Category: Uncategorized

New .com Website Address

Well, guess who did something silly. I forgot to renew the old www.EyesOnTrauma.org website and a domain shark poached it from me. I tried offering £150 to buy it back but they ignored my offer. I decided to register an alternative domain name instead, and amazingly, the .com was still available. Silly domain sharked missed that opportunity!

With a bit of luck and help from the best web host I’ve ever had, I managed to restore a backup of my beloved lost website onto the new .com address.

So now this website exists at www.EyesOnTrauma.com 🙂

There was a period of a few months when I well and truly thought I’d lost my whole website. I was absolutely distraught. It felt quite traumatic. I was too scared to try and get it back from my host in case the answer was ‘no’. I finally plucked up the courage to ask and it was possible to recover it.

In the meantime, that sense of loss I felt for something I put a lot of time and love into, has inspired me to do more work with Eyes On Trauma now I have the second chance with getting the website back.

Having this time to step back and consider everything, I have also been inspired to update the website and launch a peer support group. You can find out more here. Lots more exciting things coming too!

“What happened to you?”

Instead of “What’s wrong with you?”, we should be asking, “What happened to you?”

whats-wrong-with-you-what-happened-to-you

It’s time for a paradigm shift away from individualised concepts of mental illness. The problem is never solely within the individual. It is within the family, interpersonal relationships, communities and society.

Friends, family & professionals always asked what was wrong with me. If one person had instead asked what happened, I could have found the help I needed and been saved from a lot of unnecessary pain. 

I’ve struggled my whole life with “severe ill mental health” & chronic suicidal feelings. I’ve sought help from medical & mental health professionals over my lifetime. Sadly, as these services aren’t trauma-informed, this caused me more harm. I’ve since found many others with lived experience of complex trauma who have also felt this.

Still desperate for answers, I took my healing journey into my own hands. I finally discovered that my experiences can be explained by the complex trauma that began in my very early childhood.

I realise that my “mental health symptoms”, “personality disorder”, and “unacceptable behaviour” are in fact reasonable expressions of the trauma still painfully held within my body. 

In hindsight, many of these obvious warning signs have been missed since my early childhood. Instead, the people supposed to help made it worse. A trauma-informed approach is what’s missing, and something we are finally beginning to work towards.

Asking “what’s wrong with you?” implies the problem is with you, adding to the overwhelming sense of shame and guilt many people with lived experience of complex trauma already feel. Instead, “what happened to you?”, can begin to validate our experiences compassionately and help us heal. 

The next time you see someone in distress, instead of asking “what’s wrong with you?”, try “what happened to you?”. It might be the first time they’ve ever heard that question.

Originally posted by Eleanor on the @EyesOnTrauma Instagram page on 04/05/2021.

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