Meegan, you make some good points.
Shell shock was so well-known, war veterans received compassion, patience, and help. While veterans rarely spoke of their war experiences with family or friends, they discussed their problems with other war veterans in VFW halls and veterans’ hospitals. In many communities, veterans’ were often the only source of empathy available to victims of rape, violence, domestic abuse, etc.
The War on Terror was the first war of the internet age, and the term PTSD rapidly entered common usage. During the first few years, veterans at the VFW hall were badly shaken by the public’s blithe, casual, even callous use of PTSD for relatively minor events in everyday life (saying inane stuff like “I know how you feel, I was in a car accident”). For people with PTSD that kind of talk is heard – and felt – as disregard, indifference, and contempt.
There is a difference between pity, sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is a reaction to seeing someone else’s plight. The most common form of sympathy is pity; a feeling of discomfort at seeing someone in distress, that often has paternalistic or condescending overtones. Most of us experience pity when we see homeless people. Alleviating our own discomfort is the reason so many people want the homeless kept out of sight.
Empathy, however, depends on an individual’s ability to recognize and share the emotions of another person. Ability is the key word. Not everyone is capable of empathy. A lot of people cannot put themselves in someone else’s shoes, let alone share someone else’s emotions, including distress.
I do realize that trauma is individually based. What traumatizes you, may not affect me at all - and vice versa. Nonetheless, I’ve grown weary of people seeking attention and creating drama by calling everything a trauma. Just because a person struggles with stress does not mean they were traumatized or dis-ordered.
People who’ve learned to live with PTSD know the dis-order part comes and goes depending on behaviour, circumstances, etc. Learning how to manage emotions, quickly identify symptoms of dis-order emerging, take actions to ward them off and self-soothe takes practice and tons of self-discipline.
Last, but not least, the essential feature of Munchausen is the falsification of medical or psychological signs and symptoms by someone who knowingly misrepresents, simulates, or causes signs or symptoms of illness or injury. When people in the habit of using exaggeration to create fake and unnecessary drama around themselves start claiming PTSD they are deep in falsification territory – hence my comparison.
