Recently, a therapist told me one of my designs was “belittling and demeaning.”
The shirt says: I have childhood trauma. And underneath, in smaller letters: (this claim is disputed by my parents).
I want to answer that for real. Not in a comment section. Here, on my terms.
Because that shirt isn't making light of trauma. It's what surviving it sounded like in my head.
Thanks, it's all the trauma
My whole life, people have told me how funny I am. And my whole life, I've done the same bit: a little hair flip, and — "thanks, it's all the trauma."
I thought I invented that joke. It turns out half the internet makes it. And there's a reason for that.
I learned humor as a coping mechanism before I had words for what it was. The words came in seventh grade, when we were reading Shakespeare and a teacher explained comic relief — the funny scene that exists so the audience can survive the tragedy. I remember thinking: oh. That's me. That's the job I've been doing.
I made myself the comic relief. I made myself the butt of the joke, on purpose, so it didn't hurt so much.
Here's the part the critics get wrong, and I need to say it plainly: the jokes did not show up after I was safe. I wasn't laughing from some healed mountaintop, looking back. I was joking during it. In high school, people told me I was hilarious. In college, people told me I was hilarious. I was still being abused. Laughter was how I got through the day I was actually having.
So when I drew Got Trauma? — same typeface energy as "Got Milk," because I'm a graphic designer and I'll never waste a good reference — it wasn't a punchline I made up for a product line. It was the joke I had already been living inside for twenty years. And the more people I talk to, the more the real joke reveals itself: who doesn't got trauma?
What the joke actually does
When people ask what I have, I tell them I have all the letters. AuDHD. CPTSD. PCOS. POTS. Narcolepsy, Tourette Syndrome, anxiety, depression — at this point I'm just collecting the alphabet.
Nothing physically changes when I say that. I'm still the same person with the same diagnoses and the same history. But something shifts. The thing that nearly broke me becomes something I'm holding, instead of something holding me. A dark joke gives the power back. It puts lightness into a room that pain wanted to keep dark.
And here's the boundary that matters, the one I wish critics could see: the joke is not instead of the healing. I laugh my way through the moment, and then I go to therapy and unpack it. Both things. In that order, sometimes minutes apart. Humor is how I survive the wave; therapy is how I learn the ocean. I wrote a whole essay about this — why humor is a valid coping mechanism — because my own therapist and a lot of actual research agree: gallows humor is one of the ways humans metabolize the unbearable.
There's also a difference the size of a canyon between a joke I make about my trauma and a joke someone else makes about it. I earned my jokes. I paid full price for them.
About that parenthesis
Let me tell you why the shirt says (this claim is disputed by my parents), because that line isn't random. It's the most autobiographical thing I've ever printed.
When I finally told my parents what happened to me as a child, they didn't believe me. I wrote about it. I've been no contact for three years.
Sometimes trauma isn't just surviving what happened. It's surviving the people who insist it didn't.
That is what the parenthesis is. It's the experience of thousands of adult survivors: you carry the trauma, and the people who caused it — or failed to protect you from it — dispute the claim. They call it a dream, a phase, an exaggeration, a lie. And then everyone wonders why so many of us go quiet, or go to therapy, or go no contact.
The shirt names that — in eleven words, with a laugh where the wound is. When the right survivor reads it, they don’t feel belittled. They feel caught — seen mid-experience by a stranger's shirt. You're not the only one whose reality got disputed. Look, it's on a shirt. It happens so often it's on a shirt.
That's not making light of trauma. That's making light for the people still in it.
What's fair, and what isn't
I want to be fair to the people who flinch at these designs — more fair than the internet usually is.
It is completely fair to not find my shirts funny. Dark humor is medicine dosed by the patient; someone watching from the outside sees the pain, not the relief, and I understand the flinch. It's fair to say "this isn't for me." It's fair to say "this is too raw for where I am right now." If that's you, truly: it's okay. Not every design is for every person. The gentle ones exist for a reason too.
But "belittling and demeaning" — no. I can't accept that one, because it describes an intent that has never once lived in this brand. Belittling would be laughing at survivors. This is survivors laughing first.
And I do have a line. There are jokes I've toyed with and refused to print. I almost made a design that said "If I want to ruin my day, I just call my mom." It's honest. It might even be relatable. But it tears someone down instead of lifting someone up, and that's the whole test: does this help a survivor feel seen, or does it just take a swing at somebody? Self-Care Shirts will never tear a person down — including the people who tore me down. The point was never revenge. The point was company.
The ones who need it, find it
A trauma therapist who works with survivors every day recently bought my "I Unpack Trauma Like It's Amazon Prime" sticker and put it on her car for her clients to see. People stop strangers wearing "My Therapist Knows All Your Names" to say mine too. Someone with a panic disorder sees "Any Room Can Be a Panic Room If You Just Give Me a Second" and laughs the specific laugh of being understood.
Because here's the thing about these designs: buying one is a purchase, but wearing one is a message. Every time someone wears one of these shirts into a grocery store, a coffee shop, a waiting room, they're quietly telling every survivor who walks past: you aren't the only one.
And sometimes I think about a younger version of me — the kid who was sure she was the only one, because trauma convinces you it's an isolated incident, that nobody else could possibly relate — and I imagine her watching a stranger walk by in a Got Trauma? shirt, laughing about it with a friend. I know exactly what that would have done for her. It would have cracked the silence.
Mental health struggles happen in silence. They're overcome with connection. Every shirt is a conversation that starts without anyone having to be brave first.
So if you cope the way I do — if you've been told you're "not taking your healing seriously" because you laugh at the worst thing that ever happened to you:
Laugh now. Unpack later.
Your jokes are load-bearing. Mine are too.
The ones who need the message will find it. 🩵
If you're carrying something heavy, help is free and available right now — call or text 988, anytime.
And if dark humor is your love language, you know where to find me.
