![]() ![]() And so a meme is a way of expression." In response to toxic positivity ![]() When you experience a painful event that causes extreme anxiety, like we see in PTSD, there's a period of time where you want to avoid, but avoidance is a trap you don't necessarily want to fall into. "Whether you're doing it through a meme or you're doing it with a friend or with a therapist. "Talking about trauma is always helpful," Nguyen said. She points out that what these memes are really doing - whether they involve a dark quote about eating disorders on top of a picture of a possum or a picture of famous women from the early aughts overlaid with depictions of a manic episode - is opening up the conversation to talk about trauma. "I use humor as a way to lean into moments of suffering while also using humor to help me feel OK." "When a person suffers from trauma or a very sad and painful time in their life, there is something to say about the use of humor both to heal or deflect from the pain, or distract and deflect," Nguyen, a licensed clinical social worker who is also speaking from personal experience, told Mashable. But these memes can also be helpful and healing to the audience, Theresa Nguyen, the chief program officer at Mental Health America, told Mashable. She says it can feel cathartic to create. ![]() She's not the only account posting memes that tackle issues like trauma, therapy, and healing: Look at Instagram accounts like or Taylor creates these memes, she's digging into her own trauma and using art and humor as a way to communicate that. Her posts differ greatly in their content, but always come back to one thing: They are trauma memes. One of her posts shows someone using weed to solve for, or cover up, "every trauma that exists in my body every illness every pain every anniversary of moments lost in memory." Another incorporates a photo of naked legs in bed with an artist's background and text saying: "I can feel myself slipping away from the certainty of tomorrows, I see now that it all ends." Taylor, a 25-year-old writer and artist whose upcoming book of poetry is titled Bimboland, said she found that there was a need for herself and others to have a space to go to on the internet that wasn't just "haha this is funny," but was "ha ha this is funny, but it's kind of painful." "And for me, the more I talked about it, the less I was alone, because all of a sudden I had so many strangers reaching out being like, I also have this experience." "I really feel like shame kills people," Taylor told Mashable on the phone. Life > Health & Wellness > Mental HealthĮrin Taylor started creating memes on her Instagram page in 2018 as a way for her to talk about her own trauma and "work out the shame" she had connected with those experiences. ![]()
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