At any rate, this is what I've learned thus far, from reflecting on the experiences of AutismTwitter during the #Spring2020AutisticLockdown.

What to say to never-traumatized folks about the pantrauma, I've yet to figure out.

It's only a half-joke though for me to suggest that everyone, regardless of trauma experience, set up an altar to Pan.

[fin]

#pantrauma

Already having survived trauma however may at least allow you to keep your head through initial rounds of most everyone else losing theirs.

So look for one another. Think ahead about who you know who's already got trauma scars. Who do you know who's "good in a crisis"? Why do you think that is?

We all know trauma casualties who are on the bubble, too. Some of these, we may lose as the world burns. Others may rise to the occasion of a pantrauma.

#pantrauma

And little, of course, prevents trauma survivors from being re-traumatized. I say "little," because there's a hard-headedness that comes of the practice of "sitting with negative feelings" advocated by both Vinay and Jessica Wildfire.

To survive pantrauma unscathed, you'll need to be enlightened in one or another of the world's enlightenment traditions.

If that's your goal, better get cracking. Short of that in any case, the more you sit, the harder your head.

#pantrauma

This will leave trauma survivors and trauma casualties looking on in horror as the rest of the world attempts to avoid the culling process that traumatization brings.

"Minimizers," whether pandemic- or climate-focused, represent one such avoidance startegy. Look around for others.

Compassion may or may not have a place here. What I'm saying is that seeing what's in front of us against a background of oncoming trauma leaves us better capable of understanding it.

#pantrauma

@the_Effekt #pantrauma

Agreed. Considered phrasing it more like that. In writing this thread though, I realized I'm addressing people who've already been traumatized, though mostly by the usual cruelty that's been going on for generations.

So I was trying to draw a line between them and whatever's ahead. I've really no idea what to say to people for whom it's hard to, as @StillIRise1963 puts it, "believe that bad shit can happen to them."

It may be all we're going to be able to do is watch.

@ebk

#pantrauma

It's a good hash, and very likely as you've described.

We're probably already going through it to some extent due to the collection of crises we're dealing with. These stresses might be just below the surface but it won't be long.

Mental health issues and crime and violence from people with nothing left to lose is already increasing.

Given climate change and all else before us, we should expect fresh experience with collective, population-scale trauma within the lifespans of many present day adults.

Just to have a name for this, I propose "pantrauma," as in "pandemic," "pan-" being a nod, still and always, to the Greek god from whom we get the word "panic."

The prevailing perspective on the new pantrauma, I suspect, will be that of the as yet untraumatized.

#pantrauma

With not even the poets guessing why:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

#pantrauma

Somewhere in one of the many hours I've listened to of Vinay Gupta being interviewed, he speculated that humanity is still passing down generational trauma that originated with the Black Death.

When we look at all the repressive Covid denial we see today, it's not hard to imagine how we might react to sending off our dead piled high on carts for years on end.

We surely could store up a massive backlog of personal trauma that would echo and unfurl, parent to child, for centuries.

#pantrauma

@StillIRise1963

Traumatized people often wind up alexithymic, or out of touch with emotions, slow or unable to know, name, feel, or act on what we're feeling.

Your treatment of your toddlers sounds like anti-alexithymia training.

Once enough people in a nation have been traumatized, one way or another, and this goes unrecognized and unaddressed, and is repeating across generations?

Your treatment of your toddlers sounds like citizenship, leadership, and survival training.

#pantrauma

When my kids were toddlers, I used to ask them questions to help them pinpoint their feelings. "Are you mad, sad, confused, frustrated...?" I taught them lots of words because I wanted them to be able to say exactly what they meant.

@StillIRise1963

#pantrauma

When my kids were toddlers, I used to ask them questions to help them pinpoint their feelings. "Are you mad, sad, confused, frustrated...?" I taught them lots of words because I wanted them to be able to say exactly what they meant.

— @StillIRise1963

#pantrauma

Beginning to round out the autism threads now, bringing them back home as to why this all belongs on Global Dark Theme.

Hashtags that've brought matters along to this point :

#Spring2020AutisticLockdown (~18)
#LatN (5)
#GDTautismIntro (8)
#WhoTalks (13)
#LivingInFear (2)
#DPSO! (7)
#traumapants (next)
#pantrauma (later)

Spoiler: none of this, it turns out, has anything to do with autism.

It has everything to do with trauma.

An experience not at all limited to autistics.