The more difficult life experience I amass, the more I become persuaded that the key to all of life's highest callings is to make peace with and ultimately transcend the various early-childhood traumas that we're often not even aware are shaping our decisions and behaviors.
It is no surprise to me that there is some biological basis for all these inherited ticks most of us seem to have.
This is something I struggle with. I was raised by a child molestor (my father) and he raped me from birth until puberty. Did the same to my sister and also made us perform for him. I feel like this is impossible (or at least, it feels like it) to ever really come to peace with.
I have at least TRIED to come to peace with it, as much as I have been able (I am not young), but it resurfaces in ways that catch me off guard. Triggers that I have a hard time identifying (and that seem minor or inconsequential from a logical point of view) can instantly send me into a spiral of depression that can be very difficult to get out of. I have a hard time hiding it at work (in tech, higher up) when it gets bad but I feel that I must.
I know that there's nothing that I can say or do which will erase the past, but I wanted to take a moment of my day to tell you that I'm sorry that this happened to you.
Hi, thank you for sharing your experience. I’ve been working with persons involved with great trauma, such as those in prison, for the past few years. In a few months myself and another person will launch a project we’ve worked on for some time. It is an exercise where you write down your responses to six questions. The point is not to tell but to show (I could go on about this concept for sometime). And better yet, have them show themselves, how to create opportunity. This is for anyone (age, status, sex, etc) and can be applied to anything. I thought it might be appropriate to post.
—————
1. Share a thought
2. How does that thought make you feel?
3. Why does it make you feel that way?
4. What is another way of thinking about that thought?
5. How does thinking about it differently change the way you feel?
6. What new opportunities are possible by thinking differently about this?
I mostly want to really applaud your candor and presence in that comment.
I wasn’t molested in the sense I think you mean, but over the years I’ve been close and cared deeply about some who were.
I’m not qualified to say much about this, but I can share that I’ve seen people do the hard work and make wonderful lives for themselves after that kind of tragedy.
I admire you greatly for fighting your traumas. Going to that dark alley to mop up what would feel like the sea.
I am really noone to give advice but I will try to give you what guiding words I have.
Try to find your strength. Look for the spark. Use your powers to do good. Leverage the perspectives you've gained in life. Noone can do so, and noone has them, but you. Try to find a way to use the bad to do good.
If you manage to do this, you or others might find yourself a gem too valuable to have even dreamt of finding.
So are there any real things one can consciously do to make progress in this area?
As someone in their mid twenties, I am aware of _some_ past traumas that effect me but I have no clue how to make peace with them. It's been a few years already and I barely see any natural progress. Makes it hard when these experiences are quite actively blocked by our brains. :(
These 'ticks' are quite automatic and it is hard to deal with in the moment at least for me. Sometimes I'll get random anxiety from a conversation with someone when my brain matches some pattern with the trauma. Very annoying!
I've had dreams that enlightened me to certain things. So that's interesting.
Meditation? Psychedelics? Cognitive behavioral therapy? I know some people swear by ayahuasca. Anyone got any thoughts?
Disclaimer: different things work for different people, no harm in trying out all the things to see what works with you.
I was pretty skeptical of therapies for the longest while but this past year finally wrung up enough effort to go hunting for a trauma-specialist (PTSD and CPTSD flavors) therapist. There's tonnes out there (psychologytoday has a good list if you're in the US where you can search by specialty + location). Remote friendly, etc.
Personally found exceptional results with IFS (Integrated Family Systems) which was recommended by a trauma therapist. Had quite a few skeletons in the closet about a childhood full of medical fuckery and it feels like it's a healed scar now, mentally, versus an open wound with a band aid slapped over it.
I wish you the best in wherever your journey takes you.
This is crazy-subjective, but my personal experience/philosophy is that mental health is the degree to which we make decisions in our own best interest, incorporating our values, without harming others. So altruism would firmly count towards that if we believe in it.
The scarce commodity, maybe the only one more scarce than time, is the short-term-finite capacity to do difficult things. Discipline/willpower/etc. is (unlike time) renewable, but grow a new forest renewable, not write on the other side of the paper renewable.
Big picture it’s time that has to be budgeted. But in the small: improving our lives, being better custodians of our resources, relationships, and reputation, is hard work. You have to find the high leverage stuff.
As an example, I’m just way more effective if I keep my place tip-top. If I let it get to be a mess, it’s friction on getting out of bed. So I try to tidy up and wash dishes even after a long workday. But if I work too long, not happening. I have to actively budget it.
That’s just an anecdote/example, but we all have the stuff we know we ought to be doing and aren’t: bin-packing the highest leverage stuff before saying “fuck it I’m ordering a pizza and a six pack” is the unglamorous work of striving for a better life.
I recommend starting with reading The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It gives a good "state of the field" with regards to therapy. See if any of the forms of therapy described there resonates with you
It may take a few therapists before you come across someone you feel you can build a good relationship with. You also need to fully commit to the therapy - a therapist can only take you so far, otherwise.
Personally, I did not find CBT all that helpful for dealing with known traumas. I did find Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy resonated with me, which I discovered through that book.
Therapy with a strong CBT and mindfulness bent can help. Meditation - I suggest using Gil Fronsdal’s daily meditations starting with his intro to meditation -particularly vipassana, which combines effectively with CBT. Exercise - a daily exercise regime that elevates the heart rate materially. Eating a lot more veggies and probiotics. Spend time with friends and laughing. For me these form a foundation of resiliency. The answer for me for coping with my traumas, which have been substantial, is incrementally increasing my resiliency to the point that I’m more resilient than the traumas damage. Once I’m beyond that threshold the traumas have no hold on me. I don’t think there’s a magic pill though that makes you “unlive” them and they’re always with you in some way. But an awful lot of resiliency is biochemical and can be “hacked” by doing the things you know you should be doing and we’ve known work for thousands of years.
I wouldn’t self medicate with psychoactive substances. I’ve tried that and it just led to worse traumas after a period of being distracted from my problems by the chemicals. This is what led me to realize resiliency is the difference between living well with trauma and living in trauma.
As someone with a lot of experience with this, the only real answer is therapy. Don’t try to shortcut it with “pop” remedies, see a therapist that unpublished connect with. While there’s a lot of commonalities, everyone’s traumas are different and need a custom tailored approach. A good therapist will do that for you.
(Disclaimer- worked at an ayahuasca retreat and have drank 150+ times)
Ayahuasca with proper support is very beneficial for a lot of people. Some other therapies (someone mentioned EMDR which is excellent, also somatic experiencing) are incredibly synergetic with it. They are very good at showing you the root of the issue, but they are absolutely not magic. It takes quite a bit of courage to go in and face yourself and to do the necessary work. Often the work doesn't start until after the ceremony finishes and you're back in "real life".
I've seen a lot of positive change from plant medicine. I've also seen a lot of people rebound back in to darkness after failing to do something with the message they got (after an initially positive experience)
The real work is facing your own fears. How? A lot of work. Meditation can help but you need a good teacher. Find people who are obsessed with and in the pursuit of “obtaining” enlightenment and I found people who know their inner thoughts and feelings at a deep and intimate level. I found people who want to be happy but ultimately need to find what is “getting in the way” of enlightenment. The irony though is that there is nothing in the way of enlightenment and “it” is already there but that’s a separate topic.
People do and can get to the bottom of what is ultimately is driving them in their own humanity.
You can go in circles trying different spiritual practices. You can have earth shattering changes with plant medicine too. You can do dream work with dream yoga too (google Andrew holecek). The rabbit hole is long and wide.
I would not swear by ayahuascha. All of life is ceremony. It might help in the short term but what you are seeking is an active thing and high effort thing until it becomes effortless. To be curious about your pain, fear and anxiety. Even to see the beauty in them. To have humility. To listen. To surrender it all.
There is no magic pill though. I’ve tried many things. I’m not the same person. You can change. There is a way out but the way out is not what you might think it is. The way out is the way through.
I think some past traumas cause irreversible damage, to the brain and behavior.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/
They also impact emotional stability, some suck as mangers because they crack under high stress on tense conflicts due to early traums, some companies try to weed them out before they reaching top positions.
There's a constellation of techniques involving "Timeline" therapy, typically combined with hypnosis. You can go back in time and change your personal history, give your younger self more psychological resources from the POV of your grownup self.
There is a technique called "Parental Timeline Reimprinting" where you go back in time to before you were born (or before your parents were born) and give your parents (or grandparents) more resources to be able to change their behaviour and so raise you differently in a kind of imaginary parallel universe. Despite being imaginary this alternate universe "you" can "merge" with the "real" you and typically deep and pervasive healing often occurs.
Nobody mentioned Schema Therapy, so I will.
Schema Therapy is such a beautiful thing and Jeffrey Young seems such a great human being and therapist (unlike the narcissistic freudian type of self important psychotherapist).
I only did a short period of Schema Therapy, but the cognitive part of it was the most helpful thing in my overcoming of my BPD, I can only imagine how great the non-cognitive parts must be.
What Valakas said. Also learn about the autonomous nervous system, fight, flight, freeze, befriend. The amygdala has role in decision making. Learn about slow and fast thinking.
The best advice is therapy. Internal family systems is said to be by far the most effective and there are others similar.
Soar: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying by Tom Bunn worked very well for me. It's written by a pilot who is also a licensed therapist. The book uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help you moderate your body's stress response to flying, but with the added benefit of the author explaining, from a pilot's point of view, the mechanics of flying.
The book is only $10 so if it doesn't work no big loss.
VR. Population one, where you can climb and glide, if you want - while shooting people....
I have literally no fear of heights now, nothing. I first noticed when I took my daughter on one of those high wire adventure things. Suddenly I was aware of something odd - there was no fear, no reaction to the height, absolutely nothing, flat.
So if you can play the game and occasionally climb and build up slowly to the point where you don't even think about it in VR - then you will have solved the problem in real life (anecdata).
The best way to overcome that fear is to take a really long flight. I also I had an irrational fear of flying that held me back from traveling internationally for years. Taking a 14 hour flight to Seoul fixed that. I have zero anxiety around flying anymore.
Some call them ticks, others call them winning strategies. The fact that the playing field changes thus rendering the strategy no longer useful seems unavoidable. An inherent quality of knowledge.
Yeah definitely. I think that most of the unproductive shit I pull as an adult in the 21st century was useful/necessary in the past, either mine or way back on the Savannah.
It’s like the limp you often still have even after the busted knee has healed.
This is the basis of the Enneagram[0] personality system. It might seem like astrology at first, but it’s quite kind boggling how accurate and insightful is been for me and the people I’ve shared it with over the years. It truly transformed my interpersonal skills, and never ceases to amaze people with the eerie accuracy in which it seems to know a person once they read up on their type. Each type has a childhood trauma at their core that shapes their behavior and the underlying forces driving their thoughts and feelings. Awareness of these core aspects of the self, along with actionable tools to navigate and measure growth or regression is foundational to personal growth. I like to encourage others to stow their skepticism long enough to discover and study their Enneagram type! I think it deserves more study from academia. Whatever it is, the value I’ve seen it grant people is hard to ignore, and the accuracy with which it explains people has been surprisingly unmatched in my exploration of the aloof and mysterious human personality.
I’ve always wanted to map a system like this into more traditional ones to see what kind of patterns might emerge. I’m not sure how that would look but I think there’s still a lot to be discovered.
It's a very common reaction for people to assert that the solution to a deep societal problem is to "stop [group] from [doing action] to [another group]", as if that's an answer, rather than the beginning of a very long list of questions, most of which don't currently have answers, or at least not widely accepted ones (hence the problem continuing to be pervasive).
I spent a lot of my early adulthood thinking the depression/anxiety/dependency that afflicted me was the fault of others, including parents, peers who'd bullied me, former partners/friends who'd betrayed me, etc. And on one level there's truth to it, until you realise all those people were acting in reaction to abuse and trauma they'd suffered, so it's futile to scapegoat everything onto particular individuals or categories of people.
For what it's worth, I am personally trying to undertake work that over the long term would help society to be better at alleviating these trauma cycles and avert the patterns of abuse we see everywhere, but I'm under no illusion that it will be fast or easy, or even that it's likely that the approaches I've found to be effective would be embraced widely enough to have any impact at all. I'll keep trying, however.
Abuse is very relative too. My parents don't feel like they abused me, in their reality all they do is love me, but in mine they're harming me repeatedly. To society it's probably in the gray area. They have emotional baggage from their childhood, causing failure and limits in understanding of others that is very hard to manage.
Sometimes I wonder if the epidemic of abuse is in part a bad feedback loop from society raising expectations of parents. It wasn't so long ago letting your kids play alone at the park, walk themselves to school, or sit in the car for 5 minutes while you go in and buy some milk wasn't criminalized. Now parents practically aren't even allowed to leave their kids alone at all, meaning there's no relief for some parents. I wonder if this increased punishment of parents by society leads to increased abuse.
For every veteran with PTSD, there are hundreds of adults with (at least) CPTSD from childhood trauma.
You're completely right.
Let me respost this I saw the other day:
"What almost nobody realises is that prescribing "social interaction" is almost like prescribing homeopathy to someone with cancer.
The real cancer is trauma.
Trauma.
We live in an epidemic of emotional trauma and few people see it.
It is trauma that causes parents to neglect their kids, to have low empathy for their suffering and not be able to realise they are not ok. Parents, or whoever is taking care of the kids, with the "help" of "modern" society in fact, cause kids, through action or inaction, not to be ok. Do people think these kids just happened to be born with a "social isolation gene"? Or "generalised hatred" gene? Nobody is that way, they were made.
The person you're replying to is an outlier and very lucky to have found people that were supportive. But I'd say by far most won't. And there's a reason for that and it's not their fault. Traumatized people are not very popular. Trauma itself is not very popular and most people have no clue about it, or how to identify someone who is traumatized, because the very nature of trauma causes them to conceal they have it to fit in and be accepted. And the ones who don't fit in are just seem as "there's something wrong with them". Kinda reminds me of the state of medicine in the middle ages.
What these people need is not social interaction.
They need
Compassion
someone to listen to them, to hear them, to be with them with their pain.
to hear their story. Not to be asked "what's wrong with you?" but "what happened to you?"
be told there's nothing wrong with them. They are this way because it's one of the ways a healthy mind copes with extreme emotional neglect and maybe abuse.
to have a secure attachment. Someone they can count on. All the time. Unconditionally.
a sense of belonging. To a community. To a shared sense of purpose. That they are needed and wanted. That they are valued. Desired.
Unfortunately the way society is right now where we don't live on tribes with people that know us that care about us and are always there for us and can provide the above, like it happened for thousands of years, and like our brain is made to function with, now for many people there's only one that can do some of this and you have to pay them for it. Therapists. It's screwed up.
Things have changed so much and so quickly that we're totally unaware of how screwed up and how much we were not made for this "modern" lifestyle.
We were not made to live with only 2 adults who have to take the role of a village to single handedly rear a child.
We were not made to attach primarily with people of our age. First in kindergarden, then school, then college. There were always several people and of all ages who we humans attached deeply to, who we matured emotionally from, whose more mature behaviors we could emulate and learn from.
We were not made to, if those 2 people fail to provide us a sense of safety, have no backup. There would always be someone who we could chat. We would always be with company of other people in the tribe. There would always be a "loving grandma" or an "older brother" who we could go to.
We were not made to have to pay someone to give us a simulation of unconditional love, and safety that our group would provide. This person, who we know in the end does it for the money, and to help, but without money they wouldn't do it. How can we think this is OK and normal and that people are having their emotional needs met in these weird conditions?
How far have we gone the far end to find ourselves proud to conclude that social interaction increases lobgevity? Are we in the future going to be so dry that people will be proud to conclude that drinking water increases longevity too?
In the conditions we live now it is no wonder emotional neglect and abuse has been happening so much. The very way the social foundation is layed is lacking and so easy for trauma to happen and propagate.
The covid pandemic we hear about it. The trauma pandemic, which is equally transmissible from generation to generation and between romantic partners, very difficult to heal and causes unimaginable silent pain to millions of people... Nah. We blame people for being wounded. We call them lazy, and angry. We give them condescending names like "Karens" to make it seem like they're different and their own species and not that their extreme sense of entitlement actually comes from feeling worthless inside. Or accuse people of just being unempathetic angry and selfish as if all their life hadn't been nothing but an experience that would make anyone become that way. No shoulder to cry on. No motherly voice to comfort them. They can't be anything but unempathetic, angry and lonely. People are not mentally ill. People are mentally injured.
And I say pandemic because it is everywhere. In the politicians who seem to only care about themselves. In the influencers who seem so fixated in having people provide them validation in being seen highly by others and in feeling important. In the people who commit crimes. And I mean financial and ethical crimes too. How can they do that? Maybe crimes happened in their childhood and nobody cared. In the bosses at our jobs who seem to only care about maximising profit as a proof that they're being the best to compensate for how not good enough they always felt like. In the clerks who seem to enjoy the little power they have over people and exert it to the full extent to compensate for the powerlessness they felt all their lives since they were a kid.
We have been so conditioned in our society to accept trauma as a common and normal occurrence that we hardly pause to acknowledge it. It's no wonder many people suffer in silence.
And nobody seems to know about this and only talk about social interaction, making friends, focusing on the positive, being more out there and looking at traumatized people like they're some weirdos that came through a membrane from another universe.
Are we being so different from the people that in the 17th century burned "heretics" or in ancient Rome sheered for the blood spilled in arenas as criminals were slayed to death and who we now regard as barbarics?
Sorry about the long rant, but I needed to get this out of my chest."
Being tired and stressed and thus not modulating your voice tone or facial expression appropriately when responding to a child who is demanding attention while you are trying to do some other chore necessary for life, e.g., cooking dinner, etc is itself abuse if done repeatedly over many years.
If you are not immune to stress and fatigue changing how you respond to people and external stimuli then you will be an abusive parent, and you are an abusive partner.
A psychiatrist once told me people who had a bad childhood don't even realize it.
They come into the office, and truly belive their childhood was normal.
I busted a mental gasket in graduate school, and thought Therapy would fix me.
I look back, and talking about my childhood did absolutely nothing. I was young, and very verbal too.
Just don't steal money from work to pay for the sessions. Yes--I was so young, and naieve; I really thought those pricy 50 minute sessions would cure me. I never got caught. It was a liquor store owned by the wealthiest guy in my county, so feeling bad over larceny was not a problem.
I still don't belive my childhood was the cause of my problems. My parants tried. I did feel like the only adult in the family though, but being first born I just thought that came with the birth order?
I have found psychiatry useful personally, it’s not a magic wand but in my experience it’s a useful adjunct to more personal work.
I also haven’t found any correlation between expensive mental healthcare and effectiveness. This is sort of different to like surgery where the standards of success are more clear-cut and the ballers get paid a lot if they are motivated by money.
Getting help can be as simple as finding a group in your area, it’s not always a huge barrier to entry to see improvement.
I read about epigenetics a few years ago and it's fascinating. I hope more research gets done on it.
Trauma passed through genes makes me wonder a few things:
* Where/How is it encoded in the gene sequence?
* Is having kids earlier in life better for the kid since these is less parental trauma to pass down (assuming the parent experiences some adult trauma)
* What good things are being passed down? Such as ability to play music or understand math more effectively?
> And Dias and Ressler reconditioned their mice to lose their fear of cherry blossoms; __the offspring conceived after this “treatment” did not have the cherry blossom epigenetic alteration, nor did they fear the scent.__
I'd like to know if anyone's parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents (think WWII) are actually free of trauma? How do they find a control here for trauma-free people?
Trauma is not automatic even for people put in very bad situations, afaik. Perception and expectations are very important here.
For example: A person is fired from their job. For someone who wanted to quit anyway, that could be a rather small annoyance, perhaps a blow to the ego. But for someone who struggled very hard to hold down even that one job, this could be catastrophic, and be perceived as life threatening. In the case of really really bad situations (like being kidnapped), just not being (or not feeling as) the only victim can make a big difference already.
People also made very different experiences during the war. Some lived in remote areas and didn’t ever hear air raid sirens or anything. Others lived in constant fear because their parents were taken away in the middle of the night (try ever sleeping well again).
I think trauma is a fundamental part of the human experience and everyone has it. But it's not a binary: surely many have a much lighter trauma load on their life than others.
Yes, and, the "trauma load" is highly relative to the subject of that trauma. IOW, two people can go through the same traumatic experience and have different levels of resulting trauma.
And also it is impossible to separate the genetic part from the nurture part for humans. People who were traumatised might be genetically pre-disposed to be traumatised and will pass it on to their children. Alternatively, you can bet that the kids will be reminded all their childhood of their parents trauma, or at the very least may grow up in an abnormal environment because of their parents trauma. Plus trauma is probably not a linear scale. If you live a quiet life, it maybe that a short scary event might traumatise you, but that if you go through the horrors of war for years you may develop a tolerance. So I am skeptical of any study that claims that it works one way or another.
I’ve intuited this for quite some time. There seems to me to be a place within our psyche were decisions are made and I would bet that it’s not through our “thinking through a problem” paradigm where so many of us think our decisions come from.
I’m curious how this plays into the free will conversation. I think if people could get accustomed to seeing themselves and others as not having quite as much free will as one might think, that would do wonders for humanity.
Your choice for the word "blame" is telling? Blame would not be the word I'd use in this case. It's understanding. Understanding that people have traumas. Traumas percolate through the generations.
Without elaborating too much - both in my wife's and my family their traumas are for a large part World War II related. Active fighting, hunger, uncertainty, refugeeship, absence - it's all reflected in our (grand-)parents generation and thus in our genes and upbringing. We have our own traumas that I'm unable to reflect on yet. That's why I feel an extra sadness when watching Ukrainian children. Traumas live on for ages.
Thing that comes to mind: We have local cultures celebrating battles with Spain 400+ years ago. Humans are a hardy bunch. I don't think it's biological after many generations, but culture is an important part of humanity.
> Great. Even more stuff we can blame on our parents.
Yes, and why not? The point is not so much blame but making them responsible for their actions. To put the responsibility where is lay is part of healing from the trauma. To say that people should take responsibility for the trauma that other gave them will in no way help anyone heal.
My father was horrible and my mother was loving. If it were not for her I would probably be dead. I can hold my mother my mother for saving my life as much as I can my father for causing my suffering.
And we have no choice but to take responsibility for the trauma. But those who abused us? They have a choice, unless we force them into accountability by calling them out.
My brothers also abused me and that probably played a role in my mood disorder. So now they are all living fine lives and I am homeless with no health care and in and out of psyche wards. When I asked them if they could loan me $500 for a deposit on an apartment my sister said; "All you want is the money!"
:^/
It is these people that pass on the trauma, the people who think that those of us who had the trauma "should take responsibility" and do nothing to help us heal, both mentally and physically.
Take responsibility for the hand of poker they are dealt? Take responsibility for a random occurrence, that's a pretty weird statement.
Better is to understand and live in the truth - that many aspects of our lives are random. Including our own decisions, free will is an illusion and whether we decide to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps (as is deemed 'good') or sink into misery, it is a foregone conclusion which will happen. All we can do is surf the experience moment to moment, year by year. Free yourself from blame, from responsibility, know that the void is merely playing with all possibilities. Let that very subtly different you in one of the other realities do the hard work of saving the world, or whatever grand scheme suits you best. They are the ones for whom it was meant to be.
The problem with this is that it infinitely regresses. If I can't control anything I do, then what's the difference if I'm empathetic and compassionate or not? Surely I'm just "riding the wave" either way.
These admonitions always start by saying we have no free will and then advising a course of action based on that knowledge, but that's incoherent.
Just because you worked your ass off doesn't mean that you weren't lucky. It just means you worked your ass off.
But so far, you probably either never experienced poverty or was lucky enough to get out. Lots of folks work their ass off and never are able to lift themselves out of poverty.
Chances are, you didn't get really sick in school and had to hold off on your studies. And you didn't lose a job because you wound up with an autoimmune disorder and weren't at the job long enough to qualify for FMLA, which was unpaid anyway. If you went to higher education, especially if you went for a Masters or higher - or had any degree that requires unpaid internship - you had someone to help support you during that time - parents, partner, etc.
And the list goes on. So many things in everyone's life are the result of just getting lucky and people have no control over this. Sometimes it is just luck avoiding things and sometimes it is just that some folks have a much better starting hand than other folks. Not everyone can get the good cards because the really good cards need to be unlocked with good cards. They still work their asses off, though.
Hard work alone does not yield success. Any of us who have succeeded have had a huge amount of luck. Simply being born in what is presumably a first world country during a time of relative prosperity is already a tremendous amount of luck.
This is what every hard working person who has reached success think of themselves while ignoring every istance of luck.
How many people have worked harded than you and end up in a menial job, defeated and burned out? I bet they are a lot. And how many just inherited wealth and never lifted a finger in their life? I know they are a lot.
We've all heard the proverb about apples and trees but there is a fine line between studying these things and denying people their agency. I fear that in today's ideological climate the information gleaned from this type of study will almost exclusively be used as justification for denying people the freedom to run their own lives.
Psychotherapists do admit they are primarily a role of social control. The field was an offshoot from philosophy and has developed into a bottom-up inquisition against perceived problems that are very vaguely defined.
I'm not sure they do any more good than enforce parenting and individual behaviour norms. Much like the inquisitors of olden days enforced christianity and loyalty to the crown.
The science is never quite grounded, which could be a feature instead of a bug. People are sometimes mysteriously cured without explanation and it's not really ever possible to determine if someone is mentally healthy or not. Someone internally pretending to be mentally ill is indistinguishable from the real deal.
Some people are 'treatment resistant' for completely unknown reasons. The whole field is philosophically and scientifically uncertain.
I find for myself (& others that share these issues) that recognizing ways you may have been affected is liberating.
An analogy is having a broken hand your whole life without knowing it. You wonder why you can’t do what the other kids can do. But by noticing it, you have the option to give yourself the additional care, adaptation, and kindness that can help you create a happy & successful life.
I find it really interesting that one of the consequences is increased obesity in offspring. It's basically evolution passing on the message from one generation to the next: "Pack on those extra calories when you can kid, you're gonna need them!" Then when those environmental stressors are gone the signal is turned off for next generation. Sort of a short-term but cross-generational mechanism for optimizing metabolism. Wild.
Readit News
http://web.archive.org/web/20220618204642/https://www.scient...
It is no surprise to me that there is some biological basis for all these inherited ticks most of us seem to have.
I have at least TRIED to come to peace with it, as much as I have been able (I am not young), but it resurfaces in ways that catch me off guard. Triggers that I have a hard time identifying (and that seem minor or inconsequential from a logical point of view) can instantly send me into a spiral of depression that can be very difficult to get out of. I have a hard time hiding it at work (in tech, higher up) when it gets bad but I feel that I must.
—————
1. Share a thought
2. How does that thought make you feel?
3. Why does it make you feel that way?
4. What is another way of thinking about that thought?
5. How does thinking about it differently change the way you feel?
6. What new opportunities are possible by thinking differently about this?
I wasn’t molested in the sense I think you mean, but over the years I’ve been close and cared deeply about some who were.
I’m not qualified to say much about this, but I can share that I’ve seen people do the hard work and make wonderful lives for themselves after that kind of tragedy.
God speed.
I admire you greatly for fighting your traumas. Going to that dark alley to mop up what would feel like the sea.
I am really noone to give advice but I will try to give you what guiding words I have.
Try to find your strength. Look for the spark. Use your powers to do good. Leverage the perspectives you've gained in life. Noone can do so, and noone has them, but you. Try to find a way to use the bad to do good.
If you manage to do this, you or others might find yourself a gem too valuable to have even dreamt of finding.
May God help you.
This is something that really upsets me as a father to multiple children.
Is it even possible for a biological father to do this? I've been meaning to google but I'm afraid of seeing the results.
I always assumed this would be limited to step parents, but Im afraid the truth is darker than i thought possible
As someone in their mid twenties, I am aware of _some_ past traumas that effect me but I have no clue how to make peace with them. It's been a few years already and I barely see any natural progress. Makes it hard when these experiences are quite actively blocked by our brains. :(
These 'ticks' are quite automatic and it is hard to deal with in the moment at least for me. Sometimes I'll get random anxiety from a conversation with someone when my brain matches some pattern with the trauma. Very annoying!
I've had dreams that enlightened me to certain things. So that's interesting.
Meditation? Psychedelics? Cognitive behavioral therapy? I know some people swear by ayahuasca. Anyone got any thoughts?
I was pretty skeptical of therapies for the longest while but this past year finally wrung up enough effort to go hunting for a trauma-specialist (PTSD and CPTSD flavors) therapist. There's tonnes out there (psychologytoday has a good list if you're in the US where you can search by specialty + location). Remote friendly, etc.
Personally found exceptional results with IFS (Integrated Family Systems) which was recommended by a trauma therapist. Had quite a few skeletons in the closet about a childhood full of medical fuckery and it feels like it's a healed scar now, mentally, versus an open wound with a band aid slapped over it.
I wish you the best in wherever your journey takes you.
The scarce commodity, maybe the only one more scarce than time, is the short-term-finite capacity to do difficult things. Discipline/willpower/etc. is (unlike time) renewable, but grow a new forest renewable, not write on the other side of the paper renewable.
Big picture it’s time that has to be budgeted. But in the small: improving our lives, being better custodians of our resources, relationships, and reputation, is hard work. You have to find the high leverage stuff.
As an example, I’m just way more effective if I keep my place tip-top. If I let it get to be a mess, it’s friction on getting out of bed. So I try to tidy up and wash dishes even after a long workday. But if I work too long, not happening. I have to actively budget it.
That’s just an anecdote/example, but we all have the stuff we know we ought to be doing and aren’t: bin-packing the highest leverage stuff before saying “fuck it I’m ordering a pizza and a six pack” is the unglamorous work of striving for a better life.
It may take a few therapists before you come across someone you feel you can build a good relationship with. You also need to fully commit to the therapy - a therapist can only take you so far, otherwise.
Personally, I did not find CBT all that helpful for dealing with known traumas. I did find Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy resonated with me, which I discovered through that book.
I wouldn’t self medicate with psychoactive substances. I’ve tried that and it just led to worse traumas after a period of being distracted from my problems by the chemicals. This is what led me to realize resiliency is the difference between living well with trauma and living in trauma.
Ayahuasca with proper support is very beneficial for a lot of people. Some other therapies (someone mentioned EMDR which is excellent, also somatic experiencing) are incredibly synergetic with it. They are very good at showing you the root of the issue, but they are absolutely not magic. It takes quite a bit of courage to go in and face yourself and to do the necessary work. Often the work doesn't start until after the ceremony finishes and you're back in "real life".
I've seen a lot of positive change from plant medicine. I've also seen a lot of people rebound back in to darkness after failing to do something with the message they got (after an initially positive experience)
People do and can get to the bottom of what is ultimately is driving them in their own humanity.
You can go in circles trying different spiritual practices. You can have earth shattering changes with plant medicine too. You can do dream work with dream yoga too (google Andrew holecek). The rabbit hole is long and wide. I would not swear by ayahuascha. All of life is ceremony. It might help in the short term but what you are seeking is an active thing and high effort thing until it becomes effortless. To be curious about your pain, fear and anxiety. Even to see the beauty in them. To have humility. To listen. To surrender it all.
There is no magic pill though. I’ve tried many things. I’m not the same person. You can change. There is a way out but the way out is not what you might think it is. The way out is the way through.
For Methylation, B viatmins, Zinc, Folate, can all change DNA methylation https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/11/3979
Histone modification seems to be controlled by fatty acids https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8273343/
There is a technique called "Parental Timeline Reimprinting" where you go back in time to before you were born (or before your parents were born) and give your parents (or grandparents) more resources to be able to change their behaviour and so raise you differently in a kind of imaginary parallel universe. Despite being imaginary this alternate universe "you" can "merge" with the "real" you and typically deep and pervasive healing often occurs.
I only did a short period of Schema Therapy, but the cognitive part of it was the most helpful thing in my overcoming of my BPD, I can only imagine how great the non-cognitive parts must be.
The best advice is therapy. Internal family systems is said to be by far the most effective and there are others similar.
So first, a question; What are the ramification of ridding our trauma and not passing along those epigenetic changes to out children?
Also, if you want to rid yourself of epigenetic trauma you need to understand DNA methylation and histone modification.
Both can be controlled by diet.
For Methylation, B viatmins, Zinc, Folate, can all change DNA methylation https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/11/3979
Histone modification seems to be controlled by fatty acids https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8273343/
IMHO, I feel the reason obesity is so linked with trauma is this attempt of the body to fix histone modification.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517810...
The book is only $10 so if it doesn't work no big loss.
I have literally no fear of heights now, nothing. I first noticed when I took my daughter on one of those high wire adventure things. Suddenly I was aware of something odd - there was no fear, no reaction to the height, absolutely nothing, flat.
So if you can play the game and occasionally climb and build up slowly to the point where you don't even think about it in VR - then you will have solved the problem in real life (anecdata).
It’s like the limp you often still have even after the busted knee has healed.
I’ve always wanted to map a system like this into more traditional ones to see what kind of patterns might emerge. I’m not sure how that would look but I think there’s still a lot to be discovered.
[0] https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-...
I spent a lot of my early adulthood thinking the depression/anxiety/dependency that afflicted me was the fault of others, including parents, peers who'd bullied me, former partners/friends who'd betrayed me, etc. And on one level there's truth to it, until you realise all those people were acting in reaction to abuse and trauma they'd suffered, so it's futile to scapegoat everything onto particular individuals or categories of people.
For what it's worth, I am personally trying to undertake work that over the long term would help society to be better at alleviating these trauma cycles and avert the patterns of abuse we see everywhere, but I'm under no illusion that it will be fast or easy, or even that it's likely that the approaches I've found to be effective would be embraced widely enough to have any impact at all. I'll keep trying, however.
Do you shout at your toddler when it does crazy stupid & dangerous things, or do you just let them suffer the consequences of their actions?
You can't go all the way to escalating to remove children from their parents care, but then who are they to be cared by? Other abuse victims.
It's very easy to say "prevent x from occurring", but then there's people and religion, and politics, and culture, and...
You're completely right.
Let me respost this I saw the other day:
"What almost nobody realises is that prescribing "social interaction" is almost like prescribing homeopathy to someone with cancer.
The real cancer is trauma.
Trauma.
We live in an epidemic of emotional trauma and few people see it.
It is trauma that causes parents to neglect their kids, to have low empathy for their suffering and not be able to realise they are not ok. Parents, or whoever is taking care of the kids, with the "help" of "modern" society in fact, cause kids, through action or inaction, not to be ok. Do people think these kids just happened to be born with a "social isolation gene"? Or "generalised hatred" gene? Nobody is that way, they were made.
The person you're replying to is an outlier and very lucky to have found people that were supportive. But I'd say by far most won't. And there's a reason for that and it's not their fault. Traumatized people are not very popular. Trauma itself is not very popular and most people have no clue about it, or how to identify someone who is traumatized, because the very nature of trauma causes them to conceal they have it to fit in and be accepted. And the ones who don't fit in are just seem as "there's something wrong with them". Kinda reminds me of the state of medicine in the middle ages.
What these people need is not social interaction.
They need
Unfortunately the way society is right now where we don't live on tribes with people that know us that care about us and are always there for us and can provide the above, like it happened for thousands of years, and like our brain is made to function with, now for many people there's only one that can do some of this and you have to pay them for it. Therapists. It's screwed up.Things have changed so much and so quickly that we're totally unaware of how screwed up and how much we were not made for this "modern" lifestyle.
We were not made to live with only 2 adults who have to take the role of a village to single handedly rear a child.
We were not made to attach primarily with people of our age. First in kindergarden, then school, then college. There were always several people and of all ages who we humans attached deeply to, who we matured emotionally from, whose more mature behaviors we could emulate and learn from.
We were not made to, if those 2 people fail to provide us a sense of safety, have no backup. There would always be someone who we could chat. We would always be with company of other people in the tribe. There would always be a "loving grandma" or an "older brother" who we could go to.
We were not made to have to pay someone to give us a simulation of unconditional love, and safety that our group would provide. This person, who we know in the end does it for the money, and to help, but without money they wouldn't do it. How can we think this is OK and normal and that people are having their emotional needs met in these weird conditions?
How far have we gone the far end to find ourselves proud to conclude that social interaction increases lobgevity? Are we in the future going to be so dry that people will be proud to conclude that drinking water increases longevity too?
In the conditions we live now it is no wonder emotional neglect and abuse has been happening so much. The very way the social foundation is layed is lacking and so easy for trauma to happen and propagate.
The covid pandemic we hear about it. The trauma pandemic, which is equally transmissible from generation to generation and between romantic partners, very difficult to heal and causes unimaginable silent pain to millions of people... Nah. We blame people for being wounded. We call them lazy, and angry. We give them condescending names like "Karens" to make it seem like they're different and their own species and not that their extreme sense of entitlement actually comes from feeling worthless inside. Or accuse people of just being unempathetic angry and selfish as if all their life hadn't been nothing but an experience that would make anyone become that way. No shoulder to cry on. No motherly voice to comfort them. They can't be anything but unempathetic, angry and lonely. People are not mentally ill. People are mentally injured.
And I say pandemic because it is everywhere. In the politicians who seem to only care about themselves. In the influencers who seem so fixated in having people provide them validation in being seen highly by others and in feeling important. In the people who commit crimes. And I mean financial and ethical crimes too. How can they do that? Maybe crimes happened in their childhood and nobody cared. In the bosses at our jobs who seem to only care about maximising profit as a proof that they're being the best to compensate for how not good enough they always felt like. In the clerks who seem to enjoy the little power they have over people and exert it to the full extent to compensate for the powerlessness they felt all their lives since they were a kid.
We have been so conditioned in our society to accept trauma as a common and normal occurrence that we hardly pause to acknowledge it. It's no wonder many people suffer in silence.
And nobody seems to know about this and only talk about social interaction, making friends, focusing on the positive, being more out there and looking at traumatized people like they're some weirdos that came through a membrane from another universe.
Are we being so different from the people that in the 17th century burned "heretics" or in ancient Rome sheered for the blood spilled in arenas as criminals were slayed to death and who we now regard as barbarics?
Sorry about the long rant, but I needed to get this out of my chest."
By /u/astronaut_in_the_sun
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If you are not immune to stress and fatigue changing how you respond to people and external stimuli then you will be an abusive parent, and you are an abusive partner.
They come into the office, and truly belive their childhood was normal.
I busted a mental gasket in graduate school, and thought Therapy would fix me.
I look back, and talking about my childhood did absolutely nothing. I was young, and very verbal too.
Just don't steal money from work to pay for the sessions. Yes--I was so young, and naieve; I really thought those pricy 50 minute sessions would cure me. I never got caught. It was a liquor store owned by the wealthiest guy in my county, so feeling bad over larceny was not a problem.
I still don't belive my childhood was the cause of my problems. My parants tried. I did feel like the only adult in the family though, but being first born I just thought that came with the birth order?
I also haven’t found any correlation between expensive mental healthcare and effectiveness. This is sort of different to like surgery where the standards of success are more clear-cut and the ballers get paid a lot if they are motivated by money.
Getting help can be as simple as finding a group in your area, it’s not always a huge barrier to entry to see improvement.
Dead Comment
https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2012112
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2019.0019...
And both can be modified by changes in the environment and diet.
> And Dias and Ressler reconditioned their mice to lose their fear of cherry blossoms; __the offspring conceived after this “treatment” did not have the cherry blossom epigenetic alteration, nor did they fear the scent.__
For example: A person is fired from their job. For someone who wanted to quit anyway, that could be a rather small annoyance, perhaps a blow to the ego. But for someone who struggled very hard to hold down even that one job, this could be catastrophic, and be perceived as life threatening. In the case of really really bad situations (like being kidnapped), just not being (or not feeling as) the only victim can make a big difference already.
People also made very different experiences during the war. Some lived in remote areas and didn’t ever hear air raid sirens or anything. Others lived in constant fear because their parents were taken away in the middle of the night (try ever sleeping well again).
Experiences on mice are more interesting I think.
I’m curious how this plays into the free will conversation. I think if people could get accustomed to seeing themselves and others as not having quite as much free will as one might think, that would do wonders for humanity.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma#Histo...
At some point, more people should take responsibility for the hand that they are given and run with those cards.
At the best, we now have more ammo as parents to deal with trauma so we don't pass it off to the offspring.
Without elaborating too much - both in my wife's and my family their traumas are for a large part World War II related. Active fighting, hunger, uncertainty, refugeeship, absence - it's all reflected in our (grand-)parents generation and thus in our genes and upbringing. We have our own traumas that I'm unable to reflect on yet. That's why I feel an extra sadness when watching Ukrainian children. Traumas live on for ages.
Thing that comes to mind: We have local cultures celebrating battles with Spain 400+ years ago. Humans are a hardy bunch. I don't think it's biological after many generations, but culture is an important part of humanity.
Don't you think that it makes sense in that context?
Yes, and why not? The point is not so much blame but making them responsible for their actions. To put the responsibility where is lay is part of healing from the trauma. To say that people should take responsibility for the trauma that other gave them will in no way help anyone heal.
My father was horrible and my mother was loving. If it were not for her I would probably be dead. I can hold my mother my mother for saving my life as much as I can my father for causing my suffering.
And we have no choice but to take responsibility for the trauma. But those who abused us? They have a choice, unless we force them into accountability by calling them out.
My brothers also abused me and that probably played a role in my mood disorder. So now they are all living fine lives and I am homeless with no health care and in and out of psyche wards. When I asked them if they could loan me $500 for a deposit on an apartment my sister said; "All you want is the money!"
:^/
It is these people that pass on the trauma, the people who think that those of us who had the trauma "should take responsibility" and do nothing to help us heal, both mentally and physically.
Better is to understand and live in the truth - that many aspects of our lives are random. Including our own decisions, free will is an illusion and whether we decide to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps (as is deemed 'good') or sink into misery, it is a foregone conclusion which will happen. All we can do is surf the experience moment to moment, year by year. Free yourself from blame, from responsibility, know that the void is merely playing with all possibilities. Let that very subtly different you in one of the other realities do the hard work of saving the world, or whatever grand scheme suits you best. They are the ones for whom it was meant to be.
These admonitions always start by saying we have no free will and then advising a course of action based on that knowledge, but that's incoherent.
But so far, you probably either never experienced poverty or was lucky enough to get out. Lots of folks work their ass off and never are able to lift themselves out of poverty.
Chances are, you didn't get really sick in school and had to hold off on your studies. And you didn't lose a job because you wound up with an autoimmune disorder and weren't at the job long enough to qualify for FMLA, which was unpaid anyway. If you went to higher education, especially if you went for a Masters or higher - or had any degree that requires unpaid internship - you had someone to help support you during that time - parents, partner, etc.
And the list goes on. So many things in everyone's life are the result of just getting lucky and people have no control over this. Sometimes it is just luck avoiding things and sometimes it is just that some folks have a much better starting hand than other folks. Not everyone can get the good cards because the really good cards need to be unlocked with good cards. They still work their asses off, though.
They're never going to be financially stable in the way I am, though. I work hard too, but I also have luck.
You can be rich, lazy, and lucky. You can be rich, hardworking, and lucky.
But you can't be rich, hardworking, and unlucky. Luck is necessary ingredient.
How many people have worked harded than you and end up in a menial job, defeated and burned out? I bet they are a lot. And how many just inherited wealth and never lifted a finger in their life? I know they are a lot.
I'm not sure they do any more good than enforce parenting and individual behaviour norms. Much like the inquisitors of olden days enforced christianity and loyalty to the crown.
The science is never quite grounded, which could be a feature instead of a bug. People are sometimes mysteriously cured without explanation and it's not really ever possible to determine if someone is mentally healthy or not. Someone internally pretending to be mentally ill is indistinguishable from the real deal.
Some people are 'treatment resistant' for completely unknown reasons. The whole field is philosophically and scientifically uncertain.
I find for myself (& others that share these issues) that recognizing ways you may have been affected is liberating.
An analogy is having a broken hand your whole life without knowing it. You wonder why you can’t do what the other kids can do. But by noticing it, you have the option to give yourself the additional care, adaptation, and kindness that can help you create a happy & successful life.