If the trauma evokes such a strong emotional negative reaction that we’re overwhelmed, we’re not able to heal,” he tells me. “Processing is about being able to experience these emotions at a level we can tolerate. Clinical psychiatrist Vincent McDarby believes trauma memes can aid in healing and help people learn to encounter their triggers without being overwhelmed by them. Trauma memes work in the way that all memes do - they communicate something instantly recognizable or relatable - but there’s an extra level of understanding for both creators and audiences. But even more so, it allows survivors agency over their own narratives.” “The more you talk about these things openly, it becomes clear that you’re not alone and decreases the overall shame. “Certain trauma carries a lot of taboo, and this kills people because it’s so easy to internalize the stigma,” she says. Taylor tells me that when she started making memes about child sexual abuse, she rarely saw anyone else doing it but that she soon found solace in the practice. The format is an invitation to relate, destigmatizing topics that people find untouchable. Recently, Taylor has been grappling with a serious medical diagnosis through the art of memes.Ī post shared by hottie that hyperspecificity and candor that makes and similar accounts unique, even exclusionary, but it’s also what makes them communal. In one, teddy bears hug beneath bold pink text that reads, “I was raped this summer and all I got to show for it is an inability to have healthy relationships.” In another, a family holds a baby’s stroller on the rail of a bridge, and the overlaid text references the complexities of familial abuse. Images of everything from celebrities to Sopranos screenshots to Taylor’s own selfies are overlaid with text that can feel jarring. True to form, the account feels at once voyeuristic and reassuring. She started as a way to explore topics like sex, kink, and vulnerability while working at a sex dungeon, but it has developed into an artistic practice and “interactive trauma diary,” she tells the Cut. But healing, like all things, takes different forms for different people, and creating memes is not mutually exclusive to therapy.Įrin Taylor, a writer and artist whose upcoming book of poetry is titled Bimboland, is a trauma-meme trailblazer. Instagram accounts like and that deal with trauma, therapy, and healing through memes may be confusing for those who either haven’t experienced trauma or are earlier in their process. For many meme creators and trauma survivors, however, that doesn’t mean it’s off-limits for humor. Of course, trauma is serious, and its effects on the brain and body are extensive and unpredictable. We understand memes to be jokes, but culturally we perceive some things, like trauma, as too serious to joke about. The memeification of serious mental-health issues like addiction and trauma can be even more controversial. For many, though, having painful or shameful feelings validated can be a form of cognitive reappraisal. They’ve been used since around the mid-aughts to convey feelings around mental illness, particularly anxiety and depression, but fears that memes may “romanticize” mental-health issues still abound. That's no way to live.Photo: Underlying Image: Getty Images / KMazur, Meme: the years, memes have evolved from their broad relatability and humble top/bottom text origins to become absurd, esoteric, and often dark. Ultimately, stop may or may not mean stop and it loses the life giving vibe it used to have. We end up responding to signs unilaterally or just disregard them. We become disconnected from each other and are left with our own predictions. We fail to understand why we get the vibes we do from each other and collaboration breaks down. When we can't connect and communicate to clarify what things mean or where they come from. Life enhancing information processing is a perspective that explores how we have come to use information processing to clarify signs and collaborate. So, for culture to support life we need to ask what things mean. Predictions of course, are not fact and are often inaccurate. Our brain predicts what we think someone's sign means. If you drive safely you probable get a strong vibe from a stop sign that makes you STOP! Feelings link information, energy, and the body though the vibes we get about what we perceive. We use signs all the time to collaborate in meeting our needs. A stop sign is a great everyday example of the physical connection between our brain and our culture.
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