It's PTSD awareness month so I am actually going to rerelease a podcast episode that we had earlier on. It's about living with cPTSD, and I want to have it again because living with cPTSD is a big part of my life. It shaped a lot of who I am growing up in mostly horrible ways. It took a long time for me to discover who I am outside of what that illness made me. There are still parts of myself that I am still untangling from my cPTSD today. Experiencing trauma is not like experiencing stress. There is not good trauma like there is good stress aka stress that is normal and helps you build your mental or physical stress. Trauma is debilitating. It might be the origin story for many super heroes in cartoons, but in real life, most people end up struggling to live their lives as normal as possible. Abuse, rape, seeing people die, having to kill someone for your job, being maimed and all those horrible things are not normal. They do not make you stronger. Mental illness is not a super power Remember, not everyone survives trauma. Not everyone lives a good life or even normal life after trauma. Some people live in fear the rest of their lives. Some people become lonely horrible people. Some people will never be able to hold a job again. Does that mean people cannot be strong or live normal lives after trauma? No, but they figure out how to be strong despite the trauma. People can cope and survive trauma with support from family, friends, society and professionals. Stigmatizing PTSD, cPTSD and trauma helps no one. We need to understand what these things are so we can help each other, stop intergenerational trauma, break the cycles of abuse and just be better as a people.  Christelle: https://www.instagram.com/sd.christelle Me: www.TheThoughtfulBeast.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ready-to-talk/support