Any Community That Tolerates Trauma Junkies Is Unsafe For Everyone Else

You know the kind. The person that bends every gathering and interaction into a hunt for the problematic elements or people within it. The person who is not happy unless we’re all doing the work to eliminate the systemic oppression at our event. The person who loudly centers themselves as leading the charge to making a place or group or scene “safe” for everyone.

This person makes any space that they are let into radically unsafe for every normal person within that space, and destroy any communities they are let into. Tolerating them isn’t a kindness, it’s endangering your loved ones out of cowardice.

Obligate Victimhood

The Trauma Junkie must be the shining knight leading the charge against evil. This is how they get psychological validation. Unfortunately, their demand for evil greatly outstrips the supply. They will therefore recast normal interactions as traumatic ordeals so there will be a victimization to rally against. The alleged victim is almost always the trauma junkie. They’re rarely more happy than when they are recounting the brief awkward conversation that had them more scared than they’ve ever been, trying desperately to recall defensive techniques against a violent knife attack which could totally happen any second, I swear.

Because the trauma junkie must be victimized at every event, and because this never actually happens in real life, there will always be one hyper-exaggerated victimization at an event the junkie attends, and the perpetrator of this “victimization” will be chosen at random. If you know 400 people will be at an event with an obligate victim, are you willing to risk a 1-in-400 chance that you will be placed upon the junkie’s list of secret violent rapists which will be distributed to any future events he or she is interested in? And possibly friends-of-friends in your social circle, and future employers?

Anyone who tolerates the presence of a trauma junkie in groups and at events is creating such a victim among their members/attendees.

Draining of Leadership Resources

A trauma junkie needs the narrative to be about them, which means they need the leadership of whatever group or event they have infiltrated to acknowledge them and invest resources in their vanity crusade. They will take unbounded hours of time and every ounce of available energy if it is within their reach. Leadership resources are limited, and generally pretty scarce relative to how much they are needed. The parasitization of a leadership team’s time is damaging to any organization that allows it. What’s worse, the more they allow it, the more trauma junkies will be drawn to the organization to leach from them.

Every bit of energy that’s thrown into that insatiable maw is less energy that can be used to actually make an event or group better, safer, funner, more valuable to real people. They leave less resources available to address any actual wrongdoing that might happen. Leadership may think they are taking the brunt of a trauma junkie’s attention in order to spare their community members from being targeted for Obligate Vicitm-ization. But they’re leaving the community poorer and more vulnerable to real shocks. Even worse, acquiescing to a struggle session will at best only buy a short delay while encouraging future demands for even more attention.

Crumbling Communities

Trauma junkies are not subtle. They crow victory loudly with every victim they are fed in the endless appeasement of the molochian gods of social war.

The community members, seeing friends and family and even inoffensive strangers slowly offered up on the alter, quietly nope out. The most socially vulnerable go first. Their friends flow in successive waves.

They leave because speaking up is dangerous. Anyone who opposes a trauma junkie immediately becomes the most likely candidate for the junkie’s next victim. The junkie will attack anyone who challenges their narrative. An individual who questions the description of events or the severity of the harm is immediately showcased as a part of the problem. Either a rape-apologist or an unwitting stooge blinded by their own privilege. Trauma junkies don’t for the truth, because they don’t believe in truth. They believe only in power, they have only the will to battle, the hunger for affirmation.

Why would anyone speak up in such a situation? There are smaller, safer communities to join. The world gets smaller and lonelier. The victimized community becomes unpleasant enough that eventually even leadership gives up in burnt-out disgust. Then only the trauma junkies are left, having hollowed-out and taken over yet one more place that used to serve a vibrant community of joyful humans.

Duties of Leadership

This is not a problem that goes away if it’s ignored. Perhaps one thinks “it’s OK, everyone knows that this person is a trauma junkie, everyone knows to avoid them and ignore them.” This is rarely true. Even in the best case scenario - where a trauma junkie picks the wrong target, a community member that is truly valued and cherished by everyone, and the junkie is thoroughly discredited and embarrassed - this only creates a new problem if the junkie sticks around. Now they become a Missing Stair, a person that everyone who was there at the time knows to avoid, but that all new members must be warned about lest they become the next victims. And it’s impossible to warn everyone in time in every case. Why do we still have this person around, victimizing new members?

Protecting one’s community is one of the duties of leadership. Yes, it is hard. The trauma junkie will marshal whatever resources they have to be as destructive as possible on their way out. It won’t be costless, and the leaders may take financial or reputational damage as a result. It is worth it. Would you rather the costs be borne by the people who trusted you to create this space for them? The community can’t bear it forever.

Most organizations have some rules or guidelines about what they tolerate. Most groups do as well, even if they are informal and unwritten. Every organization and group should state (and codify, if written rules exist) that they will not tolerate trauma junkies within their groups. I would even use those exact words.¹ Anyone who displays the behaviors of a trauma junkie may be quietly approached and informed that such actions aren’t accepted here, and they need to stop destructive activities. When they refuse to do so, the junkie must be firmly disinvited and told not to return until they have reformed. Any community that doesn’t have a protocol to deal with such persons will be unsafe for everyone else within it.

The rest of us are not without responsibility. Every one of us has to have just enough backbone to say out loud that we don’t want to live in fear, and to let our leaders know. I, personally, will unequivocally support any leader in any group I value to turn away the junkies. They will get ridiculous amounts of benefit of the doubt from me. It is, after all, very easy to spot a trauma junkie. They intentionally draw attention to themselves at every opportunity. They offend again and again without remorse. Any leader of mine willing to stop this will be loudly and publicly supported by me so they don’t bear the brunt of the junkie’s retaliation alone.

A Word of Concession

Ok, fine. Perhaps trauma junkies “can’t help” the way they are. They’re traumatized themselves, hypervigilant PTSD victims of social media and political warfare. That doesn’t change the fact that they are dangerous to everyone around them. For the protection of everyone else they must be isolated, just like the violent psychotic or compulsive rapist must be isolated. Whether they are “at fault” or “morally responsible” for their behavior is irrelevant. Our first duty is to protect our families and our community. Or these trauma junkies will perpetuate the cycle and hurt more people into further trauma narratives.

1. There does not need to be an explicit definition of what “trauma junkie” means. There should not be an explicit definitions of what it means, because trauma junkies love gaming definitions and spending eternal resources trying to rules-lawyer leadership. This is a judgement call by leadership. Either the rest of the community trusts you to be a leader, or it doesn’t. In the first case you are serving them as a leader should, in the latter you never had a viable community anyway.