What Is Trauma? 10

I am often divided about post traumatic stress disorder.  Yes, that has been my diagnosis and my life has been affected and in some ways hobbled from stress and trauma.  In other ways stress and trauma have helped enrich and form my life.  I have never felt entirely comfortable with PTSD as a diagnosis.

I think this is because our streets are full of the walking wounded, most of whom do not and never will have to live with a diagnosis of mental illness.  Perhaps they have been able to cope better than some, or maybe they're better liars and have just managed to fake being well.

But this seems to be what it's all about.  Faking believably and effectively that we're okay, I'm okay, everything and everyone is okay even though our hearts are breaking and we'd much rather weep than laugh.  But isn't that what everyone's been doing?  All this time?

I sometimes wonder if those of us who, while growing up, never learn to lie about who we are, are the ones who are going to go through life being all the more severely punished.

We live in toxic times.  We live in a death culture.  It's always been about winners and losers.  The winner takes it all and the rest of us fight over and cope with the leavings.  Unless we have progressive educators in our schools, most of us as children are raised to be selfish, ambitious and indifferent to the sufferings of others, unless they happen to be either people who are just like us, or if they live across the pond somewhere in Africa or elsewhere.

We are born with the need to connect with others.  With our parents and siblings, yes.  With our primary caregivers, of course.  But when you look at small children during playtime (if you can endure the noise) you will notice that they freely interact with one another, there is very little discrimination.  We only learn to be snobs and form cliques as we get bigger and this developing selfishness is simply fed and encouraged by consumer pop culture, as well as the fears our parents inculcate us with.  .

Of course, and this goes without saying, parents are going to want to street-proof their kids.  It is just sad that this often ends up in creating a crop of young adults distrustful and afraid of strangers or anyone who isn't just like them.  Especially if they happen to be poor.

We are collectively traumatized. The fear of losing, missing out on social and professional success, the fear of poverty, fear of social exclusion, these are very effective measures for keeping us in line.  We are hobbled by fear.  Yes, we still go out and work every day or attend classes, and we still interact with families and friends and significant others, and we all play our part keeping the corporate and economic machine running.

None of this makes us better human beings, simply productive and useful to the system we are living under.  None of this makes us more loving or caring towards others.  None of this inspires in us the appreciation of beauty and wonder.

We are more anxious, stressed and crippled by fear than ever.  Who in their right mind would even suggest this to be an indicator of good mental health?  Meanwhile, as the bar is raised higher and the competition grows fiercer and more unforgiving, we will just continue to struggle to get ahead, or at least to not fall further behind, while more and more of us fall through the cracks and die on the pavement because everyone else is too frightened and too frantic with doing their job in order to care or even notice and eventually we will bring everything down to the gutter and everyone with us in this frenzied and fear-informed dance of death.