As we move more and more to a digital society our gaps continue to widen. We begin to lose authentic connections with people and as we do we start to develop more and more insecure attachments.
There is a pathogen sliding around us in plain sight and we as a society are blind to it at the moment. A pathogen is a sickness, a virus and in this case not necessarily a biological virus strain but a sickness in critical thinking, reasoning and judgment. Dr. Craig Childress a clinical psychologist from Pasadena, California describes an attachment trauma developing more and more and it continues to feed and grow on pain and suffering. This pathogen which feeds on pain and thrives in darkness has no motive, no agenda other than to spread more pain. The pathogen survives by “splitting”….it creates divides…divides in groups, ideas, thoughts and people stop talking, communication breaks down and the isolation grows. Divide and conquer…pathogen wins…more pain.
You see it more and more in the news and our society. What we know as today terrorism, school and mass shootings and anything you see in the media that causes pain….is the pathogen in our society. People struggle to understand why this could happen, why this person could do this or even simply how an ex partner could be so cruel amidst a divorce or break up. The pathogen has no agenda other than to cause more pain. Struggling to make an illogical situation logical is a futile battle that would drive anyone insane.
Well we have to stop asking why because the answer is right in front of us and we as a society are asleep to it. Childhood trauma. At the base of it all is childhood trauma and we learn to reenact those patterns of trauma unconsciously if left unresolved and untreated. Trauma is complex because it is unique to the individual. My Supervisor once said to me “One persons hangnail could be another’s end stage cancer” meaning it affects us all differently.
This trauma pattern shifts and grows and the old saying hurt people…hurt people is so very true. It causes a ripple effect that can carry on for generations if left unbroken. Empathy is the powerful emotion that is also getting eroded in our “selfie society” and is slipping away before our very eyes.
How do we stop this?
How do we stop the murders, rapes, drug addiction (opioid epidemic) and teen pregnancies plaguing our families and society as a whole? As individuals we have a choice. We can choose to ignore these trauma patterns and reenact them or recognize them and choose to break them. If we choose the latter then we have some work to do. We have to first ask ourselves if we are brave enough to face the painful truth to take a journey of growth and then slowly put one foot in front of the other until we eventually reach our goal of true inner peace and happiness. The pathogen thrives in darkness so we shed light on it…we begin to talk about it. We begin to tell our story to help other’s realize “hey that happened to me too” (or know someone) and then the healing journey can start.
I began my crusade over two years ago fighting through a high conflict divorce and a journey to end pathogenic parenting. I realized later that the problem was much deeper than “parental alienation” and boiled down to trauma. Attachment trauma…childhood trauma…most of us suffer from it on some level or another and if we don’t, we know someone close to us who has.
Once we have a deeper understanding of trauma and how it affects us, our children and our families….then we can start moving towards breaking the pattern. The beautiful thing is that ripple effects work both ways. We change how we react…we react with love and understanding vs. anger.
Photo by BarbaraALane (Pixabay)
That’s pretty awesome… Thank you spiff
You’re welcome Craig….lets go get your boy back!
In precolumbian times the Cree called this Wetiko. In truth, it is older than humanity, but the pathogen is being identified by science in a different way with new advancements in neuroimaging and understanding a confluence of scientific disciplines in the field of psychoneuroendocrinology, it is becoming more and more obvious that the pathogen, which has gone by many names over the history of humanity, is getting a new one called subclinical hypercortisolism.
Hi James,
As the owner of the blog I had to look up these terms to understand them. It is, from what I can gather, an interesting way to put another perspective on this topic. Would you briefly break this down into a more layperson explanation?
Brave explorations!
I too have found that many of the answers to my patterns of behaviour lay in exposing my childhood traumas to myself. Admitting that the idealic childhood I told everyone I had was just a mask for the buried pain and dysfunction I carried within my being. Being a victim of alienation forced me to confront deeply buried emotions that expressed themselves in dysfunctional responses to many of life’s events. Instead of visiting the pain of my wounds, I buried them in my attempt to “do things differently”. In the process I created a repetition of that which I was seeking to escape.
For me exploring authenticity, reclaiming my own authenticity has been part of the long journey of recovering from recent as well as past wounds.
Renate
Thanks Renate. This particular post was provided by my friend Michael Allen. I can relate to what you’re saying. Whether or not we like it, We can only change my responses to what is happening, not what is happening itself. A friend sent me notes from a book which referred to the Petty Tyrant and that had a significant effect on re-framing what has been happening. And paradoxically we have far more choices available the more we do that. This dynamic, like all dynamics that destroy only work by isolating and generating fear. It’s effective because it works. But communication by those of us affected has never been more available which does a great deal to weaken the hold the pathogen has on our lives, and our children.