This is going to sound absurd but I cannot enjoy things without immediately feeling anxiety about whether I'm supposed to like them. My therapist didn't use the term "taste PTSD" but she was circling around something close - this hypervigilance about my own preferences.

It started in college. I went to an art school where taste was a competitive sport. Every conversation was laden with judgment. Not explicit judgment - that would've been kinder, honestly. It was the subtle kind where you'd mention loving something and someone would just tilt their head slightly with a smile that meant they were filing that information away as proof that you weren't serious about art. Or weren't smart enough. Or didn't have the right background.

So I learned to curate my tastes before speaking them. I'd run things through a filter: is this the kind of thing someone with legitimate taste would admit to? Over time, I couldn't even enjoy a movie without that voice happening in my head. "This is good, but would an actual film person agree? What if someone who matters hears me say I liked this?"

Now I'm thirty-two and I still do this. I'll be reading something and have a moment of pure enjoyment and then immediately feel a spike of anxiety. Is this good? Do I actually like it or do I think I'm supposed to like it? Would anyone respect my opinion if they knew I preferred the trashy version? The question itself has become contaminated.

I don't trust my own judgment anymore. That's the real damage. Not that I have bad taste - it's that I can't even access what my actual taste is because it's buried under layers of defensive curation.

Is this just how culture works now, or did I just have a particularly bad experience with a specific community?