Trauma is Always Self Inflicted

In this insightful episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss new research showing childhood trauma is caused more by one's perception of events than the events themselves. People with verified abuse who don't see their childhood as bad show minimal ill effects, while those with no abuse who believe they were mistreated exhibit high rates of mental issues. Malcolm reflects on his own unusual upbringing, arguing he avoided PTSD by seeing challenges as adventures. They explore why women tend to recall more childhood adversity. Malcolm contends trauma comes from random negative events, not predictable ones. Ultimately, it's community narratives that frame events as traumatic or not. Avoiding "trauma creation" will be key for their parenting.

Malcolmm: [00:00:00] all these people complain like, well, as a boy, I, I was never allowed to cry and I was never allowed to feel bad.

And I was never allowed to confide in people and they're like, and that was all bad. That was all bad things that happened to me, but it's not a bad thing. It actually makes your life better. When people are hard on you, when people are hard on the way that you frame your life, In the moment, it doesn't feel awesome.

In the moment, when you want to be vulnerable, it doesn't feel awesome. But in terms of life outcomes, it is demonstrably and dramatically better. And, and this is a very, very, very obvious from these various research data points.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolmm: Its so great to be here with you today. You had just sent me this study where you're like, this is so fascinating. Mm-hmm. , and better than that, [00:01:00] it confirms our preexisting beliefs. And isn't that just the, the best kind of studies, right? Yes.

Simone: That's, that's what, that's why people read studies to, well, for confirmation bias of, so this study, is by Andrea Denny's and Kathy Spatz Widom.

Gonna get their names wrong, of course. It's called Objective and Subjective Experiences of Child Maltreatment and Their Relationships with Psychopathology, published in Nature Human Behavior, which is a very respectable journal. And basically they found... I'm just going to quote them. We found that even for severe cases of childhood maltreatment identified through court records, risk of psychopathology linked to objective measures was minimal in the absence of subjective reports.

In contrast, risk of psychopathology linked to subject report, subjective reports of childhood maltreatment was high, whether or not the reports were consistent with objective measures. So, so dumbed down some more words.

Malcolmm: In simpler language. Basically [00:02:00] what it means is that if you had a really traumatic, in the way that modern society would frame trauma, childhood, like you were systemically abused in ways that were verified by the court system, but you don't believe that you had a difficult childhood, you will not have any negative effects from your childhood.

However, if you had a perfect childhood, but you believe you had a terrible childhood, you will have all of the effects that we associate with childhood trauma. Now, this is something that confirms with other studies that we've talked about on this show. You know, we've talked about the study of sleepers that showed that People who believed that they had had bad sleep, but hadn't actually had bad sleep, had all the effects that we as a society associate with bad sleep.

People who verifiably had bad sleep they didn't have any of those effects. Yeah, it's how [00:03:00] you

Simone: see it. If you think that you slept poorly... You're going to show signs of fatigue that day, you're going to struggle, and even if you slept like s**t, but you believe you slept really well, you're going to be like, oh, I'm perky, I feel good, on average.

Malcolmm: This is so critical within our, because what this actually means, you know, you can, you can say, oh, this is like interesting or quirky or whatever. It actually means that as a society, when we say something like, childhood trauma causes adult issues. That is just verifiably untrue. It's the belief that you were traumatized in childhood that causes adult issues.

Yet, often these two things are pretty correlated, right? Often somebody who is traumatized in childhood will have the belief that they were traumatized in childhood. But what's critical to remember is when the left, Yeah, it's usually the left who does this, invents new types of [00:04:00] traumas that somebody can go through, or they frame something as particularly traumatic that previously people wouldn't have thought of as traumatic.

They create the symptoms of trauma in that individual. Where that individual previously wouldn't have had those symptoms. And this is, you know, we have seen this have such negative effects on individuals lives. Recently we were interacting with someone and they were just absolutely riddled with like

Simone: all sorts of

Malcolmm: diseases, you know, neurological issues, pain, all these sorts of very spoonie like issues. If you go to our spoonie episode and, and we had a friend who was like that as well, you know, but what was really interesting is she was only like that when she was a progressive.

So when we first met her, she was like deep into the progressive sphere. And so if you want to talk about what happened, because she's a better friend to you than me.

Simone: Yeah, I mean, she, she had some severe health problems and they included, you know, [00:05:00] seizures, severe allergies. I mean, this was a fairly limited life that she had to live.

She couldn't, you know, computer screens.

Malcolmm: Yeah, yeah, there was imagine your life not being able to look at computer screens. It was, it

Simone: was really rough. And then yeah she, she shifted some things. She got in a really good relationship. So she sort of changed her standards and values and sort of the way that she was going to prioritize things in her life.

And then like, One day she called me and she was like, yeah so I don't have seizures anymore.

Malcolmm: Well, so it wasn't just that. So, I mean, the guy who she married is a Texan guy. You actually have seen this couple in some of our after video credits playing with the kids at one point. Yeah, we really,

Simone: really

Malcolmm: like them.

They're awesome people. Yeah, yeah. And then the Fourth of July party, they, they hosted this. But yeah, so, so Texas guy, very religious, you know. And actually not at first. So he and she had known each other for years. He was also in [00:06:00] this far progressive movement. And then they started hanging out more with us than their other friends.

And then they became like, really, like, like, they, they went along with sort of the way that we were going, but they went further than us. And, and now, you know, they're really into Jesus and all that, and very much structure their lives as a very religious, Conservative couple and they focus on this real

Simone: trad athletic.

Yeah, I would, I would say that you almost like implied that like we had some influence on them. No, like they, they very, very introspectively thought through their lives and their values and they came to a very. Religious and more traditional conclusion. Do you really

Malcolmm: think that would have happened had they not known us?

Hold on. Do you really, we were there only like non ultra progressive

Simone: for it. We, we may have nudged them slightly, but I think many, many factors nudged them slightly.