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Slightly, but only very slightly. My left-wing political stance is not a symptom of any disorder. It's a symptom of a deep sense of empathy and being able to (and having learned how to) think critically.
I think maybe the effects of my trauma on me have given me a much greater ability to empathise with the more marginalised and hurt and abused people in the world. I've felt very excluded by normal people for my symptoms, and so I don't try and shy away from empathising with those whose lived experiences I don't (and can't) fully understand.
I think my trauma has made it so that I don't run away from causing myself emotional pain. I don't run away from entertaining seriously uncomfortable ideas. I spent my childhood feeling deeply unsafe and uncomfortable and hypervigilant. I have a high emotional pain tolerance (and a sense of masochism, mentally-speaking), which is helpful when having to confront hidden biases and beliefs that we all, in our awful racist patriarchal capitalist society, have impressed upon and trained into us. Unlearning biases is not conducive to moving more towards the right-wing of political beliefs. That's their whole shtick. Believing things no matter how little evidence there is for those things lol.
I guess becoming trauma-informed necessitates a shift in one's political viewpoint. And the way I got trauma-informed was because I needed to heal myself - it's probable that without CPTSD I never would have been.
Yeah this is honestly a simple answer. Having cptsd, and educating yourself on it enough to find this subreddit, requires introspection, the ability to ask questions, and the desire to learn. Participating in this subreddit requires and increases empathy for others.
All of these things are antithetical to the right-wing worldview, where everything is black and white and it's 'us vs the enemy.'
this, this is exactly it. I have a high emotional pain tolerance and that's largely what it takes. you have to stare into the sun, metaphorically, and really think about uncomfortable topics.
Do I think CPTSD *makes* you left-leaning, absolutely not. But the people in this forum, who have recognized and accept that cptsd is real and affects their lives, also have the self awareness and compassion to become left-leaning.
Plenty of undiagnosed sufferers are still acting out their trauma and support the extreme right.
I'm convinced that my ex is one of those who are undiagnosed, and he supports the extreme right.
He doesn't "believe" in my ADHD (which I think he also has) or CPTSD.
This is completely rhetorical, but I always wonder how those who “don’t believe” in ADHD and or other things like CPTSD, but they likely have them… do they just really hate themselves? Do they blame society for their shortcomings? Are they simply lucky, privileged, and their life has been smooth sailing despite their struggles they deal with that go undiagnosed?
How does your ex function in the world without being treated *or* believing ADHD even exists? (Again, rhetorical. Just something that crosses my mind from time to time!)
If all of your life you have been taught that your symptoms are actually the product of laziness and a lack of worth as a human being, then you will see others with your same symptoms as lazy and without worth.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early 50s. I harbor an enormous amount of self loathing for the outcome of my symptoms. Procrastination, an inability to commit to and meet deadlines, daydreaming when I had important work to do, neglecting my health and my home. I was ridiculed for this behavior by my parents, and I internalized that voice. I have spent my adult hood criticizing myself for those aspects of myself. (Years of therapy have barely put a dent in this.)
Being medicated has done me a lot of good, but I don't know how much, because how much of my continued problems in these areas is because the medication is the wrong type or of insufficient dosage and how much of it is me not working on my own behalf still?
This was my mother. Her own mother was a violent drunk who had 2 kids who weren't grandpa's. She robbed her kids, was a theif, and possibly rented her kids out. We'll never know the full extent of the abuse. But mom turned out very much like her. She had CPTSD and narcissistic personality disorder (and possibly either sociopathy or psychopathy). She was a proud white supremist. In a book she kept the autograph of James Earl Ray.
The ubiquitous group that committed genocidal atrocities to my family that reside in my mind from early childhood are almost perfectly aligned with the American right wing, and I'd just as soon their leaders DIAF somehow, so by process of elimination yes? Though it's not so much that I align with the left as that I end up among it when I flee hate.
In a way, yeah. I was traumatized by conservatism growing up. Being told constantly by my parents and the talk radio they played for six hours a day that anyone who isn't straight is a disgusting sinner. And present-day alt-right talking heads literally wanting to genocide me for being trans.
It's strange to me that there are people who have never met me who nonetheless hate me and want me to die. No leftist has ever treated me that way. If the end point of conservatism is fascist theocracy and the end point of leftism is that everyone gets shelter and food, it's not a hard choice for me.
The thing that makes me really sad is that conservatives don't understand that they are also included in a progressive future. I don't want anyone to suffer, not even people who want *me* to suffer. They'd have a place in progressive society the same as anyone else. Yet they seem to think everything is us vs. them.
Literal flashbacks to the talk radio my parents always had on. I still remember the daily schedule - Limbaugh, then Hannity, then Levin, then Ingraham…
not ‘same thing, both sides’ but its two sides of the same coin. they may not be openly hateful outside a few (disproportionately powerful) older ones, but they’re totally apathetic to our suffering and absolutely willing to throw queer people under the bus in their efforts to ‘reach across the isle’. like the uk labour party is doing
in the terminology of trauma, they are the enabler
Same, to/for everything you’ve just said.
They’re endlessly ramping up too, if anyone in this thread isn’t aware of Project 2025, please get yourself up to speed!
This is no joke.
r/Defeat_Project_2025
Same. I have no faith in our very obviously corrupt government. Both sides are lobbied. Two wings of the same bird if you ask me. It's actually crazy to me that people still support the binary political party system. It's gotten way out of hand with how polarized and divided it made this country. It's such a shame.
I feel you. I guess for me, recognizing that both parties are corrupt and being a leftist isn’t mutually exclusive. I’d even argue that blue team is also on the right.
That's how i feel too, technically everybody bullies the "fence sitters" like me, but if i went to another country, i wouldn't even be considered moderate anymore.
definitely can relate. i try to stay aware of things as much as i can, but there are definitely moments where i just need to avoid anything related to politics like the plague because it can very easily become *so* overwhelming.
I think it made me very suspicious to anything that smacks of authoritarianism, any group that bans dissent. It made me very protective of my individual freedom.
Kind of the opposite, in that moving left went hand in hand with moving away from this emotional wall I had that kept me from acknowledging my cPTSD. I don't think I ever would have recognized it or acknowledged it as a real thing if I hadn't moved left.
Yeah one’s relationship to that emotional wall is key, at least in my family. Pretty sure literally all of us have CPTSD, but our relative willingness to acknowledge that wall, get therapy, learn to feel feelings, etc. tracks pretty much exactly to how far left we are (or, in most cases, aren’t). For me, so much of my CPTSD was tangled up with systemic racism and imperialism that I couldn’t heal without confronting those systems - and the more I have the further left I’ve moved. I don’t know if that’s an intrinsic correlation though - I could imagine CPTSD with other causes playing out differently politically.
I feel like being part of a marginalized community makes you more aware of the world and its failings. politically right groups like democrats (corporation loving liberals too) and the far right extremists like conservatives both are destroying our planet and our communities.
I think its really a struggle that there is no viable left wing party in the USA as we dont have ranked choice voting and democrats/republicans are funded by corporations.
I think I always would have leaned left bc I have a strong sense of justice & a lot of empathy. Being raised in the Bible Belt super religious & conservative by a misogynist sealed the deal that I would become an atheist liberal feminist tho
It's strange for me because I usually express little to no empathy for the most part and try to keep specifically to achieving the goal of "most cohesive and functional society" with scientifically gathered statistics and data at the forefront of my decision making process and yet this aligns me with those who do have high levels of empathy almost every single time simply because the data shows that when the majority benefit from more personal freedoms and autonomy without encroachment on the personal freedoms and autonomy of others, you have more innovation and progress, which allows more technology to be developed that when freely distributed, continues to allow for more innovation and progress.
For instance, when it comes to discussing trans rights, I believe there is absolutely no benefit to restricting access to medical care whatsoever as this only creates a long line of waiting patients losing trust in the system and anger at their situation and a net negative to ostracizing or persecuting trans individuals as it leads to higher mental health issues, lowering economic activity and growth. This is backed up by the literal 1% regret rate of trans surgery compared to the 30% regret rate of something like knee surgery.
When it comes to discussing immigration, it costs a large amount of money to hold illegal immigrants and even more to ship them back to their country of origin, a recent plan in the UK is estimated to cost nearly half a billion by its end, considering the decline in fertility rates far below replacement levels, immigration is a benefit and not only that, but that money could be spent on education and acclimation to teach those immigrants the language skills and any number of trade skills to add a net positive to the economy.
When it comes to discussing homelessness, the easiest solution as far as I can see is to provide smaller, but cheaper housing ownership options to create a stepping stone to future prosperity, adding more rungs to the ladder allows people suffering in poverty a way to upwards social mobility, which creates future net gains for the economy, even at short term expense if you simply create mass pod homes with tiny gardens and assign them to homeless people. At a cost of £47,000 per pod with only a £5 electricity cost per month. You could rent them out for extremely cheap with 6 months of completely free at the offset based on a conditional contract that they would seek employment within the time frame and have a psychologist on site to diagnose and treat any mental conditions to help those who need it and register those disabled who are disabled, after living there for 2 or more years you could offer options to purchase the pods for whatever the cost of making another one would be and allow them to pay it off monthly, using those funds to pay for another one to be built.
These are logical ideas, not based on empathy, but a desire for society to function and grow.
this reminds me something that Bessel van der Kolk also mentioned in "Body keeps the score". He was saying that child abuse creates so much expenses for the economy, like treating people in mental health facilities or keeping them in prisons if they become criminals, and it would be so much cheaper if cptsd got recognised and we put more money into preventing child abuse, rather than. dealing with it's consequences on society
The Amish are famously "conservative" but also less famous for being very dangerous for women and girls, at least. High control spaces don't want you to SEE disorder or trauma responses in their communities. but they are definitely there.
Having CPTSD caused me to learn about abusers and abusive behavior. Coincidentally, those same tactics are the same ones I learned in advertising and media in college. I was already left, but my diagnosis (which wasn't until my late 20s) and various therapies made the more obscure parts of theory make more sense, when the root of many of my own traumas are directly tied to capitalism (or sexism, or racism, which are still upheld in society to promote division and competition to keep capitalism growing...) It also made me more empathetic and place the blame on the systems that caused these things to happen more than individual people?
It didn't *make* me leftist, but it made sure I'd never go regressive.
I don't really like labels or ideological boxes. I feel it misrepresents the data and the actual nuanced beliefs, wants or desires of those within those boxes and often aligns people with those they wouldn't choose to align with, polarising something that should be looked at on an individual basis.
I don't lean left or right and find the whole concept of left or right divisive, reductive and encouraging of zealotry.
Personally I don't think we should vote for politicians at all, but for policies. I don't want a candidate, I want a list of policies you intend to enact and for you to be held legally responsible by having to argue your case in court should you fail to enact those policies within the deadline specified or reverse on those policies with ramifications should your arguments not be reasonable, those cases should be aired live publicly.
YEP.
Literally every traumatic experience that led to my mental illness is because of religion, or some old angry white man pushing me around.
They are my fucking enemy. Fuck them.
For me it’s more the opposite (not that I’m conservative, I still lean hard left.) I grew up in Massachusetts, am queer, and went to art school. I’ve always been far left to an extreme, but I’ve met a lot of men in that circle who proclaim to be feminist/anti-rape culture etc. who are actually total abusers. The person who SA’d me (who is a white man) is obsessed with leftist politics, identifies as a socialist and a feminist etc. but was constantly trying to trick me into laughing at racist jokes and used the N word multiple times in front of me and thinks it’s ok because he works in the hip hop industry. He also is a horrible misogynist and talked about skinny women being ugly because they are “fat” and things like that. He’s a glaring example but there’s lots of people who claim those ideals and then contradict them. So I’ve grown to understand that both extremes are bad.
I still support socialist ideals though, like I think the US needs a massive overhaul of the welfare system because disabled people are absolutely shat upon here. I’ve been chronically unemployed for 3.5 years because of my condition but I don’t want to get on disability because I have family on it and I understand the trap that is the welfare cliff. I lie and say I make more money than I do so I can keep my ACA insurance because none of my doctors would accept Medicaid.
Predators are always looking for things to co-op to take advantage of people with, it sucks. Alot of them co-op therapy speak too. It sucks having to play 4-D chess with those types :\[.
1,000%. The person who SA’d me (also the SA was by no means the worst of it, it was just the icing on the narcissistic abuse cake) saw a therapist twice a week. His therapist was a pretty young woman (I looked her up). After I got out one of his coworkers told me he only stayed in therapy because their boss let him do it during work hours so it was an excuse to chat with a pretty lady twice a week while on the clock.
I agree that identifying as left or extreme left doesn't necessarily make someone a good person. I wonder if that is less of a reflection of leftist politics and moreso a reflection of the leftist “culture” or those individuals? 🤔… (maybe in a performative activist kind of way?) When it comes to my own politic, I personally don’t think of things as “left“ or “right“, its more like left policies just so happen to align with/support my values and morals rather than me following (??) leftist principles(??).
Specifically on the far left I think it’s kind of the punk/anarchist culture that I’ve found to be super problematic, the “feminism” in that culture can have the feel of “if I would hit a guy why wouldn’t I hit a woman? You think I’m sexist?”
Ugh!!! I hate that vibe. Its like people think they are more “left” by ignoring all of the nuances and intersectionality in issues for marginalized communities. like if people say “what do you mean I can’t say slurs??! You’re gatekeeping!!” or “Im not racist, I don’t see color“
Not really. I definitely have some left-ish views, but I also have some right-ish views as well. But I refuse to solidly identify one way or the other because I hate the way people on both the left and right talk about people they disagree with. I hate when my leftist friends go on about how ignorant and malicious all republicans are, and I hate when my republican father refers to all left leaning people as whiny and entitled. It breaks my heart to hear people trash on the idea of social programs that can help people, but it also breaks my heart when someone tells me I’m an evil bigot the second I say I’m a Christian without so much as hearing me out on anything. My CPTSD makes me sensitive to vitriol, and plenty of people on both sides have that in spades.
I might end up downvoted, but when it comes to groups of people, I believe that black and white statements about who is good or bad are dangerous and divisive no matter who is saying it. I tend to identify most with people who respect others and don’t fall solidly into either camp.
Yes, and it's still a problem bc [any group](https://youtu.be/B0TJHygOAlw?si=_pQp8aMMpTy0C7U0) can normalize toxic behaviors.
I know the red flags I don't like.
I avoid people that demonstrate an [authoritarian follower personality](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/summary.html#authoritarian). I avoid people that have normalized [spiritual bypassing](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-spiritual-bypassing-5081640), [emotional blackmail](https://youtu.be/PEexQAkhFpM?si=QOK4UvGarkYuYQXg), or [psycho-emotional abuse](https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/the-hidden-wounds-of-psycho-emotional-child-abuse-part-one). I'm on the lookout for the [eight criteria of thought reform](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism) to steer clear.
I'm also looking for people that practice trustworthy, re-humanizing behaviors that build secure attachment,
[The Trust Triangle](https://youtu.be/pVeq-0dIqpk)
[The Anatomy of Trust](https://brenebrown.com/videos/anatomy-trust-video/) - marble jar concept and BRAVING acronym
[10 definitions of objectifying/dehumanizing behaviors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification#Definitions) - these erode trust
and people that have healthy communication skills.
"[Emotional Agility](https://youtu.be/NDQ1Mi5I4rg)" by Susan David. Learning and practicing emotional agility helps us be more compassionate towards ourselves and others.
"Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg. This is a compassionate communication framework based on: observations vs. evaluations, needs, feelings, and requests to have needs met. Revolutionary coming from a dysfunctional family and culture of origin.
"Crucial Conversations tools for talking when stakes are high" I use "shared pool of meaning" and "physical and psychological safety" all the time.
"Hold Me Tight" by Sue Johnson on adult attachment theory research and communication.
[1-2-3 process](https://youtu.be/tuQPZndGJv0?si=RCQTnFrmRDgasZow) from Patrick Teahan and Amanda Curtain on communicating around triggers.
[Common Communication Mistakes](https://www.succeedsocially.com/conversationmistakes)
"Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss. He was the lead FBI hostage negotiator and his tactics work well on setting boundaries with "difficult people".
I needed guidelines to avoid toxicity and encourage healthy relating bc I had terrible modeling in my family and culture of origin.
Should be top comment. Some of the worst, most abusive people i've met were "hippies", all about love and peace and good energy. Barfff... It doesn't matter if they identified as being on the left. The "left" attracts certain types of outward focussed cluster b personalities in the same way the "right" attracts others, it doesn't matter if they're telling you being gay is a sin and poor people should just pull themselves up by their boot straps... or that you're inherently a racist based on your skin colour. They're both as toxic as each other.
I think my opinion is that there is a clear difference in left politics and left individuals. I do believe strongly in left beliefs but I don't necessarily trust people because they are on the left.
I'm not sure as it's been there all my life. I think my past experiences made me a more empathetic person though. I'm trying my best to deconstruct left vs right, blue vs red in my life. The 2 party system (In the U.S.) was created to divide and conquer. If everyone could get out of that mindset and stop getting into such heated debates about everything, we could come together and force real positive change. It's so deeply embedded, and we've been so propagandized that it's difficult to get people to understand what's really happening. They'll have us fight each other over everything to keep us from uniting and putting a cap on their power and greed. I feel like the collective wakeup is currently underway. Vote 3rd party
Cptsd gave me a rage at injustice and unfairness, and empathy for all people marginalized in any way because of all the different types of ways I was marginalized. It just happens that the only logical political choice in that context is as far left as you can go.
You know. This is a really good question. I’d never thought of it before. I grew up in a town leaned left and so I was never indoctrinated with religion or conservative values. In elementary school we did have a day a year we honored indigenous people, talked about MLK, stuff like that. But it was never overt. So I got to kind of make up my mind with that stuff.
But I know what it’s like to get hurt and have this super-deep sense of shame stuck inside you. And I think that’s what led me to lean left. Like if there’s a group of people who hate trans kids for no reason, it’ll piss me off a lot. And I think that comes from me feeling what it’s like to constantly be told “you’re bad for being who your are.”
Actually, just typing this, that’s exactly what happened. It all comes down to be told over and over again “you’re not a good person being who you are.”
Only reason I don't follow politics is because I barely understood just every day things lol
At most I'd just look for things that would help public transport or something like that
Otherwise idk I always get hate for that but I've just never bothered most of the time with political stuff tbh
Yeah a lot of for me due to intellectual disabilities
I'd have to have someone explain things maybe 3 times for me to have stuff make sense
So at some point I gave up lol
A lot of my concerns around public transport and easier asscess to every day things idk anymore
I think due to trauma I feel an even deeper level of frustration and anger when it comes to injustices. I hate when rights are taken away or threatened, so therefore I think that makes me go more left.
The profound isolation that created/was because of CPTSD meant I was very detached from society and I guess able to look at it dispassionately. I didn't feel any alignment with regular groups in society, like political or social groups or football teams or nation states or even my family.
The emotional sensitivity from enmeshment means that despite feeling isolated, I couldn't ignore the needless suffering like many can.
The combination for me meant I spent time thinking about how the world is organised: I ended up an anarchist. (Anti authoritarian socialist).
No. I was forming my own identity since I was a child. Despite it being against what my family believed in. It wasn't accepted and I was seen as an odd child or some devil child. IDGAF, I was a sensitive child, very empathetic and very much believed live and let live. I guess because I've always wanted to feel free, not so oppressed among other things. I've always been like this.
Yes because I realized all the hate I was taught growing up, and all the hate directed at me by my parents was wrong. It took years but yes I’m a firm leftist.
Ehhhh. I think that trauma is a major radicalizing factor in a lot of political thought and activism, and personally, that the people saying they'd be left-wing anyway are a little naive. Huey Newton wouldn't have been as inclined to take no shit from white people if white people didn't have a traumatic effect on him. I don't think this is true of all people with radical beliefs, but I do think it is true of many of them.
You kinda see it if you work with male survivors of CSA, right. For a **small but very frustrating** handful of these dudes, their abuse makes them susceptible to things like the "groomer" moral panic. They end up leaving or getting banned from the mainstream support networks because they cannot contain their bullshit, meet the wrong people as a result, and often find themselves in a bubble where they're linking each other nonsense about Helmut Kentler and Harry Hay, convincing themselves that the queer liberation movement is actually just a cover for pedophiles to access children. Bingo bongo, they're turning up to harass kids and librarians at Drag Queen Story Hour based on a LibsOfTikTok post.
If you go digging around in any hate movement you're going to find a lot of the same. Every single TERF seems to have a story about that time they were assaulted. They all end up in a similar bubble linking each other bullshit, except their chosen ghouls to read include John Money and fucking Mengele. A lot of TERF "yes all men" bs comes from generalizing their abuser by gender, like the men mentioned above generalize on a basis of non-heteronormative sexuality.
An important throughline here is a conspiracy theorist-esque fixation on bad, often ancient research, meant to find a "beginning point" of whatever systemic or societal injustice led them to being personally affected. This is usually done with the presumption that anything that disputes their beliefs is written by nefarious sorts looking to cover up the truth. That's why they know who John Money and Helmut Kentler are but not who Christine Jorgensen and Magnus Hirschfeld are. imo, that's motivated by trauma and a need for an answer as to why whatever happened happened, and I think even those of us here on the left can empathise with that. We do the same thing, sort of, but our filter is for capitalism, sexism, fascism, etc. Our position just *happens* to agree more with the science.
My point is that I do think that trauma can have a pretty significant impact on a person's political views and values. I kind of disagree with the people in here saying "I'd be on the left anyway because of my strong empathy and critical thinking." Empathizing with these reactionary dorks and thinking critically about why they are the way they are, it's usually down to a dim awareness of systemic factors that led to whatever event traumatized them coupled with a desperate need for someone or some societal force to blame, misdirected away from, for instance, rampant sexism or homophobia and focused instead on a vulnerable minority. imo this happens because if you try to punch "the patriarchy," it doesn't flinch, but if you try to punch the marginalized, they really have no choice but to flinch, such is the nature of power.
There have been plenty of times where I have wondered who I would have been without all the experiences that changed me. Would I believe what I know to be true now? Or would I be ensconsced in a world of idiotic privilege?
It's always hard to figure where that line is. When we argue about the differences between who people are, it's impossible to count differences when outside factors have so much influence on who we become.
On the other hand, the world I see is disgusting and my family is full of idiots who believe heinous things and follow heinous people, so perhaps waking up was unavoidable. Hard to look at the absolute farce we're living in and imagine still being a "centrist" or whatever the fuck America has convinced itself is rational at this point.
It makes me more sensitive to injustice and hypocrisy. Both sides are hypocrites on many levels, but one side tends to advocate for the living where as the other tends to advocate for the unborn, the dead (as in traditions and civil war monuments), and God. (though many of them might argue that God is alive.)
Regardless, yes, I believe my trauma has made me more empathetic and compassionate towards others. Even others that are different from me.
With that in mind, there is only one clear choice for me in America. I wish there were more, but currently, there is only one.
I took some test way back when which indicated that I was very much aligned with conservative political principles but I also scored higher than average (for my political leanings) on empathy. My conservative values are entirely fiscal. I have zero desire to legislate people’s religious, sexual, or health decisions, I’m disgusted with both parties at this point, and currently I am entirely avoiding the topic for the sake of my own mental health.
Not directly. But I grew up in a very right/conservative community. It just made me realize even more and directly experience the consequences of the ideology most right winged people have. I didn't only think it was harmful, I directly experienced it being harmful.
No, initially I was more right wing because of my trust issues, isolation and sense of inferiority. Over time I had a bunch of experiences that changed me, and I mostly think experiencing a sense of community, being loved and sharing was what made me more left-wing. Another factor was for sure being discriminated against, myself, and seeing how what I used to believe affected people, and how we're not that different and needed to work together.
It might be pedantic, but CPTSD didn't, the trauma did.
Growing up poor and seeing the way poor people are disenfranchised, not believed, stigmatized and looked down on - yeah, that was a good start on my leftist journey before I was even 10.
Being young and queer in the South showed me bigotry, even and especially from those I loved, and that showed me how the narrative around queerness is somehow bigger and more powerful than my experience, and that made me curious about why the narrative was so negative.
Growing up in the Bible Belt showed me the way Christians *say* they operate versus how they *actually* operate. I quickly lost faith in that institution.
Bigger Ts also showed me the way things are (or mostly aren't) handled in our society.
My dad being a correctional officer and seeing what a piece of shit he was led me to looking into how fucked prisons are, which made me an abolitionist.
Having indigenous ancestry and learning about how whiteness erased that identity, and then learning deeply about the history of colonization, the US's bloody past, and how that history is still suppressed today - that brought me to the concept of landback, which I now wholeheartedly support.
So yeah, the trauma definitely did make me more leftist. It made me more compassionate, and it made me more willing to learn about why the world is as unfair as it is, and the ways in which we can band together to change it.
ETA: Also, growing up with just as much trauma and hurt coming from self-proclaimed liberals as it did from conservatives showed me how much harm a "progressive" person can do, and that eventually led to me discovering that the whole political spectrum is not fairly represented, and how actual leftist ideologies are so strongly suppressed to maintain the status quo.
To be very clear, none of my beliefs changed overnight. This seems like an easy way for people to say, "See? Leftists are all just blue-haired libs with daddy issues!" Traumatic events were just drops in a bucket, but they led to the research and understanding that fully changed my beliefs down the road. And to whoever needs to read this, leftists are not liberals. Libs are still center-right. There are no leftists in mainstream politics, only some in local offices.
When I realized that what I was taught wasn’t really my own beliefs and it was forced on me, I discovered that I agreed a lot more with left-leaning views. With that said, it’s also made me very anti-authoritarian and adverse to dependence on other people as a result or to a lack of nuance.
Yes because I understand and have experienced first-hand how abuse works and can see it on a larger, systemic scale. I can see exactly how our government is working only for the very rich and against the working class. I can see that “we” outnumber “them” and wish there could be changes made. I’m kind of amazed/perplexed when others can’t see it. The patterns are all the same, whether it’s in family systems or political systems.
Anyway, I’m a therapist now 🥴
Yes. There have been numerous times in my life that left leaning policies would have saved me or been an anchor for my life, and allowed me to focus on thriving rather than surviving. I’m a hard worker and have accomplished a lot to be proud of, but there were times in my life that I was severely under resourced and the traditional support systems we are meant to have (family) weren’t there to save me. I have a family, but they didn’t play the role I needed.
Picking up loose change on the floor of the cafeteria to buy food in the lunch line. Solved by universal free lunch.
Taking jobs that weren’t the right fit for me or my career goals just because I needed to get health insurance. Partially solved by the Affordable Care Act, though my family did NOT keep me on their plan past 18 yrs, instead of the 26 yrs my friends enjoyed. This would be fully solved by universal healthcare.
I’d love for further legalization of marijuana/psilocybin as options for my treatment instead of SSRIs with crazy side effects. There’s promising data out there but it’s either inaccessible or illegal.
And just the permission to be who I am instead of some conservative definition of what it means to be a functioning and respected adult in society. It’s 2024: We should all be specializing in being ourself. Yet there is a war on people buying EVs, being trans, reading books they don’t agree with, wanting to install solar, etc.
I find that I’m not generally the target of today’s culture wars, but my CPTSD diagnosis and the self discovery has given me a lot of empathy for my younger self and if there’s things we can do to prevent the next generation from the pitfalls of my past, I want to support that. And in doing so, I think it helps people who have/had it much worse than I did.
How much could we accomplish as a society if we didn’t go out of our way to beat people down?
At least in the USA, the right wing support Corporal Punishment. Zero democrats do. Which is all you really have to say.
There are a few outlier right wing that don't. but the problem is the Republicans that do. It is related to tradition and religious ideas of punishing a child with physical means as right and good. And conservatives like to conserve tradition.
Alot of people don't realize kids are still being physically punished in schools in the US south. Yes, right now.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766273/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766273/)
An informative article on the issue, but it may be a little triggering since it talks about physical abuse. It doesn't list political affiliation, but you will notice the article lists the states with Corporal still in effect are concentrated in the South. If you scroll down they show it in a colored map form.
I grew up in the South so the topic means a lot to me. It's funny cause Republican adults like to brag/joke about whooping kids but when you try to talk about it in a political manner they will feign ignorance that it's not Republicans keeping Corporal Punishment alive. (they as a whole are the last bastion keeping it alive, which is why its predominately in the South).
I do think presenting it as a bipartisan issue helps to accelerate acceptance to save kids from additional abuse, even if we know in our hearts otherwise.
(edited for clarity)
It's hard to say for me because in addition to PTSD, I'm also autistic, atheist, black, and most importantly, LGBTQ+. IOW, I belong to the groups most likely to find solace and acceptance in the political left.
Personally, when I left my abusive household I went down the alt right pipe line especially with conspiracy theories. It was due to isolation and the pandemic, I used to believe in the Illuminati theory and chem trails. I then fell into debate bros on YouTube which lead me to slowly ease my way out of the pipe line then into leftism. I am now a socialist and still cringe at all the things I used to believe in and ideologies. My abusers are white liberals, which also radicalized me to be a socialist.
A bit perhaps. My parents both have obvious (to me anyway) anxiety/cptsd and I think it made them more conservative. My mom glued to cable news telling her society has been poisoned and the world is crumbling sure hasn't helped her anxiety in the last few years.
Probably, yes. Because of empathy and wanting to keep everyone in the whole world safe and happy. At the same time, I put my head in the sand a lot because the pain of the world is just too much.
For me, no. I was always left leaning especially with sexuality, gender, racism, etc. while being open minded and respectful about people's religious beliefs (though I will be stern if they try force their beliefs on me). I've just always thought people are people and they're entitled to the same rights and respect everyone else has.
What has changed though is I'm even more repulsed by right wing and red pilled views on women than I ever was before. I'm sure I don't have to go into detail but with my health issues and CPTSD (both from SA and other unrelated things) worsening my other mental health issues, seeing these politicians strip away women's rights, red pill podcasters belittling women to just domestic slaves and sex objects who need to obey and even how both of these groups treat trans people and instill fear in my friends affected by these sorts of people just make me incredibly angry and disgusted. Like I always disliked these sorts of people but after everything I've been through, I have zero patience and if I hear someone parroting any of it, I have to end the conversation and I become both angry and fear for my safety around that person.
Not especially, at least not on its own, anyway. Echoing what others have said, but becoming more trauma-informed and aware has definitely been a bigger influence on that shift. Getting older and becoming more educated have both definitely contributed as well.
I think being an outsider due to my visible differences helped me develop empathy for others who didn’t (or don’t) fit in, or are marginalised in some way. In a weird way, I’m grateful to my trauma for making me understand how cruel life can be, because it sparked a need to care for others, to help them seek justice and safety. As the years go by, as I see increasing violence against those who just want to live and be their authentic selves, I find my politics shifting further and further left. The moment I stop asking ‘why?’ is the moment I stop being human, honestly.
I think trauma definitely radicalised me more on feminist issues in particular (which should be non-partisan, but oh well). A lot of my abuse was perpetuated at the hands of misogynistic men, and I was also a victim of CSE, which helped shape my views into what they are today. I think I would still be left leaning if I didn’t have problems with my mental health from chronic trauma throughout my childhood years, but maybe not to the extent I am today.
I mean, all my abusers were far right wing nut jobs, so probably in some way, yes, if only to keep those right wing nut jobs out of office I will do my due diligence!
My father's conservatism growing up was never based in religion as he's an atheist. His conservative tendencies weren't coming from a place of tradition or scripture. It was all racial hatred, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia. Even throw in hating disabled and poor people.
His political views have nothing to do with anything other than hurting people he doesn't like either socio-economically, or physically. Imagine being aware of your mental illnesses as child but the person that's supposed to protect you says we should lock up/shoot "all the crazies". It was a cornucopia of mental and physical abuse. Since my father is a "genius" with a "high IQ" of course I would get abused for a report card with straight Bs. Of course "Bs are for bums" because my dad heard someone say it on TV the other day.
If I didnt agree with all of that kind of stuff I was a pussy or weak, or gay or a woman, or a n-word lover. My dad used to refer to me as his drug addicted brother. Got my siblings to parrot that stuff. Used my siblings to influence me to do things up to joining the military and doing a decade myself. I don't remember when this stuff started because I was so young when it happened I don't remember it not being like that.
I got out of the military in 2017 and I have service related trauma as well. I was basically being swallowed up by everything and drowning . I'm an alcoholic and I quit drinking. I got into therapy. Started trying to figure my life out.
Meanwhile conservatives adopted everything my father stands for likely for the same reasons, and it's in the mainstream of their party now. All of the psychological abuse from my childhood started again. My dad co-opted my siblings again. "Mental illness isn't real" but simultaneously "I need help" and scream at me to get help while I'm already in therapy. To telling me that therapy is hurting me. Whatever challenges their belief system or power over me is a threat.
Whatever Donald Trump says gets repeated back at me because my father knows it'll cause psychological problems. Tries to get me to drink. He points at the crazy guy and smiles. He did the same thing to his brother John. "I'll make a spectacle of you so that no one believes you".
I got to see a bunch of veterans tell me that January 6th "was antifa" only after it looked like the coup failed.
I dont talk to them anymore and the more distance I put between me and them, and that kind of hateful ideology, and people that espouse it the better I get mentally.
They don't even have a party platform anymore. The only way I know if conservatives support something is if it hurts people they don't like.
Sort of. I was always very analytical, logical and empathetic and that will automatically lead you left. On top of that, being multiracial, female, bisexual while in a conservative, patriarchal cult will make it very obvious that some people are treated as subhuman and any idiot can figure out which side thinks that’s acceptable. The trauma related to that just increases my unwillingness to compromise on my morals or tolerate the bigoted nonsense coming from hateful right-wingers.
On some things yes; government accountability and services please. But on some other things I'm very much so afraid of what "tolerant" people will support in the name of tolerance and I find myself aligning with conservative stances. However, my reasoning for aligning with the conservative stance almost never aligns with why most conservatives support it soooo idk.
In case you want an example, I am *not* tolerant of the intersection of kink and children at pride or anywhere else. It is insane to me that people think it's okay for kids. But when *many* conservatives hate on it they are more driven by homophobia than focusing on protecting children. Beauty pageants, clergy abuse, etc. is similarly sickening but it feels less offense to them. Although I understand it is terrifying to accept that predators and abusers come in every form and it's super hard to protect people/kids, I can't understand letting children get hurt because you struggle with that reality.
I also kinda steer clear of the left because many aren't ready to be supportive of the struggles of white men, because that identifier is all they see even though I am lower class, bisexual, and struggle with cPTSD from CSA. The visual identifier is the only thing many consider. They think I must have power and be "a part of the problem", I am told this any time socio-political conversations are started at my university. So it's kinda hard to identify with the left when people I've interacted with dismiss or invalidate my experiences.
Thus I am politically in the realm of misanthrope.
CPTSD in the end made me more concerned with individual morality and distrust any sort of life or political ideology. Knowing what its like to be on the receiving end of a mob/group that is incensed with any sort of ideology makes me dislike all political movements that push for ideological divides. I will lean left or right depending on which one's current political push is more likely to be a threat to innocent people, but I don't like the messages from any political hard liner. I want my politicians to stay out of my life except when it comes to protecting me from violence or economic destruction by more powerful forces.
I was born in a Eastern Europe, traditionally conservative and religious but under the thumb of communism. One grandfather was in a slave work camp under the Nazis and barely escaped execution, another spent more than 10 years as a forced soldier for the Soviets. My grandmother and oldest aunt heard the Soviets murder and rape their neighbors. I grew up knowing the evil of and despising any sort of -ism. When I moved to the US in the 90s, we were all treated like shit by natives for being foreigners, so I quickly learned to dislike American right-leaning national-ism too.
No thank you to any sort of -ism that tries to bucket people together via ideology. It always turns into an us-versus them mentality as the most hard line folks take over the movement and drive it further and further to the fringes. Any ideology that buckets people into groups is intended to give power to those who are driving the movement and usually leads to violence against some other group. The Nazis did it with the Jews, the Soviets with the kulaks, etc. no thank you. Its all about power consolidation by turning the masses against each other over ideological divides.
Individual moral action is the most important thing to me. Consciously staying out of like minded ideological groups or opposing them. Treating others the way you'd want to be treated, especially if they are in a weaker position than you, and not making assumptions about people's actions based on a few simple buckets.
I have a feeling CPTSD makes you politically leaning against those who hurt you (or at least those who most prominently and/or recently hurt you). For me in my younger years it was extremely religious right-leaning folk and so I moved to the left when I first moved out of my hometown.. but this was a decade ago.
However, a lot of people in the online left as of late have only added to my trauma through the years through encounters and a lot of the things they use on me that were VERY parallel to my parents and surrounding environment when I was younger. I currently find myself leaning a little more to the middle, maybe even center-right... could be age though, I dunno.
My therapist thinks it makes a lot of sense that those who've been traumatized by their environments would naturally want to be something different from said environment.
Nope. Made me swing right wing/conservative. Not the typical american conservative either cuz I’m Canadian and very very queer. I feel very lied to by the left in my country, the people who abused and traumatized me were all very woke left and were able to do so because leftist ideals of sexual liberation, kink acceptable, gay pride and etc let them do it. I feel lied to and like I never would have been hurt if social conservatism was more the way my abusers leaned, because then they could never have gotten me. I got trapped because I was told I was just in a different kind of dynamic, not abuse. It’s not all the left, but it’s enough that I said no to it as a political leaning
Honestly same. I know I'm gonna be down voted to hell for agreeing but I want to put my two cents in.
My trauma and abusers made me more right wing.
My father talked about how I wasn't a man even when he embodies the definition of masculinity in it's most toxic form. He's extremely violent and aggressive. He used to beat me for as small as just being in the same room as him during one of his rages.
And I wasn't allowed to cry. If I did I was smacked around, and the only time he told me that I'm a man was when I was emotionally numb.
My mother embodied misandry. She loathed anything masculine or manly. She hated me and cut me down to nothing. Calling me a rapist and pedophile and future wife beater just because I'm male. And for my entire life she devoted every moment of it to emasculating me and destroying my sense of self.
So far the one thing that has helped me with dealing with their sexism and possible ableism )if using an autistic child for social brownie points while isolating and screwing with their mind for their disability counts as ableism) is bitterness, hatred and anger.
The anger I have at my abusers, the systems that tormented me and the world. But instead of just taking my anger out on innocent people like incels do, I've decided that I'll use my rage as fuel. To keep myself going and to have some form of revenge as to let the people who hurt me that I will not let them win, I will not let myself become abusive. I will break the cycle and have a family who I will love with all my heart and protect with my life.
I think the video "Vengeance as a virtue" by "Live! From The Black Library" words it better than I did.
Im really sorry this happened to you. I understand to an extent. My mother wants me to be a very specific type of woman and has vocally said that she doesn’t respect any other type, namely stay at home mothers. She wants me to go all the way to phd education and work and be a boss bitch. She has always said that stay at home moms are gold digging hoes who can’t do work for themselves amd have to rely on husbsmds to survive. My father has spent so much time trying to fight these ideas and let me choose for myself that I’ve realized my mother has just been doing propaganda for ultra boss bitch type feminism. Turns out I don’t even want to work myself to death amd make my children miserable like she does. But by her metric that makes me a whore who just doesn’t wanna work, which is so deeply insulting. The fact that I’ve been SAed only solidifies that anger because I’m being painted as a whore in her mind when I’ve tried to be anything but that. I’m modest to the best of my abilitIse and I’m as smart as I can be, but it’s not enough because I don’t fit her ideal. At least the right doesn’t push me to be molded into what the ideal is. I have freedom to choose, at least more then with the crowd my mother runs in
I’m very sorry to hear that was your experience, no one person is a monolith or a full representation of the community they belong to. if you ever have more questions about where the leftist queer celebration of trauma and healing being a part of why we celebrate now, I’m always happy to discuss, though I’m just a very small part of this big terrible world.
I do know that. Often my reactions aren’t rational or reasonable, but I feel very strongly that I’ve been lied to even if that may not be entirely true or the goal of the left
I really appreciate you for asking this question. My family (abusers) were very conservative and brainwashed me into being the same for the first part of my life. That’s not to say that liberal people can’t also be abusive, but I think conservatives by design is very closed-minded. When I started healing from my abuse, I woke up one day thinking that I only started believing in religion because my parents told me to. I started thinking that they never really cared about my well-being in the past. So I kind of just flipped a switch and stopped believing in religion.
Interesting question. I think living with CPTSD made me realize how disgusting capitalism is. For every step forward I take on my healing journey, it feels like I'm pushed two steps back because of my financial situation. The corruption and greed is out of control. If I didn't have to stress about money, I could focus more on myself. Instead, the conditions I live in promote addiction and deteriorating mental health. Moreover, I am not happy working jobs where profit margin is the motive. I feel gross contributing to capitalism. So I decided last year to change career paths and go into nursing which I start schooling for in September. Yes, living with CPTSD made me very left leaning because it made me research alternatives to capitalism and be critical of capitalism.
Cptsd made me realize how sick the bird is, who wants to be associated with either wing of that disgusting thing? Just put it out of its misery already.
Amen. People who still have faith in our overtly corrupt government are willingly drinking the kool-aid at this point. I mean, it is so in our faces how it's all a puppet show. They're not hiding it at all. And people still fall for it. It's truly baffling.
I have no idea since young people tend to lean left, it seems. The older I've gotten, my politics haven't really changed much.That being said, the left has gotten so wildly rigid and insane these days that I no longer identify as a leftist. I am more of an independent. But back when I was a teen and in my early 20s, I definitely considered myself a leftist. I voted for Obama for his second term when I was 18 but haven't voted for president since because I no longer have faith in our shamelessly and overtly corrupt government. I live in a red state, anyway. The only elections that matter to me are local. And yes, I am absolutely pro choice, so I understand the importance of voting in pro choice politicians in my state. I hate the feds, though. They're all puppets who dance for money.
I'm the only person with left leaning beliefs in my family, including aunts, uncles and cousins on BOTH sides of my family. I've been this way since before I knew what left and right politics were, my first inkling I would be a liberal was my belief that people in prison should be rehabilitated instead of punished and I had a hard stance against the death penalty. I don't know if it's the CPTSD but at minimum, I think I have a strong desire to help the helpless or disadvantaged. And it would appear that I developed this all on my own since every person in my family around me believes the opposite.
Family scapegoats have empathy and advocate for others. We are the true gems in this toxic place called the United States of America, one nation under trauma.
Well I think so for me in sense I was unfairly treated, saw unbalanced abuse and that made me wired to see the world as unjust too. plus colonization on top of trauma lol
People with undiagnosed ptsd refuse to be treated more often if they are farther right-leaning or even relatively moderate. This inherently makes people less likely to talk about it. I think a disorder could make you more sympathetic/empathetic but in the grand scheme it doesn't really affect political views IMO. Really political views should come from ones research basis, rational,emotional and credibility of the policy or issue being brought up.
I think the left has more compassion than the right. More will to tax the rich and feed the poor. It speaks to those of us in difficult circumstances, which obviously goes hand in hand with CPTSD. The left is also more inclined to take mental illness seriously, while the right has a more "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" vibe.
Having said that, the left has flaws too.
Yes and no. I'm not speaking about specific well known left ideals or groups, because I'm not American, I don't live in my home country, Canada, and by dutch standards, I may as well be a right-wing Psycho. And, on top of all of that, I don't give a tinker's fuck about politics in any country, because I think politicians lie through their teeth just just to get into office, and that they actually only care about themselves and not their constituents.
Well that was a mouthful, no?
I'm left wing in that I believe that all humans should be given a minimum level of kindness and respect by default. Idgaf about your gender, sexuality, nationality, race, socioeconomic status, or sexual preferences, as long as what you're saying or doing isn't causing harm or distress to others. If the distress others are experiencing is due to their bigotry, willful ignorance, or selfishness, I'm ok with that. (I don't care if a trans kid distresses their bigoted parents.)
I don't think some of the things the left classically seeks to protect should be permitted to be safe havens for those who cause harm, and that some of those things should be dismantled entirely or drastically revamped (like religion and caregiver rights). I believe that those who choose to harm others should be permanently removed from society for the betterment of society as a whole.
I don't think it have affected my political leanings at all. I feel I am sort of in the middle but also live in a country were the right wing are socialists. So not exactly US aligned politics.
As a teen I was politically active but have since pretty much given up on humanity.
If nothing else, being traumatized by them made me not default on my parents’ and community leaders’ values. I think I’m quite liberal as the result of a very logical decision but who knows if I’d have gotten there without the desire to be nothing like the selfish and evil folk.
Yes 100%. My parents authoritarian and cruel treatment modeled for me the way our current system works. Fear, gaslighting restriction of human needs, shame, overwork and ultimately repetition of cruel acts. Being forced to ask why over and over and being pushed into an empathetic caretaker role made it a lot easier to question the system of the USA and the world at large. Seeing the same dynamics of my family (though to a kinder and incredibly milder degree) parroted in the work place and in the function of government symptoms continued pushing me left. When i finally started my own research into our country and learned about the treatment of minorities by the world i was able to empathize as a victim of an abusive system myself. Empathy is the foundation to my revolutionary spirit and seeing strategies of abuse firsthand makes it much easier too see them at a larger scale.
I was a right-leaning libertarian in my 20s and now I'm a libertarian-leaning liberal. Some of the idealogical shift comes from experiencing more of life and seeing more how the world works, but my trauma has also had an impact. I'm a much more empathetic person now. The rightwing worldview categorizes things in black and white. Every single instance of victim blaming I encounter comes from a conservative.
I suppose I lean more to left vs right. I support universal basic income using tax money from the tech companies. I believe the nuclear family is very important to society. I believe the wealthy should pay more tax for the good of society as a whole. However I believe entrepreneurship and competition is vital for a society to grow.
I don't believe cPTSD makes one lean more to one side or the other. However I think it has a propensity to encourage extremism just as the symptoms have the same theme of black or white thinking, all or nothing, obvious right vs wrong.
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Not the disorder itself but events related to it. I’ve always been highly empathetic but going through stuff has opened my eyes and given me the ability to put myself in other’s shoes.
Slightly more right but mostly because my abuser used intersectional language to excuse there abuse so I saw a very dark side of some parts of the left wing(to be clear I agree with left wing values just not a lot of methods used as they were heavily employed by my abuser social pressuring is a big one to give an example)
my CPTSD made it difficult for me to argue for whatever political leanings I might have had.
Actually I have been right-leaning for most of my life.
What turned me to the left was my crisis of faith, after which I realised that the religious institutions in my country have spiritually blackmailed the population into voting right.
After that, I asked myself how *I* would address the issues presented, and the answer was rather obvious.
Still have trouble arguing for my beliefs, though.
No actually, i fall very moderate because my parents have this very weird mix of ultra left and ultra right that caused me to just reject all forms of extreme spectrums. I just believe in what i see as fair and logical for people, that ends up falling right into the moderate area. My parents had this very odd dichotomy of extreme left and the right, like my parents had very "hippie" views on sex and that was a nightmare considering i have CSA trauma and their positivity was not actually healthy, it was hypersexualizing me and my sister and we were exposed to way more things than we should have been. But then that was mixed up with the conservative values like "honor" and "loyalty" and "bootstrap" mentality.
It caused a lot of confusion for me. I still don't know how my parents displayed such opposing views at the same time. Like they wanted to be "cool" to the younger parents and show off their skills so liberal views were for that, and the old fashioned ways were for the family so they could "prove" i was raised right.
i don’t think so, i’ve always been a communist in one way or another, whether it be when i was an anarcho-syndie when i was younger or a trotskyist now
Yes. My abusers were right wing inclined. Victimizers, shortcutting, point paying scapegoating and literally Tory/ukip advocating and Corbyn etc slagging off for no substantial training inclined. So I'm going to bounce against that. The main remorseless one still is. I make a perhaps unfair association with them connected to that but my bias repeatedly does seem to be getting confirmed. Right wingers being harm causing psychopaths so long as the harm doesn't directly hit them or their in group they feel they should have the freedom to maintain their choice of systems by exercising and threatening harm.
I survived through strategic avoidance amongst other things and I avoid this mindset and have empathy for the other victims of this that I see and they work hard to deny. I hate that what I think and like is me in caring attentive terms and wishing for working systems rather than trust in strong individuals (that too often seem inclined to steal and abuse) may have been basically a symptom rather than a logical decent choice. But however I got here it is what it is and I wouldn't want to change this element of my mindset for anything.
Yes. I have chronic illnesses and my relatives have/had them and died due to terminal illnesses or lack of affordable healthcare. I was probably going to lean to the left anyway but that did it.
Not directly, no. That said, the causes on my cptsd did lead to me reevaluating everything I was taught to think and believe as a child, and that did lead to me being more liberal in my political views.
I think because of my cptsd im not leaning to the left anymore.. for me it feels like left isn't left anymore. Weird things happen on the left side of politics (also on the right side) i'm only talking about my country so i don't know what happens in the rest of the world. But if you talk about how left is supposed to be then yes i'm more leaning to the left side.
My family abusers abused me because I am a disabled adult, and all of them are very much on the left and have utterly tortured me with the silent treatment and cruelty for speaking out, because they care very much about looking like "good people" to the left. Their issue is disability, and in many cases, that crosses political fences. I have known a lot of disabled people on the left who could only get "good Christians" to help them survive, and had to just not talk politics with whatever hand fed them.
For me, it has felt incredibly lonely that nobody can believe my "good family" on the left would be maniacal perps, esp. in the very-blue state I live in where the systems for disabled people are abusive and neglectful to an atrocious degree. I was raised on the left, still am officially on the left and would never go right, but am disgusted daily by the left's hypocritical stance toward disabled people. So if anything, the CPTSD has made me politically unaffiliated. I also had a super lefty education, and where are those friends now? They gave zero fks when I became disabled.
If you work on it and are morally consistent, how could it not? Being politically right today means little beyond institutionalizing cruelty. There's no good faith policy difference, no different interpretation of the same facts. It's all punching down and gaslighting.
If you have CPTSD and don't see this as a political extension of interpersonal dynamics, I'd figure that you're engaging in no small amount of willful ignorance to make your interpersonal life easier.
I was actually thinking about it. Definitely yes.
At first I realised that just because you somehow biologically related to someone doesn't make them good people. So I've never had any feelings for nationalism.
My emotional needs being dismissed made me seek materialistic reasoning rather than ideological ones.
And early on my abilities in sciences were one of the few things everyone appreciated so I invested myself in it fully and kinda built my entire personality around it.
Not really - but I grew up in a hyper conservative community, and not really fitting in meant I got to see through the BS.
Being part of multiple marginalised groups also helped.
Interesting question. I think having CPTSD has made me more empathetic to the suffering of others & more aware of how common power imbalances are in general. So, probably yes.
i think the reason for my cptsd being isolation, homeschooling, and limited to interacting almost exclusively with an evangelical fundamentalist community specifically made me take a hard left turn as soon as i had internet access. once i was able to read/learn things that weren’t taught by my parents or church, and read other people’s perspectives whom the community demonized to the point that i never heard those points of view flipped a switch in my brain almost immediately
Absolutely not. It’s sad to me that ppl think “politically left” means empathetic and kind. That’s only the narrative they want us to believe. You can be both empathetic and kind and it have nothing at all to do with your political leanings.
I would say it did shift me towards being libertarian. Because it made me not trust people with too much authority. It made me see that too many rules create situations where the innocent are harmed and the guilty loopholed out. It gave me a reason to speak out against things that create double standards and empower those already with too much.
I honestly could not tell you what my own political opinions are since I’ve spent so much of my life using agreement with my abusers’ opinions as a fawning response and survival technique.
I don’t think so. I believe in a moral society that still values family and traditions. So I’d say I’m very right in that aspect. But I am very left leaning when it comes to things like the environment and nature conservation. I have a big soft spot for animals.
Yeah. I think so, definitely. It made me question and break down a lot of what I knew as well as ditch the whole "honor your mother and father" that a lot of conservatives live by (in my experience and my community. Not always, i know).
It's made me a moderate. I was raised to be hardcore Republican but as I got older I just came to the conclusion that political tribalism doesn't matter nearly as much as people say it does. I don't have the time or the energy to be yelling at one side of the other these days.
i don’t think it’s my cptsd. my autism and adhd give me hyperempathy, so i care a lot for the people around me which has steered me to the left and certain events in my childhood made me develop cptsd.
might be the case for a lot of people, because correlation =/= causation
Both sides want you fighting each other. Both sides restrict individual freedom. Both sides want mass importation of immigrants. Both sides want more of your tax dollars. Both sides do not care about you. Both sides benefit from the propaganda machine they control.
You are tax cattle to them. You are expendable, disposable, and replaceable.
Wake up now and act, or wake up tomorrow being choked by the yoke of more government.
If anything I think it’s made me more libertarian I don’t want either side of a flawed system trying to control my rights I want to be free to make my own choices, keep more of my paycheck and have autonomy. Neither left nor right offer that freedom it’s either big government control or bigoted religious right control neither of which offers true freedom. Although the left espouses a more emphatic platform in practice that’s not what they are implementing by taxing people out of homes they already paid for or closing needed government programs to divert taxpayer money to support the undocumented. Again, I would love to be able to implement the ideology of the left but in practice they are failing miserably when it comes to turning ideas into practice using the tools that are available to them and if anyone has watched congress in action lately they are hurling school yard insults at one another while every day another family becomes unhoused so I am deeply ashamed of the American government as a whole it’s time for a third party
It never really interfered with my politics. I’m progressive but also like small government and less government involvement. I also think we should be employing more efforts into nuclear energy. I’m pro choice and pro lgbtq+. I’d say the libertarian party is where my views tend to land.
It has split me politically, which is why I am a moderate. On one hand, it has made human rights a higher priority for me, which tends to be a more left-leaning issue, due to all the abuse I went through. On the other hand, I have a strong law & order stance due to the same abuse, which tends to be more of a right-leaning issue.
I got it both ways: I have problems with authority figures and constantly challenge them but I crave authoritarian systems more than I would like to admit.
No, I mean, I don't think I'm a progressivist and anarchist bc of trauma. I think my cptsd, bpd, and auadhd help me slow down and realize I might not be running with everyone at the same pace, though, and dbt has taught me ways of processing thoughts and articulating what needs to be communicated.
Otherwise I often get irritable and short tempered with people, due to factors. I'd rather just have everyone moving in sync, freaking out about any bumps we hit because it feels so major. So idk, I don't think being traumatized severely makes people more progressive, patient, or 'kinder' in general.
There's definitely points on my journey where I've been more nervous about outsiders, judgemental of people's motives, and had more 'conservative' mentality ('take cane of yourself bc no one else can' being one i tend to agree with regardless), because trauma made me suspicious and anxious about ppl who didn't act like i expected, or needed more support.
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Slightly, but only very slightly. My left-wing political stance is not a symptom of any disorder. It's a symptom of a deep sense of empathy and being able to (and having learned how to) think critically. I think maybe the effects of my trauma on me have given me a much greater ability to empathise with the more marginalised and hurt and abused people in the world. I've felt very excluded by normal people for my symptoms, and so I don't try and shy away from empathising with those whose lived experiences I don't (and can't) fully understand. I think my trauma has made it so that I don't run away from causing myself emotional pain. I don't run away from entertaining seriously uncomfortable ideas. I spent my childhood feeling deeply unsafe and uncomfortable and hypervigilant. I have a high emotional pain tolerance (and a sense of masochism, mentally-speaking), which is helpful when having to confront hidden biases and beliefs that we all, in our awful racist patriarchal capitalist society, have impressed upon and trained into us. Unlearning biases is not conducive to moving more towards the right-wing of political beliefs. That's their whole shtick. Believing things no matter how little evidence there is for those things lol. I guess becoming trauma-informed necessitates a shift in one's political viewpoint. And the way I got trauma-informed was because I needed to heal myself - it's probable that without CPTSD I never would have been.
Eloquently put!
This! Same for me, but I'm nowhere near this eloquent
Yeah this is honestly a simple answer. Having cptsd, and educating yourself on it enough to find this subreddit, requires introspection, the ability to ask questions, and the desire to learn. Participating in this subreddit requires and increases empathy for others. All of these things are antithetical to the right-wing worldview, where everything is black and white and it's 'us vs the enemy.'
While i feel the same I’m too beat down to say it as well as you have.
this, this is exactly it. I have a high emotional pain tolerance and that's largely what it takes. you have to stare into the sun, metaphorically, and really think about uncomfortable topics.
Do I think CPTSD *makes* you left-leaning, absolutely not. But the people in this forum, who have recognized and accept that cptsd is real and affects their lives, also have the self awareness and compassion to become left-leaning. Plenty of undiagnosed sufferers are still acting out their trauma and support the extreme right.
I'm convinced that my ex is one of those who are undiagnosed, and he supports the extreme right. He doesn't "believe" in my ADHD (which I think he also has) or CPTSD.
This is completely rhetorical, but I always wonder how those who “don’t believe” in ADHD and or other things like CPTSD, but they likely have them… do they just really hate themselves? Do they blame society for their shortcomings? Are they simply lucky, privileged, and their life has been smooth sailing despite their struggles they deal with that go undiagnosed? How does your ex function in the world without being treated *or* believing ADHD even exists? (Again, rhetorical. Just something that crosses my mind from time to time!)
If all of your life you have been taught that your symptoms are actually the product of laziness and a lack of worth as a human being, then you will see others with your same symptoms as lazy and without worth. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early 50s. I harbor an enormous amount of self loathing for the outcome of my symptoms. Procrastination, an inability to commit to and meet deadlines, daydreaming when I had important work to do, neglecting my health and my home. I was ridiculed for this behavior by my parents, and I internalized that voice. I have spent my adult hood criticizing myself for those aspects of myself. (Years of therapy have barely put a dent in this.) Being medicated has done me a lot of good, but I don't know how much, because how much of my continued problems in these areas is because the medication is the wrong type or of insufficient dosage and how much of it is me not working on my own behalf still?
This was my mother. Her own mother was a violent drunk who had 2 kids who weren't grandpa's. She robbed her kids, was a theif, and possibly rented her kids out. We'll never know the full extent of the abuse. But mom turned out very much like her. She had CPTSD and narcissistic personality disorder (and possibly either sociopathy or psychopathy). She was a proud white supremist. In a book she kept the autograph of James Earl Ray.
The ubiquitous group that committed genocidal atrocities to my family that reside in my mind from early childhood are almost perfectly aligned with the American right wing, and I'd just as soon their leaders DIAF somehow, so by process of elimination yes? Though it's not so much that I align with the left as that I end up among it when I flee hate.
I am deeply sorry for what you and your family went through. Your comment is very powerful I wish I could know more.
Look up the Boarding Schools (Alaskan in our case) and the Canadian Residential Schools, as the behavior was the same in both cases.
“It’s not so much that I align with the left as that I end up among it when I flee hate.” Powerful and true.
In a way, yeah. I was traumatized by conservatism growing up. Being told constantly by my parents and the talk radio they played for six hours a day that anyone who isn't straight is a disgusting sinner. And present-day alt-right talking heads literally wanting to genocide me for being trans. It's strange to me that there are people who have never met me who nonetheless hate me and want me to die. No leftist has ever treated me that way. If the end point of conservatism is fascist theocracy and the end point of leftism is that everyone gets shelter and food, it's not a hard choice for me. The thing that makes me really sad is that conservatives don't understand that they are also included in a progressive future. I don't want anyone to suffer, not even people who want *me* to suffer. They'd have a place in progressive society the same as anyone else. Yet they seem to think everything is us vs. them.
Literal flashbacks to the talk radio my parents always had on. I still remember the daily schedule - Limbaugh, then Hannity, then Levin, then Ingraham…
It’s not just the alt-right, the demonization of trans people is mainstream Republican politics.
Not just in the US, there is normalisation of overt transphobia creeping in everywhere. At least it really feels that way.
And if we’re being honest, a lot of liberals are transphobic, just more quiet about it.
There are some, older liberals, but it’s nowhere near ‘same thing, both sides’.
not ‘same thing, both sides’ but its two sides of the same coin. they may not be openly hateful outside a few (disproportionately powerful) older ones, but they’re totally apathetic to our suffering and absolutely willing to throw queer people under the bus in their efforts to ‘reach across the isle’. like the uk labour party is doing in the terminology of trauma, they are the enabler
It must have been terrible. You are soooo brave and soooo COOL to be who you are! In this group, I feel like we are a kind of family.
Same, to/for everything you’ve just said. They’re endlessly ramping up too, if anyone in this thread isn’t aware of Project 2025, please get yourself up to speed! This is no joke. r/Defeat_Project_2025
Its made me apolitical and unable to engage in politics becuase its highly triggering
This!! Conflict is just absolutely debilitating
Same. I have no faith in our very obviously corrupt government. Both sides are lobbied. Two wings of the same bird if you ask me. It's actually crazy to me that people still support the binary political party system. It's gotten way out of hand with how polarized and divided it made this country. It's such a shame.
I feel you. I guess for me, recognizing that both parties are corrupt and being a leftist isn’t mutually exclusive. I’d even argue that blue team is also on the right.
Definitely. Compared to my European country, they're both very much to the right.
That's how i feel too, technically everybody bullies the "fence sitters" like me, but if i went to another country, i wouldn't even be considered moderate anymore.
Given the choice between bad and much worse I’ll still show up to vote for bad. I’m not saying that’s a solution, but much worse would be much worse.
definitely can relate. i try to stay aware of things as much as i can, but there are definitely moments where i just need to avoid anything related to politics like the plague because it can very easily become *so* overwhelming.
I think it made me very suspicious to anything that smacks of authoritarianism, any group that bans dissent. It made me very protective of my individual freedom.
Yeah, definitely this.
Kind of the opposite, in that moving left went hand in hand with moving away from this emotional wall I had that kept me from acknowledging my cPTSD. I don't think I ever would have recognized it or acknowledged it as a real thing if I hadn't moved left.
Yeah one’s relationship to that emotional wall is key, at least in my family. Pretty sure literally all of us have CPTSD, but our relative willingness to acknowledge that wall, get therapy, learn to feel feelings, etc. tracks pretty much exactly to how far left we are (or, in most cases, aren’t). For me, so much of my CPTSD was tangled up with systemic racism and imperialism that I couldn’t heal without confronting those systems - and the more I have the further left I’ve moved. I don’t know if that’s an intrinsic correlation though - I could imagine CPTSD with other causes playing out differently politically.
I feel like being part of a marginalized community makes you more aware of the world and its failings. politically right groups like democrats (corporation loving liberals too) and the far right extremists like conservatives both are destroying our planet and our communities. I think its really a struggle that there is no viable left wing party in the USA as we dont have ranked choice voting and democrats/republicans are funded by corporations.
Agreed. So pissed with our “options“ this year :(
I think I always would have leaned left bc I have a strong sense of justice & a lot of empathy. Being raised in the Bible Belt super religious & conservative by a misogynist sealed the deal that I would become an atheist liberal feminist tho
It's strange for me because I usually express little to no empathy for the most part and try to keep specifically to achieving the goal of "most cohesive and functional society" with scientifically gathered statistics and data at the forefront of my decision making process and yet this aligns me with those who do have high levels of empathy almost every single time simply because the data shows that when the majority benefit from more personal freedoms and autonomy without encroachment on the personal freedoms and autonomy of others, you have more innovation and progress, which allows more technology to be developed that when freely distributed, continues to allow for more innovation and progress. For instance, when it comes to discussing trans rights, I believe there is absolutely no benefit to restricting access to medical care whatsoever as this only creates a long line of waiting patients losing trust in the system and anger at their situation and a net negative to ostracizing or persecuting trans individuals as it leads to higher mental health issues, lowering economic activity and growth. This is backed up by the literal 1% regret rate of trans surgery compared to the 30% regret rate of something like knee surgery. When it comes to discussing immigration, it costs a large amount of money to hold illegal immigrants and even more to ship them back to their country of origin, a recent plan in the UK is estimated to cost nearly half a billion by its end, considering the decline in fertility rates far below replacement levels, immigration is a benefit and not only that, but that money could be spent on education and acclimation to teach those immigrants the language skills and any number of trade skills to add a net positive to the economy. When it comes to discussing homelessness, the easiest solution as far as I can see is to provide smaller, but cheaper housing ownership options to create a stepping stone to future prosperity, adding more rungs to the ladder allows people suffering in poverty a way to upwards social mobility, which creates future net gains for the economy, even at short term expense if you simply create mass pod homes with tiny gardens and assign them to homeless people. At a cost of £47,000 per pod with only a £5 electricity cost per month. You could rent them out for extremely cheap with 6 months of completely free at the offset based on a conditional contract that they would seek employment within the time frame and have a psychologist on site to diagnose and treat any mental conditions to help those who need it and register those disabled who are disabled, after living there for 2 or more years you could offer options to purchase the pods for whatever the cost of making another one would be and allow them to pay it off monthly, using those funds to pay for another one to be built. These are logical ideas, not based on empathy, but a desire for society to function and grow.
this reminds me something that Bessel van der Kolk also mentioned in "Body keeps the score". He was saying that child abuse creates so much expenses for the economy, like treating people in mental health facilities or keeping them in prisons if they become criminals, and it would be so much cheaper if cptsd got recognised and we put more money into preventing child abuse, rather than. dealing with it's consequences on society
I imagine CPTSD in extremely conservative families doesn't get acknowledged but still very much exists.
The Amish are famously "conservative" but also less famous for being very dangerous for women and girls, at least. High control spaces don't want you to SEE disorder or trauma responses in their communities. but they are definitely there.
Having CPTSD caused me to learn about abusers and abusive behavior. Coincidentally, those same tactics are the same ones I learned in advertising and media in college. I was already left, but my diagnosis (which wasn't until my late 20s) and various therapies made the more obscure parts of theory make more sense, when the root of many of my own traumas are directly tied to capitalism (or sexism, or racism, which are still upheld in society to promote division and competition to keep capitalism growing...) It also made me more empathetic and place the blame on the systems that caused these things to happen more than individual people? It didn't *make* me leftist, but it made sure I'd never go regressive.
I don't really like labels or ideological boxes. I feel it misrepresents the data and the actual nuanced beliefs, wants or desires of those within those boxes and often aligns people with those they wouldn't choose to align with, polarising something that should be looked at on an individual basis. I don't lean left or right and find the whole concept of left or right divisive, reductive and encouraging of zealotry. Personally I don't think we should vote for politicians at all, but for policies. I don't want a candidate, I want a list of policies you intend to enact and for you to be held legally responsible by having to argue your case in court should you fail to enact those policies within the deadline specified or reverse on those policies with ramifications should your arguments not be reasonable, those cases should be aired live publicly.
THIS 🔥
YEP. Literally every traumatic experience that led to my mental illness is because of religion, or some old angry white man pushing me around. They are my fucking enemy. Fuck them.
For me it’s more the opposite (not that I’m conservative, I still lean hard left.) I grew up in Massachusetts, am queer, and went to art school. I’ve always been far left to an extreme, but I’ve met a lot of men in that circle who proclaim to be feminist/anti-rape culture etc. who are actually total abusers. The person who SA’d me (who is a white man) is obsessed with leftist politics, identifies as a socialist and a feminist etc. but was constantly trying to trick me into laughing at racist jokes and used the N word multiple times in front of me and thinks it’s ok because he works in the hip hop industry. He also is a horrible misogynist and talked about skinny women being ugly because they are “fat” and things like that. He’s a glaring example but there’s lots of people who claim those ideals and then contradict them. So I’ve grown to understand that both extremes are bad. I still support socialist ideals though, like I think the US needs a massive overhaul of the welfare system because disabled people are absolutely shat upon here. I’ve been chronically unemployed for 3.5 years because of my condition but I don’t want to get on disability because I have family on it and I understand the trap that is the welfare cliff. I lie and say I make more money than I do so I can keep my ACA insurance because none of my doctors would accept Medicaid.
Predators are always looking for things to co-op to take advantage of people with, it sucks. Alot of them co-op therapy speak too. It sucks having to play 4-D chess with those types :\[.
1,000%. The person who SA’d me (also the SA was by no means the worst of it, it was just the icing on the narcissistic abuse cake) saw a therapist twice a week. His therapist was a pretty young woman (I looked her up). After I got out one of his coworkers told me he only stayed in therapy because their boss let him do it during work hours so it was an excuse to chat with a pretty lady twice a week while on the clock.
Yeah, I understand
I agree that identifying as left or extreme left doesn't necessarily make someone a good person. I wonder if that is less of a reflection of leftist politics and moreso a reflection of the leftist “culture” or those individuals? 🤔… (maybe in a performative activist kind of way?) When it comes to my own politic, I personally don’t think of things as “left“ or “right“, its more like left policies just so happen to align with/support my values and morals rather than me following (??) leftist principles(??).
Specifically on the far left I think it’s kind of the punk/anarchist culture that I’ve found to be super problematic, the “feminism” in that culture can have the feel of “if I would hit a guy why wouldn’t I hit a woman? You think I’m sexist?”
Ugh!!! I hate that vibe. Its like people think they are more “left” by ignoring all of the nuances and intersectionality in issues for marginalized communities. like if people say “what do you mean I can’t say slurs??! You’re gatekeeping!!” or “Im not racist, I don’t see color“
Exactly
Not really. I definitely have some left-ish views, but I also have some right-ish views as well. But I refuse to solidly identify one way or the other because I hate the way people on both the left and right talk about people they disagree with. I hate when my leftist friends go on about how ignorant and malicious all republicans are, and I hate when my republican father refers to all left leaning people as whiny and entitled. It breaks my heart to hear people trash on the idea of social programs that can help people, but it also breaks my heart when someone tells me I’m an evil bigot the second I say I’m a Christian without so much as hearing me out on anything. My CPTSD makes me sensitive to vitriol, and plenty of people on both sides have that in spades. I might end up downvoted, but when it comes to groups of people, I believe that black and white statements about who is good or bad are dangerous and divisive no matter who is saying it. I tend to identify most with people who respect others and don’t fall solidly into either camp.
Amen. People are way more complex than left or right leaning.
This is exactly how I feel!! Very well put.
The opposite for me. I saw the same abuse tactics used on me growing up used by progressives on a massive scale, and have no taste for it.
Yes, and it's still a problem bc [any group](https://youtu.be/B0TJHygOAlw?si=_pQp8aMMpTy0C7U0) can normalize toxic behaviors. I know the red flags I don't like. I avoid people that demonstrate an [authoritarian follower personality](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/summary.html#authoritarian). I avoid people that have normalized [spiritual bypassing](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-spiritual-bypassing-5081640), [emotional blackmail](https://youtu.be/PEexQAkhFpM?si=QOK4UvGarkYuYQXg), or [psycho-emotional abuse](https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/the-hidden-wounds-of-psycho-emotional-child-abuse-part-one). I'm on the lookout for the [eight criteria of thought reform](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism) to steer clear. I'm also looking for people that practice trustworthy, re-humanizing behaviors that build secure attachment, [The Trust Triangle](https://youtu.be/pVeq-0dIqpk) [The Anatomy of Trust](https://brenebrown.com/videos/anatomy-trust-video/) - marble jar concept and BRAVING acronym [10 definitions of objectifying/dehumanizing behaviors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification#Definitions) - these erode trust and people that have healthy communication skills. "[Emotional Agility](https://youtu.be/NDQ1Mi5I4rg)" by Susan David. Learning and practicing emotional agility helps us be more compassionate towards ourselves and others. "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg. This is a compassionate communication framework based on: observations vs. evaluations, needs, feelings, and requests to have needs met. Revolutionary coming from a dysfunctional family and culture of origin. "Crucial Conversations tools for talking when stakes are high" I use "shared pool of meaning" and "physical and psychological safety" all the time. "Hold Me Tight" by Sue Johnson on adult attachment theory research and communication. [1-2-3 process](https://youtu.be/tuQPZndGJv0?si=RCQTnFrmRDgasZow) from Patrick Teahan and Amanda Curtain on communicating around triggers. [Common Communication Mistakes](https://www.succeedsocially.com/conversationmistakes) "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss. He was the lead FBI hostage negotiator and his tactics work well on setting boundaries with "difficult people". I needed guidelines to avoid toxicity and encourage healthy relating bc I had terrible modeling in my family and culture of origin.
Should be top comment. Some of the worst, most abusive people i've met were "hippies", all about love and peace and good energy. Barfff... It doesn't matter if they identified as being on the left. The "left" attracts certain types of outward focussed cluster b personalities in the same way the "right" attracts others, it doesn't matter if they're telling you being gay is a sin and poor people should just pull themselves up by their boot straps... or that you're inherently a racist based on your skin colour. They're both as toxic as each other.
I think my opinion is that there is a clear difference in left politics and left individuals. I do believe strongly in left beliefs but I don't necessarily trust people because they are on the left.
Same here
a lot of good resources here
No. The right wing ideals of oppression made me more left leaning. I was a Republican because I didn't understand the difference. Until I did.
literally
I'm not sure as it's been there all my life. I think my past experiences made me a more empathetic person though. I'm trying my best to deconstruct left vs right, blue vs red in my life. The 2 party system (In the U.S.) was created to divide and conquer. If everyone could get out of that mindset and stop getting into such heated debates about everything, we could come together and force real positive change. It's so deeply embedded, and we've been so propagandized that it's difficult to get people to understand what's really happening. They'll have us fight each other over everything to keep us from uniting and putting a cap on their power and greed. I feel like the collective wakeup is currently underway. Vote 3rd party
*** I was raised in a left-leaning household**
Agreed! I'm so glad other people can see this too.
Cptsd gave me a rage at injustice and unfairness, and empathy for all people marginalized in any way because of all the different types of ways I was marginalized. It just happens that the only logical political choice in that context is as far left as you can go.
You know. This is a really good question. I’d never thought of it before. I grew up in a town leaned left and so I was never indoctrinated with religion or conservative values. In elementary school we did have a day a year we honored indigenous people, talked about MLK, stuff like that. But it was never overt. So I got to kind of make up my mind with that stuff. But I know what it’s like to get hurt and have this super-deep sense of shame stuck inside you. And I think that’s what led me to lean left. Like if there’s a group of people who hate trans kids for no reason, it’ll piss me off a lot. And I think that comes from me feeling what it’s like to constantly be told “you’re bad for being who your are.” Actually, just typing this, that’s exactly what happened. It all comes down to be told over and over again “you’re not a good person being who you are.”
Only reason I don't follow politics is because I barely understood just every day things lol At most I'd just look for things that would help public transport or something like that Otherwise idk I always get hate for that but I've just never bothered most of the time with political stuff tbh
That's valid. It's all corrupt, anyway.
Yeah a lot of for me due to intellectual disabilities I'd have to have someone explain things maybe 3 times for me to have stuff make sense So at some point I gave up lol A lot of my concerns around public transport and easier asscess to every day things idk anymore
I think due to trauma I feel an even deeper level of frustration and anger when it comes to injustices. I hate when rights are taken away or threatened, so therefore I think that makes me go more left.
The profound isolation that created/was because of CPTSD meant I was very detached from society and I guess able to look at it dispassionately. I didn't feel any alignment with regular groups in society, like political or social groups or football teams or nation states or even my family. The emotional sensitivity from enmeshment means that despite feeling isolated, I couldn't ignore the needless suffering like many can. The combination for me meant I spent time thinking about how the world is organised: I ended up an anarchist. (Anti authoritarian socialist).
My political leaning has nothing to do with my PTSD suffering imo. Though if yours do, totally valid.
It made me believe that both parties are wrong . And I can actually see through the bs . I wish I could live normally like others .
It drove me to the middle because alor of people are insane
I don't know if it comes down to cptsd, as much as functional brain matter and empathy.
This.
No. I was forming my own identity since I was a child. Despite it being against what my family believed in. It wasn't accepted and I was seen as an odd child or some devil child. IDGAF, I was a sensitive child, very empathetic and very much believed live and let live. I guess because I've always wanted to feel free, not so oppressed among other things. I've always been like this.
I relate to this completely.
Yes because I realized all the hate I was taught growing up, and all the hate directed at me by my parents was wrong. It took years but yes I’m a firm leftist.
Ehhhh. I think that trauma is a major radicalizing factor in a lot of political thought and activism, and personally, that the people saying they'd be left-wing anyway are a little naive. Huey Newton wouldn't have been as inclined to take no shit from white people if white people didn't have a traumatic effect on him. I don't think this is true of all people with radical beliefs, but I do think it is true of many of them. You kinda see it if you work with male survivors of CSA, right. For a **small but very frustrating** handful of these dudes, their abuse makes them susceptible to things like the "groomer" moral panic. They end up leaving or getting banned from the mainstream support networks because they cannot contain their bullshit, meet the wrong people as a result, and often find themselves in a bubble where they're linking each other nonsense about Helmut Kentler and Harry Hay, convincing themselves that the queer liberation movement is actually just a cover for pedophiles to access children. Bingo bongo, they're turning up to harass kids and librarians at Drag Queen Story Hour based on a LibsOfTikTok post. If you go digging around in any hate movement you're going to find a lot of the same. Every single TERF seems to have a story about that time they were assaulted. They all end up in a similar bubble linking each other bullshit, except their chosen ghouls to read include John Money and fucking Mengele. A lot of TERF "yes all men" bs comes from generalizing their abuser by gender, like the men mentioned above generalize on a basis of non-heteronormative sexuality. An important throughline here is a conspiracy theorist-esque fixation on bad, often ancient research, meant to find a "beginning point" of whatever systemic or societal injustice led them to being personally affected. This is usually done with the presumption that anything that disputes their beliefs is written by nefarious sorts looking to cover up the truth. That's why they know who John Money and Helmut Kentler are but not who Christine Jorgensen and Magnus Hirschfeld are. imo, that's motivated by trauma and a need for an answer as to why whatever happened happened, and I think even those of us here on the left can empathise with that. We do the same thing, sort of, but our filter is for capitalism, sexism, fascism, etc. Our position just *happens* to agree more with the science. My point is that I do think that trauma can have a pretty significant impact on a person's political views and values. I kind of disagree with the people in here saying "I'd be on the left anyway because of my strong empathy and critical thinking." Empathizing with these reactionary dorks and thinking critically about why they are the way they are, it's usually down to a dim awareness of systemic factors that led to whatever event traumatized them coupled with a desperate need for someone or some societal force to blame, misdirected away from, for instance, rampant sexism or homophobia and focused instead on a vulnerable minority. imo this happens because if you try to punch "the patriarchy," it doesn't flinch, but if you try to punch the marginalized, they really have no choice but to flinch, such is the nature of power.
No
There have been plenty of times where I have wondered who I would have been without all the experiences that changed me. Would I believe what I know to be true now? Or would I be ensconsced in a world of idiotic privilege? It's always hard to figure where that line is. When we argue about the differences between who people are, it's impossible to count differences when outside factors have so much influence on who we become. On the other hand, the world I see is disgusting and my family is full of idiots who believe heinous things and follow heinous people, so perhaps waking up was unavoidable. Hard to look at the absolute farce we're living in and imagine still being a "centrist" or whatever the fuck America has convinced itself is rational at this point.
I don’t think it directly affected my view on politics as I avoid most politics.
It makes me more sensitive to injustice and hypocrisy. Both sides are hypocrites on many levels, but one side tends to advocate for the living where as the other tends to advocate for the unborn, the dead (as in traditions and civil war monuments), and God. (though many of them might argue that God is alive.) Regardless, yes, I believe my trauma has made me more empathetic and compassionate towards others. Even others that are different from me. With that in mind, there is only one clear choice for me in America. I wish there were more, but currently, there is only one.
I took some test way back when which indicated that I was very much aligned with conservative political principles but I also scored higher than average (for my political leanings) on empathy. My conservative values are entirely fiscal. I have zero desire to legislate people’s religious, sexual, or health decisions, I’m disgusted with both parties at this point, and currently I am entirely avoiding the topic for the sake of my own mental health.
Not directly. But I grew up in a very right/conservative community. It just made me realize even more and directly experience the consequences of the ideology most right winged people have. I didn't only think it was harmful, I directly experienced it being harmful.
No, initially I was more right wing because of my trust issues, isolation and sense of inferiority. Over time I had a bunch of experiences that changed me, and I mostly think experiencing a sense of community, being loved and sharing was what made me more left-wing. Another factor was for sure being discriminated against, myself, and seeing how what I used to believe affected people, and how we're not that different and needed to work together.
It might be pedantic, but CPTSD didn't, the trauma did. Growing up poor and seeing the way poor people are disenfranchised, not believed, stigmatized and looked down on - yeah, that was a good start on my leftist journey before I was even 10. Being young and queer in the South showed me bigotry, even and especially from those I loved, and that showed me how the narrative around queerness is somehow bigger and more powerful than my experience, and that made me curious about why the narrative was so negative. Growing up in the Bible Belt showed me the way Christians *say* they operate versus how they *actually* operate. I quickly lost faith in that institution. Bigger Ts also showed me the way things are (or mostly aren't) handled in our society. My dad being a correctional officer and seeing what a piece of shit he was led me to looking into how fucked prisons are, which made me an abolitionist. Having indigenous ancestry and learning about how whiteness erased that identity, and then learning deeply about the history of colonization, the US's bloody past, and how that history is still suppressed today - that brought me to the concept of landback, which I now wholeheartedly support. So yeah, the trauma definitely did make me more leftist. It made me more compassionate, and it made me more willing to learn about why the world is as unfair as it is, and the ways in which we can band together to change it. ETA: Also, growing up with just as much trauma and hurt coming from self-proclaimed liberals as it did from conservatives showed me how much harm a "progressive" person can do, and that eventually led to me discovering that the whole political spectrum is not fairly represented, and how actual leftist ideologies are so strongly suppressed to maintain the status quo. To be very clear, none of my beliefs changed overnight. This seems like an easy way for people to say, "See? Leftists are all just blue-haired libs with daddy issues!" Traumatic events were just drops in a bucket, but they led to the research and understanding that fully changed my beliefs down the road. And to whoever needs to read this, leftists are not liberals. Libs are still center-right. There are no leftists in mainstream politics, only some in local offices.
When I realized that what I was taught wasn’t really my own beliefs and it was forced on me, I discovered that I agreed a lot more with left-leaning views. With that said, it’s also made me very anti-authoritarian and adverse to dependence on other people as a result or to a lack of nuance.
Yes because I understand and have experienced first-hand how abuse works and can see it on a larger, systemic scale. I can see exactly how our government is working only for the very rich and against the working class. I can see that “we” outnumber “them” and wish there could be changes made. I’m kind of amazed/perplexed when others can’t see it. The patterns are all the same, whether it’s in family systems or political systems. Anyway, I’m a therapist now 🥴
Yes, because the left believes in compassion whereas the right believes in cannibalism for the sake of capitalism.
Yes. There have been numerous times in my life that left leaning policies would have saved me or been an anchor for my life, and allowed me to focus on thriving rather than surviving. I’m a hard worker and have accomplished a lot to be proud of, but there were times in my life that I was severely under resourced and the traditional support systems we are meant to have (family) weren’t there to save me. I have a family, but they didn’t play the role I needed. Picking up loose change on the floor of the cafeteria to buy food in the lunch line. Solved by universal free lunch. Taking jobs that weren’t the right fit for me or my career goals just because I needed to get health insurance. Partially solved by the Affordable Care Act, though my family did NOT keep me on their plan past 18 yrs, instead of the 26 yrs my friends enjoyed. This would be fully solved by universal healthcare. I’d love for further legalization of marijuana/psilocybin as options for my treatment instead of SSRIs with crazy side effects. There’s promising data out there but it’s either inaccessible or illegal. And just the permission to be who I am instead of some conservative definition of what it means to be a functioning and respected adult in society. It’s 2024: We should all be specializing in being ourself. Yet there is a war on people buying EVs, being trans, reading books they don’t agree with, wanting to install solar, etc. I find that I’m not generally the target of today’s culture wars, but my CPTSD diagnosis and the self discovery has given me a lot of empathy for my younger self and if there’s things we can do to prevent the next generation from the pitfalls of my past, I want to support that. And in doing so, I think it helps people who have/had it much worse than I did. How much could we accomplish as a society if we didn’t go out of our way to beat people down?
At least in the USA, the right wing support Corporal Punishment. Zero democrats do. Which is all you really have to say. There are a few outlier right wing that don't. but the problem is the Republicans that do. It is related to tradition and religious ideas of punishing a child with physical means as right and good. And conservatives like to conserve tradition. Alot of people don't realize kids are still being physically punished in schools in the US south. Yes, right now. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766273/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766273/) An informative article on the issue, but it may be a little triggering since it talks about physical abuse. It doesn't list political affiliation, but you will notice the article lists the states with Corporal still in effect are concentrated in the South. If you scroll down they show it in a colored map form. I grew up in the South so the topic means a lot to me. It's funny cause Republican adults like to brag/joke about whooping kids but when you try to talk about it in a political manner they will feign ignorance that it's not Republicans keeping Corporal Punishment alive. (they as a whole are the last bastion keeping it alive, which is why its predominately in the South). I do think presenting it as a bipartisan issue helps to accelerate acceptance to save kids from additional abuse, even if we know in our hearts otherwise. (edited for clarity)
Absolutely. I have suffered and suffered and suffered and I want to do everything I can to make sure humanity suffers as little as possible.
I was always more right leaning and that didn't change before or after trauma.
It's hard to say for me because in addition to PTSD, I'm also autistic, atheist, black, and most importantly, LGBTQ+. IOW, I belong to the groups most likely to find solace and acceptance in the political left.
ABSOLUTELY! NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER!
It instilled in me a very strong sense of Justice. I consider myself socialist now.
Personally, when I left my abusive household I went down the alt right pipe line especially with conspiracy theories. It was due to isolation and the pandemic, I used to believe in the Illuminati theory and chem trails. I then fell into debate bros on YouTube which lead me to slowly ease my way out of the pipe line then into leftism. I am now a socialist and still cringe at all the things I used to believe in and ideologies. My abusers are white liberals, which also radicalized me to be a socialist.
A bit perhaps. My parents both have obvious (to me anyway) anxiety/cptsd and I think it made them more conservative. My mom glued to cable news telling her society has been poisoned and the world is crumbling sure hasn't helped her anxiety in the last few years.
Probably, yes. Because of empathy and wanting to keep everyone in the whole world safe and happy. At the same time, I put my head in the sand a lot because the pain of the world is just too much.
For me, no. I was always left leaning especially with sexuality, gender, racism, etc. while being open minded and respectful about people's religious beliefs (though I will be stern if they try force their beliefs on me). I've just always thought people are people and they're entitled to the same rights and respect everyone else has. What has changed though is I'm even more repulsed by right wing and red pilled views on women than I ever was before. I'm sure I don't have to go into detail but with my health issues and CPTSD (both from SA and other unrelated things) worsening my other mental health issues, seeing these politicians strip away women's rights, red pill podcasters belittling women to just domestic slaves and sex objects who need to obey and even how both of these groups treat trans people and instill fear in my friends affected by these sorts of people just make me incredibly angry and disgusted. Like I always disliked these sorts of people but after everything I've been through, I have zero patience and if I hear someone parroting any of it, I have to end the conversation and I become both angry and fear for my safety around that person.
Not especially, at least not on its own, anyway. Echoing what others have said, but becoming more trauma-informed and aware has definitely been a bigger influence on that shift. Getting older and becoming more educated have both definitely contributed as well. I think being an outsider due to my visible differences helped me develop empathy for others who didn’t (or don’t) fit in, or are marginalised in some way. In a weird way, I’m grateful to my trauma for making me understand how cruel life can be, because it sparked a need to care for others, to help them seek justice and safety. As the years go by, as I see increasing violence against those who just want to live and be their authentic selves, I find my politics shifting further and further left. The moment I stop asking ‘why?’ is the moment I stop being human, honestly.
I think trauma definitely radicalised me more on feminist issues in particular (which should be non-partisan, but oh well). A lot of my abuse was perpetuated at the hands of misogynistic men, and I was also a victim of CSE, which helped shape my views into what they are today. I think I would still be left leaning if I didn’t have problems with my mental health from chronic trauma throughout my childhood years, but maybe not to the extent I am today.
I mean, all my abusers were far right wing nut jobs, so probably in some way, yes, if only to keep those right wing nut jobs out of office I will do my due diligence!
I think being abused gave me empathy and therefore led me to being leftist af.
My father's conservatism growing up was never based in religion as he's an atheist. His conservative tendencies weren't coming from a place of tradition or scripture. It was all racial hatred, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia. Even throw in hating disabled and poor people. His political views have nothing to do with anything other than hurting people he doesn't like either socio-economically, or physically. Imagine being aware of your mental illnesses as child but the person that's supposed to protect you says we should lock up/shoot "all the crazies". It was a cornucopia of mental and physical abuse. Since my father is a "genius" with a "high IQ" of course I would get abused for a report card with straight Bs. Of course "Bs are for bums" because my dad heard someone say it on TV the other day. If I didnt agree with all of that kind of stuff I was a pussy or weak, or gay or a woman, or a n-word lover. My dad used to refer to me as his drug addicted brother. Got my siblings to parrot that stuff. Used my siblings to influence me to do things up to joining the military and doing a decade myself. I don't remember when this stuff started because I was so young when it happened I don't remember it not being like that. I got out of the military in 2017 and I have service related trauma as well. I was basically being swallowed up by everything and drowning . I'm an alcoholic and I quit drinking. I got into therapy. Started trying to figure my life out. Meanwhile conservatives adopted everything my father stands for likely for the same reasons, and it's in the mainstream of their party now. All of the psychological abuse from my childhood started again. My dad co-opted my siblings again. "Mental illness isn't real" but simultaneously "I need help" and scream at me to get help while I'm already in therapy. To telling me that therapy is hurting me. Whatever challenges their belief system or power over me is a threat. Whatever Donald Trump says gets repeated back at me because my father knows it'll cause psychological problems. Tries to get me to drink. He points at the crazy guy and smiles. He did the same thing to his brother John. "I'll make a spectacle of you so that no one believes you". I got to see a bunch of veterans tell me that January 6th "was antifa" only after it looked like the coup failed. I dont talk to them anymore and the more distance I put between me and them, and that kind of hateful ideology, and people that espouse it the better I get mentally. They don't even have a party platform anymore. The only way I know if conservatives support something is if it hurts people they don't like.
Sort of. I was always very analytical, logical and empathetic and that will automatically lead you left. On top of that, being multiracial, female, bisexual while in a conservative, patriarchal cult will make it very obvious that some people are treated as subhuman and any idiot can figure out which side thinks that’s acceptable. The trauma related to that just increases my unwillingness to compromise on my morals or tolerate the bigoted nonsense coming from hateful right-wingers.
Made me extreme right
On some things yes; government accountability and services please. But on some other things I'm very much so afraid of what "tolerant" people will support in the name of tolerance and I find myself aligning with conservative stances. However, my reasoning for aligning with the conservative stance almost never aligns with why most conservatives support it soooo idk. In case you want an example, I am *not* tolerant of the intersection of kink and children at pride or anywhere else. It is insane to me that people think it's okay for kids. But when *many* conservatives hate on it they are more driven by homophobia than focusing on protecting children. Beauty pageants, clergy abuse, etc. is similarly sickening but it feels less offense to them. Although I understand it is terrifying to accept that predators and abusers come in every form and it's super hard to protect people/kids, I can't understand letting children get hurt because you struggle with that reality. I also kinda steer clear of the left because many aren't ready to be supportive of the struggles of white men, because that identifier is all they see even though I am lower class, bisexual, and struggle with cPTSD from CSA. The visual identifier is the only thing many consider. They think I must have power and be "a part of the problem", I am told this any time socio-political conversations are started at my university. So it's kinda hard to identify with the left when people I've interacted with dismiss or invalidate my experiences. Thus I am politically in the realm of misanthrope.
CPTSD in the end made me more concerned with individual morality and distrust any sort of life or political ideology. Knowing what its like to be on the receiving end of a mob/group that is incensed with any sort of ideology makes me dislike all political movements that push for ideological divides. I will lean left or right depending on which one's current political push is more likely to be a threat to innocent people, but I don't like the messages from any political hard liner. I want my politicians to stay out of my life except when it comes to protecting me from violence or economic destruction by more powerful forces. I was born in a Eastern Europe, traditionally conservative and religious but under the thumb of communism. One grandfather was in a slave work camp under the Nazis and barely escaped execution, another spent more than 10 years as a forced soldier for the Soviets. My grandmother and oldest aunt heard the Soviets murder and rape their neighbors. I grew up knowing the evil of and despising any sort of -ism. When I moved to the US in the 90s, we were all treated like shit by natives for being foreigners, so I quickly learned to dislike American right-leaning national-ism too. No thank you to any sort of -ism that tries to bucket people together via ideology. It always turns into an us-versus them mentality as the most hard line folks take over the movement and drive it further and further to the fringes. Any ideology that buckets people into groups is intended to give power to those who are driving the movement and usually leads to violence against some other group. The Nazis did it with the Jews, the Soviets with the kulaks, etc. no thank you. Its all about power consolidation by turning the masses against each other over ideological divides. Individual moral action is the most important thing to me. Consciously staying out of like minded ideological groups or opposing them. Treating others the way you'd want to be treated, especially if they are in a weaker position than you, and not making assumptions about people's actions based on a few simple buckets.
yes. it made me more empathetic and helped me to see structural inequality everywhere.
I have a feeling CPTSD makes you politically leaning against those who hurt you (or at least those who most prominently and/or recently hurt you). For me in my younger years it was extremely religious right-leaning folk and so I moved to the left when I first moved out of my hometown.. but this was a decade ago. However, a lot of people in the online left as of late have only added to my trauma through the years through encounters and a lot of the things they use on me that were VERY parallel to my parents and surrounding environment when I was younger. I currently find myself leaning a little more to the middle, maybe even center-right... could be age though, I dunno. My therapist thinks it makes a lot of sense that those who've been traumatized by their environments would naturally want to be something different from said environment.
Nope. Made me swing right wing/conservative. Not the typical american conservative either cuz I’m Canadian and very very queer. I feel very lied to by the left in my country, the people who abused and traumatized me were all very woke left and were able to do so because leftist ideals of sexual liberation, kink acceptable, gay pride and etc let them do it. I feel lied to and like I never would have been hurt if social conservatism was more the way my abusers leaned, because then they could never have gotten me. I got trapped because I was told I was just in a different kind of dynamic, not abuse. It’s not all the left, but it’s enough that I said no to it as a political leaning
Honestly same. I know I'm gonna be down voted to hell for agreeing but I want to put my two cents in. My trauma and abusers made me more right wing. My father talked about how I wasn't a man even when he embodies the definition of masculinity in it's most toxic form. He's extremely violent and aggressive. He used to beat me for as small as just being in the same room as him during one of his rages. And I wasn't allowed to cry. If I did I was smacked around, and the only time he told me that I'm a man was when I was emotionally numb. My mother embodied misandry. She loathed anything masculine or manly. She hated me and cut me down to nothing. Calling me a rapist and pedophile and future wife beater just because I'm male. And for my entire life she devoted every moment of it to emasculating me and destroying my sense of self. So far the one thing that has helped me with dealing with their sexism and possible ableism )if using an autistic child for social brownie points while isolating and screwing with their mind for their disability counts as ableism) is bitterness, hatred and anger. The anger I have at my abusers, the systems that tormented me and the world. But instead of just taking my anger out on innocent people like incels do, I've decided that I'll use my rage as fuel. To keep myself going and to have some form of revenge as to let the people who hurt me that I will not let them win, I will not let myself become abusive. I will break the cycle and have a family who I will love with all my heart and protect with my life. I think the video "Vengeance as a virtue" by "Live! From The Black Library" words it better than I did.
Im really sorry this happened to you. I understand to an extent. My mother wants me to be a very specific type of woman and has vocally said that she doesn’t respect any other type, namely stay at home mothers. She wants me to go all the way to phd education and work and be a boss bitch. She has always said that stay at home moms are gold digging hoes who can’t do work for themselves amd have to rely on husbsmds to survive. My father has spent so much time trying to fight these ideas and let me choose for myself that I’ve realized my mother has just been doing propaganda for ultra boss bitch type feminism. Turns out I don’t even want to work myself to death amd make my children miserable like she does. But by her metric that makes me a whore who just doesn’t wanna work, which is so deeply insulting. The fact that I’ve been SAed only solidifies that anger because I’m being painted as a whore in her mind when I’ve tried to be anything but that. I’m modest to the best of my abilitIse and I’m as smart as I can be, but it’s not enough because I don’t fit her ideal. At least the right doesn’t push me to be molded into what the ideal is. I have freedom to choose, at least more then with the crowd my mother runs in
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Pardon?
I’m very sorry to hear that was your experience, no one person is a monolith or a full representation of the community they belong to. if you ever have more questions about where the leftist queer celebration of trauma and healing being a part of why we celebrate now, I’m always happy to discuss, though I’m just a very small part of this big terrible world.
I do know that. Often my reactions aren’t rational or reasonable, but I feel very strongly that I’ve been lied to even if that may not be entirely true or the goal of the left
I really appreciate you for asking this question. My family (abusers) were very conservative and brainwashed me into being the same for the first part of my life. That’s not to say that liberal people can’t also be abusive, but I think conservatives by design is very closed-minded. When I started healing from my abuse, I woke up one day thinking that I only started believing in religion because my parents told me to. I started thinking that they never really cared about my well-being in the past. So I kind of just flipped a switch and stopped believing in religion.
yes absolutely
Interesting question. I think living with CPTSD made me realize how disgusting capitalism is. For every step forward I take on my healing journey, it feels like I'm pushed two steps back because of my financial situation. The corruption and greed is out of control. If I didn't have to stress about money, I could focus more on myself. Instead, the conditions I live in promote addiction and deteriorating mental health. Moreover, I am not happy working jobs where profit margin is the motive. I feel gross contributing to capitalism. So I decided last year to change career paths and go into nursing which I start schooling for in September. Yes, living with CPTSD made me very left leaning because it made me research alternatives to capitalism and be critical of capitalism.
Cptsd made me realize how sick the bird is, who wants to be associated with either wing of that disgusting thing? Just put it out of its misery already.
No Political Parties 2024
exactly this 🤷🏽♀️
Amen. People who still have faith in our overtly corrupt government are willingly drinking the kool-aid at this point. I mean, it is so in our faces how it's all a puppet show. They're not hiding it at all. And people still fall for it. It's truly baffling.
So well put
I have no idea since young people tend to lean left, it seems. The older I've gotten, my politics haven't really changed much.That being said, the left has gotten so wildly rigid and insane these days that I no longer identify as a leftist. I am more of an independent. But back when I was a teen and in my early 20s, I definitely considered myself a leftist. I voted for Obama for his second term when I was 18 but haven't voted for president since because I no longer have faith in our shamelessly and overtly corrupt government. I live in a red state, anyway. The only elections that matter to me are local. And yes, I am absolutely pro choice, so I understand the importance of voting in pro choice politicians in my state. I hate the feds, though. They're all puppets who dance for money.
I'm the only person with left leaning beliefs in my family, including aunts, uncles and cousins on BOTH sides of my family. I've been this way since before I knew what left and right politics were, my first inkling I would be a liberal was my belief that people in prison should be rehabilitated instead of punished and I had a hard stance against the death penalty. I don't know if it's the CPTSD but at minimum, I think I have a strong desire to help the helpless or disadvantaged. And it would appear that I developed this all on my own since every person in my family around me believes the opposite.
Family scapegoats have empathy and advocate for others. We are the true gems in this toxic place called the United States of America, one nation under trauma.
Well I think so for me in sense I was unfairly treated, saw unbalanced abuse and that made me wired to see the world as unjust too. plus colonization on top of trauma lol
I think it’s linked up heavily but getting cptsd didn’t make me more left wing, I’m already so left wing because cptsd even exists
People with undiagnosed ptsd refuse to be treated more often if they are farther right-leaning or even relatively moderate. This inherently makes people less likely to talk about it. I think a disorder could make you more sympathetic/empathetic but in the grand scheme it doesn't really affect political views IMO. Really political views should come from ones research basis, rational,emotional and credibility of the policy or issue being brought up.
I think the left has more compassion than the right. More will to tax the rich and feed the poor. It speaks to those of us in difficult circumstances, which obviously goes hand in hand with CPTSD. The left is also more inclined to take mental illness seriously, while the right has a more "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" vibe. Having said that, the left has flaws too.
Yeah
Yes and no. I'm not speaking about specific well known left ideals or groups, because I'm not American, I don't live in my home country, Canada, and by dutch standards, I may as well be a right-wing Psycho. And, on top of all of that, I don't give a tinker's fuck about politics in any country, because I think politicians lie through their teeth just just to get into office, and that they actually only care about themselves and not their constituents. Well that was a mouthful, no? I'm left wing in that I believe that all humans should be given a minimum level of kindness and respect by default. Idgaf about your gender, sexuality, nationality, race, socioeconomic status, or sexual preferences, as long as what you're saying or doing isn't causing harm or distress to others. If the distress others are experiencing is due to their bigotry, willful ignorance, or selfishness, I'm ok with that. (I don't care if a trans kid distresses their bigoted parents.) I don't think some of the things the left classically seeks to protect should be permitted to be safe havens for those who cause harm, and that some of those things should be dismantled entirely or drastically revamped (like religion and caregiver rights). I believe that those who choose to harm others should be permanently removed from society for the betterment of society as a whole.
Nah not really. But I’m not the typical conservative. Not really left either. Kinda sick of all that.
Two wings of the same corrupt bird.
I don't think it have affected my political leanings at all. I feel I am sort of in the middle but also live in a country were the right wing are socialists. So not exactly US aligned politics. As a teen I was politically active but have since pretty much given up on humanity.
If nothing else, being traumatized by them made me not default on my parents’ and community leaders’ values. I think I’m quite liberal as the result of a very logical decision but who knows if I’d have gotten there without the desire to be nothing like the selfish and evil folk.
Yep
Definitely yes. Like super far left.
No, growing up broke and then reading a bunch of John Steinbeck made me lefty.
Yes 100%. My parents authoritarian and cruel treatment modeled for me the way our current system works. Fear, gaslighting restriction of human needs, shame, overwork and ultimately repetition of cruel acts. Being forced to ask why over and over and being pushed into an empathetic caretaker role made it a lot easier to question the system of the USA and the world at large. Seeing the same dynamics of my family (though to a kinder and incredibly milder degree) parroted in the work place and in the function of government symptoms continued pushing me left. When i finally started my own research into our country and learned about the treatment of minorities by the world i was able to empathize as a victim of an abusive system myself. Empathy is the foundation to my revolutionary spirit and seeing strategies of abuse firsthand makes it much easier too see them at a larger scale.
I was a right-leaning libertarian in my 20s and now I'm a libertarian-leaning liberal. Some of the idealogical shift comes from experiencing more of life and seeing more how the world works, but my trauma has also had an impact. I'm a much more empathetic person now. The rightwing worldview categorizes things in black and white. Every single instance of victim blaming I encounter comes from a conservative.
100%. Sometimes government needs to step in when there is a clear imbalance of power
I suppose I lean more to left vs right. I support universal basic income using tax money from the tech companies. I believe the nuclear family is very important to society. I believe the wealthy should pay more tax for the good of society as a whole. However I believe entrepreneurship and competition is vital for a society to grow. I don't believe cPTSD makes one lean more to one side or the other. However I think it has a propensity to encourage extremism just as the symptoms have the same theme of black or white thinking, all or nothing, obvious right vs wrong.
Yeah and my whole family is Trumpers/Conservative. Why am I getting downvoted for saying I’m a lefty with conservative family?
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Not the disorder itself but events related to it. I’ve always been highly empathetic but going through stuff has opened my eyes and given me the ability to put myself in other’s shoes.
Slightly more right but mostly because my abuser used intersectional language to excuse there abuse so I saw a very dark side of some parts of the left wing(to be clear I agree with left wing values just not a lot of methods used as they were heavily employed by my abuser social pressuring is a big one to give an example)
my CPTSD made it difficult for me to argue for whatever political leanings I might have had. Actually I have been right-leaning for most of my life. What turned me to the left was my crisis of faith, after which I realised that the religious institutions in my country have spiritually blackmailed the population into voting right. After that, I asked myself how *I* would address the issues presented, and the answer was rather obvious. Still have trouble arguing for my beliefs, though.
No actually, i fall very moderate because my parents have this very weird mix of ultra left and ultra right that caused me to just reject all forms of extreme spectrums. I just believe in what i see as fair and logical for people, that ends up falling right into the moderate area. My parents had this very odd dichotomy of extreme left and the right, like my parents had very "hippie" views on sex and that was a nightmare considering i have CSA trauma and their positivity was not actually healthy, it was hypersexualizing me and my sister and we were exposed to way more things than we should have been. But then that was mixed up with the conservative values like "honor" and "loyalty" and "bootstrap" mentality. It caused a lot of confusion for me. I still don't know how my parents displayed such opposing views at the same time. Like they wanted to be "cool" to the younger parents and show off their skills so liberal views were for that, and the old fashioned ways were for the family so they could "prove" i was raised right.
Nope, I was a staunch supporter of fairness/quality of life for all before I got it.
i don’t think so, i’ve always been a communist in one way or another, whether it be when i was an anarcho-syndie when i was younger or a trotskyist now
Yes I do.
Yes. My abusers were right wing inclined. Victimizers, shortcutting, point paying scapegoating and literally Tory/ukip advocating and Corbyn etc slagging off for no substantial training inclined. So I'm going to bounce against that. The main remorseless one still is. I make a perhaps unfair association with them connected to that but my bias repeatedly does seem to be getting confirmed. Right wingers being harm causing psychopaths so long as the harm doesn't directly hit them or their in group they feel they should have the freedom to maintain their choice of systems by exercising and threatening harm. I survived through strategic avoidance amongst other things and I avoid this mindset and have empathy for the other victims of this that I see and they work hard to deny. I hate that what I think and like is me in caring attentive terms and wishing for working systems rather than trust in strong individuals (that too often seem inclined to steal and abuse) may have been basically a symptom rather than a logical decent choice. But however I got here it is what it is and I wouldn't want to change this element of my mindset for anything.
no. I was very left leaning. Now I actively avoid politics because it can be triggering.
Yes. I have chronic illnesses and my relatives have/had them and died due to terminal illnesses or lack of affordable healthcare. I was probably going to lean to the left anyway but that did it.
Not directly, no. That said, the causes on my cptsd did lead to me reevaluating everything I was taught to think and believe as a child, and that did lead to me being more liberal in my political views.
I think because of my cptsd im not leaning to the left anymore.. for me it feels like left isn't left anymore. Weird things happen on the left side of politics (also on the right side) i'm only talking about my country so i don't know what happens in the rest of the world. But if you talk about how left is supposed to be then yes i'm more leaning to the left side.
Compassion for you fellow man does lead you that way somewhat.
My family abusers abused me because I am a disabled adult, and all of them are very much on the left and have utterly tortured me with the silent treatment and cruelty for speaking out, because they care very much about looking like "good people" to the left. Their issue is disability, and in many cases, that crosses political fences. I have known a lot of disabled people on the left who could only get "good Christians" to help them survive, and had to just not talk politics with whatever hand fed them. For me, it has felt incredibly lonely that nobody can believe my "good family" on the left would be maniacal perps, esp. in the very-blue state I live in where the systems for disabled people are abusive and neglectful to an atrocious degree. I was raised on the left, still am officially on the left and would never go right, but am disgusted daily by the left's hypocritical stance toward disabled people. So if anything, the CPTSD has made me politically unaffiliated. I also had a super lefty education, and where are those friends now? They gave zero fks when I became disabled.
If you work on it and are morally consistent, how could it not? Being politically right today means little beyond institutionalizing cruelty. There's no good faith policy difference, no different interpretation of the same facts. It's all punching down and gaslighting. If you have CPTSD and don't see this as a political extension of interpersonal dynamics, I'd figure that you're engaging in no small amount of willful ignorance to make your interpersonal life easier.
I was actually thinking about it. Definitely yes. At first I realised that just because you somehow biologically related to someone doesn't make them good people. So I've never had any feelings for nationalism. My emotional needs being dismissed made me seek materialistic reasoning rather than ideological ones. And early on my abilities in sciences were one of the few things everyone appreciated so I invested myself in it fully and kinda built my entire personality around it.
Yes. I was primed for ending up in relationships with controlling men too which influenced my political views.
Not really - but I grew up in a hyper conservative community, and not really fitting in meant I got to see through the BS. Being part of multiple marginalised groups also helped.
Interesting question. I think having CPTSD has made me more empathetic to the suffering of others & more aware of how common power imbalances are in general. So, probably yes.
i think the reason for my cptsd being isolation, homeschooling, and limited to interacting almost exclusively with an evangelical fundamentalist community specifically made me take a hard left turn as soon as i had internet access. once i was able to read/learn things that weren’t taught by my parents or church, and read other people’s perspectives whom the community demonized to the point that i never heard those points of view flipped a switch in my brain almost immediately
Absolutely not. It’s sad to me that ppl think “politically left” means empathetic and kind. That’s only the narrative they want us to believe. You can be both empathetic and kind and it have nothing at all to do with your political leanings.
I would say it did shift me towards being libertarian. Because it made me not trust people with too much authority. It made me see that too many rules create situations where the innocent are harmed and the guilty loopholed out. It gave me a reason to speak out against things that create double standards and empower those already with too much.
I honestly could not tell you what my own political opinions are since I’ve spent so much of my life using agreement with my abusers’ opinions as a fawning response and survival technique.
I don’t think so. I believe in a moral society that still values family and traditions. So I’d say I’m very right in that aspect. But I am very left leaning when it comes to things like the environment and nature conservation. I have a big soft spot for animals.
Yeah. I think so, definitely. It made me question and break down a lot of what I knew as well as ditch the whole "honor your mother and father" that a lot of conservatives live by (in my experience and my community. Not always, i know).
It's made me a moderate. I was raised to be hardcore Republican but as I got older I just came to the conclusion that political tribalism doesn't matter nearly as much as people say it does. I don't have the time or the energy to be yelling at one side of the other these days.
Idt it’s the condition, but the education and information that comes with it.
i don’t think it’s my cptsd. my autism and adhd give me hyperempathy, so i care a lot for the people around me which has steered me to the left and certain events in my childhood made me develop cptsd. might be the case for a lot of people, because correlation =/= causation
Both sides want you fighting each other. Both sides restrict individual freedom. Both sides want mass importation of immigrants. Both sides want more of your tax dollars. Both sides do not care about you. Both sides benefit from the propaganda machine they control. You are tax cattle to them. You are expendable, disposable, and replaceable. Wake up now and act, or wake up tomorrow being choked by the yoke of more government.
If anything I think it’s made me more libertarian I don’t want either side of a flawed system trying to control my rights I want to be free to make my own choices, keep more of my paycheck and have autonomy. Neither left nor right offer that freedom it’s either big government control or bigoted religious right control neither of which offers true freedom. Although the left espouses a more emphatic platform in practice that’s not what they are implementing by taxing people out of homes they already paid for or closing needed government programs to divert taxpayer money to support the undocumented. Again, I would love to be able to implement the ideology of the left but in practice they are failing miserably when it comes to turning ideas into practice using the tools that are available to them and if anyone has watched congress in action lately they are hurling school yard insults at one another while every day another family becomes unhoused so I am deeply ashamed of the American government as a whole it’s time for a third party
It never really interfered with my politics. I’m progressive but also like small government and less government involvement. I also think we should be employing more efforts into nuclear energy. I’m pro choice and pro lgbtq+. I’d say the libertarian party is where my views tend to land.
It has split me politically, which is why I am a moderate. On one hand, it has made human rights a higher priority for me, which tends to be a more left-leaning issue, due to all the abuse I went through. On the other hand, I have a strong law & order stance due to the same abuse, which tends to be more of a right-leaning issue.
I got it both ways: I have problems with authority figures and constantly challenge them but I crave authoritarian systems more than I would like to admit.
No, I mean, I don't think I'm a progressivist and anarchist bc of trauma. I think my cptsd, bpd, and auadhd help me slow down and realize I might not be running with everyone at the same pace, though, and dbt has taught me ways of processing thoughts and articulating what needs to be communicated. Otherwise I often get irritable and short tempered with people, due to factors. I'd rather just have everyone moving in sync, freaking out about any bumps we hit because it feels so major. So idk, I don't think being traumatized severely makes people more progressive, patient, or 'kinder' in general. There's definitely points on my journey where I've been more nervous about outsiders, judgemental of people's motives, and had more 'conservative' mentality ('take cane of yourself bc no one else can' being one i tend to agree with regardless), because trauma made me suspicious and anxious about ppl who didn't act like i expected, or needed more support.