I've still not read the entire thread - I might never do so, because I feel like I got enough out of it yesterday - but I found some things in your post interesting. I think the situations you describe are real and existing ones in life.

There are other situations too though. So, I will present more of my side too to add more on some of those. It definitely helped me process more of my trauma (cPTSD), when I looked up this label this thread is about. Even though I've looked up other "labels" like "emotional abuse" and stuff like that before. It still gave me new things I didn't recognise before about behaviour patterns of people who drained me and caused me much harm.

You mention alcoholism and describe the challenges about dealing with such a person. And then you describe alcoholic people finally standing up and admitting openly to having a problem and taking responsibility for it. I liked the way you described that.


I've then translated that to other situations. For example the particular person that drained me (who was good at tact and diplomacy by default but had the cold, mean streak whenever she needed something). She had some undiagnosed mental illness. That would be one way to translate the situation of the alcoholism to her situation. Another way would be translating it to her toxicity that she had next to it/on top of it.


I took a very long time fighting with myself on whether it was a character problem she had or just her undiagnosed mental illness. E.g. her unwillingness to take responsibility and doing something about her negative outlook of things leading to her toxic attitudes and behaviours, including manipulative behaviours to exploit others. While I was fighting with myself about this, on the one hand trying to assume good about her ("it's just her mental illness", depression, bipolar depression, her isolation or god knows what else), and on the other hand trying to see if she did actually bad, immoral, harmful things, I was unable to move forward and accept the harsh, cold reality of what actually happened, including the worsening of the cPTSD itself (denying the emotional side of my cPTSD symptoms, being very numb and detached from them).


When I finally did accept the latter, it helped me, helped with dealing with some triggers, helped containing them, and not expose myself to further retraumatisation.


Reading your post on the alcoholic people, I really wished she and some other people I know (who I'd still like to pull up with me from where they currently are - they are not toxic people btw, that's the difference), would stand up like that and face their problems. I think I do not want to enable them in any way even accidentally. And I do respect how big the challenge is as I've also had to deal with facing how I developed mental illness, depression and trauma/cPTSD and how it affected me and everything. Because if you don't admit to it and don't go get outside help, it's just like alcoholism. To me it's just the same. This is not true of all mental illnesses of course, but there are some that I just see that way. Just because of my own experiences really. And while having toxic stuff is not the same as having a mental illness, this applies to that too.

This is all a really complex topic but my real point is just that the labels can be really helpful if they help face negatives in circumstances or in people, their attitudes and their behaviour patterns that we (at least I) try to deny the existence of. I used to try and deny it really hard.



I don't understand how this links to the topic of toxic people. Do you mean with your PTSD you had a phase where you tried to label people too fast as toxic or abusive when you were simply very sensitive to common behaviours and attitudes of people, due to the trauma? I know what that is like, to be that sensitive, though I've got past a lot of it by now (thank god).

I think it's nothing to be ashamed of, if you had a phase like that, because with PTSD/cPTSD it's actually very normal to be thrown into this big chaos where the world/people are no longer safe and then your brain is on high alert to try and avoid danger and your mind and emotional brain develops these hypersensitive antennaes to detect every little thing that could be or is actually negative. Takes time to recalibrate.

But in my own case, this phase did teach me to recognise certain negative attitudes and behaviour patterns that I denied the existence of before. That was really helpful, learning about all that, all those negative things.

And yes, so it takes time to recalibrate and learn. I remember when I was in that chaos before, I felt like "what the hell is happening, I know this isn't how it used to be, people couldn't have suddenly all changed, what's going on, what's all this horrible negative stuff going on?" Things like this. I didn't label people, because I was overly careful with identifying the toxic stuff from the people that actually harmed and drained me very bad. But I understand the mindset otherwise.


And to get out of that chaos, yes I do agree you have to understand yourself the most. But I still think society could do with more education on human psychology, including what to think or say or do when around people who have active ongoing trauma/PTSD/cPTSD. I think it would contribute to making the management easier and would contribute to a healthier society on the whole. So I think it's perfectly normal to wish that others would understand our challenges with trauma. Even if not in some deep, detailed way, they could at least have a concept of what it really is, and an idea about how to approach it. (Same for other psychological issues, as far as it's reasonable and constructive, I don't mean getting overly involved in any of it.) It is a reasonable desire and it would definitely be helpful if they understood more. (Just like you did learn about and understood alcoholism more.) It's a long process of education though, I think. Won't happen right now, but it gets better and better every year/every decade. Look back at how psychiatry treated people with issues just a few decades ago. We've come a long way.