Anonymous Coward · 4d
is it possible for abuse to not be traumatizing at all? objectively speaking, i know physical and verbal abuse are bad, but it was so commonplace and normalized in my entire community growing up (us kids would talk to each other quite casually about our parents abusing us, and the adults around us would talk openly about corporal punishment) that i don't even regard those memories as traumatic. at worst the punishments were an inconvenience, and even at the time i didn't think much of it. i wouldn't say theyre traumatic, especially in comparison to other things. i wasnt randomly abused for no reason, either, it was all related to being disobedient like not doing chores, so i could have avoided it at any time.
yeah, so the thing here is that you're saying you weren’t traumatized by the abuse, but everything in your question points to the fact that you did internalize harmful ideas about what is and isn’t acceptable treatment of a child. that’s what makes it traumatic, not necessarily whether or not you personally feel traumatized by it in a way that you recognize.
like, the punishment for not doing chores should not be to hit a child. full stop. but because it was normalized in your environment, you don’t question it, and you even see it as something that could be justified. that's how trauma works—it gets into how you see yourself, the world, and what you think is just “the way things are.”
plus, your idea that abuse is only truly abusive if it’s random isn't actually accurate. abusers always have a reason—whether it’s control, punishment, or even just stress relief for them. but part of the trauma response is internalizing those reasons as if they make the abuse make sense or be somehow deserved. in reality, you were a kid, and kids mess up, and the appropriate response to that is teaching, not violence.
so, objectively, yeah, you might not label your experience as “traumatic” in the way that some people think of trauma (flashbacks, nightmares, etc.), but that doesn’t mean it didn’t shape you in a way that shows clear trauma patterns. the normalization of harm is trauma, even if you don’t immediately recognize it that way.
