Part 2: This PTSD Symptom Is Killing You and No One Is Talking About It

A Follow-Up to the Now-Viral Article About the Effects of Victimhood in Recovering from Trauma

Matt Gangloff
12 min readJan 3, 2022
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

Here are some of the things I wish I said in the original article:

Everyone Has Trauma and Mine Is No Different Than Yours

I don’t think anyone escapes childhood without trauma. I mean that technically.

I don’t think you become your own person until you’re aware that something can hurt you. For many people, the first taste of trauma is being smacked on the ass by the Doctor who delivered us or being denied our mother’s breast when we’re hungry.

That’s the first time there is a self, the one who feels the pain, and an other, the one who inflicted it. Before that, we were one with our mothers and maybe even one with the Universe.

The events that cause that separation? That’s trauma.

Trauma creates our perceptions and our perceptions create the world around us. Who we are, who other people are, the nature of reality, all those are perceptions informed by trauma.

We all have that.

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Matt Gangloff

I teach the how-to’s of Post-Traumatic Growth: How to heal and grow, find a new mission, become your best self and build a meaningful life. www.mattgangloff.com