I've used https://reddit.com/r/cptsd as a support group for awhile. It never felt right to post such sensitive discussions onto a platform controlled by a tech company trying to monetize its content, so I was really happy when things like Lemmy began taking off. In my opinion, support communities belong in user-owned spaces like this.
I use Beehaw as a provider, and I thought it might be a good place to host a CPTSD community because of Beehaw's rules and ethos. I had a look at what's existing, and this is the closest one I could find. There's [email protected] (am I referring to that correctly?), but it's dead.
Is anyone aware of a good CPTSD community, or would there be interest/support in creating one on Beehaw?
speaking as a user for a moment and not as an admin: i do think this is a good idea for the site and community as a whole, and i'd like for us to eventually be able to accommodate stuff like this.
but speaking as an admin and not a user: ...the main issue (besides specificity) is that we're grappling with how we can responsibly facilitate any kind of mental health-focused community on here. in our current position, i don't think we're capable of doing that, nor do i think we'll be able to any time soon. this is why we balked on anything closer to that space than [email protected] and [email protected], which we think mostly avoid what we're worried about. (even then, we have three mods covering the first and i regularly keep special eye on the second.)
you've probably noticed that we really care about making sure our community and everything about it exists responsibly and ethically--and that also applies here. there are very real, immediate harms that can be caused by irresponsibly moderated health and mental health spaces and we don't want that. but ensuring stuff like that doesn't happen takes a lot of work and we're just not in a place where we can do that work or promise we'll get around to it.
while we also appreciate that people out there would volunteer to moderate such spaces, we're also not in a place interpersonally where we can trust someone to watch over such a community. we'd ideally want legitimately qualified people to watch the space, and we just can't promise that kind of thing. this obviously isn't just a matter of pruning hate speech or getting correct information about how to take care of a plant--bad information in a mental health context can irreversibly harm or kill people. (and obviously there's potential threats of violence, self-harm, and/or suicide that are really opened up to being expressed in such communities that must be handled with care. we've been fortunate to not deal with something like this yet.)
all this to say: this something we want to be able to have on the site, but i hope everyone can understand why this is a thing we're not able to right now, and probably won't for awhile.
Thank you for the excellent explanation! I can certainly appreciate this stance and why you and the other admins might want to be sure to do this in the right way, if ever. It's enough for me to know it's in the back of your minds.
In the meantime, do you have any suggestions for a provider to host such a space?
In the meantime, do you have any suggestions for a provider to host such a space?
hmm, good question. i've paged other people who i think are better able to socially or technologically answer this one than i, and hopefully they'll be able to direct you and others toward something
I was thinking about something similar yesterday. On Reddit, I was part of a number of religious trauma/ex-Christian groups. I was always uncomfortable posting in a place like Reddit, but reading others' posts was greatly comforting to me.
I'm not sure how similar CPTSD and religious trauma are, but I'd be interested in a community like you mentioned to learn more about it.
In the past few days, the admins have made posts about the influx of people and the goal of Beehaw. A lot of people come with a lot of suggestions for communities, and they don't feel it's necessary to stretch the communities so thin. Communities in this instance are only created by the admins when they feel it's needed (aka enough people will participate).
It's best to use the communities that already exist and if they get overwhelmed by one sub-topic, they will see that it's best to create a community for it.
As far as I'm aware, the community [email protected] might be a fit for this topic. At least for now.
This was cross-posted from the neurodivergence community, but I don't think it's a very good fit. Without getting into the nuances, CPTSD is situational, or it's caused by a confluence of factors, and is a negative aspect of people's lives requiring support. Neurodivergence is more often something that's biological, and not usually negative, and can be celebrated.
A more appropriate broad categorization would be something like a mental health community, but even then, sadly, people who suffer from CPTSD have been through some horrific, NSFL, things. Having a separate community would probably be best for both sides: those who have CPTSD, and those who don't, and probably wouldn't want to read some of the things in people's posts.
Anyway, I was wondering if there was a place people could request new communities, but it sounds like the admins largely decide based on what they see on the fediverse?
I understand your frustrations. This post got buried under so many others here on the Beehaw Support community, but it will better explain from an admin what is going on: https://beehaw.org/post/507164
They will certainly add a community for your needs, but it's important that we give them a bit of time to breathe.
At least for the moment, if we really want to help as users, I think it's best to be patient and save our requests for when it's more appropriate. It doesn't have to be months, just a week or two, I bet things will calm down by then.
I too would love to see more specific communities eventually.