Why is it hard to think positive when you are traumatized?
“I think human consciousness, is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight – brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”
Rust Cohle, True Detective (S1)
If a kid has seen or felt something he is not supposed to feel at that young age, it’s almost a case of trauma. And it doesn’t just disappear when he grows up, it just goes into the background. Many times it’s even harder for him to remember it because it’s a feeling that he doesn’t want to feel again, so he has pushed it way back in his memory. This explains why is it hard to be positive when you are traumatized.
But feelings are organic; you can’t just push a button and remove them from your brain and body. It affects both his life and his body. (Learn about PTSD.)
But it’s not about what he has seen; it’s about how he has reacted to it, what he has felt about that experience. A traumatic experience can be someone bullying him when he was young or seeing his children getting killed in front of his eyes. It doesn’t matter how severe it was; what matters is how severely he felt it. Why is it hard to be positive when you are traumatized? Because those severe feelings linger.
It affects his entire life, depending on what he wants to call a “life.” It affects his mind and body (read “The Body Keeps the Score”). All these things make him something different from the rest of us. A different perspective on life and the people around him. You can’t change that, for better or worse. It’s not easy to change him. It takes warmth and tremendous care for him to change. But yes, he can change. The trauma can escape his body and mind with effort. That’s why there are people called “therapists.”
I’m lucky to know a few such people. Lucky, because their different perspective on life helps me understand it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, that life doesn’t just “happen”…you have to make it happen! Happiness doesn’t just appear in your life; you have to work for it, “fine-tune” your mind to accept it, “chisel” the body to feel it.
It’s not me that I was talking about. But that “him” is inside many of the people I’ve met. Hopefully this will trigger those emotions…
I am not a mental health professional, if you are dealing with any type of intense emotions, please reach out to psychologists/therapists!
Thanks for reading! 🙂
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