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Comment by benreesman | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

I appreciate it. I don't tell people about this in real life (aside from my wife and a few therapists over the years) so occasionally posting as I did here can feel a bit unburdening and beneficial to me.

I once was a member of an in-person men's abuse support group (I was AMAB) and I always found it remarkable to hear my very thoughts echoed by people in that group. It was a very de-stigmatizing experience, to hear those thoughts and realize I had processed my own abuse (non-sexual) in a very normal way. It made me feel much less alone. Not pushing anything, just sharing that experience.

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.

God speed.

Hi man.

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.

I am so sorry avout your experience.

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

Sadly, and devastatingly for the parent/child relationship, there are such creatures out there. As my dad said when I confronted him about it as an adult with kids of my own, "I guess I wasn't thinking. I couldn't help myself".

Once I had my first child I was holding and rocking him back to sleep after a late night feeding and I forced myself to imagine doing to him what my father did to me and it completely wrecked me. I just lost it. It was utterly impossible and horrifying to imagine doing that to any child, let alone my own. I thought it might help me at least gain some insight into him, however feeble, but it didn't... it made me feel an even deeper burning hatred for him and what he did. Pedophiles like he is are simply defective and need to be kept away from children lest they succumb to their urges.

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.

It's a stellar book. One of the most astute things I've read.

I also agree with you on finding the right therapist, and also on taking the work seriously. It's like a running coach or a personal trainer: they can point you in the right direction, but they can't work out for you.

And for youniverse, one way I've found it useful to look at therapy and meditation as self-instrumentation. As you've already started to do, you need to pay attention to correlations and unexpected reactions. At first you will notice these things with a fair bit of delay and thought. But with time, you can gradually become aware of the reaction in the moment. Once you've gotten there, you can begin the debugging work. Often that's just giving yourself a different experience in the moment. E.g., you'll feel the anxiety spike, recognize it as trauma-related, and then take a few deep breaths and consciously relax. In the same way your body learned when it wasn't safe, it will gradually re-learn when it is safe.

For me it's also been helpful to build a pretty chill life for myself so that anxiety stands out against the baseline. For me that means things like living in a quiet place, going to bed early enough that I don't need an alarm clock, and strictly limiting intense media and video games. When I was your age my life was pretty intense and anxiety-making not because I had to, but because that was familiar to me. If I was a bit frantic all the time, it was much easier to ignore trauma reactions! [taps temple in I'm-so-smart gesture]

It is incredibly detailed (>1000 pages) and goes through exhaustive list of treatments for PTSD and complex traumas.

Neurofeedback works great for physical traumas. I found some really good content for IFS[1]. It is probably something that would be good for all parents so they are careful not to pass traumas to their children. [1] http://sfhelp.org/

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.

CBT, meditation and "fostering resiliency" are poor for healing from childhood trauma, please don't follow this advice.

Instead:

* Internal Family Systems

* Books: Body Keeps the Score, CPTSD: From surviving to thriving, Whole Again.

* Get validation of the abuse/neglect you suffered.

* EMDR

* Yoga with a focus on emotions stored in your body

* Emotional mindfulness, emotional vocabulary (alexythimia).

* With the previous one, paying attention to your needs.

* Boundaries

* Changing self-talk

* Foster the opposite of resiliency. Traumatized people have had to be strong and resilient their whole lives. What they need is softness, to be heard, to be seen and feel understood. To be vulnerable, to rest.

* (...)

In my life what you suggested below generally led to profound depression.

Being resilient isn’t white knuckling through things. It’s building a threshold of mood and perspective that allows the trauma to be examined without creating a feedback cycle. Meditation and CBT allowed me to create an internal reference system that wasn’t wrapped up in the emotion of trauma and allowed me to modify my perception of the trauma. Doing so allowed me to see pathologies in my various feedback cycles and work on breaking them at the weakest part.

I would ask that you give your own advice without invalidating the experiences of others. Humans are complex and there is no magic incantation you’ll provide. I’m glad these worked for you.

Internal reference system that wasn't wrapped up in the emotion of trauma? When I read that, it sounds like someone who became further desensitized to what happened.

I'm sure you're more functional now, but know that being more functional doesn't equate to actually having healed anything. It can just mean the person learned to cope better.

In fact, the initial stages of healing from childhood trauma are expected to be less functional, less productive, and yes, more depressive, because for the first time in the person's life, they're feeling, in a compassionate way, what they've been pushing down all their lives, because they had no one safe to go to, and often there's a lot to unpack. It definitely is tiring and often just exhausting. But it's the only way. Because without feeling you can't heal.

Also, childhood trauma doesn't create "pathologies" it creates coping mechanisms which any healthy person would develop in the same circumstances, which need to be understood, and which will subside on their own without the need for behavioral approaches (aka symptom fixing) like CBT.

We are all humans, so we can't keep saying "what works for me may not work for others", at the core we do have many things in common, we all have feelings, we all have similar needs. And we all get traumatized in similar ways. So while there might be some differences, at the end of the day, some things will work for everyone, and those things are the ones that relate to the things we ALL have in common.

The reason it became so ingrained in psychology the mentality of "what works for you may not work for others" is because we've been in the equivalent of the middle ages of psychology for trauma treatment.

This is incredibly condescending. It’s the equivalent of telling a friend: “no, your arm is still broken” when they get their cast off.

I’m genuinely wondering how you can be so confident. You’re telling someone to follow your universal prescription, and insulting their suggestion taken from person experience.

Let alone the fact that you’re arguing against “resiliency” being a positive trait to foster in any human being, regardless of past traumas.

Do you at least acknowledge your confidence? You’re telling somebody off for sharing a reasonable mental health approach.

And what if I said I completely agreed with GP, on account of my person experience and reconciliation? Not everybody breaks in the same way; why do you then think that putting a person back together must follow your prescription?

I could not disagree more that there’s singular universally effective psychological or psychiatric treatments. It’s overly reductionist and ignores some basic facts such as two people experiencing the same trauma can be impacted by it in wildly different ways. Some people are for all intents and purposes unaffected in the long term and some are profoundly disabled. If we don’t respond the same to the cause, why do you assume we all respond the same to a treatment? I’d also say that trauma manifests in many different psychological pathologies that aren’t universally experienced, that’s why classifications in psychology have inventories and criteria that aren’t measurable objectively but are assessed. I’m sure you’re a great programmer though.

You are making an assumption that all of our brains work the same way. From my own (neurodivergent) experience, IFT doesn't always work the way it's "supposed to."

I have a special interest in emotional vocabulary & alexythimia ; do you have more resources on that part specifically ?

Re: boundaries, I found this book quite interesting https://www.amazon.com/Set-Boundaries-Find-Peace-Reclaiming/...

I’m busy doing EMDR therapy. Can’t recommend it enough.

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.

Therapy may be an answer for some people, in certain occasions. I did years of therapy with five different therpist: single, group, meditating, CBT and so on and on...

To me it was extremely easy to see what the therapist wanted me to say and say it.

Sometimes I had the impression that I had to protect the therapist from the reality that some people have really, really, really shitty lives behind thei control and their thinking is not a cognitive distortion: it's the rational response to a disastrous situation.

Well said. This is a very difficult point to make in the current zeitgeist, but I hope to see it return to a reasonable perspective that most people can understand.

> To me it was extremely easy to see what the therapist wanted me to say and say it.

This is easy with everyone, but seeing as you're the one paying for them to listen it seems a little weird to meta therapy like this. If you feel that need, just don't go.

> Sometimes I had the impression that I had to protect the therapist from the reality that some people have really, really, really shitty lives behind thei control and their thinking is not a cognitive distortion: it's the rational response to a disastrous situation.

Any therapist will explain to you that your environment and your behaviour (if they are as connected as you say) have to change together: The former because it is almost impossible to change yourself in an identical context, the latter because otherwise you will create the same environment in a new place.

From what you said, you had both bad therapists and did not want to participate in therapy. It's no wonder it doesn't work in that case, every good therapist will tell you this.

I strongly agree with this comment. Based on 20 years of searching and self help patches. If I knew and had the cash I’d have gone for EMDR therapy at the first viable moment after childhood.

(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)

Is it really a good setting to be surrounded by people we don't know who're all looking for a solution to their (often stubborn) problems and collectively embark on such an experience?

I've done psychedelics plenty of times over 25+ years and can see the potential they have but I'd never in my life do so in one of these retreats.

I think the group setting is really helpful. Being surrounded by a bunch of people who are also doing deep work on themselves can be really supportive. The place I worked did minimum 10-day stays (6 ceremonies), but usually longer (1 month or more). You get to know your group and the staff very well and find yourself being very open and vulnerable. The day-after-ceremony meetings are full of common experiences and people will often get inspiration from each other's stories. Working at the center was incredible, the people are one of the best parts. I made more friends in that short period than any other in my life.

There's a chance you have found the miracle drug, but everything I know and have read about seems to suggest that anything which impairs your judgment is not the solution.

Drugs aren't, alcohol isn't, etc.

What seems to work is... work. Working on yourself, trying to confront past traumas, talking to others about it, opening up. You know, the sucky parts that everyone hates to do.

Such a simplistic view of it. Psychedelics, when used properly, have a way of making your judgment very unimpaired. They can help one do everything you listed in your closing paragraph.

i tried shrooms and then 6 months later had deep insight

i’ve been dealing with low grade trauma for a long time so kept doing the work

i will never know if i finally put enough work or if going crazy on moderate shroom trip rewired the brain just enough to see

this stuff is so hard since personal experiences are hard? unwise to generalize.

yet, feeling better about existing is nice.

also recovery is always tenuous since life can deal you a hand that can break you and maybe your new healthy mindset can’t handle it.

yet, the old broken mindset would have at least kept you alive.

too young to comment on which it will be for me

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.

Diet plays a large role

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/

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.

I can recommend the books "No more Mr. Nice Guy" and "When I say no I feel guilty", they helped me a lot.

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.

As others have said, various therapies. You can also get a similar result with self-exploration, in my experience. Something like what's described here: https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob...

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.

Lots of self introspection. therapy can be helpful. A good therapist will teach you how to observe yourself and tackle those issues.

Check out EMDR.

The epigenetics of trauma has a purpose; To pass on to our children what they should avoid to stay alive.

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...

Are you suggesting that we should beat our kids so that they won't beat their kids?

No. What I am saying is that if you are genetically predisposed to aggression, histone modifications and DNA methylation might inhibit that aggression.

If you’re not genetically predisposed to aggression then beating your kids might have the opposite effect.

The answer is if you’re aggressive focus on fixing yourself and don’t worry about your kids.

Yep. Now, for example, I'm trying to avoid at all costs a trip by airplane because of my fear of flying - which I took from my dad as a child.

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).

Heights are not really the problem in my case. My problem is with the plane crashing. It's completely irrational, no data take that from my brain. I need a good therapy.

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.

The back seat of a Cessna doing stall recovery practice would probably solve it too.

People don't fear things when their frame of reference includes way more extreme things that are fine.

Experiencing fear can be traumatic, but it's only by experiencing it that we can lead to deal with it. There is a lot of talk about PTSD now days, which can lead us to thinking that all trauma is bad; but normally results in post traumatic growth, which makes us more resilient.

I traveled across oceans a few times (12h+ long), when I'm in the plane I feel "ok". The problem is when taking off and landing, I get super anxious/panicked.

I had to travel weekly for work. It completely took away my fear of flying.. Now it's just a slog.

Obviously not everyone can just fly a bunch to do half assed exposure therapy, but maybe something like VR?

I was just googling for that. any recommendation?

I used to play Kerbal Space Program in VR. It was hilariously terrifying.

But for exposure therapy, you're probably going to want to go with Microsoft Flight Sim 2020, right? I think it supports VR and it's probably the most visually accurate experience. I could be wrong though as I've never played it myself.

I also played a bunch of Warthunder in VR. The sense of height in those smaller planes is really freaky.

I've taken many long flights west to east, and many internal flights and have been unable to stop a physical anxiety response when flying, so it isn't as simple as that. Had the first flight in nearly 2 years a month ago, just a quick one and on the way back got hit with some horrible turbulence which caused me to have a mild panic attack. The only thing I found that helped me before was drinking or taking valium.

> have been unable to stop a physical anxiety response

Well there's your issue. Anxiety attacks are like a rushing river, if you try to swim against or stop the current you'll get nowhere. Ride it out and know that if you felt things got really got bad, you could ask any airline attendant for help - they deal with nervous flyers every day across tens of thousands of people every year and would help you through it compassionately and respectfully. We're all in this together man, nobody is going to make you feel bad for being human.

No. Talk to a real therapist. It's not as simple as this. They can guide you to keep the right level. Don't it wrong can make it worse.

I used to date a physiologist researching/specialized in how to overcome anxiety.

You are literally saying: don’t trust this guys experience, my girlfriend is a doctor. I don’t think it’s as strong a point as you think it is.

While true to a point... there's also just lots of things that might work for a minority of people but are major risks for most. Someone who has actually studied the risks around exposure therapy is probably in a better position to discuss the risks of exposure therapy; and how to manage those risks. The person initially recommending it made no discussion of this whatsoever, and implied it was perfectly safe.

We all see people advising stupid things every day, because it's worked for them so far. There's the lichtenberg wood burning people who explain how to pull out a microwave transformer and use it to burn patterns into wood... and fail to acknowledge just how likely it is to kill you.

But what if that anxiety is preventing you from taking the trip to overcome the anxiety?

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.

Classic maladaptive behavior. Being prickly with people who are curious about me because it was a self-protective behavior I learned as a kid when someone started quizzing me is one of mine. I second your assertion that one of life’s highest callings is to identify and correct those behaviors that no longer serve you, and in fact knee cap you, like your proverbial limp.

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.

[0] https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-...

Better yet, stop parents from abusing their kids. It's an epidemic. Child abuse causes adult alcoholism, depression, murder, suicide, rape and so on.

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.

One thing I've been thinking for the trauma cycle is how isolating childhood is for those who are in an abusive cycle (and in general). It takes a village to raise a child, but often the entire responsibility is put on 1-2 people, who themselves have been raised in isolation with a lack of serious external investment in preparing them for the responsibility. The education system spreads one adult's time across 20-30 children in a structured and unnatural environment, which limits engagement, limits visibility in to root causes for deviant behaviour, and creates a stressful environment that can (and does) cause negative reaction and thought patterns among the educators.

To go from zero positive role models to one for a child who is suffering would already be a life changing event. If the responsibility for child raising can be shared among more people in society I truly believe it would smooth out the negative actions of single individuals who are the only meaningful influence in a child's upbringing. Having engagement from one adult who demonstrates compassion, who can create a safe space, and who can act as a role model for how to positively integrate in to society, would provide the child with visibility of what exiting their situation looks like, illuminating a path that they are entirely blind to without this.

At least in my own anecdotal experience you are completely correct that externalising blame, even where warranted, is not the solution. Understanding why these external situations happen and acceptance of them only provides so much too. Engagement with the child from invested individuals may not solve the problem entirely, but it will shift us on to a corrective path that would have a massive impact on society a few generations from now.

Yeah just my own 2 cents on the problem. I wish you luck with your vision.

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.

I used to think that abuse had to be conscious and with intent to be abuse but it most definitely doesn't. A parent can be doing their best, and loving in their eyes, and abusing/neglecting their kid.

I’m really not sure we should be using the word abuse in some of these discussions.

Could say "neglect", unintentional neglect on some aspects of the child by (innocently) ignorant parent(s).

But good parenting is not black and white.

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?

Exactly. Parenting is a challenging mix of turning kids into functioning adults, letting them have fun, teaching them life skills, making them feel safe, and preventing them from accidentally causing serious injury.

Often these goals require conflicting choices. The solution, so far as there is one, is to do everything with love and humility. Then, even my mistakes are learning and bonding opportunities.

Shouting something like "stop" or "enough" or "go" at toddler wont cause him trauma. What will cause trauma to your kid is yelling at him something like "you stupid f**, good for nothing looser, I hate you ..."

There is literally zero dichotomy between preventing toddlers doing crazy stupid & dangerous things vs causing them trauma via words. Toddlers can be annoying and don't respect you are tired mentally or emotionally. People loose their emotional control, it happens, especially when there are other stresses. But, saying that it is about safety is simply not true.

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.

Afaik, we dont have raising rates of child abuse. The abuse is talked about more openly. But, a lot of abuse stories you read about is adults talking about what happened to them in 90ties or so. The acknowledgement of intra family abuse was much lower.

How?

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...

Having a strong social support system goes a long way. Help meet people’s basic medical needs, basic educational needs, have affordable housing, a minimum wage that people can survive upon. All of those are preferable (and well studied) methods of decreasing childhood trauma, without taking the kids away.

Where possible ensure that children are brought into the world by people in a position to emotionally and financially support them. Availability of contraception being one thing.

it is impossible to asses whether someone is emotionally able to care for children without observing them how they actually treat their own children. observing them with other children does not work either. i have seen wonderful teachers who were not so good at parenting.

requiring parents to be financially stable would cut out a way to large portion of society. you only want rich people to have kids?

how about building a society where raising children does not cost money? free schools, healthcare, financial support (basic income?) for having children, can go a long way.

same for emotional support. instead of attempting to weed out potentially bad parents, provide a support system where parents can get the help needed if they struggle with their kids.

I figured the parent comment had largely covered the societal aspect you mentioned. Public schools aren't far off free and healthcare where I live is inexpensive. Childcare is expensive but there are at least income-tested subsidies which are very helpful; free childcare seems like a good goal.

With the emotional and financial angle, I was getting at abortion as well as contraceptives and sex education. If an individual/couple get pregnant but they themselves don't feel they are emotionally or financially prepared, pushing them down that path (especially with poor support) immediately puts them and their child behind the eight ball. Obviously it's a particularly contentious topic in some countries.

I can't find the link now, but I was reading stats about foster children the other day which were quite incredible. Encouraging an environment where children are with parents who want them seems like something we should aim for.

I think most of the commenters here are probably more interested in talking about the middle ground between “taking kids away from parents” and “abortion”.

i agree that people who don't want children should get help to make it easier to not have children accidentally.

but wanting children and being emotionally fit to take care of them are not the same thing. and denying someone the right to have children is completely inappropriate, as is trying to convince them that they are not capable.

> free schools

This furthers the huge amount of resources society puts into the positional good known as education. If you make X level of education free and universal the X+1 level will soon become mandatory for a decent job even if it's irrelevant to the work.

> healthcare

This is a bottomless pit. A gov can spend almost arbitrarily large amounts of money on this (easily orders of magnitude more than total GDP), so you'll need to put a limit on it in some way.

if you make X level of education free and universal the X+1 level will soon become mandatory for a decent job even if it's irrelevant to the work.

not true. the US is the fourth highest country in number of students with tertiary education. notably europe (eg germany which has always had free universities) has only half as many students (and those even include trade-schools, which are absolutely relevant for work)

https://ourworldindata.org/tertiary-education

what possibly drives irrelevant higher education is high unemployment. if there are lots of applicants to choose from, you may tend to choose the higher educated ones. reduce unemployment and demand for lesser educated people should rise.

healthcare: This is a bottomless pit

literally ever country in the world spends less on healthcare than the US.

the limit on spending comes from insurance and governments not allowing exploitation by healthcare providers.

https://ourworldindata.org/financing-healthcare#healthcare-s...

If “education” is considered a “positional good” then it’s not an “education” in the sense I meant it above and in the sense that it’s meant when considering societal wellbeing.

To see it that way you’d either have to have too little or too much of it. I doubt you’ve had so little education that you see no real value in it. So I guess you’ve been privileged with so much of it that the marginal cost of more education for you doesn’t provide any further value. Fair enough - for you.

Education in the normal sense of the word is valuable in itself, regardless of the value other people place in it. If that’s not your experience you’re very much doing it wrong and should stop.

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."

By /u/astronaut_in_the_sun

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.

It's counterproductive to consider anything less than ideal as abuse.

Also, it can be harmful to shelter your kids from all stress and normal human behavior and reactions. It's all very non-precise.

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.

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