Traumatizing National Events

This Hostage Crisis.

You missed 1/6/2021.

The Hindenburg disaster

Oh the humanity.

The first big headline news that came as a shock to me was when Diana died (and no I didn’t scream). I was only 13 but to hear the news about someone so famous being killed so suddenly really made me realise how short life can really be.

The JFK Assassination.

That was also the first time I saw my father cry.

Trump's election. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. It felt surreal. I waited for the Secret Service to escort from the White House. And here we are over 4 years later, damaged beyond repair. Sigh.

Ok. I voted 9/11 - but I’ve decided that Trump getting elected was worse. 9/11 brought us together (well, except for the almost 3,000 who died) and 2016 divided us. I don’t think we will ever (as a country) recover from that motherfucker.

Personally, I cried after 9/11 - I was a teen and it was an incredibly scary time. After Trump was declared the winner - I felt like I was in a daze. I went off social media and felt like I was living in bizarro world. I don’t really like thinking about that time.

11/22/63. It affected my entire generation and the rest of US political history.

9/11 paralyzed the country……everyone was in shock…..like a Pearl Harbor moment …….it was so horrible that it is hard to describe the feeling that was in the air…..like a very heavy sadness and dismay …..there was not one American who lived through 9/11 who wasn’t affected by it.

When I learned that Meghan and Harry HAD NOT consulted with the Queen before naming their daughter.

When Millie Vanilla were busted lip syncing their lyrics. Music has never been the same.

When Dylan went electric.

When John Lennon was shot.

R13- Yes, that was horrifying. I was only about 11 or 12 and remember my older brother trying not to cry. He was cursing the killer and said " Of course the son of a bitch would have to be from Georgia!" He was devastated. My mother was crying, I was crying because they were crying. It wasn't like it is now. People getting shot on the street was shocking back then.

Dump getting elected. I remember thinking that I wouldn't be able to take 4 years of his shit.

9/11 was horrific and until the pandemic, the worst thing I've lived through. The pandemic completely changed our way of life even moreso than 9/11 and that's why I voted for it. My entire life went from having a thriving social life to complete isolation for over a year. We were afraid to breathe and of each other, not some foreign terrorists. I personally feel it has impacted my mental health for the worse and I will forever be living in a state of anxiety that something worse will come along. I lost a friend to Covid and know many others who got it and have lingering issues from it. Not to mention I thought that the pandemic would bring us all together and instead it brought out the selfish assholes who couldn't give a fuck about anyone else. I never thought I'd see the day when people were protesting science but it happened and 600,000 + of us have died from something that could have easily been prevented had folks not been such complete dirt bags.

The Ides of March '44

R15 it obviously completely destroyed you mentally.

R16- Not to mention we had to live with a criminal psychopath destroying our country and leading a take over attempt of our government at the same time. It has been hellish and his damage gets more frightening everyday.

[quote]We were afraid to breathe and of each other, not some foreign terrorists

MARY!

The movie Cats

9/11

For me, it was when they introduced a new Darrin on Bewitched.

Literal violence.

The day I learned that I was expected to call Bruce Jenner " she" and pretend he was a women and not a cross dresser. I just can't........

As a young person - 9/11. As not so young but want to consider myself a young adult - D. Dump being elected. As someone who accepts my age as just an adult - 1/6/2021. I worked from home on 1/6 to watch the proceedings once the insurrection began, I decided to just use vacation time. I’ve never felt so awful about the state of our country. I cried because that isn’t who we as a people are.

9/11 is a close second, however the President of the United States getting his brains blown out while riding in an open limousine was the most traumatizing thing this country has ever seen. Not to mention seeing the alleged assassin getting shot to death on live TV 48 hours later. It's still the crime of the century because it is unsolved to this day.

The day James Corden’s work visa got approved

I don’t care about rockets or spaceships.

r27, it isn't unsolved. Lee Harvey Oswald shot him and there is no evidence that he was acting on anyone's orders. I used to be obsessed with the conspiracy surrounding this but it's pretty clear once you look at the evidence that he acted alone.

I noted Challenger disaster because it took place in a time before the the concept of/ actual terrorism took hold as the boogeyman. It was a more innocent time before internet, so people actually gathered in front of the TV watching CNN, a rather new concept itself (24 hr news). Whatever news that was out, everyone shared and was more of less on the same page. Then for us young kids, we’d been getting the build-up to having a teacher in space, and she was on the news telling us that she was going to teach us from space. Then when the shuttle exploded, for many kids it was our first experience with death.

NASA originally wanted to have Big Bird as the first civilian in space but eventually ditched the idea. Can you imagine the trauma to kids if it had been Big Bird who got blown to pieces?

Anyway of course the disaster was all over the nightly news and we watch Ronnie Reagan doing his great communicator-actor thing. Horrible president but even as a kid I couldn’t deny he had a certain ability to sell it.

The nationwide release of The Mirror Has Two Faces

The Challenger blowup was avoidable, as NASA was warned by engineers the day’s temperature was too cold for all the rocket’s hardware to withstand takeoff.

They pressured one department head to sign off on it anyway, but he adamantly refused. Which he was grateful for, once all the investigations started.

French spies blowing up one of our boats was the first time I realised terrorism could happen here if you fucked with the wrong country.

The Christchurch earthquake, then the Mosque attacks were pretty horrific.

9/11 - I remember watching on telly and immediately knowing there would be a war after what seemed like a decade of peace.

I spent many years in therapy getting out from under self esteem issues that had me trapped in a crap job. I finally succeeded in moving on...a fantastic day. Ready to celebrate, I realized the TVs in the appliance stores were all tuned in to the Challenger disaster...

So not the best day (my then partner and I celebrated anyway, if quietly), but I went on to greater things.

When Al Sharpton organized and then led a mob that burned down Freddy's Fashion Mart and killed eight people.

I was retraumatized years later when MSNBC paid him millions and gave him his own TV show.

9/11 was very traumatic (and doubly so for me, the towers went down then later that day I broke my leg in a mountain biking accident). But those were single traumatic events.

I said Trump because it's been an ongoing thing for the last four years and continues to be a constant, ongoing trauma. I suppose the upside of Trump is that he got all of the KKK/Qunts to take off their hoods so we all know who in our circle are racist, hateful, assholes.

JFK, RFK, MLK, Challenger, 9-11, Trump win, 1-6-21 capitol riot, Reagan's casual and murderous indifference to the AIDS epidemic

I used to sometimes do corporate cater waiter jobs in the Twin Towers during my starving artist NYC years. Thankfully I’d moved on to L.A. by the time they were hit.

I’ve always wondered if any coworkers from that catering company were there that day.

9/11 and the pandemic changed/will change a lot of things. 9/11 changed travel, ushered in security theater that keeps no one safe but annoys everyone, curtailed civil liberties, and put money in the pockets of politicians who sell fear and had stock in companies that made airport porno scanners and such.

We don't have the full picture of how the pandemic will change things yet. Working from home is probably here to stay for a lot of people for one. But it showed how disgusting, stupid, and selfish the average American is and how terrible and tenuous the healthcare system is.

But for sheer shock and fear, January 6th. I could not believe what I was seeing and was really really scared about what could happen in this country for the first time even after four years of trump.

I lived in NYC during 9/11 but January 6th was still more shocking and scary to me. The full plan for 9/11 didn't even last the day, the passengers on the final plane caught on and took matters into their own hands. And that kind of attack is not possible anymore. The cockpit doors are reinforced and the passengers won't stand for it. But January 6 to me was a really ominous sign of things to come, all of them bad for democracy. The politicians that incited it were emboldened because they were not punished at all. And there is plenty more flyover rabble waiting for them to give the word. Again.

I seem to recall something related to pineapple...

When tRump was elected ….i was literally shocked because I thought no one in their right mind could ever have voted for him.

However ,as the MAGA supporters, The Don’t Tread on Me gangs , idiots driving pickup trucks with big ass confederate flags anchored in the back and the Q Anon crowd emerged and then had their ‘Let’s Lynch Mike Pence’ Insurrection Jamboree Jan 7 it all came into focus that these people would stop at nothing to circumvent an election and shred our democracy.

And I was correct……..no one in their right mind would ever vote for a man like tRump.

R40: isn’t that something you could check on the victims’ list? CNN put one up not long after and I think it’s still easy to find online (probably a million other websites that have the list too)

When Obama was elected. I couldn't believe so many people would fall for that grift.

[quote]R44 isn’t that something you could check on the victims’ list? CNN put one up not long after and I think it’s still easy to find online (probably a million other websites that have the list too)

Thanks. I’ll check on that.

I don’t remember my fellow cater waiters’ full names, if I ever even knew them. They were Sam, Carrie, the one from Circle Rep Lab, etc.

The election of Ronald Reagan as POTUS. It marked the beginning of the decline into the morass we find ourselves.

I was an 18-year-old college freshman at the time (yes, I’m OLD), but even then I recognized that charlatans were taking over the US.

[quote][R15] it obviously completely destroyed you mentally.

Really? How so?

JFK. Hard to express how suddenly energized the whole country felt when he became President. And how that energy at once dissipated when LBJ was sworn in.

JKF Jr. really upset me. I'll admit I cried deeply about Diana. And I did start to cry on January 6th when it started so I had to turn it off. And don't ask me why but I lived in the West Village on 9/11 and saw it looking down Sixth Ave. but I don't know why I wasn't as shaken as I should have been.

I remember having trouble sleeping for several nights after Oklahoma City — felt like something fundamental in the country shifted and revealed the dark underside of America.

9/11 laid the groundwork for Trump.

Trump by far. He nearly ended (and still is working on it) 200+ years of Democracy.

r20, you can "Mary" me all you like, but I actually lost someone to Covid because his son who was asymptomatic went to visit him and gave him Covid. He ended up on a respirator and died shortly thereafter and the son now has to live with the fact that he killed his father.

So yes, we were afraid of each other and if you weren't, what the hell was wrong with you?

r35 How did overcome your issues? I'm struggling through the same thing and have been for years :(