‘Good morning! Merry Christmas, I went through something really traumatic once in my life and I’ve let it affect me forever, so now that I’ve been getting help for it I understand and I know how you feel.’

I was controlled and abused; mentally, physically and sexually, for months. ‘I know how you feel’ is the absolute most inappropriate thing to say to anyone with PTSD, as chance is, you have no idea how they feel.

It’s true, I’m fragile and I have no issue sharing my experiences with those who wish to listen. However, I don’t use the negatives of my life as an excuse for behaviours and I don’t use them to get attention. Still to this day, very few people know the extent of what really went on. The reason that I do not sulk to every person who will listen to my woes, is that I will not allow the trauma and less than ideal things that have happened in my life to define me.

I am genuinely concerned for the person who decided Christmas was an appropriate time to speak to me about their trauma, and compare their understanding of PTSD to mine. The moment I expressed concern over their sudden change from depressive to manic behaviour, the response was ‘….but look at all of these the unfortunate events of the past year and it’s just my time to be happy’. This person has been using some unfortunate, not traumatic events, to get attention for too long, and I have suddenly stopped succumbing to it. It’s fine though, there are people in this persons life who will be quite happy to flock to the attention seeking childishness. They see the personal gains of being in this persons life, as soon as they no longer think they need you, they’ll disappear from the face of the earth, just like in the past.

It’s fine to talk about trauma, it’s not fine to think that you can understand what anyone else has gone through. Particularly when your trauma is probably your excuse for not really being there for me when I needed you most…