Not Dealing With Our PTSD is Hurting Society
The 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the supposed pandemic of 2020 traumatized people. It's time we deal with it.
We’re Living With PTSD
I was listening to the Timcast IRL show yesterday and Ian just mentioned the “Patriot Act” and Tim said, “And that’s the trauma; there’s the PTSD,” and I thought, “He gets it.” I think most people have no idea how many traumatized people there are living in the US.
The 9/11 attacks traumatized many of us in this country. And although some of the first responders may have received some help for that trauma, most people are walking around not realizing how much it actually affected them. It doesn’t help that most of us in the US experienced it the same way, so people just assume the reaction is normal. Trauma has become normalized.
And, those critical of leftists (who are going crazy with “microaggression” accusations) now diminish a lot of discussion about real trauma as a backlash. I believe anyone who gets triggered by perceived “microaggressions” was traumatized, not by the perceived microaggression, but by whoever taught them to look for and complain about microaggressions and that being a victim or “social justice warrior” was virtuous. Anyone who grew up in a healthy environment would know that feeling eternally like a victim would feel disempowering and awful and that that isn’t a life to shoot for. They’re clearly not acting in their best interest.
Trauma is on a scale, and some smaller traumas may not affect us very much. But people are living with really large traumas and then they act out trying to control others because they feel as if they are not in control. This is affecting our government on a large scale.
AI Getting “Traumatized”
I was looking around in a meditation game’s Discord channel and someone posted a link to this video (timestamp) that shows how an AI program learns to play Pokemon. I’ve never played Pokemon but I still found it interesting how the creator of the video relates it back to how the human mind learns.
He’s clearly aware that it’s just a program, but there’s a point at which the AI gets “traumatized” from a huge loss. The AI program is given rewards for certain things. In this case, there was a reward tied to the cumulative levels of its Pokemon. So as it collects more Pokemon and levels them up it gets more rewards and this is what causes it to behave the way we would want it to. That works well until it loses a lot of rewards at one time accidentally.
It deposits a Pokemon into storage at the Pokemon Center. As it deposits a 13-level Pokemon it loses 13 reward points. The AI then avoids the Pokemon Center for all future games.
We Hate Huge Losses
When we experience huge losses, we tend to avoid the things that we think caused those losses. People who got really hurt by a loved one passing away or leaving may try to harden their hearts and not let people in again.
When people in the US felt a huge loss of safety from the attacks in 2001, they really wanted to avoid feeling that way again. So we, as a nation, hardened up. The Patriot Act was quickly passed.
Who’s Responsible for Our Feeling of Safety?
People looked for a “savior” because they felt like “victims.” They wanted the government to be that savior. Now some people didn’t approve and thought it was unconstitutional. But the majority of people went along with it because they were traumatized.
They felt unsafe. Rather than take personal responsibility for healing that trauma (that most of us ignore even happened), they looked for someone else (the government) to take responsibility for their feelings of safety.
I said the same thing about COVID. I wrote for WrongSpeak, “If you were afraid of getting sick, you could sit around waiting for your rescuer to “save” you. Or you could take personal responsibility for your health and figure out ways to mitigate the risk. Personally, I started taking more Vitamin D and Zinc in 2020 because hospitalized COVID patients were often lacking in those. I exercised because obesity was a co-morbidity with COVID. I also meditated because stress can actually lower your immune system’s ability to fight off infections. Meditation helps to let go of that stress. I never got sick regardless of never wearing a mask or getting vaccinated. But, better yet, I was never afraid of getting sick in the first place. When you take personal responsibility for yourself, then you feel powerful and in control of your life. You are your own master.”
But so many other people looked to doctors, nurses, and the government to save them from illness and/or death. They waited around in their homes, frightened, and blamed other people for why they didn’t feel safe. They blamed the unmasked and then the unvaccinated. They felt as if their feelings of safety were in other people’s hands, not their own.
You will always feel powerless if you place your feeling of safety in the hands of another person. Those who feared the unmasked or unvaxxed shifted the responsibility to make themselves feel safe onto other people. They made it your responsibility to wear a mask or get a vaccine so that they could feel safe. By doing so, they ensured that they would never feel safe or empowered.
Could Anyone Not Be Traumatized?
The attacks on 9/11/2001 and the supposed pandemic of 2020 traumatized people. If the mainstream media wanted people to feel free and better they would have been talking about how to deal with those traumas and how to find a feeling of safety without looking to other people for it. But they were traumatized too. Essentially we have the blind leading the blind into a ditch.
If you had faith or belief in the law of attraction (like I did in 2020) and/or our God-given immune systems, you could protect yourself from the fear of COVID. But even though I wasn’t afraid of COVID, I realized I fear an overreaching government.
Even though I believe our government is a response to what we feel inside, I’m aware that most of the citizens have no clue that they’re reacting to fear in a way that will hurt them, and that could eventually hurt me. That’s something I have to deal with. It’s my struggle with God. I believe that I’ll be protected in one sense, but then there’s the PTSD to contend with.
Most people are terrified to live without someone or some government out there “protecting” them because they feel so vulnerable. (I try to rely on God and take personal responsibility instead).
The reason anyone wants authoritarian and tyrannical rulers is because they’re afraid of what would happen without those people in charge. This happens because of the responsibility shifting of feelings of safety.
So I wish for people to start trying to feel safe without relying on items (masks, vaccines, guns) or people (government programs, cops, etc.). I am not saying not to use items that make you feel safer, but there should be a desire to find safety beyond those items. That could come about from meditating and releasing trapped emotions of fear. It comes about by facing the traumas and it can be helped with taking responsibility over anything you can take responsibility for, like your physical and mental health.
If people took personal responsibility for their feelings of safety, then we wouldn’t feel so much of a desire to control what other people do, think, or say.
Stop Dismissing Trauma Responses
I started this article talking about Timcast IRL, and I think Tim was dismissive of Ian by saying that Ian’s reaction was essentially because of PTSD. We need to not brush aside the fact that we’ve been traumatized. People have fears and we would be much better off discussing them so we can see how our reactions to current things are being affected by our past interactions.
When someone feels “triggered,” the correct and beneficial reaction is not to blame the person or event they think triggered them. If you get “triggered” the better reaction is to ask yourself questions like:
“Why did I get triggered?”
“What about this event made me feel wrathful or fearful?”
“What does this remind me of from my past?”
“What is the opposite of the emotion I’m feeling right now?” (this is your true desire)
“How can I, personally, find a way to feel that desired emotion?”
The better reaction to getting “triggered” isn’t to make it someone else’s responsibility to make you feel better, it’s to find out how you can make yourself feel better. Then you will feel empowered.
I understand that many people believe the words “trauma” and “triggered” are incorrectly or over-used. Whatever you want to call it is fine. But the point remains that many people are acting like that AI. We’re desperately avoiding things that make us feel unsafe, and, in the long run, that is hurting our society. That insecurity makes people want to control others.
But we can learn to handle the feelings of insecurity another way. We become empowered by taking personal responsibility for our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. I wish all of that for you.
Related Articles
If you didn’t read my last article, I also discussed in that one how we got traumatized in 2020:
And, if you’re interested in this topic of people “getting triggered” and placing the responsibility to feel better onto other people, you may enjoy this article on how people who demand you use their “preferred pronouns” are doing this:
I wrote about how the political left & right both try to downplay trauma and pass it off as “normal”:
Pitch Perfect