Every Friday we will pose a question for you all to discuss or privately consider. You can engage with it publicly here on the RFAS blog, or you can join our forum (details below) for a more private discussion. You can write it down to think about later, journal about it, or bring it in to a therapy session with you.
Every Friday we will pose a question for you all to discuss or privately consider. You can engage with it publicly here on the RFAS blog, or you can join our forum (details below) for a more private discussion. You can write it down to think about later, journal about it, or bring it in to a therapy session with you.
Today is April Fool's Day, where people try to trick each other into falling for jokes. Sometimes, these jokes are fairly harmless and can be pretty funny. Other times, pranks can be very mean and damage our trust in the people around us—sometimes our identities might even be treated as if they are a joke. Some people feel that, particularly in the case of parents pranking children, that such pranks will almost always harm the sense of safety and trust that kids should have towards their parents. Even when it's supposed to be light-hearted fun, the implementation of the joke can do some serious harm: today, Google's April Fool's prank backfired horribly and even caused some people to lose their jobs. As survivors, we've all had to deal with betrayal, and for many of us, that leaves us with a sense of feeling foolish or "dumb"* and judging ourselves for having fallen for it. Thus, times when we are faced with pranks may end up bringing up these aspects of trauma and making it hard to get through the day. How do you feel about being fooled?