The Fraud of “Trauma-Informed” Care: Why Survivors Are Smarter Than The “Experts”
What Pain Creates That Comfort Never Could
People talk about trauma like it’s just a wound. Something broken, something lost. But that’s not what it is. Not really.
Trauma doesn’t only break—it builds something too. It sharpens perception. It rewires instincts. It creates intelligence that can’t be learned from books or replicated in labs.
Not that the world sees it that way.
People love to talk about resilience, but only in the ways that make them comfortable. The version where survivors rise up, overcome, and become palatable again.
It’s the hero’s journey that you love from films and storybooks. It’s the marketable fantasy that everyone has come to expect—the unrealistic ideal to make you want and need for.
What nobody wants to talk about is the version where survivors see everything differently. Where trauma strips away illusions and forces clarity. Where the world stops feeling like a place of certainty and starts feeling like a series of patterns, risks, and calculations.
Because that’s what trauma really does.
It makes you see what others miss. It makes you anticipate what others assume. It teaches you a language most people will never have to learn.
The Intelligence of Survival
Most people assume intelligence is about knowledge. The ability to retain facts, solve equations, and articulate ideas with ease.
But intelligence is bigger than that. It exists in places most people never think to look.
There’s AQ (Adversity Quotient)—the ability to take a hit and keep moving, to adapt under pressure, to survive what should have taken you out.
There’s XQ (Experiential Quotient)—the kind of intelligence you don’t get from a classroom, but from living through things that forced you to understand.
These are the forms of intelligence people overlook. The ones that don’t show up on standardized tests but determine who makes it through life intact.
Because survival is its own kind of genius. The ability to see the trap before it closes. The ability to read a room without a word being spoken. The ability to navigate chaos with precision because you’ve done it a thousand times before.
These skills don’t look like what society calls “intelligence” so they’re dismissed. Overlooked. Cast out. Ignored.
And the people who possess them? We’re treated like we’re the ones who don’t understand. Like we’re the ones with the problem. Like we’re the ones who are the problem.
The Fraud of “Trauma-Informed” Expertise
Little infuriates me more than the so-called “trauma-informed” experts who have no lived experience with real trauma, yet write and train others on “standards”.
They study human beings in contained suffering as if they’re lab rats and publish findings. They publish papers, speak on stages, sell info-products and certificates as authorities.
Then further ignorant and unsafe people get certified by them as “experts” and “professionals” after taking a few workshops.
They memorize the right words—words that do nothing but sanitize trauma for corporate policies and HR manuals, and serve to further alienate and oppress the wounded.
Then they get paid to manage vulnerable people. People who have actually survived. People whose intelligence was forged in fire, not in a classroom or through a computer screen. People who have been studying human behavior out of necessity their entire lives, largely convinced that they’re stupid or crazy.
And what do the certificate holders then get to do? They get paid to re-traumatize the very people they claim to help and report on how who in their camps are still unworthy.
They use patronizing, clinical language that strips survivors of autonomy. They reduce real human experience into shameful, theoretical frameworks that fit neatly into training slides. And worst of all? They hold the institutional power.
If you challenge them, if you push back, if you refuse to be condescended to, they can flip the script and weaponize the system against you. They report you and gossip about you.
All they have to do is say you made them feel “unsafe”. Perhaps even give you a label. They could say you were “aggressive” or “confrontational” or “disrespectful” rather than assertive or misunderstood, given the way you’d been treated. Perhaps they felt “uncomfortable” in your presence. Not because you did anything wrong, but because you didn’t make them feel valued or validated.
And suddenly, you become the problem.
This is the modern day version of what happened a century ago in Germany before things got violent.
God forbid you assert to someone: “Don’t touch me!” when they feel you need a hug or a soothing touch on your arm. After all, what right do you have to claim ownership of your own body. You must need to be given a pill or restrained if you get upset. You should probably get counseling and go somewhere else.
Because in this world, it doesn’t matter who actually understands trauma. It only matters who holds the microphone and the paperwork.
Pain Transforms or It Destroys—You Choose
I don’t share my experiences and observations for sympathy. I don’t need it. I already love myself deeply.
My father tried telling the truth when he was alive, just like all my kids have always done too. Now everyone who’s left is doing what they have to do to survive.
I’ve got a court appearance coming up on Tuesday morning. We shall see what happens there this time.
They unlawfully detained me December 27, 2024 and would have left me there forever had a missing person’s report not been filed.
Inside, I heard all the words those on shift spoke about. I know who they are. I know what they’re doing. I know what they’ve done. They don’t hide it at all. They brag. They laugh. They torture for fun and for paychecks.
I have been out of the cell for nine weeks now on bond, after 21-days of being caged—stripped of my rights and my dignity, experiencing horrors still impossible for me to say.
God’s given me guidance and angels to get by in the meantime. I trust still in this that nothing will change.
I share my true life stories because people need to see what trauma actually does. What it builds. What it reveals. What it gives you that nothing else can.
Pain will either sharpen you or shatter you.
It will either teach you or trap you.
And the difference between the two? How you choose to carry it.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20)
If you carry pain, let it serve its purpose. Let it refine you. Let it give you what comfort never could. But never let it define you. Because you are not what hurt you. You are what you become through it.
Don’t ever let “them” win.