Erin Taylor started creating memes on her Instagram page @atmfiend in 2018 as a way for her to talk about her own trauma and "work out the shame" she had connected with those experiences.
"I really feel like shame kills people," Taylor told Mashable on the phone. "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."
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."
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."
Her posts differ greatly in their content, but always come back to one thing: They are trauma memes. She's not the only account posting memes that tackle issues like trauma, therapy, and healing: Look at Instagram accounts like @69possums420, @binchcity, or @manicpixiememequeen.
When Taylor creates these memes, she's digging into her own trauma and using art and humor as a way to communicate that. She says it can feel cathartic to create. But these memes can also be helpful and healing to the audience, Theresa Nguyen, the chief program officer at Mental Health America, told Mashable.
"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. "I use humor as a way to lean into moments of suffering while also using humor to help me feel OK."
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.
"Talking about trauma is always helpful," Nguyen said. "Whether you're doing it through a meme or you're doing it with a friend or with a therapist. 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. And so a meme is a way of expression."
In response to toxic positivity
These memes actually popped up in direct response to an increase in a toxic positivity movement online, Amanda Brennan, a meme librarian and the senior director of trends at XX Artists, a digital marketing agency, told Mashable. That was right after the 2016 election in the U.S., when you may have seen posts popping up on Instagram and Twitter urging you to check in on your friends or reminding you to drink some water. On its face, these might not seem like toxic positivity — after all, you probably should go drink some water. But toxic positivity is the idea that all experiences can and should somehow be spun into the positive, even if those experiences are truly negative ones. Drinking water isn't a substitute for going to therapy, nor is it a solution for a traumatic experience or mental illness.
"I think by going through this time where positive and wholesome memes were really the fabric of the language, [we saw] a lot of discussion around toxic positivity," Brennan said. "And I think by acknowledging these methods of being positive in life, you also have to acknowledge, 'Hey, not everything is sunshine and roses.'"
Brennan said that pointing out the toxic positivity of the new post-2016 internet trend led to some more acknowledgement of the difficult parts in life overall. Memes were the perfect way to explore that because, she says, "I'm going to just laugh at them because, otherwise, it's too hard."
Aiden Arata is another creator of memes and videos about mental health. Much of her work on her Instagram page @aidenarata looks at the relatable absurdity of healing. Think: manifestation videos and positive thought generators, but she places you at the supermarket, or another mundane place you'd least expect to do this kind of work. And, while she didn't necessarily start creating the memes in response to an onslaught of toxic positivity online, she told Mashable that she "certainly doesn't believe" that toxic positivity is the solution to pain or the ideal response to trauma. She strives to acknowledge "the full spectrum of human experience as best we can on the internet."
"I consider myself an optimist, but I think it's actually a very hard and informed choice," Arata said. "It's not naive toxic positivity or success manifestation. I want to critique those models, and I want to unpack them and figure out why we're drawn to them and what we really are seeking."
The downfalls
Of course, using humor to cope with trauma can be considered a defense mechanism. And despite the fact that these memes deal directly with trauma and therapy and healing, they aren't actually a substitute for therapy. Creating memes and flipping through them can be cathartic, but it is not the same thing as speaking to a mental health professional.
Further, as with any trend that takes over the internet, there's space for the negative along with the positive on a larger scale — especially when it comes to something as nuanced as mental health and trauma recovery. While many of these specific memes accounts show the gritty truth of mental health, trauma, and healing, some social media use can glamorize mental health and trauma that isn't always helpful.
One of the downfalls is that this content can be triggering for people who aren't anticipating it. There isn't a sensitivity covering of the meme when it's shared on anyone else's page. Some original posters will have a trigger warning in their bios, but not all creators do. And it's rare that any individual post or meme or video will come with a trigger warning at all. That means these memes can pop up into anyone's timeline and have the potential to trigger them.
"I can't look at [trauma memes] too much, because then I will end up in a whole thinking about my trauma for a very long time," Brennan said. "You end up just looking at them because at first you think it's funny, and then all of a sudden it can be more triggering than you anticipate."
Beyond the potentially triggering content, as with any content you enjoy, these memes can also cause you to spend an increased amount of time on social media, which has the potential to have a negative effect on a users' mental health, depending on where and how they're spending their time online. And, the fact is, a lot of us are spending time online: According to the Pew Research Center, 69 percent of adults and 81 percent of teens in the U.S. used social media in 2017. Significant time on the internet puts users at an "increased risk of feeling anxious, depressed, or ill over their social media use," according to the McLean Hospital.
"I'm also keeping people's eyes on their screen and I'm playing into this attention economy that is sort of designed to exploit people and to make them feel bad sometimes," Arata said, adding that she spends time thinking about how her work could drive people to spend more time online.
But increased time on social media isn't always a bad thing. As we learned over the pandemic, the internet can do incredible things for our mental health and connectivity — it can help people learn new abilities, hang out with friends, make new friends, and even fall in love. So the same rule applies to whatever meme pages or influencers you are following on Instagram. It matters what you're looking at while you're online, and what you're missing out on in other parts of your life.
A 2020 study out of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that using social media every day as part of your routine, and responding to others' content, is positively associated with social well-being, positive mental health, and self-rated health. However, checking apps "excessively out of fear of missing out, being disappointed about or feeling disconnected from friends when not logged into social media" has the opposite effect.
"It's not all bad or all good, like anything. In this particular context, with the sharing of trauma, I cannot see a downside," Nguyen said. "When you experience a traumatic event, there's so much shame associated with it. Certain handles, ones that talk about therapy but in the context of humor, I think it reduces the fear that someone has about maybe going to therapy and saying, you know what, it's totally OK to go sit with someone, a friend or their therapist and process whatever happened to you in a safe space. And that's going to be a good thing."
Creating a community
Moreover, some creators feel pressure to process complicated feelings in front of that community in real time. These creators aren't mental health professionals, but that also isn't the point. They aren't speaking from a place of professionalism, like a therapist would be. Instead, they're coming from the same angle as an artist or a filmmaker or a comedian.
"We are a community of people with lived experience," Nguyen said. "So we are the experts in our own lives."
It's similar to talking to friends about trauma, where often something is so wild and horrible that you cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Sharing these stories can also make people feel less alone or vulnerable in their trauma, which can help the healing process.
The memes are art that can feel very "casual" and almost "cavalier," Taylor said. "That's very purposeful... that's a part of the de-stigmatization of discussing trauma within society."
Carving out that space can be cathartic for the creator, too. Making art about trauma can help them work through their own past while helping others access the language to do that, too.
But burnout for these creators is real."I had to just take a step back and be like, 'OK, this is a thing that I do because I love doing it and it makes me feel good and it makes other people feel good, but it has to be on my terms and all my schedule,'" Arata said about creating boundaries with her own work. "Like I can't spend three days a week making little videos, but I don't know, I really like doing it."
Meme is art, right?
"We've spoken to creators about that pressure, that responsibility that weighs on you, which is why a lot of creators say, 'I need to take time off from my community,'" Nguyen said. "And it's OK for anyone to say that. That's what I would say to any creator."
Just like a therapist might recommend you paint, or draw, or write music or poetry, you might want to try your own hand at meme creation.
"Meme is art, right? It's art from today that helps us empathize with one another about our personal experiences," Nguyen said. "And because memes are democratic, anyone can create a meme. There are so many; I think memes do a better job of reflecting the human condition as a whole than the art of before, where it was only a reflection of a certain subset of the population."
If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, Crisis Text Line provides free, confidential support 24/7. Text CRISIS to 741741 to be connected to a crisis counselor. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET, or email info@nami.org. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources.
If you have experienced sexual abuse, call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access the 24-7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org.
If you feel like you’d like to talk to someone about your eating behavior, call the National Eating Disorder Association’s helpline at 800-931-2237. You can also text “NEDA” to 741-741 to be connected with a trained volunteer at the Crisis Text Line or visit the nonprofit’s website for more information.
