[xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE]

The only problem is that this is blatantly false. Having suffered trauma a couple of years ago, I can attest that the actual, physical functioning of your brain is changed. For months I'd feel weirdly alert when walking alone at night. I'd be afraid of the specific place the truma occurred. It's like there's a built-in circuit in my brain I never knew about that would start screaming "don't go there or you'll die!". It's all hardcoded in there. The effects persisted for about a year, maybe longer, with a linear-feeling falloff.

The experience didn't impact my life negatively in the long term, but it definitely changed the way I think about trauma. If a single experience can fuck up my brain semi-permanently, I have utmost respect for people who suffered repeated trauma, sometimes even during early development. I cannot imagine such experiences not leaving debilitating scars of physical nature.

[iroh2727]

Well, I don’t think this article did a good job of representing Adler’s real views. I’ve read a little bit of his work and he’s definitely a reasonable person who would agree that your trauma is real.

I think his perspective/emphasis just differs a bit from Freud for example. Like rather than saying this event caused my current state of mind (which is of course true from one perspective), he’d focus on the perspective that my mind reacted in this way for a particular purpose (e.g. to protect itself so that I can keep surviving/functioning in the future, even if it comes at a severe cost). That perspective is also true, just different.

I guess it’s important to have both—-empathy for your experience and the real trauma it caused (so that you still feel connected and supported by people) but also reflecting on what may be the purpose of some behaviors/mentalities that came out of the trauma, so that at least in the longer term they can be improved or substituted (e.g. if something exists for a purpose, we can’t just remove it because it’s “not normal”; we need to understand the root of it). All to keep moving forward to your best self. I mean, there’s no magic pill for trauma so every therapeutic approach is going to have limitations but it’s good to seek useful, self-empowering approaches which I think is what Adler was going for.

Just my interpretation. I’m not an Adler expert but I do like his work (as well as Freud’s).

[Brian_K_White]

"this is blatantly false. Having suffered trauma"

The title is stupid, as is responding only to it.