It is strange, you know, that I can tell that reading a particular manga or manwha validated my "crash-outs" (a recent term for anger outburst) and made me feel less anxious about those times that I became indignant due to a perceived unfairness and impossibility of addressing a personally critical issue without being brick-walled, ignored, dismissed, and downplayed. The fact that I know just how validating and feel-good it is scares me a little bit. It is normal, since self-awareness is normal. But it is just strange to know that I like listening to music and reading and writing stories that validate or make "seen" my past outbursts.
Speaking of writing stories that explore my feelings, it helps me be a lot more self-aware of where I stand and how people see me, since I know well that I will take personally people's qualms about the protagonist that I wrote after my own experiences with trauma.
But as time passes, I believe that the stigma around trauma will lessen, because people too often see trauma as this one-dimensional thing. But it can look really ugly. Thoughts can spin in ways that really scare the average reader or viewer, and I know that personally well. But it is not something to be afraid of, just concerned about and addressed in a digestible way, and stories are an effective medium for that.
I don't like shock. When it is (or was) your reality, is it really shocking? Or is it just making sure that the only people shown in media are not Gary Stus and Mary Stus? It is not that I intentionally set out to avoid writing perfect characters, but I found that what came most naturally to me were characters that shared my pain and misery, even if I arguably made them go through worse things than I did.