Introduction by Roxane Gay

[Jon]

Hi Everyone, I'm not exactly sure how this works. How is everyone reading the book? Hard copy, kindle, or audiobook? I'm curious if you can share highlights from the Kindle to this discussion.

[Jon]

Can someone please link a reference for trauma-informed care?

[Jon]

I ended up going with the audiobook. Some things that have stood out to me:

Introduction
-“I believed people were inherently good.” This statement was arresting for me, because it made me consider where I stand on this if I’m caught off guard. Just reflecting on this makes me want an answer so that I don’t stay in this thought cycle of ‘maybe it’s just my perspective.’

-It seems that older I get, the more sensitive I become to people having their childhood taken from them prematurely.

-I’m grateful about how she described living with her trauma & how that meant breaking it down into something she could manage (how minimizing that hurt her in the long run). I think this reaction has regrettably become very normal and is compounded by people being forced to carry their trauma alone. I’m curious to know if ‘calloused empathy’ is studied, how that effects people, and what useful steps there are to overcoming that.

-“rarely do people engage with what [rape culture] actually means.” @me

[Morgan]

Highlights from my intro section:

“What I went through was bad, but it wasn’t \that\ bad”

“I fostered wildly unrealistic expectations of the kinds of experiences worthy of suffering until very little was worthy of suffering. The surfaces of my empathy became calloused.”

I think that a calloused empathy is so common and how we internalize our suffering. If it’s “not that bad” and we can get through it, whatever getting through it looks like’ then that means everyone else can get through it too. It’s how we discount emotions and behavior and police what is normal for trauma survivors to look like. Just look at the “borderline patient” and how they get treated. Reading these stories is so important for everyone so that we can stop stigmatizing those with trauma and start making progress.

[Jon]

Morgan wrote: "Highlights from my intro section:

“What I went through was bad, but it wasn’t \that\ bad”

“I fostered wildly unrealistic expectations of the kinds of experiences worthy of suffering until very li..."

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