I so, so deeply agree with you regarding all of this and especially that last part. For a long time I centered my trauma in a way that actually hurt others, and I think this is somewhere we can get stuck- in thinking no one else has experienced the pain we've experienced or are experiencing. In that way we erase others and inflict trauma! Which is so wild. I personally think that patterns like this are why there's so much violence in the world- on all levels. Like you said, if we all approached one another with the understanding that each of us knows pain and that all of us are in various stages of healing, being healed, healing others, or in the midst of recovering or maybe even enduring a traumatic event currently. We just never know, so why not be kind and give, as you said, the benefit of the doubt? People always show us what they're capable of regardless, I think, but if we offer some grace there's more possibility that they will feel safe doing so, which is something I always hope for.
Love it. I feel like those of us who have suffered trauma and abuse at the hands of loved ones have an especially difficult time trusting our gut. After all, we were gaslit from our earliest days. What we felt to be true was denied.
So in order to trust our gut, we have to do the hard work of parsing through the trauma, reconnecting ourselves to our bodies, and trust. It’s an incredibly difficult process.
Gullibility is a can of worms for me. I love what you said about it being related to not trusting yourself. I came to that conclusion, in a rational sense, years ago, but getting it to sink in emotionally is a whole different matter. It feels like a highwire act to me to try to balance trusting myself and not getting too caught up in my own story of things that I become adamantly sure of things that later turn out not to be true (this being, I believe, a combination of negativity bias and CPTSD). Like you said, it sounds simple, but it's not easy.
I must say, also, that while I agree with everything you are saying here, I feel it's important to keep in mind that - especially for marginalized people - there really are some situations where assuming the best from others can be dangerous, sometimes to a life-threatening degree. I don't think this reality negates anything that you have said in your article, but I do think it's important to state this caveat because of the dominant cultural tactic of denying the dangers and damage of oppression to its targets. A cornerstone of oppression is the cultural gaslighting of those who are marginalized, as a way of delegitimizing the experience of oppression. So I feel when we discuss this type of subject, it's important to specifically state that caveat, so as not to unintentionally perpetuate that cultural gaslighting. Hope that makes sense.
Thank you for those kind and thoughtful words! And it’s funny, I hadn’t thought to look up the meaning of that phrase even though it’s an important one in my life. There is SO much that resonates here for me, from being raised to never trust myself and my feelings, to being put off by trying to assume the worst of others. That’s a powerful observation.
One of the reasons it’s important to me is *because* I have such an impossible time trusting people. Assuming good faith (at least until shown otherwise) on another’s part is a place to start. (This is not, as you point out, to make oneself gullible, which I have also been described as; it’s to help learn who one can trust vs. who one truly can’t, or what I think of as the shape and boundaries of trust.) I have also found I personally really dislike it when people don’t give me the benefit of the doubt.
My younger sister practices and trains people in trauma-informed management. We talk about it a lot and her approach—along with our knowing too many people with intimate and/or personal trauma—has persuaded me that human interaction would be a completely different and more wholesome thing if we all assumed that every person we’re interacting with carries some form of trauma and triggers, even if we’ll never know what they are.
I grew up in a home where I was responsible for other people’s emotional needs too, and I have an emotionally immature mother with narcissistic tendencies. I don’t have CPTSD but I do have borderline personality disorder (seemingly the other option lol). I am setting this context up in response to your comment about having a natal chart reading. I recently had my first family chart reading, where an astrologer looked at my chart alongside the rest of my family’s and noted generational patterns but also relational dynamics that are likely at play. It was kind of wild; she said I have the marker of someone who becomes estranged from their natal family, whether by choice or not and that was kind of intense (I’m estranged from my family!). It was insightful and affirming in so many ways and I highly recommend it if you’re ever in a place where it might be helpful.
This writing-as-personhood is something I’ve been working through a lot of thoughts on this year. In the past I would self-bully and self-normalize and insist I figure things out the “right” way, as in, the neurotypical way (in my mind, no writing allowed!). And it lasted for years and I was so harmed by it. Fast forward to today and I understand now that most of the expert writer or literary declarations disqualify someone like me from the start.
“Don’t trust a writer who writes more than he reads” — terrified me the first time I read it and it haunted me for years. I can’t read quickly but I do read deeply and think expansively about everything I read. And then I write for miles about that one thing. Up until the last year or two, I disqualified myself as a reliable writer because of that one maxim.
Or the one about sitting your butt down to write no matter what? Oh, no way. No way! That is so contraindicated for someone with a traumatic past. Even the retelling of the story to yourself in therapy can be a re-traumatizing force. NaNoWriMo makes me cringe to imagine how many people have tortured themselves to achieve an artificial word count and in the process silenced their bodies crying for relief.
OK I’m on a tangent here but I just wanted to say that I’ll be your backup singer on this song. Writing is intrinsic to my expression of personhood and no one is taking that from me or anyone else on my watch.
Thanks for sharing! I related so much to this post. I've been called gullible in the past but I'd rather have a worldview where I believe in the inherent good and good intentions of others than act in a way that's damaged and only sees people of trying to take advantage.
I recently got into more “woo woo” things like having Tarot readings and trying to send good intentions into the universe and have crystals etc. I'm loving it so far. Whether the positive mindset is bringing new things or it may actually be true but I suppose it doesn't really matter. Maybe it's being 36?! An “astrological natal chart reading” sounds interesting. Where did you have it done?
Hello Anastasia! I can totally relate with what you have written today. How many time I felt gullible, just because I want to do things right, to not deceive people... And of course it ends up deceiving and hurting myself. In the past months I have a very hurtful situation going on at work. I'm a freelancer illustrator and author, my editor did a mistake, and the client (a powerful institution) blamed me for it, all by phone. It's very difficult for me to deal with people by phone, and I was left by nothing more than giving them what they wanted. But in the next days I wrote an e-mail, sharing my point of view, including all the writing material (screen-shots of emails, etc) which were proving I was right, and that nobody should ever treat me badly like that in the future. It was a very difficult e-mail to write, but writing was the good thing for me to do, it helped to focus, and to hold my point. I think it's a powerful tool for "shy" people, when it comes to deal with others.
Results: they all and up recognizing their mistakes, and for once I was so proud for standing up for myself! ;) And I also ask them that I would never talk to the phone with them, but just by written, in order to prevent further misbehaving...
Thank you for all of your writing, it's always inspiring! There are so many things to read online, but yours I read with attention and care.
I so, so deeply agree with you regarding all of this and especially that last part. For a long time I centered my trauma in a way that actually hurt others, and I think this is somewhere we can get stuck- in thinking no one else has experienced the pain we've experienced or are experiencing. In that way we erase others and inflict trauma! Which is so wild. I personally think that patterns like this are why there's so much violence in the world- on all levels. Like you said, if we all approached one another with the understanding that each of us knows pain and that all of us are in various stages of healing, being healed, healing others, or in the midst of recovering or maybe even enduring a traumatic event currently. We just never know, so why not be kind and give, as you said, the benefit of the doubt? People always show us what they're capable of regardless, I think, but if we offer some grace there's more possibility that they will feel safe doing so, which is something I always hope for.
Love it. I feel like those of us who have suffered trauma and abuse at the hands of loved ones have an especially difficult time trusting our gut. After all, we were gaslit from our earliest days. What we felt to be true was denied.
So in order to trust our gut, we have to do the hard work of parsing through the trauma, reconnecting ourselves to our bodies, and trust. It’s an incredibly difficult process.
Gullibility is a can of worms for me. I love what you said about it being related to not trusting yourself. I came to that conclusion, in a rational sense, years ago, but getting it to sink in emotionally is a whole different matter. It feels like a highwire act to me to try to balance trusting myself and not getting too caught up in my own story of things that I become adamantly sure of things that later turn out not to be true (this being, I believe, a combination of negativity bias and CPTSD). Like you said, it sounds simple, but it's not easy.
I must say, also, that while I agree with everything you are saying here, I feel it's important to keep in mind that - especially for marginalized people - there really are some situations where assuming the best from others can be dangerous, sometimes to a life-threatening degree. I don't think this reality negates anything that you have said in your article, but I do think it's important to state this caveat because of the dominant cultural tactic of denying the dangers and damage of oppression to its targets. A cornerstone of oppression is the cultural gaslighting of those who are marginalized, as a way of delegitimizing the experience of oppression. So I feel when we discuss this type of subject, it's important to specifically state that caveat, so as not to unintentionally perpetuate that cultural gaslighting. Hope that makes sense.
Thank you for those kind and thoughtful words! And it’s funny, I hadn’t thought to look up the meaning of that phrase even though it’s an important one in my life. There is SO much that resonates here for me, from being raised to never trust myself and my feelings, to being put off by trying to assume the worst of others. That’s a powerful observation.
One of the reasons it’s important to me is *because* I have such an impossible time trusting people. Assuming good faith (at least until shown otherwise) on another’s part is a place to start. (This is not, as you point out, to make oneself gullible, which I have also been described as; it’s to help learn who one can trust vs. who one truly can’t, or what I think of as the shape and boundaries of trust.) I have also found I personally really dislike it when people don’t give me the benefit of the doubt.
My younger sister practices and trains people in trauma-informed management. We talk about it a lot and her approach—along with our knowing too many people with intimate and/or personal trauma—has persuaded me that human interaction would be a completely different and more wholesome thing if we all assumed that every person we’re interacting with carries some form of trauma and triggers, even if we’ll never know what they are.
I grew up in a home where I was responsible for other people’s emotional needs too, and I have an emotionally immature mother with narcissistic tendencies. I don’t have CPTSD but I do have borderline personality disorder (seemingly the other option lol). I am setting this context up in response to your comment about having a natal chart reading. I recently had my first family chart reading, where an astrologer looked at my chart alongside the rest of my family’s and noted generational patterns but also relational dynamics that are likely at play. It was kind of wild; she said I have the marker of someone who becomes estranged from their natal family, whether by choice or not and that was kind of intense (I’m estranged from my family!). It was insightful and affirming in so many ways and I highly recommend it if you’re ever in a place where it might be helpful.
This writing-as-personhood is something I’ve been working through a lot of thoughts on this year. In the past I would self-bully and self-normalize and insist I figure things out the “right” way, as in, the neurotypical way (in my mind, no writing allowed!). And it lasted for years and I was so harmed by it. Fast forward to today and I understand now that most of the expert writer or literary declarations disqualify someone like me from the start.
“Don’t trust a writer who writes more than he reads” — terrified me the first time I read it and it haunted me for years. I can’t read quickly but I do read deeply and think expansively about everything I read. And then I write for miles about that one thing. Up until the last year or two, I disqualified myself as a reliable writer because of that one maxim.
Or the one about sitting your butt down to write no matter what? Oh, no way. No way! That is so contraindicated for someone with a traumatic past. Even the retelling of the story to yourself in therapy can be a re-traumatizing force. NaNoWriMo makes me cringe to imagine how many people have tortured themselves to achieve an artificial word count and in the process silenced their bodies crying for relief.
OK I’m on a tangent here but I just wanted to say that I’ll be your backup singer on this song. Writing is intrinsic to my expression of personhood and no one is taking that from me or anyone else on my watch.
Thanks for sharing! I related so much to this post. I've been called gullible in the past but I'd rather have a worldview where I believe in the inherent good and good intentions of others than act in a way that's damaged and only sees people of trying to take advantage.
I recently got into more “woo woo” things like having Tarot readings and trying to send good intentions into the universe and have crystals etc. I'm loving it so far. Whether the positive mindset is bringing new things or it may actually be true but I suppose it doesn't really matter. Maybe it's being 36?! An “astrological natal chart reading” sounds interesting. Where did you have it done?
Love it.
It ties in with my post coming out this Thursday. Gave me hello universe shivers. (Good kind) 😁
Hello Anastasia! I can totally relate with what you have written today. How many time I felt gullible, just because I want to do things right, to not deceive people... And of course it ends up deceiving and hurting myself. In the past months I have a very hurtful situation going on at work. I'm a freelancer illustrator and author, my editor did a mistake, and the client (a powerful institution) blamed me for it, all by phone. It's very difficult for me to deal with people by phone, and I was left by nothing more than giving them what they wanted. But in the next days I wrote an e-mail, sharing my point of view, including all the writing material (screen-shots of emails, etc) which were proving I was right, and that nobody should ever treat me badly like that in the future. It was a very difficult e-mail to write, but writing was the good thing for me to do, it helped to focus, and to hold my point. I think it's a powerful tool for "shy" people, when it comes to deal with others.
Results: they all and up recognizing their mistakes, and for once I was so proud for standing up for myself! ;) And I also ask them that I would never talk to the phone with them, but just by written, in order to prevent further misbehaving...
Thank you for all of your writing, it's always inspiring! There are so many things to read online, but yours I read with attention and care.
Sorry for my clumsy english,
Giorgia, Italian living in France.