Let’s be honest: we all love a bit of murder.
We do. We love it. We nestle into the sofa on a Friday night, crack open a bottle of Pinot Grigio, and spend three hours watching a Netflix documentary about a serial killer in Wisconsin who dissolved people in acid. We devour podcasts about stalkers on our commute to work. We treat the worst moments of humanity as high-end entertainment, consuming other people’s trauma like popcorn.
There is a pub near where I used to live that proudly displays a Blue Plaque on the wall. It doesn’t mark the home of a poet or a scientist. It reads: “The Hatton Garden Gem Heist was organised here.”
Think about that for a moment. We are literally celebrating a group of men who drilled a hole in a concrete wall because they were too stupid to do something constructive with their lives. We have immortalised them. We have turned a crime scene into a tourist attraction because, deep down, it thrills us. It triggers that cinematic “Hero Fantasy” where we imagine ourselves in the vault, wondering if we could have cracked the safe.
But there is a specific moment where this fascination with crime stops dead in its tracks.
It stops the moment a friend sits you down and tries to talk about the reality of child abuse.
The “Professional” Shield
Suddenly, the same person who can recite the entire timeline of the Manson Family murders becomes very shy. The shutters come down. The body language shifts. And then comes the line. It is the default setting of the British public when things get uncomfortable:
“I’m not a professional. You really need to speak to someone trained for this.”
Let me translate that phrase for you. It isn’t about a lack of qualifications. It is a polite, socially acceptable way of saying: “This isn’t entertaining anymore.”
You see, listening to a survivor of childhood trauma doesn’t give you that adrenaline hit. There is no heist to imagine yourself planning. There is no “Hero Fantasy” in imagining being a scared child in the boot of a car, or being woken up at 3:00 AM by a parent who views you as a commodity. That isn’t fun. It’s just repulsive.
And because it isn’t palatable, because you can’t consume it comfortably with your glass of Pinot – you check out. You decide that because the story is messy, it must be a medical issue. You decide that listening to it requires a degree.
The Mythical Queue
So, you point the survivor toward the “Professionals.” You wash your hands of it and send them into the system.
I want to tell you the reality of that system in the United Kingdom in 2025.
When I finally sought help, I was told there was a two-and-a-half-year waiting list for therapy. Two and a half years. But I waited. I held my breath. I existed in the queue. And then, because I moved house – because of a couple of different letters in my postcode – I lost my spot. I was told I had to wait another three years.
I have not spoken to a single professional since my memories returned. Not one.
For decades, it felt like a shadow had been cast over my life. I knew it was there, but I couldn’t see it clearly. Then, a year and a half ago, it came into sharp focus. The weight of every single thing that had happened to me fell on me all at once. It wasn’t a trickle; it was an avalanche.
I am currently standing under a ton of bricks, and there is no “professional” coming to help lift them.
So when you tell a friend to “go see a professional,” you aren’t giving them responsible advice. You are telling them to go away into a void. You are hanging up the phone so you can go back to watching True Crime 24/7 without feeling guilty.
The Forensic Mirror
You don’t understand what this silence does to a person. When abuse happens that young, it changes the architecture of your being.
I have spent countless hours looking in the mirror, staring at the very pores of my skin, trying to reverse-engineer my own personality. Why do I react like this? Why does this specific texture repulse me? Why do I feel this way?
It is a lonely, forensic examination of the self. And when a survivor tries to share a finding from that examination with a friend, only to be told “I’m not trained” it confirms the abuser’s greatest lie: that they are too damaged to be understood by normal people.
The Challenge
It is 2025. Humanity should have evolved enough to listen to uncomfortable things without needing a degree.
If we have the technology to stream 24-hour murder documentaries into our living rooms, surely we can summon the emotional intelligence to sit with a friend who is in pain?
They don’t need a doctor. They don’t need you to “fix” them. They aren’t asking for a diagnosis; they are asking for a human ear and perhaps a glass of that wine.
We wouldn’t put up a Blue Plaque that said: “Here is the house where two parents conspired to destroy a child’s life.” We would find it tasteless. Yet we are happy to glamourise the “Hollywood” crimes while leaving the victims of the “ugly” crimes to navigate the silence alone.
So, the next time the shutters start to come down, catch them. Stop asking yourself if you are “trained” to listen, and start asking yourself why you are only willing to listen when the crime is entertaining.
Besides, if you invite that friend over, you can finally get the ‘Two bottle deal’ with the posh salmon nibbles without feeling you might have a problem.
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