"Repressed Trauma" Is the New Horoscope
Did you think it was "normal" to sometimes have a stomach ache? No, you must have repressed traumatic memories.
On my first day of college, my psychology professor gave us all a written personality test. During our next class, he handed out our results and asked us, by show of hands, how many of us felt our results were accurate. Almost everyone in the class raised their hands, saying their results were some version of “eerily accurate.” Then, he revealed that the tests had actually been completely fake, and everyone had been given the same results. That’s right—everyone, from frat boys to sardonic hipsters to shy geeks—received the same personality results, and all of them felt these results were accurate.
How did all of these college kids fall for the same prank? Well, the personality test results were extremely vague. I don’t remember specifics, but I recall figuring that about 80% of it was true of me, enough to be “surprisingly good,” and then I disregarded the 20% that wasn’t quite right. But more importantly, the specific pieces that I do remember were all descriptions of victimhood—statements like “I do so much for other people and get less appreciation than I deserve” or “I don’t advocate for myself enough because I don’t want to disappoint people.” I realized that these narratives were things that most people believed about themselves, even though there’s no way the entire world is full of people-pleasers (If this were true, people would be, well, a bit more pleased.)
This is the same basic concept behind horoscopes—and by the way, I am not judging people who enjoy astrology for fun. But if you get your horoscope done, you will probably find that most of it seems basically accurate, regardless of what it says. Horoscopes or psychic predictions are rarely specific enough to be clearly false—and if you want to believe in them, you will. This is known as the Barnum effect, and it has kept many psychics gainfully employed.
I see the same sentiment repeated across social media and “TherapyTok,” attributing extremely common ailments—symptoms of “having a body and being alive”—to unrecognized trauma, or even traumatic events one doesn’t remember at all. (It’s giving Satanic Panic “recovered memories.”) This is not just about helping people with trauma process what happened to them and heal. It’s about convincing people that they experienced trauma even if they have no real reason to think they did, based on vague symptoms that could apply to nearly anyone.
Let me ask you: do you sometimes feel lightheaded when you get up too quickly? Do you occasionally have a stomachache? Do you sometimes have trouble sleeping? Does your neck sometimes hurt? Now, you might be saying, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean I had a traumatic childhood—I don’t have any memories of anything seriously bad happening!” But not too fast. Did you know that “not remembering much of your childhood” is, in fact, a symptom of repressed trauma too?
It’s no wonder that you can convince almost anyone they had a traumatic childhood, given that not remembering anything traumatic is now a “sign” that trauma happened. My psychology professor’s prank lives on, except now it’s on social media and people are taking it seriously.
