Fear appears to be a principal cause and ingredient to trauma. Whether you have survived a war, a bombing, earthquake, abusive parents, or one bad hair day too many, and you are traumatized, you have likely been already very afraid and for a very long time.
You are afraid of further misfortune, disaster, abuse, or malfunctioning setting gel. Usually the trauma justifies the fear and the fear is justified by the traumatic event or events that have caused trauma. Except for the bad hair days, in which case you might consider buying a wig and treat yourself to an afternoon in the nail spa.
If you have been homeless, as I have been, there is going to be the echo effect. You will fear becoming homeless again. If you are a decent human being with empathy, then you will be able to process a lot of this fear of repeating homelessness on having survivor's guilt and will do your very best to advocate for those who are still homeless and unhoused. You may still experience that shadow of fear, as I do at times, but it will diminish, become manageable and may eventually disappear altogether.
Surviving natural or human-made catastrophes will leave you with a huge fear of losing whatever stability and safety has been returned to you. If you have been robbed, assaulted, raped or stalked then you will have a dreadful time recovering trust. You will be paralyzed by fear, the fear that horrible things could happen to you again.
If you were abused as a child, especially by your parents and primary caregivers you will likely never trust anyone in a position of authority or power over your life again. This has been my personal experience.
The need to feel safe is huge among trauma survivors. This was my experience for three years after I had been homeless.
If you are living in a dictatorship or some oppressive regime then fear will be constant and chronic. Trauma becomes a collective event and a collective experience. I am thinking especially of the Uighurs in China, the Moslem minority from the westernmost promise. Individuals are being taken away in the middle of the night and forced to spend months in re-education centres where through threats and brainwashing they are taught to love Big Brother. They return deprived of their love for their religious faith and for their own culture and customs parroting all the lies and platitudes that prove them to be loyal Han members of the communist party, thus upholding Mao's toxic legacy.
Those who are not taken to the re-education camps are traumatized by osmosis, paralyzed by fear after seeing their loved ones transformed by their repressive government into the walking dead.
I have no doubt that such fear paralyzed and kept in check most if not all forms of rebellion among the Medieval Spanish and the Mexica.
It becomes a toxic balance. Governments that owe their power and legitimacy to their power and ability to bully, threaten and cow into submission their own people. There is no love there outside of the toxic fruit of Stockholm Syndrome. The power of the few is derived from the dehumanizing of the many.
I have never had to live under a dictatorship. I do enjoy the good fortune of living in a country and society that honours and upholds human rights and freedoms. I am glad to say that my experience of trauma had been largely due to growing up in a broken and dysfunctional family. Unfortunately the stigma of poverty has also complicated things. My experience of chronic poverty and underemployment and poorly paid work has put me at the mercy of some of the least flattering aspects of my own Canadian society. In this country it is still open season on the poor and my experience of trauma has only been intensified in some very painful ways thanks to your average Canadian's hatred of poor people and the politicians they elect into power.
I no longer fear poverty, I mean the extreme kind of poverty where I have the choice between housing or food but I'm not permitted the luxury of both.
I did, some time ago, come to recognize that fear was the prime power source of trauma. In order to overcome trauma and its results I have opted to face and tackle my fears, one at a time. This began in 2008 when I began to travel again. Every year now, thanks to living in social housing, I seem to always be able to save enough money to go on a trip somewhere in Latin America.
These vacations, always taken alone, away from resorts, all-inclusives and other tourists, have been just amazing for helping me address, tackle and overcome some of my fears. At times my life has been in danger. But I keep overcoming. And I keep on travelling.
And I am noticing that by extension, this overcoming of fear through travel has been crucial in bringing me into a fuller healing and a much richer experience of life.
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