10 ms·

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 tran

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.

boredemployee 4y ago
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.
- hnuser847 4y ago
  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.
  - boredemployee 4y ago
    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.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - fartcannon 4y ago
      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?
      - boredemployee 4y ago
        I was just googling for that. any recommendation?
        fartcannon 4y ago
        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.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    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.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    But what if that anxiety is preventing you from taking the trip to overcome the anxiety?
  - jwmoz 4y ago
    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.
    - dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y ago
      > 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.
      - cjblomqvist 4y ago
        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.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        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.
        solar-ice 4y ago
        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.
  - mjbeswick 4y ago
    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.
- Quaengos 4y ago
  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.
- plutonorm 4y ago
  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).
  - boredemployee 4y ago
    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.
sumy23 4y ago
Hellbanevil 4y ago
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?
- benreesman 4y ago
  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.
swayvil 4y ago
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.
- benreesman 4y ago
  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.
  - eloisius 4y ago
    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.
youniverse 4y ago
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?
- patmorgan23 4y ago
  Lots of self introspection. therapy can be helpful. A good therapist will teach you how to observe yourself and tackle those issues.
- kradeelav 4y ago
  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.
- jm20 4y ago
  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.
carabiner 4y ago
Better yet, stop parents from abusing their kids. It's an epidemic. Child abuse causes adult alcoholism, depression, murder, suicide, rape and so on.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  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...
  - LeonB 4y ago
    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.
    - prawn 4y ago
      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.
      - em-bee 4y ago
        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.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
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 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/ 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/S0165178105003720 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517810...
- Teever 4y ago
  Are you suggesting that we should beat our kids so that they won't beat their kids?
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    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.
gaoshan 4y ago
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.
- fullstop 4y ago
  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.
  - gaoshan 4y ago
    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.
    - MollyRealized 4y ago
      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.
- KBeyo 4y ago
  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?
FractalHQ 4y ago
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-works https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-...

boredemployee 4y ago

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.

hnuser847 4y ago
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.
- boredemployee 4y ago
  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.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fartcannon 4y ago
    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?
    - boredemployee 4y ago
      I was just googling for that. any recommendation?
      - fartcannon 4y ago
        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.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  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.
- themitigating 4y ago
  But what if that anxiety is preventing you from taking the trip to overcome the anxiety?
- jwmoz 4y ago
  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.
  - dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y ago
    > 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.
    - cjblomqvist 4y ago
      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.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        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.
        solar-ice 4y ago
        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.
- mjbeswick 4y ago
  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.
Quaengos 4y ago
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.
plutonorm 4y ago
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).
- boredemployee 4y ago
  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.

sumy23 4y ago

Hellbanevil 4y ago

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?

benreesman 4y ago
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.

swayvil 4y ago

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.

benreesman 4y ago
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.
- eloisius 4y ago
  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.

youniverse 4y ago

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?

patmorgan23 4y ago
Lots of self introspection. therapy can be helpful. A good therapist will teach you how to observe yourself and tackle those issues.
kradeelav 4y ago
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.
jm20 4y ago
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.

carabiner 4y ago

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

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
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...
- LeonB 4y ago
  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.
  - prawn 4y ago
    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.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      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.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

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 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/ 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/S0165178105003720 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517810...

Teever 4y ago
Are you suggesting that we should beat our kids so that they won't beat their kids?
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  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.

gaoshan 4y ago

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.

fullstop 4y ago
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.
- gaoshan 4y ago
  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.
  - MollyRealized 4y ago
    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.
KBeyo 4y ago
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?

FractalHQ 4y ago

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-works https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-...