[almaIV]

Even in this reply you've had to use a metaphor for physiological abuse (a scar, a bodily mark of harm) to elevate the seriousness of emotional damage, to the extent this emotional damage is even lasting, and it doesn't have to be, while something like a scar is unequivocally permanent barring some kind of advanced cosmetic treatment.

Whether some emotional damage is "scarring" (i.e. permanent) will depend on, well, a lot of things, but almost no kind of emotional damage has to be permanent because of the way our physiology of emotions behaves. Your resilience, your existing beliefs, what you expect out of the world, and so on will determine how you respond to stressful stimuli. Learning that people don't live forever can be 'scarring' (not really) to a two-year old, but, people eventually adjust to this information, because stress tolerance exists. If everything were as equally stressful as the first time we heard it, our bodies would be overwhelmed with cortisol all the time. Since this obviously doesn't happen, our bodies can (and do) adapt to stressful stimuli in various ways.

Comparing emotional damage to scars is probably a false analogy. Your skin will never fully adapt to a gash, and being stabbed once isn't going to change the way your body responds to stabbings. But your body will adapt to stressful emotions, or at least it is capable of doing so. In the worst case it's probably like a muscle tear, but in most cases emotional stress is more like some kind of the muscle trauma that happens during resistance training, which the body adapts to.

[sudioStudio64]

I don't know that the mental machinery is as elastic as you say. Our bodies to indeed adjust to mental stress, in fact parts of the brain that respond to fear and stress will overdevelop in relation to other areas producing aberrant behavior.

There are mental trauma, that has not been caused by physical trauma, that will end up being like the gash you describe never being able to acclimatize to.

I take your point about the use of the word scarring...I was just trying to draw a certain type of similarity into the conversation...it certainly isn't a perfect analogy.

One other thing, though...is it really a surprise that discussing mental or emotional damage would use a physical analogy? We don't culturally have a large body of language for describing things accurately that are "just in your head."

[almaIV]

Physical analogies are dated when we have accurate terms now.

"There are mental trauma, that has not been caused by physical trauma, that will end up being like the gash you describe never being able to acclimatize to."

I'm not so sure about this.

Stress happens because of stress hormones. You can develop a tolerance to those hormones like you could develop a tolerance to any drug.

The range of experiences that human emotion can adapt to are vast. People in far more violent societies have adapted to far more horrific things. If we didn't have the ability to adapt to extreme shock we'd be screwed as a species.

[sudioStudio64]

And mental trauma from torture or combat that leads to suicide?

[almaIV]

It doesn't lead to suicide. It predisposes one to suicide, but the trauma isn't insurmountable. What causally leads to suicide is the choice to take some kind of weapon and use it on yourself.

[sudioStudio64]

You seem really invested in this idea. I think that we are at odds on the idea that mental damage can be insurmountable. I could speculate as to why, but in the end I think we should just call it good.

Cheers.

[sudioStudio64]

I don't get why this was downvoted. I was polite. I tried to articulate a counter point. Is it just that people really disagree with the hate speech part or that mental trauma can be as serious as physical trauma??