Name: You're not traumatized you're just hurt
Uploaded: 2025-11-27T16:51:41.000Z
Duration: 6 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Today I want to talk about how you're not traumatized, you're probably just hurt.

Adverbs of manner

There's a disturbing trend lately where psychobabble and the zeitgeist has been distorted, twisted, and sometimes even weaponized.

This has given the people the idea that they can prioritize selfish, uncommunicative behavior under the guise of self care, misuse psychological concepts like trauma and abuse, and

diagnose others who have hurt them in order to dismiss their own pain.

Now terms like gaslighting and attachment and emotional labor have like, bled into the social lexicon, giving people everywhere permission to cut out the toxic people.

At the slightest hint of discomfort, conflict or disagreement.

People are literally slinging armchair diagnoses of narcissism, PTSD or sociopathy around like they're an Oprah themed popped open pinata, right?

And though this trend has its upsides, it encourages people to get help.

It gives them the tools to recognize patterns that aren't working for them.

It provides language to more accurately communicate their feelings.

It also has a really stark downside, which is that this blunted len has warped our view of relationships.

We're not seeing them as nuanced and complex dynamics that require an ongoing dialogue, but

There has been so much rhetoric online lately that encourages disconnection over communication or language that insists your needs be placed above all else.

And this kind of black and white thinking completely ignores that.

We live in a messy world and sometimes our relationships will require compromise.

And I don't think you can go into any interpersonal dynamic expecting that your needs are gonna be met 100% of the time.

And because there's so much like Instagram therapy going around, I want to clarify my personal philosophy of what I believe our approach should be.

So I think you should put your own needs above other people's wants, but

put other people's needs over your wants.

I think putting other people's needs over your own needs is at times necessary and it's also a very kind, loving sacrifice to make.

However, prior to putting your needs over other people's needs is also sometimes necessary and a kind, loving, protective thing to do.

And this dance of deciding whose needs take priority, this is a case by case basis that should be balanced based on your best judgment.

Look, boundaries are meant to keep people in, not out.

So communicate your feelings instead of avoiding conflict and being triggered.

Look, that's actually a gift to see what you need to work on not a way to censor other people.

Like, yes, we should all be very considerate, but

if you're seeing triggers more in terms of censoring others rather than an opportunity for self exploration, you're doing yourself a huge disservice.

All of these tools are meant to help us navigate relationship dynamics.

They're meant to help us repair inevitable ruptures.

They're meant to protect our ability to remain engaged.

But if you're using therapy speak as an excuse to ice people out, diagnose someone postmortem your relationship, or set rules for another person's behavior, you are misusing them in an attempt to justify your own victim mentality, insecurity, or ego.

Like, we can't cherry pick our popular therapeutic concepts to support whatever our current state of mind is, because when we do, we're really just dismissing our own feelings.

So if you say he is such a narcissist to lay blame on someone else, you're probably really avoiding I feel abandoned and discarded.

If you say I'm setting a boundary when you're really stonewalling, you're probably just avoiding I feel unloved and a vulnerable conversation.

If you say she's so toxic when you've never communicated how you felt, you're really just avoiding I feel hurt by this person.

And to say he's gaslighting me when he's just disagreeing or having a different memory of events, you're probably just really avoiding I don't feel heard.

It's very possible to accept that a person has inflicted emotional pain without pathologizing their actions.

And often when I hear people invoke therapy speak, especially outside of a professional setting, there's usually very little accountability and self reflection going on.

And I also don't think we should minimize the experience of people who actually deal with narcissistic personality disorder, abuse, or gaslighting by throwing around these terms.

Instead, identify your emotions, take the space to adequately describe them without using pop psychology or emotional shorthand, and

Because what we're feeling is real, it just may not actually be trauma.

Trauma is when you're in a mass shooting or you're being physically abused, or you witness suicide.

What we are experiencing instead, it may just be stressful and that's a good thing.

Like, why would you want to be traumatized, right?

Like, if what we're going through is just stress, we don't need to bolster our language to elevate our experience by invoking the higher authority of therapy speak.

What we're experiencing is valid and legitimate, even when what we're experiencing is just hurt.

Thank you to the patrons who supported today's video.

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