Dylan Martin

About

Am I making too much of this? That question arrives constantly, and it usually comes from the people making the least of it, who have spent years explaining their own history away in increasingly economical terms. The question is a symptom rather than a reasonable enquiry. PTSD very reliably produces minimization. The person needs the event to be small in order to keep functioning, and everybody around them found it easier when it was described as manageable. We undo that carefully. Getting an accurate size on what happened is often the first substantial piece of work, and it changes what everything else means. I came to this from a wholly different line of work, which perhaps makes me less impressed by the idea that difficulty must be ranked before it can be treated. If you suspect you are making too much of it, that suspicion is worth examining.