I went out yesterday. I was alone, which meant I could just wander around and do what I needed in silence. My fellow introverts will get this 😂 Anyway, I overheard so many conversations yesterday that reminded me how much everyone is struggling with trauma. One of the most insidious things that has happened in ‘mental health’ has been the specific and careful way trauma has been framed as only certain things (car crash, war vets, NDE, rape), whilst everything else is seen as ‘mental health issues’ - but trauma is so many thousands of things. A teenage girl walked past me with her Dad, telling him with tears in her eyes that she couldn’t face Christmas, and that it was destroying her mental health. She was begging him not to make her attend large family gatherings whilst she wasn’t coping. Then on another aisle, I overheard two women in their 50s. One said to the other, “Do you like this fragrance?” The other woman took a firm step back and said, “Ugh god. No! Don’t spray that. He used to wear that. I don’t ever want to smell that again. It makes me feel sick. Don’t do that!” Her friend said, “Oh god, I’m so sorry, I should have realised.” At the checkout, I overheard an exhausted woman explaining she couldn’t afford everything on the belt, and needed to put some stuff back. As I paid for my stuff and walked out of the shop, I walked past a man in his 40s having a panic attack whilst his family supported him to breathe and calm. As I got to my car, I walked past a teenage girl. Pale, very thin, with tears down her face. Her mum was gently asking her if she would prefer to sit in the car instead of coming into the shop. She nodded silently. Why am I writing this? Because there’s a lot of truth behind the cliche ‘everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about’. Trauma is everywhere. Humans are traumatised, and they are struggling to cope. We don’t have a population of ‘mentally ill’ people, we have a population of people who are traumarised and distressed. Christmas is not easy for thousands of people, and if you pay attention, you can see the strain all around you.