the 3mon mark. Once you've run out of traumatic topics to bond over, you're left no choice but to start seeing that person for who they are in the present day. and you may realize that you don't like it.
So, how can I be there for people if I don't know what their traumas are? This is the question that I get most often.
What if someone has triggers? What if they have PTSD? I can actually give myself as an example. I struggle with very intense PTSD and OCD. Both have significant triggers that I need to avoid. There are topics that I cannot engage with in any capacity.
Communicating those triggers doesn't need to involve having a sit-down conversation going over the deep and intense details of my trauma. It can be as simple as, "Hey, I have some PTSD and OCD triggers related to these topics A, B, C, D. It's okay to talk about them in ABC way, but something like that would really affect me. Here's what a trigger could look like for me if I were to get one. When I do, here's what I need in order to calm down." This is an example of a way that I can explain these things to somebody without needing to sit down and get into explicit detail about what happened to me to lead to those triggers. All I have to do is speak about it very clinically. Here's my trigger. Here's what it is. Here's what I need. That's it. If I do experience a flashback, talking about the flashback actually makes it significantly worse.
And in all honesty, a random person I just met a month ago does not have the qualifications to help me process active trauma that's causing me a physical reaction. It wouldn't be appropriate to expect it even if it did help. But it doesn't even help. What does help is distraction. I can say something like, "I'm having a flashback related to XYZ."
Then that friend can put on a movie, start up an activity, and help me redirect. And this is how I'm there for my own friends. If they're experiencing a trigger related to a past trauma, I comfort them physically and distract them mentally. I make sure that they're not hungry, cold or hot, restrained by uncomfortable clothes, or overstimulated by the environment. Then I either distract them with an interesting topic that I know they'll want to talk about, or I put on a show I know will distract their mind. By the time a few hours have passed, they've regulated in a way where they can now handle the triggering thoughts. Of course, if they're having a present- day problem, we'll talk about it. Whether they want to vent or actively seek solutions, both of those things are leading to a resolution of some sort. The problem is an active one.
Redirection is what I pull out when the friend is affected by trauma in particular, things that cannot be resolved or fixed. What if someone desperately needs to process their trauma and they have nobody? Getting this question is always funny to me because again, I have been this person.
There was a time in my life where I sat on the steps of my apartment building, phone in hand, desperately trying to think of a single number that I could text for someone to talk to and not being able to think of a single person.
Reaching out to random people I'd met years ago who didn't remember me, whose numbers I just happened to still have.
absolutely desperate for someone to talk to. Of course, if someone approached me and said, "I desperately need someone to talk about my trauma. Please help." I would not turn them away. But I want you to notice something. In this example, this person asked for permission. They came to me upront and said, "I want to speak about something very heavy. Please allow me to." This allows me to set parameters and boundaries. I can check to see what topics we're about to get into and I can set boundaries around wanting to help them seek professional help rather than me continuing to play the role of a therapist to them after that moment. If I do want to be that person that they can dial when they need someone to talk to, it matters to me how they approach it, whether they seem to be treating me like a person with limits and needs and a mental health of my own.
Which gets me to my final section, premature emotional entitlement. Here's the thing. Maybe you don't have boundaries or experience discomfort around traumatic topics, which allows you to very easily consume them and hold them without much fuss. However, it's extremely important to pay attention to whether the person you're engaging with is checking for those boundaries first.
It doesn't matter whether or not you're looking out for your own emotional well-being. Pay attention to whether the other person is looking out for it for you. Relationships have pacing. Most people understand that different levels of death belong at different stages. You meet someone, you get to know their personality. You see if your basic morals, values, and ethics align. You see if you have fun together. Great.
This person can bring something into your life. So, you lean in. You start confiding in each other about your day-to-day problems. You show up for them. And then you check to see if they also show up for you. If they do, you show up for them in a more significant way. And then you check to see if they do the same. You continue the back and forth, increasing what you're willing to provide and checking to see if it will be provided back. And if at any point what you've provided isn't reciprocated, that serves as a line that can inform you what the depth of the relationship should be and where it should stay.
Trauma sharing is very very deep within that process because of the amount of care and skill that it requires and the emotional transference that it involves.
So when someone skips all of that, this immediately tells me that they cannot differentiate between closeness and access. They don't care if we've built enough closeness. They just care that they have access to me and that I can immediately provide them with something they're in need of. Intentions can vary and not all of them are insidious. Some are toxic manipulators who actually use trauma sharing as a way to boundary test and to seek people that are easy to manipulate. And this is something that I'll write a separate article about because it's a very significant topic all on its own. But most are often not engaging in something premeditated.
However, them not having a desire to build trust and closeness with you first and doing nothing to check for your boundaries should tell you things about how this person is going to be treating you moving forward. That lack of consideration is not contained just to trauma. It will show in other ways. But by the time it does, you'll already know so much about their trauma that you'll already start making excuses for them.
And then by the time you realize it, you're stuck in a friendship with someone you don't like, you never really liked, and who absolutely exhausts you, but who you feel too guilty to set boundaries with. Now, you should not be feeling guilty. They should have checked for those boundaries themselves to begin with. So, how do I enforce this? One unexpected aspect of posting about this boundary on my social media was how much people were confused about what this would look like in practice. I thought this was funny because it's underwhelmingly simple. When I first meet someone, I don't communicate this boundary immediately. But importantly, I also don't ask about their trauma. If trauma is passively hinted at, I don't ask questions or investigate further. I move on from the topic. The reason I don't make this boundary known immediately to everyone is because I like to give myself a chance to see if that person is someone who overshares about trauma to begin with. There are people who naturally do not share their traumatic history unless trust has been built. They're very good at regulating the pacing of a relationship and allowing it to progress naturally. When I meet someone who naturally doesn't seek to bond through trauma and only shares it once trust has been established, I like to let that relationship progress organically. If we build enough trust to talk about trauma within 6 months rather than within a year, I allow it because the relationship has built that intimacy in a natural way. I'm at a point where I've done this enough to be able to start discerning when a friendship can handle small bits of early trauma sharing because the other person clearly also values building trust and intimacy before that sharing happens. However, I've reached this point after years of enforcing this boundary strictly across the board. And I recommend enforcing it strictly to everyone who's learning to do it for the first time. But even in my case, if someone begins mentioning or sharing their trauma unprompted within less than 3 months, then I make this boundary known. Typically, after I've enforced this boundary the first time, people who are used to talking about their trauma all the time will slip into it a few more times. Sometimes it's intentional, but most of the time it's unintentional. When it's intentional, they begin with, "Let me know if any of this is crossing your boundary." When it's unintentional, they accidentally just start talking about it. In the former example, I'll always answer with, "Well, what are the topics you're about to talk about?" Oh, actually, yeah, that does fall under what would cross my boundary. Sorry, I don't think that's something we can talk about yet. I hope that's okay. If it's unintentional, I'll interrupt and I'll say, "Hey, I feel terrible, but do you remember that boundary that I mentioned? This unfortunately does fall under that. I really want us to have this conversation eventually. I do want to know about this at some point, but much further down the line, once we've known each other for long, inevitably people will feel rejected, and that's not something that you can avoid. This correction, unfortunately, often ends the conversation or the hangout, even if it's not a result of a fight or an argument. I don't judge people for feeling shut down or uncomfortable.
Those are normal emotions to feel in this type of situation. However, the people who consistently worked through that discomfort and continued to show up in the friendship while respecting that boundary have been the best people that have ever been a part of my life. This boundary has single-handedly been the thing that has drawn the kinds of friends to me that I never knew I could have. I've never had a healthier, more supportive, more constructive and kind group of friends around me than I do now since establishing this rule. And that's because the people who can have this boundary enforced on them. Work through the discomfort and return back regardless are communicating the following things. I'm not just here to get emotional labor out of you. Not receiving that labor doesn't eliminate my desire to be here. I'm capable of receiving feedback and handling it in a healthy way. I can handle rejection well and regulate through it. I like you enough to want to work on myself in order to be able to participate in your life while respecting your boundaries. I feel confident that I can exist as a person outside of the confines of my traumatic past. This is why in order to enforce it, you need to be okay with upsetting people. You need to be comfortable with the idea that it will make people uncomfortable and that some will walk away altogether. How someone reacts to discomfort will tell you significantly more about who they are as a person than a 5-hour conversation about their trauma ever could. So, conclusion. I'm going to be so honest. I sat down to write my weekly article 2 hours ago and I word vomited this behemoth out and now I'm running out of time. I literally have 5 minutes left of time before I have to get back to my responsibilities. There's no time to even go back and reread it. If there are [ __ ] paragraphs halfway through that's between you and Jesus, I'm not going to know. I want to write an intellectual conclusion, but since I don't have the time for it, here's what I want to leave you with. Focus less on being a constructive and helpful presence to everyone who comes up to you and seeks emotional labor. And learn to be a bit more selfish. It's easy to believe that the former is what will bring supportive and kind people to you. In reality, all it'll do is attract your way the types of people who want nothing out of a friendship but to take and take and take. It's the latter that will help you finally find the people who like you for who you are, the ones who want to be around you for reasons unrelated to what you can provide to them. There are two issues you might run into that I want to write separate articles about. One, you might define yourself by your ability to be useful to others. And you may not even know what you bring to a relationship outside of the help that you can provide. And two, you may struggle with people pleasing and enforcing the boundary at the cost of receiving negative reactions can end up feeling like an impossible hurdle. I'm going to speak separately on each of those topics. Likely, those will also be tremendous unedited word vomits. But hey, at least I'm writing through this [ __ ] of a depressive episode. The devil works hard, but my sense of responsibility to the people paying me $5 a month to write works harder. And if you haven't seen it yet, I also have a YouTube channel. Thank you for reading my unedited mess, Spencer. So, over on my Substack, or if you don't know what a Substack is, it's my blog. So, over on my blog, I put out a request for my subscribers to think about stories from their past that came up for them when they read this article, things that they thought, "Oh, I wish I knew this back when that happened." And I asked them to DM those stories to me. So, I have a handful of them here that I'd like to read to you so you can see some examples of situations where this rule could be applicable. All right. This first message is from Mai who said, "I wanted to share some thoughts that I had while reading your article regarding a friendship I had earlier this year. So for context, I'm studying a foreign language that's not commonly studied seriously. It's not exactly something many people actually get to a level they excel in. This is important for the story I'll be sharing. Starting around June of last year, I started taking learning this language seriously as I had started working with people who spoke it and even developed friendships with them. While they still spoke English, it wasn't their native tongue, thus making communication sometimes difficult when we talked about complex topics, and I frequently had to just pretend to understand or to use a translator. Even worse, situations like this were hard to come by. In general, we don't have a huge native speaking population around where I live. And the job I had that allowed me to speak to them was only temporary. It lasted about a week or so. Then I met someone that I'll call Kay. I've heard about K from friend groups that I'd frequent. That they were somebody who had lived in the country of the language I was learning and had been studying it for over 10 years. I thought that was absolutely incredible. It's super rare to hear of somebody who had actually achieved success, let alone as a Muslim woman. I remember the first time I met her at an event. I was enamored. I asked her to say some words in the language and she was able to articulate herself in full sentences and talk for an entire 5 minutes with no breaks. Something I couldn't imagine doing myself at the time. And here was someone I was in contact with who was living my dream.
After that, I didn't see her for about a year or so. She went back to the country she was staying as her job likely did not pay for extended leave. I went about my day-to-day life. Sometime around mid last year, we reconnected again at a smaller, more quiet get together. I got a chance to practice my speaking skills, and she was happy to talk to someone who was also learning the language. We both quickly bonded over our love of its culture, jokes, and complaints that frankly nobody else would be able to understand. It's a niche and very difficult language. Many people in my life found absolutely no value in it.
So, I was grateful to find somebody who actually did. I found myself texting K memes or jokes that only we would be able to get. Those Tik Toks became light chitchat which then developed into deep conversations about being Muslim, queer, and unsure of yourself because of that.
This is where I think I started to drop the ball. We hadn't known each other for very long at all. We had a mere two to three interactions prior and we were talking about being closeted to your family and reading gay smut essentially.
After that conversation, things exponentially got more and more intense.
We started calling each other randomly throughout the week just to talk about what was going on in our lives. But almost always, it would end up in both of us confiding some serious trauma to each other and a socopolitical commentary on the state of the world right now. Suddenly, the conversation about a coffee machine turned into a conversation about the exploitation of coffee in South America, which then would also become something about our personal lives. every single time. And I say this because it was definitely not just K's fault. I was also somebody who would talk about serious issues such as my previous relationship that had soured into abuse. I would also make light-hearted topics deeper. I will not be sharing any details on things she's been through as that's not my story to tell. I will just mention that she also had past tumultuous relationships hinged on her tendency for being a people pleaser. I also feel like this is a good time to mention that she is around 7 years older than me. I'm in my very early 20s and she's close to hitting 30.
To make this clear, I've been friends with people who are older than me with absolutely no strange subtext of the like. People who have been very respectful to me and I consider them like older siblings and have helped me academically, professionally, and provided advice that I still use to this day. So, even though we had an HGAP friendship, it didn't read as strange, nor did it ring any alarm bells. But I did start noticing a couple of things with Kate. One thing was how she spoke of her queer experience. She frequently cited religious, societal, and family pressures as being the reason she had a hard time accepting it. So, while one day she'd tell me about how she finds an actress very attractive, the next she'd talk to me about how she could never truly be with a woman because of her religion and family. I'm someone from the very beginning more comfortable with my identity and far less concerned with my family's approval. I'm also not religious at all, so I never really shifted between the two. She did, however, frequently switch from being very religious to being practically an atheist. And other times, she would talk excessively about her past relationships with little reciprocity. I wouldn't mind at first because I thought I was a good friend, and every good friend lets the other confide in them, right? Or so I thought. All right. Sometimes people have a lot on their mind. I mean, who am I to say anything? I've let off about my own issues before. Why shouldn't she?
I'll admit I'm a bit more quiet pertaining to my past traumas because I had worked to move past the need to discuss it constantly in my adult life.
Some people might just need a little bit of help and people can change. We shouldn't give up on our friends because they are not perfect. We should accept them as they are and encourage growth.
So when I noticed she didn't take criticism well, I told myself my criticism that she asked for was just misplaced. So when I knew she had a history of people pleasing, I just saw an opportunity for growth. When she was cruel in the way she spoke about other people, I would call me redirected to a healthier approach. So when she would tell me too much, either because I was stressed or just unequipped for it, I tell myself that I would want someone that I'd feel safe enough to talk to about these things. What I didn't realize is that I was emotionally regulating her for the both of us. That slowly over time, I actually became a little afraid of what would happen if I stopped. It wasn't that I stayed silent when I saw patterns, but I never brought them up in relation to me. If I said she was a people pleaser, it was because she was telling me about a story of when she was. If we were talking about how childhood abuse affects someone, it was because we were discussing it already. I was afraid of saying, "Hey, that comment you just made there, I disliked how you said that." Because deep down, I knew that she wasn't going to be able to handle it. That she would default to either being defensive, attempting to please me, or just straight up avoiding me, like she's done in her previous relationships. Even though I tried my best to be a safe space and to be a neutral person to talk to, what I didn't understand was that she was perfectly capable of doing that anyway. that my attempts at being a safe space weren't helpful. So, while I told her you should take your time processing what happened between you two, I didn't get that the repeated venting about the situation was her processing it through me and creating a narrative around it. Even if I didn't see it at the time, venting became a huge part of our relationship.
I'd even go as far as to say that it was practically built on it. To build your relationships on recounts of past experiences is like taking cracked stone and stacking it on top of one another.
Eventually, the pressure is going to turn the entire foundation to dust. They aren't tangible the way that experiences together in a relationship are. They have some weight and merit, but it's not the same as creating new memories or genuine moments of connection. Then I found a program for the language I wanted to study. It was affordable enough for me to go just using my savings and it was at an accredited university. She was the first person I talked to about it and I was ecstatic. I just hadn't figured out how I tell my family just yet. But with her support and her families, I felt like I could make it happen. I come from a culture where women are not often given the privileges of being independent or living on their own prior to marriage.
And even then, you would do it with your husband's permission. Even as an adult in my 20s, I'm still given a curfew and I'm frequently bombarded with spam calls and messages from my parents regarding my whereabouts. While I've taken steps to reduce their excessive need for control by what I call exposure therapy, it's still something I have to deal with. That's why I hadn't mentioned this to my parents yet, because I knew they would not react well to me hopping off to a country they've never been to in a language that they don't understand, surrounded by people they don't know.
Our relationship came to a halt when I asked her to come see me in person. She lived about 2 hours away and we were mainly talking to each other through text and calls. We had a couple of scheduling conflicts but found a weekend that would work for the both of us.
Great. At first, we had a blast just talking about life and our shared experience with the language again.
Partly because we also had another friend of ours with us. So, we weren't able to exactly jump straight into talking about our deepest insecurities.
I honestly think having that third person there with us is what kept interactions comfortable. Things went great until that friend headed home. It was just us two alone. We went back to my place. I changed in front of her. I had done this casually on calls before and it didn't feel out of place at the moment. I talked a bit about how having a long-term relationship with a man had changed how I viewed my body. She responded kindly and reassured me. I then asked her if she could talk to my parents about my study abroad plan. I didn't know how to reassure my parents about it, let alone even begin the conversation. I figured getting reassurance from someone who actually studied and lived there would be enough to ease their worries and a productive discussion would follow. I let her know that I didn't want them in on the plan yet, that I had already told them I was thinking about studying abroad, but I hadn't found a program. I wanted to be the one to break the news once they were open to it. She said she'd be willing to do it, which I was grateful for.
Originally, the plan was that she would stay only for a day. But because it had gotten late and she was uncomfortable taking the train alone, she ended up staying the night. She spent the evening talking to my mother, who was enjoying light-hearted conversation with her. And my friend became oddly helpful, frequently asking my mother if she needed anything, offering to make her tea, and doing anything in her power to make her comfortable. I made an off-hand comment about my grandmother, who had passed a year prior. My mom's tone shifted and she quickly became biting, telling me to go and shower so she didn't have to talk to me in front of my friend. My breath halted and my eyes stung. So, I left the room and distracted myself with finishing a book I had put off. I'm a faz reader, so about 30 minutes later when I had finished the book and calmed down, I decided to talk to my mother about studying abroad. But before I could head towards the stairs, I checked my phone and saw 11 messages from my sister who was in the living room doing her homework. My heart dropped and my hands started shaking rapidly. Kay had told my mom all about my study abroad plans, had given her a number to an Islamic teacher, and she was whispering to my mother about my secrets and how they were checking to make sure I wasn't downstairs so I wouldn't hear them. I later learned she was talking about my previous partner with my mother and how my mother concluded I was immature and felt like she needed to keep me on a tight leash of control because of it. My mind went blank. I felt lightheaded and terrified. What else had she told? My mother knew I was gay, but she had chosen to pretend I wasn't. I wasn't prepared to get kicked out of the house.
There was no way for me to gauge the damage that I had been done. I sat there feeling numb and texted my sister back.
Oh, that doesn't sound too incriminating. I guess mom was supposed to know about it anyway. So, I mean, dot dot dot. Looking back, dealing with that betrayal in the moment was not something I could have processed. In fact, it completely shattered the image I had about her. That she understood vulnerability, family dynamics, closetedness, that she'd understand just the risk she had taken exposing personal details like that to someone who I explicitly told her not to tell.
Heartbroken doesn't even begin to cover it. I went downstairs and talked to my mother about my plans about studying abroad. The conversation went fine. I pretended I didn't know. She pretended she hadn't said anything. I smiled and we all chatted until midnight. Kay slept in the same bed as me. She talked about how my family was precious and how they all cared about me so much. I let her know that my mom was a very abusive person towards me growing up and that she's different from other moms. She knew. My first instinct was to understand. Well, she had boundary crossing relationships before. It's possible that it's a huge misunderstanding. I told myself I wasn't there in the moment. Maybe my sister heard it wrong. I quietly justified. I didn't tell her about my mother's previous abuse. I didn't give her a good guideline on how to talk to my mom. She was probably doing her best. She was probably just confused and unsure of what to say, which is why it slipped out. The excuses ran through my mind the entire night. Although I could feel my eyes water and my throat swell, I didn't dare let out a blip of the pain I was feeling. I kept it to myself. The following morning, I got up late. She was on her phone scrolling on Tik Toks, which woke me up. I got dressed as I had work later that day and headed down. She soon followed. My sister was in the kitchen making her usual morning avocado toast, giving her no more than a quick glance and a quiet hey. The energy in the room was unbearable. I felt suffocated, but thankfully my sister was kind enough to make small talk with her.
We had breakfast together. My parents were out of the house running errands and at work. they'd be the ones to drop her off at the train station later that afternoon. My sister silently gestured towards me to walk over. Kay was immersed in an anime, so we stepped out to the kitchen for a moment. She said, "Get her out of the house. I don't want her here." I nodded and understood, then asked Kay if she wanted to come to a popular local coffee shop with me. She obliged and then we got up and left. As we sipped our matcha in the car, we started talking about my ex and dating.
She's frequently shifted between being religious and being agnostic or an atheist. She was in her religious phase during this time. We discussed things such as men not respecting women, especially in our culture. It escalated.
She spoke to me about not losing my virginity or having casual sex when I study abroad as I was very precious and my family wouldn't want that. She tied religion and that our culture simply cares about our girls so much which is why we protect them. All right, I thought I had made it clear previously I wasn't comfortable having sex with someone who I don't have a relationship with, and she knew I wasn't a virgin either. Things took an even sharper turn when she told me to consider dating with men within my race. For those who don't know, I have never once in my life liked someone of my race. Not a man, not a woman, nobody. I knew from a young age I prefer people of different races and all of my crushes and previous relationships have reflected that. And I actually want to say a little bit about this um because I can see certain comments thinking that this is sus hearing it. I think that maybe if a white or like a North American person was to say something like this, it would imply the fetishization of foreign cultures. But in this particular case, it sounds like Mai really doesn't connect with the culture she was born into. So that probably is mostly what she's referring to when she says that she's not attracted to people of her race. I'm guessing that it's it's that she doesn't feel like she can connect to her own culture. So please don't judge her. Be kind with your comments. It kept going talking about how there are good men within our race and her family is proof of it. She spoke of her brothers and cousins and how they didn't expect to marry within their race either, but things turned out differently. I let her know that while I typically do not date people within my race, it wasn't because I'm against it, but because I find that I don't fancy them often and we're often better off as friends because of our shared cultural experience. I dropped her off at my house and a couple hours later, I got a text from my sister letting me know that when she came home, she being Kay, her friend. Kay went up to my sister and told her to her face to tell me about Islam and that I need guidance and to be shown the way essentially. In the following days, I texted Kay regarding my mother. I said, "My mother is a sensitive person. You need to be cautious around her. You don't know what could set her off. There are things you can't predict. She's mentally fragile." To which she responded that she didn't feel comfortable keeping my plans from my parents. I'm reading a lot of this for the first time. that next time. She'd talked to me first, but it felt too big for her to be silent on. She then reassured me she'd never talk to my mother about me being gay as she was gay as well, and she understood, but then said that if my mother encourages me to be religious, she will too, as she's a believer of God. That was basically the end of it for the month. The call stopped the first week. Even though she was the one to violate my trust, I still wanted to reach out first. And I did.
One missed call, a couple of text messages of her letting me know she was busy. My work schedule picked up, things fell into the background, and soon after I had almost forgotten about what had happened. There were moments where I missed our friendship, but somehow I couldn't miss it the same way anymore.
The feeling of excitement and admiration I once had now fell flat. I felt an odd invasive feeling of violation every time I thought of what happened. Yeah, no [ __ ] I replayed what happened for days on end, only to then completely forget about it a week later. This went on for about a month until we met again. The final time we met was at a family event, finally enough. We saw each other, awkwardly said hello, then sat a bit distant from each other. Every time I'd sit down in the same space as her, she would leave in about 10 minutes. I'd follow her with my eyes as she would walk into the next room. My chest would relax when she was gone. Kate did come up to me eventually. We were polite and talked a bit in our third language. We spoke about being busy and not having time for each other anymore and how life has been. After about 15 minutes, she left the room to help out with preparing food. I sat there feeling like I should feel better about this, that things are normal and that it's okay. But at the same time, I felt anger. angry at the fact that she had made the situation awkward. Now I'm at an event feeling this unnecessary tension when if there was something wrong, she can just talk to me directly. After all, I worked hard on being a very safe and neutral person prior to the rupture. Why the [ __ ] was she the one avoiding me when she was the one who violated my trust and boundaries? I didn't feel that consciously in the moment. Of course, it was quietly simmering as an anxiety under the surface. I attempted to talk to her one more time. I walked into a room she was sitting in and spoke a bit to her sister and couple of family friends. She shifted immediately getting up to make room for me and then laying her head on her aunt's shoulder. She didn't say a word to me. After I got home, I sent her a text letting her know it was nice to see her after a while.
She didn't respond. I moved on and said whatever. A couple of days later, while I was out with my family, I got a text from her. It was great seeing you. I wanted to be honest and let you know I was uncomfortable the last time we hung out at your house. I wanted to be clear that I see our relationship as strictly platonic and I would appreciate keeping things in that space going forward.
Again, I'm reading this for the first time. I am offended for you. What the [ __ ] Holy [ __ ] My hands started shaking again, but this time the tears did not come. I grew hot. My jaw clenched. I was pissed the [ __ ] off. I told my sister about this plight. She looked at my text in disbelief. She's living in a whole different reality, said my sister. I kept myself composed in front of my family. I didn't respond until I got home later that day, letting her know I treated her the same as I do all of my close female friends and family. She didn't respond after that.
I'm so mad for you. That pissed me off.
Since then, I've reflected a lot on our relationship and what it all meant. I do try my best to learn from my mistakes and I would appreciate some feedback regarding my actions. I know that I chose comfort over discomfort. I feel like I knew the red flags before the behaviors even began, but still didn't nip it in the bud. But what this experience really taught me was that she just didn't earn the access to me that I gave her. That I gave her access without trust. And in the end, it bit me in the ass. I don't believe that Kay should have ever gotten close to me. I hope my story serves that emotionally intense relationships are damaging, even if they seem harmless at first. The connection is exhilarating, even if it's not platonic. But it's always important to take your time to get to know someone.
So, when I originally read your article, I felt relieved. I felt like someone putting into words what I felt and the lessons I learned. I may or may not start posting on my own substack just because reading articles that understand you, that really understand those complex nitty-gritty issues you wouldn't think of changes you. But anyway, that is all. I'm going to put Mai's Substack handle down in the description box if you're interested in subscribing to her there as well because clearly she's a phenomenal writer with a lot to say and very introspective. So, thank you so much, Mai, for sharing your story and illustrating my point. so well for me because yes, absolutely. The issue here was that the early trauma dumping caused you to put a level of trust in this person that she never earned from you.
Clearly, obviously, everything that she did was horrible. Genuinely horrible.
When you say that you felt violated, that's because you were you were violated in that way. And I'm so sorry that that happened to you as somebody with an abusive parent. My father was also physically abusive growing up. I relate so much to especially that horrible feeling of somebody just not understanding the danger that you're in.
And it doesn't just have to be with physical abuse. It can also be with emotional abuse. Abusive parents are often really good at acting much more understanding, charming, charismatic, chill in a way that they never are with you. But they do it with other people that are kissing their ass, which is what it sounds like Kay was doing here.
She was kissing your mom's ass and your mom being abusive. Uh, ate it all up.
She loved looking chill and fun to your friend Kay. And it's just such a horrible feeling when you can tell that someone is falling for your abusers's [ __ ] But they shouldn't be. If they're a good friend to you, if they're a person that you can truly trust, they shouldn't be falling for your abuser's [ __ ] But you didn't have the chance to figure out if Kay was a person that you could truly trust because that early trauma sharing gave you the impression that you were on the same page. You said that she also had experiences with abuse in her past. So that mentally gives you this idea of like, okay, I have experiences with abuse. She has experiences with abuse. So surely she understands abuse enough to understand how not to act in this type of situation. And I hope to my audience as well that this illustrates a way in which just because somebody shares a trauma with you it doesn't mean that you can trust them in circumstances related to that trauma. In the same way here my had an abusive parent. Kay had a history of abuse and yet she could not be trusted in a situation that could have led to my being abused. And very importantly, my do not blame yourself.
It wasn't your fault. When I say that this boundary should be implemented, it's not with the goal of blaming the person who struggles to implement it.
It's with the goal of protecting the person who needs to implement this boundary. It's not because you've done anything wrong. It's because you deserve something better. This next message is from Lena. Hi, I read the note and I wanted to share my experience with a friend who unloaded their trauma on me constantly for 2 years. I didn't realize for a long time that I was being manipulated. Not intentionally maybe, but for sure effectively. I feel like if I had read something like your post before this all happened, it would have saved me a lot of walking on eggshells and a lot of damage to my own state of mind. Trigger warning for mentions of suicide and self harm. Thank you for the trigger warnings, Lena. I had this friend, they identified as non-binary when I last heard of them, so I'll be using they them pronouns. I had this friend who shared really heavy things with me pretty early on about their relationship with their parents, academic pressure, their gender identity, and their insecurities. They started the conversation by using what I now consider to be a stereotypical introduction of can I tell you something and promise you won't judge. At first, I thought they were trusting me and felt honored that I made them comfortable enough to share these things. Also, before they started sharing, they had told me about their abandonment issues, which then turned into specifically telling me that they were afraid I would leave them, too. After that, I felt like I constantly had to prove that I cared.
I worried about triggering them. I also started feeling guilty just for having things in my life that were better than theirs. And when I talked to other people while we were together, they would pinch and twist my arm until the interaction ended, saying it was because they were scared I'd leave if I had other friends. If I did other things that upset them, they tell me it proved their fears right and that they had nothing to live for. Now, once I told them in person that their suicide jokes made me uncomfortable and that I thought they needed real help. I didn't realize how toxic the relationship was and I was really worried about their mental state.
Looking back on it, I can see that it was really toxic, especially combined with how we barely talked about anything except their feelings and their crises.
I tried to relate, but it just made me feel shitty inside. I didn't realize how bad it was affecting me until I started having urges to hurt myself. And I developed a naking feeling in my chest, which grew from a sinking feeling I had whenever I was around them. I started being emotionally volatile and lashed out at other people in my life. And I ended up getting professional help.
Interesting how you were responsible enough to take accountability over how you were feeling and how you were lashing out at other people and to go get professional help, but your friend was not. Going into it, I felt really guilty. I thought that they were the one that needed it instead of me. My therapist called them an energy vampire.
She said their problems weren't mine to carry and that I needed to set boundaries ASAP. Your therapist was correct. Before my meeting with the therapist, we had been friends for slightly over two years. Towards the end, which was shortly after my meeting with the therapist, they were ranting about how much they hated a person. The negativity overwhelmed me so much that I just physically walked away without saying anything. We didn't talk for a week after that, and when we did, I was really dry with my texts. Luckily, I had other people that were not so close friends, but who have called them out on their behavior before, which I did not see, and they provided me with the support that I needed to distance myself. After I distanced myself, they posted something on their Instagram story about how they felt bitter that I was happy after leaving them. Later, on two separate occasions, they send me long walls of text, 15 plus messages, venting about how I proved everything they thought right. They would delete the messages almost immediately after seeing that I read them. But one thing I remember was the why did you wait so long to leave. I blocked them after the second time, and that was the end of the relationship. I tried not to pay attention to them, but I would still see them sometimes, and I could tell that they were obviously going through things. It was really hard not to care or feel guilty. I didn't understand at the time that someone, especially a friend, can share real trauma and use it to control me. The constant guilt tripping kept me focused on their needs, and it caused me to be scared to leave and feel guilty for having my own life.
This was for sure an unhealthy relationship. I'm so glad it's over, and even though I feel like I've grown from it, it was definitely not worth it to go through. Thank you for reading this.
Thank you, Lena, so much. I wish I had more insight to give after reading these stories, but I feel like for the most part, they speak for themselves, right?
Like everybody can see the way that Lena's friend was obviously extremely toxic. One thing that I want to say, Lena's story is a very good example of how having this boundary could cause somebody to have a negative reaction, but regulating yourself and staying strong through the impulse to people please can help filter these types of people out of your life. Cuz this is a perfect example of a person who Lena would have never been involved with had she expressed this boundary from their very first conversation. This friend would have thrown a tantrum about it.
Lena would have probably felt really guilty, right? And this is where it takes a little bit of self-training not to let people like this guilt trip you in the moment when you set your boundary because they will try. They're going to make you feel so bad. You're going to go home from that conversation feeling terrible, but it will filter these people out of your life. It will keep them far away from you. So, thank you so much, Lena, for helping me illustrate that point. The next message is from Maria. Hi, I'm Maria, a person who always and without doubt overshared way too quickly about her traumatic childhood, teenage years, and early adult life, and also not a native English speaker, so my English may be lacking. Feel free to make adjustments if deemed needed. Maria, your English is perfect. Disclaimer: During reading the article, I found points I wanted to save, so I wrote them down with some thoughts. This helps me to accurately remember and display how I felt and what my thoughts were. I'm sorry if I had slip ups in using the incorrect tense of different words. Maria, your English is phenomenal. Please stop stressing. I love you. Let me maybe first introduce my reasons for oversharing and seeking people who overshare their trauma. Just like you, I often was proud of being blessed with so much trauma. There is nothing close to being as terrible as my trauma that I could ever hear, making me believe that this may be my secret superpower. listening for hours about trauma without feeling any weight because without a doubt I would have chosen their trauma over mine always insensitive to say I'm aware of that and I'm sorry but also this is the fundamental truth if I'm being real I was looking for somebody to relate to somebody even close to having endured as much as I had who struggled through it and stuck around somebody that would just get me on the same level I sometimes failed to understand myself So, somebody that understood my reactions to the most trivial things without questioning me or asking obvious questions. But since early on, I grew so very tired of all the worried looks, questions, and remarks about how weird I am at times. After a bit of thinking, of course, how could they understand if they didn't know what was going on? So, for close to 17 years, I started oversharing about my trauma. It always went like this. Hey, do you actually want to know why I just did this and that? The person would respond, certainly. And I would say, it's because of a great deal of trauma, and if you wish, I may tell you about it, but if it's hard to listen to, you may interrupt me at any time if this is too much information. And they'd say, "Yeah, don't worry." And then I would start.
Later on, I added, "There are many disturbing details. How many do you wish for on a scale of 1 to 10?" And often they did misjudge and say a number that was way too high. Sometimes they stopped me in the middle, said they needed a break and ghosted me. Sometimes they did not believe me and ghosted me. Sometimes they just cried for me, listened through it all, apologized, and then ghosted me.
Sometimes, despite rarely doing so, they listened, believed, and stayed, making quote unquote great friends. This in itself felt like a foolproof plan to serve all people worthy of my time, energy, and friendship. And without much work, we had this deep bond, a fundamental understanding of each other.
Knowing the depth of each other's scars, being both survivors in this cruel world, no judgment, no remarks of my weirdness, no worries that seemed out of place. The only person who said 10 and even asked questions and nodded along the way became like a brother to me. Our trauma was very different yet each very disturbing and in this we bonded. We had an intimacy nobody else in this world could challenge. At least I deeply believed in that. I thought we were so very similar in our beliefs, our views on similar topics and our interests. The blanks I filled in as I felt suitable confirmed our connection. I trusted him with my life. I tend to believe the world is a place of cruelty awaiting the next terrible thing. But while I truly believed all this, I was certain. The world may end, but he will be by my side. We spent close to every day together for almost 5 years. I went so far as to study a degree I did never care for just to create connections and to help change a law in our country for him to be his authentic self more easily. I did something that upset him.
He left deeply retraumatizing me in the process. He's fine. He's just a terrible person. But he traumatized me in such specific way that he used all of his knowledge about my trauma to hurt me in the worst possible way to pay me back.
For your information, the terrible thing that I did is that I didn't respond to a text that he sent on Christmas because I fell asleep and answered it the morning after. This was the beginning of me thinking maybe giving people a handbook and how they can hurt you before you have the ability to judge them is not the smartest thing. So the title itself sparked my interest. When I read the lines, I knew absolutely nothing about the way they treated people, how they handled conflict, their morals or ethics, their humor, their interests, their kindness, their consideration, or their social maturity. I knew a whole lot about their pain, and I knew that I shared that same pain. Outside of that, though, I knew nothing. That line made me let out a sad giggle, which came from the sadness of this story that I by now almost forgot. I continued reading, nodding along, and having the urge to smoke even when I stopped smoking 8 years ago. It just felt fitting. I of course did not. Your words were just so very relatable to the sad, sobbing mess I was when I was still smoking. I feel cold out cuz I I smoke every single day.
I read the line that you wrote, which said, "I recently realized though that I had no reason to be disappointed.
Disappointment implies having knowledge that built certain expectations that weren't met. But I never had any information that I should have built those expectations on to begin with. I realized that hearing about a person's trauma didn't actually reveal any fundamental information about their personhood. What someone's trauma does not tell me about them is how they treat others, how they handle conflict, whether they're capable of accountability, whether they're kind, avoidant, manipulative, grounded, self-aware, so on and so forth. Trauma tells me none of the above. Reading that line struck me and stuck with me. Yeah, I was beyond disappointed still in him, in my own judgment, but what I realized was true was that he was a stranger on the internet. There was no foundation for it. I filled in gaps as I deemed them fit and was disappointed for them turning out to be incorrect. I did feel stupid, but also I felt like I learned and understood something important. I continued to read. I read the line saying, "Personally, I start to doubt my own perception because I began to excuse behaviors that I normally dislike. I start rationalizing things that would normally be red flags to me and excuse boundaries that get crossed inappropriately. Reading that, I felt it was true. Not with this person in particular, but with others like my ex.
I thought back to how forgiving I had been with a friend who broke down in front of me over sharing her childhood trauma. I would think things like, "Ah, of course she would be angry if I didn't respond for 30 minutes because she's been forgotten too often in her life.
That was hard for her and that still shapes her perception today. I should be understanding and show her that not everyone will hurt her in the way that others did. In my 6 months of my relationship with her, I experienced a lot of mistreatment for which I believe she apologized once and for the rest I had to apologize. Despite this being slightly unpleasant to admit, I wrote this next part down in its entirety because I'm hoping that it'll manifest and find me in my next relationship.
Because I overly care for everyone but myself, and I forget to ask this question that you wrote in your article.
What does this person bring into my life? How do I feel when I'm around them? Do I feel good about myself and about the world when I hang out with this person? When I do something for them? Do they reciprocate soon after?
Does my life feel improved by this person's presence? Or does being around them leave me feeling weird, negative, or otherwise uncomfortable? But what really led me to understand that my oversharing itself was not a great way for me to sort out people, but it was potentially very dangerous was this line. It doesn't feel inappropriate because their trauma is weird. It feels inappropriate in the same way it would be inappropriate for a person you've just met to enter your house and make themselves at home without permission. I was trespassing. Asking how many steps I may take inside did not change that fact. It dawned on me them leaving was not a response of them being too weak to handle me and my emotions. It was [ __ ] self-care because I did indeed overstep by a big amount and I did nothing to earn the right to overstep in that way. Much in the same way they did nothing to earn the trust of holding this information about me. Continuing with this next line, which also stuck with me. When someone opens up to me after we've spent time learning each other's present, after we've laughed, disagreed, supported each other through ordinary daily things, then that moment feels truly intimate because then I'm not just sitting there supporting someone that I know nothing about. Them sharing it with me says, "I trust you."
And me listening says, "I want to know you." And vice versa. Them hearing about my own trauma is the same. It's a beautiful earn moment that brings two people who have grown to care about each other closer together. As a person who auditioned people on their capacity to weightlift the mental load that I presented to them, the next part felt like a personal attack at first, but settled into something important for me to understand. The passage is this. But it wasn't the job of new people whose lives I was entering into to take accountability for things that happened to me when they weren't there. There was no reason for me to expect them to hold that for me when I hadn't yet proved that I was someone worth holding that for. I needed to discover who I was outside of my own trauma. At that point, that didn't amount to much because my entire life had been nothing else. That line resonated insanely deeply with me.
And the whole chapter led me to question my identity for a while. While I found an answer easily, I did not like it a lot. I'm still to this day uncertain if this is my true self or just the result of my trauma that's still hovering around me, shaping me into a person that I am now, but who I'm not at my core. I read the line, "Their identity becomes reactive rather than self-defined. They relate to people exclusively through validation, caretaking, and emotional intensity. Conversations become repetitive, heavy, and centered on past harm, never present- day autonomy. A person who only knows themselves through their trauma often doesn't know how to show up in a relationship outside of being hurt. I know this because I have been this. Reading this passage, I thought this was true for most relationships I had fostered. We would have little therapy sitdowns, hating on the world and hating on different people and then repeating it next week.
However, reading the line where you wrote, "You should not feel guilty. They should have checked for those boundaries themselves to begin with." made me feel a little bit better. I remember how I needed that at the time that I read this article. It helped ease some of the guilt that I felt towards trauma dumping on people because I know that I at least asked for their permission. In general, this article had a great impact on me.
After reading it, I mentally checked the friends I made and kept through the years, ending some relationships as a result, as an adjustment was not desired from them. They were simply not benefiting me. And the displayed friendship and caring that you described in the section, "How can I be there for people if I don't know their traumas?"
was nowhere to be seen. It was a trade-off of continued oversharing. I knew about their mental health, but not how their jobs were going. Did they finish that degree? And are they still seeing that one person they mentioned 5 months ago during force small talk? I noticed that being surrounded by big, heavy topics makes small talk feel so very underwhelming, too light in a way.
But I think that talking about day-to-day issues is something that will feel really nice eventually.
Additionally, as I read and thought about your word vomited behemoth, I felt the sense that my trauma was clinging on to me too tightly, which of course makes sense if I repeatedly had to bring it up in conversations to make a point because we were missing day-to-day situations and experiences that I could have used just as well. I mean, talking about my trauma was needed once, but it stopped being beneficial a long time ago. Now, it's just reminding me of all the things that went terribly wrong. Some friendships have been kept. They agreed that the dynamic we had was more therapeutic than friendly, and we were not real support systems. We're currently trying to adjust this, learning to become regular friends. I also made a new friend who knows nothing about any trauma and we have a cute friendship drinking coffee and talking about work and our pets. I also checked for jobs on the site so I could afford therapy. The job market is terrible but I keep trying. I came to the conclusion that trauma dumping is in a way more performative than helpful. I'm trying to get to know myself, prioritizing time with myself a lot currently as I indeed was lacking information about me and my identity. I knew why I responded to things the way that I did, but not who I am if the veil of trauma is lifted just for a bit. Turns out being alone is not as scary as I thought. Thanks, Spencer.
You wrote that down in 2 hours, but it had a deep impact, and I appreciate you taking these two hours to share your thoughts so deeply. Hope your day is easier than expected and that you win the lottery. Kind regards, Maria. Maria, I can begin to tell you how much this message meant to me when I first read it and how much it still means to me right now as I'm reading it again. I actually teared up a little bit reading it for the first time because I see a lot of myself in you. It can feel so unfair to have to put our traumas behind us and to have to adapt to not making our traumas known. And I think what feels so unfair about it is that when we define ourselves by our trauma, it makes those traumas feel a little bit worth it. We get to feel like we earned something from experiencing them. Like at least it made us a more interesting person. At least it gave us depth. At least it made us a good therapist. At least it made us somebody who can hold a lot of trauma for other people. It feels like it happened with a purpose and like we didn't just waste those years of our lives hurting for nothing. It almost feels like an insult to have to force ourselves to be normal people engaging with life as if we didn't experience trauma. The problem though is that in trying so hard to find a meaning for why we went through what we went through, we end up committing our entire lives to it. in trying so hard to make that trauma amount to something that isn't all negative. We let it take more years of our lives, we let it steal friendships from us. We let it steal relationships from us. We let it take more from us than it did when it first happened. And this has really mattered to me to communicate to other people who have gone through as much as I've gone through in life or even more. I want you not to let trauma take any more from you. I know how much it sucks to have to put it behind you. It's not fair. It's not fair. It never will be fair. It's not fair to think that there are some people who just have it all. They never went through trauma. And yet, they're still good people. They're still introspective. They have healthy boundaries. They have really good relationships. They have really healthy friendships. and they never had to go through anything shitty to earn it. We want to have something that's our own that they don't have. We think that connecting with people through trauma is that thing that we have. We get to have these deep connections. They don't get to have these deep connections because they didn't experience it. The problem that we keep ignoring is that those people are happier. They're more well adjusted. They're navigating life in a better way. We need to let go of this desire to make this trauma mean something. We need to let go of our desire to have this trauma amount to something that is ours. And we need to instead just focus on being happy. We need to focus on being happy. Whether the trauma amounted to something or not, whether it gave us something that makes us different from the people around us or not, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we become happy. What matters is that we deserve a good life. We deserve healthy relationships. We deserve healthy friendships. We deserve to move on from it. And I'm begging you, if you're like me and if you're like Maria, earnestly, please try to figure out who you are outside of your trauma. That is where your happiness lies. That's where your happiness is. That is where that healthy relationship that you've desired for so long. Those friends who care about you, that's where all of that is.
It's not in your trauma. It's in who you are outside of it. I'm going to read one final DM that was sent to me by a subscriber that I'm very familiar with.
They show up under most of my articles and posts, which I'm very grateful for.
And the reason why I'm reading this particular DM is because they expressed a particular need for trauma sharing that I actually feel is supported by my article. But I felt this DM could be a good opportunity for me to reinforce that aspect of it for those of us who do struggle with things like PTSD and and triggers and trauma and who have no choice but to disclose it sometimes. So this is from my subscriber how lesbian.
How lesbian? I don't know what your name is. I'm so sorry. I forgot to ask before reading your DM. If you could tell me what your name is so I can know who you are, I would really appreciate it because I see you around all the time.
Now, how lesbian expresses in their DM that for the most part they fully agree with my article. It's a principle that they've lived by for most of their life.
They in general are a very private person. They don't enjoy oversharing.
They feel that connecting on more quote unquote surface level things actually leads to more intimacy and to deeper friendship. So they agree with all of these concepts but they felt taken back by one particular aspect of it. And here's what they said. But why do I somewhat feel taken back? Probably because of my desire to feel normal. I think it's okay to mention that you have a trauma without going into details about it as long as it tells me something about you, not about your trauma. So what I usually do is say something along the lines of I have trauma A. So obviously consent is important to me. If you ever feel uncomfortable but I failed to notice it, then let me know. I won't be upset if you tell me I messed up. I will be upset if you don't. And that obviously goes both ways. If you ever make me uncomfortable, I will let you know instead of bottling it up. So yeah, it may be wrong, but it's my way of communicating boundaries from time to time, I guess, because I don't like to go into details with people I don't trust, which are usually people I have known for one year or 2 years. But I still need to let them know about it if it's deemed necessary. So if it's not, I don't ever bring it up. But yeah, people could try to use my trauma against me and try to trauma bond, which bothers me. But I just want to be able to be normal about it. Saying that I have experienced a trauma in a natural way without going into details or making it about a trauma bond helped me accept that certain traumas did happen and wasn't something that defined me. I tend to think that I shouldn't be allowed near people just because I have traumas.
So normalizing talking about it as something that simply happened and shaped me somehow helps make my brain understand that yeah, everyone has traumas. That doesn't make you a monster. So I genuinely don't know. I suppose I'm in the middle of metamorphosis now since discovering your channel. And then they ended with anyways, thank you lesbian Michael.
Thank you, Hal Lesbian, for that necessary. Uh, so the reason I read this DM is because actually how Lesbian, your method is fully supported by my article.
I think I just don't go into depth enough about it. In the section where I talk about how I show care to my friends and how I want my friends to show care to me in moments where I'm experiencing a trigger, I talk a little bit about the way that I bring up the fact that I'm experiencing something like a PTSD flashback. And it's very similar to what you're describing here in your DM. So, I'm somebody with severe PTSD and also severe OCD. Both of those things are tied to my childhood and teenagehood trauma. And my trauma extends well into my very late teens up until the age of 20. So, it's very recent as well and very fresh. I'm turning 30 this year in November. So, it's not that recent. I've had like 10 years to try and deal with it. But, I've never had access to therapy. I've never been able to afford it. and and unfortunately if I don't specify the fact that I do have certain triggers uh they always end up getting brought up inevitably in a conversation.
People talk about these things casually all the time. So I have to say it. I have to say I have PTSD related to these topics. Here's how to avoid triggering me. But this is exactly how I think that we should talk about trauma. I think that we should be able to say, "Yeah, I have PTSD related to these things. I have certain triggers because I experienced this list of things." The point that I'm trying to make is not for us to pretend like we've gone through nothing. It's not for us to lie and act like we don't have PTSD, like we don't have triggers, like we don't have topics that we need to avoid. It's to only speak about it in the capacity that's necessary to keep us safe right now. So in my case, I don't have to go into the nitty-gritty details of my childhood abuse. All I have to say is that I have triggers related to certain topics. Can we please avoid talking about X, Y, and Z? Or if we have to talk about X, Y, and Z, can it be under these specific parameters? That's it. People don't have to know any more than that. And I will accept that from other people as well.
In fact, I want to know if somebody has, for example, god forbid, uh, sexual assault trauma and there are certain situations that make them feel very unsafe. It's something that I want to know. I want to know, hey, I have trauma related to sexual assault. Therefore, I do not feel safe going alone to the bathroom. Can you please go with me if we're ever out in public? or I do not feel comfortable being touched in this particular way because I have sexual assault trauma. Absolutely, those are things that people can share with me and this is also again how I speak about my own trauma. But the distinction for me is that this still solves a problem for you and for me in present day. you're communicating something to me that's meant to help us navigate something that's relevant right now as opposed to just sitting there processing trauma for no other reason except to process it and to share it. So absolutely I actually agree with uh your methodology and it's a methodology that I apply as well and I feel that it's supported by my article but I wanted to use your DM as an opportunity to really reinforce it and to make sure that people do understand that this is supported by my article that my goal is not to tell people to lie and pretend like they don't have any trauma whatsoever. My goal is just to exist outside of it and to bring it up when it's necessary for something that is relevant to right now when it's necessary for keeping you safe for preventing a physical reaction things like that. So yeah, thank you How Lesbian for giving me a chance to um address that little part of it. And if you're also in how lesbians position and you're feeling a little bit confused about where I speak about this in my article, it's under the section titled, "How can I be there for people if I don't know their traumas?" That's the section where I speak a little bit more on this particular aspect of it. So, if you enjoyed this video and you wanted to support me, the way to do that is by becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack. All of that money is going towards easing my caretaking burden. I'm the primary caretaker for my senior parents who are both disabled and both fully dependent on me both financially as well as in a lot of other ways as well. I support them on a security guard income. And this social media thing is my attempt at bringing in a second income that will allow me to still be home after work to take care of them. If I take a second job, I will have no time left to cook and clean and apply ointments and bathe my dad and things like that. But starting next month, I'll be hosting bi-weekly live streams on Substack for my paying subscribers. I'll put on a movie or a TV show on weekend evenings. I don't know which day of the weekend yet. I'll try to cycle the days that we do. I'll do some Sunday nights.
I'll do some Saturday nights. I'll do some Friday nights. And we'll see. I'll try to catch as many of my paying subscribers that want to attend as I can and yeah, I'll put on a movie or a TV show and we'll hang out together and I can catch up with the people that are paying me to create content. Uh you can tell me about your lives and we'll have little community nights. We'll connect as a community. We'll talk about what you guys are up to. Maybe we can use it as an opportunity for those of you who don't have close friends to talk to about things. uh just for you to all open up talk. I don't know if Substack lets other people connect through microphone or video call, but at the very least you can be in the chat and you can type things and we can chat that way. I also have an advice column which I post both on Substack as well as here on YouTube. I've only done one entry to it so far and it unfortunately kind of flopped. It was my last video titled um I don't know what I've titled it. I changed the title a few times cuz it was flopping so hard. I thought maybe I chose a bad title for it. But no, I think I just made a bad video. But that was my first entry to my advice column.
And I'm going to keep uploading them even if they flop because there's only so much philosophizing I can do on my own. Sometimes I need external input to give me something to talk about. And giving advice is a way that I can do that. So I have an email set up for it.
If you'd like to request my advice, that email is in the description box below.
If you have business inquiries, there's an email there as well. I very specifically wanted to thank the person who sent me this microphone that I'm wearing today. I opened a PO box that I have started putting in the description of my videos. And the goal of that was for brands to send me things. I was hoping that a tech company would maybe send me a new microphone or a laptop or something and help me get a bit of a better setup going. but instead someone sent me an Amazon package with this microphone in it and that was so kind and so sweet and I almost cried holding it in my hands. So, thank you so much for that. Genuinely, if this was you, you didn't leave a name attached to the Amazon package. Uh, I tried to see if there was a return address that I could send a thank you letter to, but there wasn't. It just said from the UK. So, if you live in the UK and you send me this microphone and you're watching this, thank you so much. This was my first time recording a video where I didn't have to re-record it 10 different times because of audio issues. The microphone just worked. It worked out of the box and I was able to record this video from start to finish without any hiccups. So, genuinely, thank you so much. Secondly, I am getting sued by one of the credit card companies that I owe money to. If you were here for the Jeremy Wong saga, and you know who I'm talking about, Jeremy Wong is the debt collection agent who is assigned to me at the debt collection agency that is in charge of collecting on my debt. And because I haven't picked up Jeremy Wongs's phone calls in a couple of months, uh, one of the credit card companies that he's collecting debt for is now suing me for $20,000.
I owed them $11,000, but I stopped making payments to them back in November. And because Jeremy Wong snitched on me, they think I'm trying to run away. The truth is, I haven't made a payment because I haven't had pay I haven't had money to give. If this is your first video of mine and you don't know why I'm in a lot of debt, I believe I explain some of it in my video titled I hate love languages so much it hurts.
If you go into the description box, there are timestamps and there's a timestamp called intermission. And in that intermission section, I talk about the situation that I'm in. The other place where I talk about why I'm in so much debt, I think, is in the very very first video that I posted. The introduction to it gives a little bit of background info on my life and on the financial situation that I'm in. So, I was served in my home. Somebody showed up with an envelope and ironically apparently they had been trying to serve me for like the better part of a month and I had no idea. They thought I was running away. I was not running away. My work schedule just changes every day. So every day I would come home at a different hour and my parents do not open the door ever. If somebody knocks, they pretend it's not happening. And they have told me that somebody has been knocking on the door every week. But I didn't know that I was getting sued. I thought we were just getting trolled by a neighbor or something. Or maybe there was like a delivery person who had been trying to deliver some mystery package.
I don't [ __ ] know. Anyway, they served me successfully finally. And I don't know where $20,000 came from. They say that it's interest that accred. I believe them. I can't afford a lawyer to question them in any way. So, I don't really know what my options are. I probably will speak to a lawyer. I'm going to save up a little bit of money for it just so I can have an idea of like what they can do and what they can't do, how much money they can ask for, and under what legalities they can do that. and then and then how much money they can't ask for, like what is pushing it too far. However, I got sued literally the ex the day after I posted a video uh talking about how much better I am than everybody because I don't take sponsorships. Very proudly declaring that I wouldn't be taking sponsorship offers that were made to me.
specifically one sponsorship offer by a sex toy company that reached out and offered me $1,000 per video to advertise their sex toys. So, I reached out to them and I was like, "Hey, tell me a little bit more about what the sponsorship would look like." And they sent me the contract for it. And it just has so many conditions attached to it.
The first one being that my video has to reach 80,000 views for them to pay me that amount. Otherwise, I think they'll they'll pay me like 300 bucks or something like that. And that scared me because if I take a sponsorship for $300, that feels like a really big sacrifice to make. Even if the video flops like my last one did, I just feel like it's a big sacrifice to make for $300 to lose that audience trust with the sponsorship. And I don't know if my video is going to reach 80,000 views.
And I wasn't sure if that was like a normal condition to have. I'm sure it is. Um, but I but I don't know if I'm comfortable with it. I hate the thought of sitting there refreshing the page, checking to see if my video is building up enough views for me to get paid. The second condition was that I had to put in the ad read within the first minute of the video starting. And to me, that seemed really unreasonable because they're shooting themselves in the foot.
If somebody clicks on my video and I throw a sex toy ad in their face right away, they're gonna click off the video and then they're not going to get as much viewership on the video that they're sponsoring. It made no sense to me that that's something they would ask for. So, I'm still kind of on the fence about it. I don't know how to feel. I don't know if I should start taking these sponsorships. I'm hoping that maybe I'll get a sponsorship offer for something else. You know who I did get a sponsorship offer from? uh [ __ ] Better Health, the so-called therapy app. And I was so mad about it because somebody reached out to me and was like, "Hey, we have a company that we're working for. Send us your media kit.
Send us some information and we'll see if we can approve you for this sponsorship offer." And I was so excited to have an offer from somebody other than the sex toy company, thinking and hoping that maybe they would come with more reasonable conditions that that wouldn't put me in a position to catastrophize my view count. And it was [ __ ] Better Help. And I was so mad about it cuz I can't I can't sponsor Better Help. They have an awful reputation. They suck as a as a service.
They've caused a lot of harm by providing so-called therapists to their clients who are not real therapists who have done more harm than good. So, I don't know. I pitched myself to Substack a while back and um they never got back to me. I really wish Substack would sponsor me, but I don't think they ever will.
So, for now, we'll see how it goes. I might take that sex toy ad. I don't know. I I don't feel good about the conditions that they're placing on it. I really don't like the thought of sitting there and refreshing my video every half a day to see if it's on track to get the views that I need to get paid in the capacity that I I need to get paid to make that ad read worth it to me. I don't like the thought of that. I feel like it'll make content creation so stressful for me. It'll make me start like caring about the algorithm and then I'll start sensationalizing my videos in a way that I don't want to. Just because like only 5,000 people care about a topic, it doesn't mean that that topic is any less worth putting out there. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know what to think of it. I don't know what to do. Sorry that I don't have more fun life updates for you guys. This is more more of what I did last video during my intermission, which is just boring little complaints.
But thank you for sticking through my boring little complaints. I think that's everything for today's video. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting me in whatever capacity you can. That support does not have to be monetary.
Just the fact that you're here, you're watching, you're engaging with my content, that is more than enough support. Thank you so much for that. I wouldn't be doing this if you weren't here. I really appreciate the little community that we formed here. Every single one of you guys has been so wonderful. I've gotten no hate comments so far. Thank you for being great. I should really come up with some kind of outro for these videos, but um I will not.
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