Venting it's not a competition yet people here make it so

[Kalista]

whatever level of pain you feel is valid. it hurts you, so you must do something about it, or not. whatever choice you make, if you believe it's the path you need to take, then take it -- regardless of what others might say.

there's a comparison regarding when and how certain actions must be taken (such as suicide) based on the level of suffering. people who juggle what multiple things life has thrown at them receive more respect because they can't imagine themselves handling that much when placed in their shoes. meanwhile, the ones suffering from a 'trivial' thing gets treated like children, with their lives compared unfavorably to the former and their criticizer.

people can lack the experience to handle situations they're dealt with. even more, they can have limited emotional and mental capacity to handle such situations. if it's painful to them, it's fucking painful to them.
to insult, dismiss, belittle, criticize, and/or judge other people's pain when it doesn't meet your requirement of pain and suffering is highly fucking ignorant and does not help their situation.

 

[QueerMelancholy]

I do agree with you. I think one of the problems is the opinions and the "advice" we give people so often is what we want to hear ourselves. So if we feel like we want to be talked out of how we feel or patted on the back and encouraged for it we say words we want others to say to us. We belittle and mock each other for similar reasons. We can feel that their reasoning and their decision making isn't as genuine and as "correct" as it should be. I dunno if this is pride masquerading as compassion or our need to love other people and feel loved by them through teasing and mockery. Could be anger could be a lot of things. The human mind is so fucking absurd. We sabotage ourselves and in some ways hope to sabotage others a little here and there to feel something. To feel better about ourselves to feel like our hard work matters to feel like our suffering is more important than other people's. That we can feel validation by comparing ourselves to other people and it does all sound so strange the more I think about it.

You're too stupid, too young, too drunk, too pretty, too beautiful, too this or that in comparison to how we feel about ourselves and our suffering that it can make us hateful and lash out. YOU DON'T DESERVE TO FEEL THAT WAY! ONLY I CAN FEEL THAT WAY! You'll never understand how it feels! STOP BELITTLING MY SUFFERING BY ADMITTING THAT YOU'RE SUFFERING when your suffering to me seems so trivial compared to my own. See that? Isn't it funny to think about?

I say let people deal with their suffering and their logical and illogical ways of thinking about it and whatever they do with coping and finding ways to deal with it let them do it their way. It doesn't matter if it's wrong or right or smart or foolish or if we think there are better less painful ways. People should be able to live and die with their own motivations outside of any outside influence.

If I see people now making what I feel to me is a wrong decision I stop myself from stepping in because honestly, it's none of my business. And I don't want my pride to masquerade as compassion. I'll read what people have to say and share my opinion but my opinion should never place a thumb on the scale of other people's lives. Share information, share love, and don't share passive-aggressive hoaxes and agendas.

We fight ourselves in how we fight other people. Lashing out in underhanded ways. Like we all have these hidden agendas and are playing hoaxes on people. I say let people talk themselves through their own suffering and whether it needs validation or not is up to them to validate it themselves. It's all a journey of self-discovery but I'm a hypocrite too. I think we all are. And to anyone who is suffering best of luck to you. You do matter but mattering and meaning are subjective. Be the subject that decides how you feel and be the actor that acts in your defense with awareness of your motivations, desires, and actions.

The idea of a silver lining is a fallacy when it comes to how people should learn to deal with themselves. Walking in other people's shoes? Why? Are we so stupid we can't see suffering and know it is suffering? I feel like many of us are so ashamed for being so similar that we lash out against this because we don't want to feel insignificant. So many people are suffering out there. I feel sad about it but honestly, do I really care? I think we all need to ask ourselves that and stop comparing our suffering while we fluff up ourselves and diminish others. We're all living our own lives. And I think this incessant need to feel validated drives us crazy. People being people being people being people. I still feel like I'm a kid in school and we talk to each other like we're all still naive children.

Figure it out for yourselves. Learn from others but don't let them push you this way or that way. Do with yourself what you want. And good luck with whatever you decide on doing because, at the end of the day, you are in your own hands.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

You know, there is this patient known as SM who suffered from a disease that caused her temporal lobe to be calcified. This resulted in bilateral damage to her amygdala. She went through a lot of traumas in life, including nearly being killed in a domestic abuse situation to being robbed at gunpoint, yet she was someone who mainly experienced mostly positive emotions throughout her life and who describes mainly feeling anger and being upset about those things, rather than showing the typical trauma-responses that would be expected.

Spoiler: Some excerpts from an article on her

SM denied feeling fear, but did report feeling upset and angry about what had happened. Without fear, it can be said that SM's distress lacks the deep heartfelt intensity endured by most survivors of trauma.

To the psychologists, SM came across as a "survivor", as being "resilient" and even "heroic" in the way that she had dealt with adversity in her life. Taken together, this evidence illuminates the possibility that because of her amygdala damage, SM is immune to the devastating effects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – an intriguing hypothesis that has recently found support in war veterans with amygdala lesions

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030206/

The reason I mention her is because she's a good example of why you cannot judge people's suffering based purely on events that caused it. Everyone's ability to handle adversity thrown their way is different. Some people can through horrific life events and are able to pull through while others may struggle to handle things we don't consider to be that bad. When my parents divorced, for example, it didn't have that big of an impact on me. I was upset for a bit and then I moved on. Meanwhile, a girl I knew from high school opened up about how her parent's divorce led to both her and her brother developing depression (both diagnosed) and that the reason she hadn't been going to school as much was because of it. It really annoys me how there are people on here who refuse to acknowledge this and go out of their way to invalidate the suffering of others on here and make it out to be a competition.

Suffering and trauma isn't about what happened to you, it's about how said thing has affected you.

 

[Sad & Empty girl]

whatever level of pain you feel is valid. it hurts you, so you must do something about it, or not. whatever choice you make, if you believe it's the path you need to take, then take it -- regardless of what others might say.

there's a comparison regarding when and how certain actions must be taken (such as suicide) based on the level of suffering. people who juggle what multiple things life has thrown at them receive more respect because they can't imagine themselves handling that much when placed in their shoes. meanwhile, the ones suffering from a 'trivial' thing gets treated like children, with their lives compared unfavorably to the former and their criticizer.

people can lack the experience to handle situations they're dealt with. even more, they can have limited emotional and mental capacity to handle such situations. if it's painful to them, it's fucking painful to them.
to insult, dismiss, belittle, criticize, and/or judge other people's pain when it doesn't meet your requirement of pain and suffering is highly fucking ignorant and does not help their situation.

This is true yet they will still dismiss it and not listen.

I wish there were more understanding people like this in the world.

 

[Z-A]

There is no 'valid' reason for CTB; the topic is always subjective, and everyone has the right to decide for themselves. Comparing levels of pain to validate someone's desire is, in my opinion, very anti-choice and selfish.

 

[Worndown]

This should be an open space. You may come here thinking of your demise. You may follow through, you may not. That is what makes this place special. Exchanging ideas and experiences can only help you.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

This resulted in bilateral damage to her amygdala

Honestly this bit right here is probably the key as to why this woman doesn't experience PTSD and is unaffected by the trauma. The amygdala is a crucial brain region for determining emotional responses to stimuli (especially fear) and contextualising memories and emotions. People with dampened amygdala activation typically have less fear responses, to the point where some people with amygdala lesions can't experience most types of fear at all or perceive situations as life-threatening.

I'm pretty sure SM has Urbach-Wiethe syndrome by how you described it, meaning that she is most likely immune to fear conditioning due to calcification of the amygdala. This condition is extremely rare and has only occured in about 400 people in the entire world. Despite the other problems caused by the disorder, like cortical lesions resulting in epilepsy, having a damaged amygdala probably protected her from developing PTSD.

There is even a clinical trial at Yale university right now investigating how MDMA can decrease activation of the amygdala and how this can be therapeutic for people with PTSD. If anyone is interested this is their hypothesis and study protocol: https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03752918

Unfortunately, we are living in an era where neuroscience is very slow and lacking resolution. Outside of a handful of research groups, no one has the technology to conduct functional imaging of brain regions. An MRI or CT can only show extreme structural damage like lesions. An fMRI can tell you how oxygenated and activated certain parts of the brain are and give clues about functional changes, but it is only used in research, not clinical practice.

There are really no treatments or drugs out there anyway that can target this specific neuronal response of amygdala hyperactivity (except maybe MDMA and sometimes changes don't stick) despite it being a huge component of why PTSD develops. There are also some people whose connections do not end up wiring as strongly and have more capacity for neuroplasticity and circuit remodeling. So everyone can be different like you said, and yet there is a very one size fits all approach to mental suffering that doesn't really address the actual mechanism happening to cause xyz response.

I think it's hard for people to realize this, the changes that determine someone's reaction to an event in life are happening at a complex, microscopic cellular level that is difficult to measure. It's also hard to fathom how different we all are in terms of the millions of cellular interactions and connections taking place everyday.

A lot of suffering is perceived as such or compared because of averages, or what's construed as being a "wild type/normal" response, despite the vast heterogeneity in neuronal connectivity in people. There's societal conditioning about what is traumatic and what isn't, when in reality it's like you say, anything can be traumatic (or not) if the brain processes it as such. What bothers one person may be like water off the duck's back to someone else and vice versa.

I have seen a lot of dumb ass psychiatrists lately arguing on medical forums about the validity of complex PTSD, and trying to claim that it isn't a real thing because repeated non-life threatening abuses and neglect throughout life aren't actually traumatic enough to warrant PTSD like phenotypes, only what is known as the "big T traumas" (God I hate therapy speak like this). This just shows how out of touch a lot of "experts" are with the organ they should be a master of, and fundamentally don't understand how the brain works.

The sooner it's accepted that it's not about what happened but how you perceive and process the event and the world around you, the better. Until then I think there is going to be a lot of infighting about what constitutes as traumatic or upsetting enough to warrant xyz response, because there is still so much gatekeeping in the mental health community or trying to project one's own experience onto someone else.

Fundamentally only we truly know ourselves and what we've experienced, what we want, don't want, etc. Others can make guesses and attempts to understand but sometimes it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

Honestly this bit right here is probably the key as to why this woman doesn't experience PTSD and is unaffected by the trauma. The amygdala is a crucial brain region for determining emotional responses to stimuli (especially fear) and contextualising memories and emotions. People with dampened amygdala activation typically have less fear responses, to the point where some people with amygdala lesions can't experience most types of fear at all or perceive situations as life-threatening.

I'm pretty sure SM has Urbach-Wiethe syndrome by how you described it, meaning that she is most likely immune to fear conditioning due to calcification of the amygdala. This condition is extremely rare and has only occured in about 400 people in the entire world. Despite the other problems caused by the disorder, like cortical lesions resulting in epilepsy, having a damaged amygdala probably protected her from developing PTSD.

Um, yeah, I know that. You are literally giving me information on shit that I already know (edit: I don't mean this in a rude way or anything. It just hit me that the way I wrote this could be interpreted as me getting upset and it's not) The point is that you can't simplify suffering down to just what you would consider to be horrible versuses not a big deal. How people respond to certain events in their life can differ depending on a variety of factors, with S.M. being an example due to the damage to her amygdala.

 

[Hotsackage]

It's all relative

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I've never seen anybody on this site make it out to be a competition. Almost any reason is a valid reason to die. We never asked to be alive in the first place so it's only fair if we are allowed a peaceful death at any time regardless of our reason. We shouldn't be forced to stay alive in a world that we never even gave consent to in the first place

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

Um, yeah, I know that. You are literally giving me information on shit that I already know (edit: I don't mean this in a rude way or anything. It just hit me that the way I wrote this could be interpreted as me getting upset and it's not) The point is that you can't simplify suffering down to just what you would consider to be horrible versuses not a big deal. How people respond to certain events in their life can differ depending on a variety of factors, with S.M. being an example due to the damage to her amygdala.

Yeah sorry if what I wrote comes off as repetitive, I just agreed with your point and wanted to expand on what you posted cause I thought it might be useful for other people who might not have heard about this stuff before. I'm autistic so my typing/writing/communication style probably comes across as very repetitive or rambling when I don't mean it to be, I just struggle with communicating

 

[LaughingGoat]

I think it's worth keeping things in perspective, especially when engaging in discourse over the internet. This site has some 48k members. With those numbers, there are going to be people that will say things that may be relatively inconsiderate or insensitive. In my eyes, people who play the suffering game or tell people they haven't met requirements to ctb are the overwhelming minority here. Most users here repeatedly say the opposite that anyone has a right to ctb and it's their life to choose. Equal to the number of people judging suffering on here, I see at least the same amount saying that ctb is the only right or rational choice, which is an extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum. If someone makes personal attacks, then mods should address that, but we can't create such a hug box that there is no criticisms allowed whatsoever. Or alternatively, maybe there should be another part of the site like Recovery called Support where one of the rules is criticism is not allowed (that idea is made in good faith, I'm not being sarcastic).

 

[sserafim]

You know, there is this patient known as SM who suffered from a disease that caused her temporal lobe to be calcified. This resulted in bilateral damage to her amygdala. She went through a lot of traumas in life, including nearly being killed in a domestic abuse situation to being robbed at gunpoint, yet she was someone who mainly experienced mostly positive emotions throughout her life and who describes mainly feeling anger and being upset about those things, rather than showing the typical trauma-responses that would be expected.

Spoiler: Some excerpts from an article on her

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030206/

The reason I mention her is because she's a good example of why you cannot judge people's suffering based purely on events that caused it. Everyone's ability to handle adversity thrown their way is different. Some people can through horrific life events and are able to pull through while others may struggle to handle things we don't consider to be that bad. When my parents divorced, for example, it didn't have that big of an impact on me. I was upset for a bit and then I moved on. Meanwhile, a girl I knew from high school opened up about how her parent's divorce led to both her and her brother developing depression (both diagnosed) and that the reason she hadn't been going to school as much was because of it. It really annoys me how there are people on here who refuse to acknowledge this and go out of their way to invalidate the suffering of others on here and make it out to be a competition.

Suffering and trauma isn't about what happened to you, it's about how said thing has affected you.

Damn. How do I get my amygdala damaged? It seems beneficial actually

 

[UKscotty]

Most people are on the same page here.

There are a handful of people who are extreme pro-death and basically say people here are not suicidal enough and the whole human race should be dead. That recovery is not possible. Those people to me are pure evil.

 

[fleetingnight]

(Warning for pro-ED comments) This happens a lot in places where it's ok to talk openly about mental illness/suicide/etc. I wonder why. I've been in eating disorder and self harm communities online before, and everyone there was always trying to prove they hurt themslves worse than othrs. They'd even put ppl down for "not trying hard enough," sometimes directly, and sometimes passive aggressively ("You ate THAT much today? Wow I WISH I could... My ED must be really bad cause I can't even THINK about that much food lol")

I guess ppl get invalidated or ignored often and need to prove their pain is real, but it doesnt excuse putting down other sto do so.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Yeah sorry if what I wrote comes off as repetitive, I just agreed with your point and wanted to expand on what you posted cause I thought it might be useful for other people who might not have heard about this stuff before. I'm autistic so my typing/writing/communication style probably comes across as very repetitive or rambling when I don't mean it to be, I just struggle with communicating

It"s okay, you did nothing wrong and and were expanding on and repacking the article rather than EV's post for the forum's benefit. You clearly were not trying to teach her.