This document discusses the cultural dimensions of traumatic stress and how cultural differences can lead to negative impacts on relationships and mental health. It argues that prevailing paradigms in psychiatry overlook how an individual's values, worldviews, and cultural orientations influence their experiences and reactions. Experiences that traumatize one culture may be viewed differently in another culture. The document also discusses how collisions between cultures with conflicting values and norms can result in destructiveness, conflicts, and traumatic stress, especially in multicultural societies and between supposedly friendly cultures. It critiques tendencies in psychiatry to reduce problems to individual vulnerability and discount cultural factors.