017 | Accept Others
I have another name for the eighth rule of Trauma Hiders Club:
“Sometimes Other People Suck, and It’s Not Their Fault.”
It can be frustrating whenever you share your trauma with others. Sometimes you don’t get the response you want; sometimes they trigger your trauma even more; sometimes you trigger their trauma. That’s because nobody else has lived your experience but you—inevitably, some people are going to fall short of expectations. But you’re not responsible for how they respond, and they’re not responsible for how you respond. Know that even the people who love you—friends, families, partners—can disappoint you. It doesn’t mean they’re not doing their best to support you, and it doesn’t mean we’re going to stop working on our healing or talking about trauma. We’ll keep going, and we’ll keep working on our healing.
In this episode, I share the eighth rule of the Trauma Hiders Club: “Accept Others.” I describe how and why people are sometimes going to disappoint you when you share with them your experiences and remind you to keep doing the work, even if you are yet to find the right people.
“Know that there are people in your world who are going to disappoint you, anger you, or re-trigger your shit. But we don’t stop. We keep doing the work.”
- Karen Goldfinger Baker
This week on the Trauma Hiders Club Podcast:
The eighth rule of Trauma Hiders Club
Your lived experiences are unique to you and why it can be frustrating to talk about trauma with others
Accepting others and doing the work