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Comment by h4l | Hacker News Reader

I think it's relative to our own experiences. If you drive on a perfect road, even a small bump is noticeable. But I don't think that means people's perception of problems is not legitimate. There's always someone worse off, especially if you compare now to historical times.

If there's a sure-fire way to create a mental health problem, it's to tell yourself you don't deserve to have a problem because other people have worse problems.

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I think trauma is also a bit relative. If you grew up with bad physical and emotional abuse from one parent the emotional distance and isolation from another might not even be a blip on your radar, at least until you've worked through the other stuff. And on the flip side if you had a great childhood with stable housing, plenty of food/money then hitting rock bottom in adulthood might be pretty traumatic since you never had to develop the mental tools required to handle serious adversity. Obviously some trauma is objectively worse but competing over trauma severity is pointless.

The thing is, kids who grew up in those good families are in fact more resilient then abused kids.

Kids with bad childhood will not categorize semi bad childhood as trauma, but have worst interpersonal relationships, worst stress handling, abuse drugs or alcohol more often and display whole range of at risk behaviors

It is simply not true that being poor or abused or neglected makes people resilient.

That's an excellent and fair point. Perhaps "resilience" is the wrong term for abused folks and it could be said as "ability to continue functioning at their usual level of dysfunction". I've seen enough examples of ostensibly well raised (typically younger) adults being hit really hard by adversity that I think there's something to it. Maybe confirmation bias or perhaps those individuals had overprotective parents that shielded them from developing a lot of skills. That sort of dysfunctional parenting can be harder to recognize in adults.

I always think of this SMBC strip.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-07-22

I love it, thanks!

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