As we process our way through trauma and attempt to help each other heal, it’s been quite fascinating to me to observe all aspects of how we got here and how we can move forward.
Years of working in the field of psychology, mental health and witnessing the effects of the gamut of trauma, collectively, individually, generationally, and ancestrally (I personally think racial fits into the other categories, however the diagram below was helpful)… I observe triggers in others in various ways, as well as still processing and working through my own while trying to integrate and process the chaos that we have come to know in our society. If you cannot reflect on yourself while healing yourself, you cannot assist others move through theirs and given current global events, healing is a lifetime process you never really get over, but you do “level up” in a way once you begin to master each trigger.
The fascination to me, is what people find acceptable based on their conditioning instead of individual moral and ethical conduct. One would expect an individual to work on a foundation with others that is at least the basic principle of do no harm. But let’s look into what is harm? Harm to whom? Which side of the coin would be considered harm?
One might ask: “If we keep running back to an expectation of the very systems that are broken, which created the problems we face in society as the only way to help us, who can we truly ‘diagnose’ as supposedly crazy?“ I have asked this about myself many times over my lifetime, it’s doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, which by psychological definition is insane. So then, who’s insane? The people creating the systems, or the people continuing to use them expecting a different result? Hmm..
Here’s where the complexity lies.
While we can apply the do no harm to simple physical aggression as this can be measured as an invasion of body, there’s been no moral or ethical agreement universally as of yet that I am aware of, on what is considered an invasion of the mind psychologically. If someone is being psychologically harmed and acts out to another aggressively because of it, who caused the harm? This is where the trauma cycle stays in its’ loop and I believe we are beginning to see globally the effects of covert psychological harm that has been centuries in the making on a historical level.
By interpreting others’ words as harmful when those words trigger us especially in the day of technology where we often do not have the rest of the communication to go with it such as body language (when we read words on a page we read them with whatever emotion is going on for us at that moment), we are failing to see the gift of those particular triggering moments. Those triggers are a tool to look inside and find the ancestral and historic emotional pain that caused it through conditioning, so we expect falsely that it is others that need to stop hurting us with their words.
We are noticing the rift in offense as an individual moral and ethical construct rather than a particular group or societal agreement to “do no harm” which has to be dissected. We have gotten so lost in an idea to do no harm to others that we have been often finding that in trying to uphold that macrocosm we are rejecting the microcosm within us that is hurting. We observe this in the certain politically pushed movements where the agreement in certain communities is to be accepted on an individual level within a group, while projecting a desire for acceptance of others on large scale with little regard to individual moral and ethical compass that might not be in alignment. How can we measure, however, what is ethical and what is not? What psychologically causes harm and what does not at a historic level? Can the two co-exist any longer within our society, or have we been kidding ourselves in the name of “political correctness”?
Pushing an ideology of “be yourself” but then follow it with, “not that way, it has to be this way and don’t change or grow away from it”, is the biggest universal trauma that has existed in history. A bit of an oxymoron I would say. I witness division in populations socioculturally as follows:
- “What others think of me is more important than my self-respect and what I think of myself.” This puts an individual at risk of doing potentially harmful things to self and others in an ideology of some “greater good”. The reality is, what other people think of you, is none of your business and by attempting people pleasing you are in the fawn stage of trauma. Thinking you will find unconditional acceptance (which is likely conditional anyway) from others at the expense of seeking your own acceptance of yourself is an illusion. No one has to love or accept you, except you.
- “These drugs I am taking are ok, but the ones you are taking are not.” Here, there’s a failure to see that all the drugs came from the same place and have been passed on through generations. They are all causing the same harm to everyone, the result just looks different. Injections from a needle, “legal” drugs vs “illegal” drugs (illegal drugs, let’s not forget, that were once legal) are actually still the same and were created to cause dependence.
- “Homeless people in our society need to be helped, but they are drug users and can be scary and I do not have the education to do so.” This would suggest that anyone who has side effects from any DRUG that was harmed in any way, is unworthy of being helped, be it cancer/stroke/autism and so forth. Homeless people are a direct result of failed systems that do not actually help people and are a consequence of a failed society.
- “Status is more important than integrity.” This would suggest that one can do whatever they want to prevent their interpretation of “harm” regardless of what the actual result is. We currently see this as a blind eye to the fact that current covid injections are causing side effects on a mass scale, simply to keep one’s status and financial livelihood when in reality it is simply a trade off for one harm vs another. No harm to one but causing harm to another based on programming.
- “We love our children so much that we send them to school so others can raise them.” This would suggest that another or group of others are more capable of programming your child based on an internal sense of intellectual inadequacy to be able to do it yourself. Schooling teaches dependence on the system, it certainly does not teach independence and self-sufficiency. We are seeing the harms of the programming now on a mass scale because critical thinking was never taught.
- “Education through programming by school is the only way an individual is regarded as, or can be smart.” This would suggest that any individual self-learnings and experiences cannot contribute to teaching another.
- “You are responsible for my thoughts and feelings when I am dealing with any of that discomfort.” This would suggest that an individual is not responsible for the triggers they incurred as a result of their own conditioning, which causes harm to another to feel like they have to “fix” how you feel. In the animal kingdom – the individual animals lick and heal their own wounds, why would or should we be any different?
- “Other people’s emotions are acceptable ONLY if they are what I perceive as good emotions.” This would suggest that anyone expressing emotions of grief, sadness, anger, depression is potentially too uncomfortable for one individual, thus potentially causing harm to another individual. The failure here is to see that when we suppress what we call “bad” emotions, we also suppress what we call “good” emotions and that creates apathy an indifference, creating a robotic unfeeling person. You cannot suppress sadness and be joyful and when you try your physical body will react.
- “To be a part of the group you must be willing to sacrifice and possibly degrade yourself with practices the group deems appropriate.” We have seen this in mask wearing and pictures of injection signalling. This brings us back to the programming that occurred generationally to follow others’ authority no matter what you feel or think so you can fit in. Let’s look at it like peer pressure which can lead us to dangerous paths like homelessness, self-abuse/injury, self-mutiliation and death or suicide.
- “If we do not all think and feel the same, that threatens the ‘group’ and anything that threatens the group must be rejected.” This keeps us in a perpetual state of generational trauma being passed on in which we repeat the same mistakes, there will be a lack of growth on a macro level holistically. We are already seeing the harmful developmental setbacks on children who have been forced to wear masks, speech is impaired as well as cognitive and emotional issues appearing.
- “If my truth doesn’t match your truth, we are going to have to battle to be right” This suggests one will be harmed, but likely both parties actually would be in an attempt to be right. We need more open-mindedness to take on another person’s perspective with respect while being able to disagree. If we cannot agree to disagree, wouldn’t we project our own internal wounds onto the other because of our conditioned ego of right and wrong? Or can we find a way to work together to measure perspectives and ideas in a neutral way? If we cannot do that, then we have to do what is right for us morally and ethically on an individual psychological level while still engaging in physical non-aggression.
Blurred Lines.
In order to live a fully thriving and peaceful, compassionate and united life with others, we must measure, evaluate and apply a universal basic rule of what are morals and ethics when it comes to psychological health and well-being in such a way that it is both safe in one way yet unsafe in another.
Safe in a way for us to not feel manipulated, coerced or covertly abused, yet unsafe in a way that will challenge us to address the fact that we are not obliged to agree with others. We must remain open enough to reflect on our own triggers, in such a way that we are not forcing psychologically onto others any ideas, but accept them in a way that enables us to differences in ways of being while at the same time keep a universal moral and ethical component of do no psychological harm. But is it possible to do no psychological harm to another and stay true to our own ethics and morals? A conundrum indeed.
We must learn that we can teach without forcing our unique truths, experiences, learnings/lessons, etc. Perhaps the “level up” for humanity is moving more into the spiritual realm of being, and less out of the complications of the mind in our quest to exist.
Are we living through an existential breakthrough to the next revolutional chapter to a spiritual awareness and way of being in the new society? Is this what it means to be truly free? You decide.