The bastardization of reality known as “trauma-informed” approach to investigation, promoted by those who believe that female victims of sex crimes suffer for lack of belief, has proven itself wonderful for the sensibilities of women and pretty awful for ascertaining the facts of whether an offense happened and who did it. So naturally, the same pseudo-science upon which it relies has found its way into education. Not just Title IX issues, but how public school teachers address their students.

The viral post, shared by a veteran teacher, explained how she had her students write down the emotional baggage they were carrying around, wad up the papers, and toss them across the room. Each student then picked up a random paper and read it to the class. Students could share if they wrote it or remain anonymous. The teacher described how the students were moved by the activity, and how she felt it helped them develop empathy for one another. The bag of wadded papers hangs by the door to remind students “they are not alone, they are loved, and we have each other’s back.”

The faddish notion is that if you write down your problems and throw them away, you’ve somehow shed your problems, the “baggage” you secretly carry with you. Before they got tossed, they got read aloud so that other students would realize they aren’t alone in their fears, their pain, their feelings.

Again, I looked at the post through my own lens. My experience teaching middle schoolers was that despite appearances, they desperately want to be real—to share their struggles and have their experiences and feelings acknowledged. So many kids walk through the halls of their schools thinking they are alone, and I see value in letting them know that they are not.

Seems fair enough that young people who might not be inclined to talk about their “experiences and feelings” have them “acknowledged,” whatever that means, and more importantly, realize that all kids have problems, and whatever problems one has, there are invariably others who have them as well. Though I suspect each child’s problem must be singularly special, even if generally similar, as it would diminish the value of their experience to tell them they’re not special and their problems are pretty much like every other kid’s problems.

Whether this was worthy of going viral as a plan for your little darlings or trendy palliative, it doesn’t appear to be a bad thing, so why not?

Like hundreds of thousands of others, I took the post at face value and neglected to dig deeper into potential pitfalls of the activity. That was a mistake.

As trauma-informed teacher and researcher Addison Duane wrote, “Research has found that asking students to relive traumatic events or emotional moments during the school day can exacerbate a problem. The student may not give off any outward indication but the internal effects, according to doctors, are long-lasting. In fact, child advocacy centers are explicitly trained in not asking a child for a traumatic story more than once, to avoid further traumatizing.”

No doubt there are middle-schoolers who have suffered trauma, whether child molestation or serious physical abuse, for example. Whether telling their “story” a second time re-traumatizes them has certainly become a trauma-informed belief. Whether it’s true, or universally true, is a matter for researchers, assuming they aren’t bent on finding a way to empirically prove their beliefs rather than test their validity.

But is every student a trauma victim? No one grows up without experiences that hurt their feelings. Not the prom queen. Not the captain of the football team. Not the science nerd or the band nerd. We all have our pains. Does that mean we’re all trauma victims?

“Our students are living through far more traumatic times than we did,” says Kellie Cashion, a former middle school teacher and current school administrator. “We should not compound that trauma by asking them to relive it in their classrooms with their peers, led by a teacher not a licensed therapist.”

It may be disturbing enough that your child’s classroom teacher would rather use his time to ferret out your kid’s misery than teach, say, reading or math. No doubt someone will say they can do both, but that’s a dubious proposition since students aren’t exactly beating the world with their mad math skillz.

Many of us got caught up in the feel-good nature of the story and our desire for human beings to connect on an emotional level—and in the process we neglected the good work of trauma specialists and professional counselors who are trained and equipped to help kids navigate those waters in a healthy way. I know I did.

Was the original viral story a “feel-good” story, or a story that valorized trauma and victimhood, as opposed to doing the job they’re paid, and if we’re lucky, trained, to do. But what happened to resiliency, to grit, to telling students that life is filled with minor aches and pains, things that will make them sad and hurt their feelings, but they need to get over it, fight through it, get past it, or they will spend the rest of their lives wallowing in misery?

But even this “feel-good” story led down the path of trauma. What seemed at first to be a cute but shallow gimmick to shed students of their hurt feelings, and “acknowledge” that they’re just ordinary kids feeling ordinary kid feelings, is now to traumatize and victimize them again?

Let this be a cautionary tale for all of us who are desperate for stories of human connection. Not all feel-good stories are as uplifting as they seem, and while we don’t need to look at every story with a negative eye, we do need to use a wider lens. Our optimism and intentions can blind us to reality, so it’s vital that we take the time to dig deeper before sharing a seemingly positive story that may actually cause more harm than good.

There are students who need medical and therapeutic care for real trauma, and identifying them so that they can get the care they need seems a worthy cause. But this is, indeed, a cautionary tale of how “trauma-informed teachers” see every child as a trauma victim, and every teacher as obliged to cater to their trauma, even if there is nothing more there than ordinary teenage angst.

If children are to grow up resilient and capable, then the lesson they learn in school shouldn’t be that they’re trauma victims. Turning them into victims isn’t “optimism,” but surely reflects teachers who are “blind to reality.” They’re kids. Let them be. Keep your trauma-informed tears to yourself.