Book #21
Unbroken: The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong
By MaryCatherine McDonald, PhD
The Importance of Positive Mentors
I lost a lot of my mentors over the past decade. Some of this came simply from life’s progression. I moved on from sports so I no longer have coaches. I finished my master’s and left my teachers. In adulthood, there are authority figures like bosses, but these are not always mentors. You probably often question whether they have your best interest at heart. It can feel unmooring.
I didn’t realize how hard I took these losses until I recently started finding new mentors. It is really great to have wise people in my life again that I can trust. However, I have largely not found these in my everyday life but have sought them out in books.
Although I am sure there is a personal element that I am missing, I am still incredibly grateful for their impact from afar. That impact has been real and genuine, even though the relationship is parasocial.
I can feel my secure attachment increasing- it does not have to be a result of relationships with people that I know personally. Having access to the guidance of an intelligent person who wants to help others makes me feel a weight lift from my shoulders.
Ironically, since I have been accepting more healthy relationships into my life from afar, closer real-life relationships have started to appear as well. It also means I have less space for the bad ones in real-life.
Contextualizing Trauma
McDonald talks a lot about the complexities of identifying and categorizing trauma as compared to everyday painful experiences. I think this is an interesting issue as it is so personal to the person who experienced it.
Calling every bad event “traumatic” can dilute the meaning of the word, but using it too sparingly can be dismissive of people’s genuine emotions and experiences. And what is traumatic for one person might not have affected another person so deeply.
Connecting Context to Personal Experience
A weird categorization that I have noticed in my own life is this: when people compare traumas, someone might say something like: “what happened to you wasn’t as bad as what happened to me”. One problem I find with this reaction is that it only focuses on what is known or has already happened in a situation. It is more past-focused than future-focused; more analytical than proactive. It looks at past and present events, not possible future events.
For example, say I had a teacher put his arm around me. A friend might be like: “You think that is bad, I just got assaulted!” Which is true. Having an authority figure violate your physical space in a subtle way isn’t as bad as getting assaulted… yet.
But this mentality ignores the fact that the teacher may escalate this type of touch and now I am hesitant to say anything because it is “not so bad”. By the time it gets to be “bad” in the eyes of others, it is already too late to prevent the abuse. All that can be done at that point is try to prevent further abuse.
How This Information Can Positively Affect You
But when dealing with a “my trauma was worse than your trauma” type of response, they typically need evidence that your trauma was worse. All effort goes to comparison, not proactivity. And comparing traumas stops us from questioning overall systems.
Sure, a person’s trauma might not be as bad as yours, but in two years it might be even worse. That’s the awful thing about trauma… it isn’t fixed. The amount of trauma you have experienced can unfortunately change in an instant. It also assumes that we know everything that has happened to others. But we examine the trauma from a limited perspective.
Now that I have a better sense of the nature of trauma, I can make more informed decisions on how to react to it- both retroactively and proactively. And I can move toward healthier environments and communities. The sad thing about this is that it is easier to just ignore all of this. Then you can maintain every relationship, even the toxic ones.
But once you start to realize what is healthy for you and what you deserve, there are a lot of tough decisions to be made. These are ultimately good problems to have. I grow my own sense of safety and self-worth whenever I make a healthy decision- and I would lose these things a little bit more each time I made an unhealthy decision. My self-esteem is improving, little by little.
Messy Bun Book Lover
(Originally posted on June 20, 2025)
Read Unbroken: The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong by MaryCatherine McDonald → https://amzn.to/3IQtwrE
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