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Trauma-Induced Frustrations & Pathologising Circumstance

11 months ago1,200 words

Some venting in response to previous posts. Much of how I react internally to things these days comes from traumatic past experiences, and it's difficult to connect with people who are all like one another but different to you.

I was planning to write a post about the current state of Dreamons today, though my recent mental health posts got more attention than recent posts usually do, and I wasn't able to get through replying to all the comments, so I wanted to write a bit about that again.

I got derailed a bit though - and spent the morning feeling frustrated, so sorry if that spills over into this post - as I woke up to see some notifications from my Discord server. I rarely go in there, and only seem to occasionally get notifications for some of the things people say (and it's rare in general that anyone posts there), but when I do I at least try to glance at them to see if there's anything that needs my urgent attention.

This time, I noticed what seemed like people grouping together to talk negatively about Jordan Peterson, after I mentioned him in the recent post.

Ugh. I almost used a vague term like "an author" instead of a specific name while writing that post, and now wish that I had.

I don't even know if that's what people were actually talking about, though; it might have been one comment that others disagreed with for all I know. I didn't want to read the whole discussion in case I got more annoyed, though, and instead my demons just assembled an imaginary argument out of memories of how such times went in the past.

I won't go on about that at length - I've already spent all morning basically mentally arguing with ghosts about it - but I wonder what the discerning saints who dislike that particular person would have said in my position the other day, when I was talking to the receptionist and she brought him up. Would they have launched into some tirade about what a bigot he is, and what a fool she was for giving him any attention? That would have been the socially adept thing to do, right? Totally conducive to connection. Grumble grumble.

It bothers me mostly due to painful memories of being dogpiled by an audience that were in agreement with one another in disagreeing with me. An awful experience, that. Would not recommend.

Our minds use our past experiences to form models of the world and expectations for how the future will go, and it's such a shame that I've had far more negative experiences than positive ones, so that's all I've come to expect.



Speaking of painful memories, I used to vent in my blog a lot during the Fig Hunter days, and got increasingly frustrated by how many of the responses were advice that I hadn't asked for. In small doses I imagine that can be accepted with gratitude even if it's not exactly wanted, but it was the sheer volume back then that just made me sick of it.

Interestingly, one of the topics covered in the last counselling class I went to was how a counsellor's role is not to ever give advice. You're meant to give your client a chance to speak without judgement, which for many people is all they really need to heal. There's a reason why this is a skill people have to go and train, though. Wanting to say something to improve the situation is only natural, and men in particular - which most of the people who've ever commented on my stuff have been - are well-known to be more inclined towards fixing rather than just listening reassuringly.



I'm fascinated by Psychology and definitely see the value in discerning which conditions a person might have, but something I've been dwelling on lately is how people seem so inclined to pathologise circumstance.

I'll try to explain what I mean through an analogy (which I also did in another recent post, though it seems worth trying again):

Imagine you've gone by yourself to study in a very foreign country for a year. China, let's say, assuming none of you are from there. Your classmates are all Chinese. On the first day, they speak to one another in Chinese, which - for the sake of this analogy - you don't speak. You try and engage them in English, to which they respond amicably in broken English, but there's clearly a communication barrier and the conversation quickly fizzles out. They turn to a Chinese person beside them and continue talking far more fluently in Chinese.

You call a friend back home and say you felt like the odd one out. "Do you think maybe you have autism?", they say. "Or how about ADHD?"

This post was originally going to be a list of all my mental health issues, why I believe I have them, why I don't think I have others (eg autism), etc, so then I could pin it and link to it in future... but it all feels largely irrelevant for my current situation.

Or rather, I'd say that mental illness was the main reason I fell into the pit I've been in for a long time, but mental illness isn't exactly the main reason my recent attempt to climb out has so far been so painful. It's the fact that I've been in the pit for so long that I'm an alien - in terms of life position - compared to people who've only lived on the surface.

I've been able to quickly and easily form bonds in the past with people who were on similar wavelengths and receptive to connection. I don't struggle with that. It's just difficult to find those people, increasingly so as I get older.

I'm not interested in acquaintance-level connections with people on completely different wavelengths to me. I get the impression that other people do find value in those, but I'd find them more of a burden than a boon.

Maybe I'll change my tune as the course goes on. We'll see.



Also, I don't want to sound ungrateful about people providing support in their own ways in comments on this blog. I do appreciate it. I suppose I'm just sore still from the frustrations of many years ago, and about the frustrations of my current situation that aren't exactly within my control.

I just wish there was somewhere obvious where I could go to find 'my people'. Online is probably my best bet, but maybe I've just got too old now so younger people would see me as an old creep for trying to interact with them - and we'd have too little in common due to generational differences anyway - and any around my age would have partners and jobs and everything.

Spending your twenties and thirties isolating from the real world is hardly a well-worn path.

I'm still working on games and stuff most days, so I really should post about at least Dreamons soon. And I'm intending to go to the class again on Wednesday, probably with different expectations this time.