Why is college fests beginning to help me in TRAUMA PROCESSING? Analysis
Why is it relevant that i am able to process Trauma while in the middle of a college fest?
At first, it felt weird. Because i was processing a lot of deeply personal things in my college fest. The kind of things you are usually able to do only in a therapy.
The kind where you excavate deep inside you and find those pieces of childhood you buried deep inside to hide from the pain it caused and has been running away from ever since.
I was surprised that this process of self therapising was unfolding in front of a large gathering of people, in broad public view, in the vantage point of a thousand gazes.
I have always ascribed certain assumptions to those gazes. often unconscious assumptions that i have started to recognize over the years. Which has been in turn shaping how I respond to people, both in a macro way ( looking at the entirety of a social gathering, the peer groups as a collective, work spaces) as well as in a micro way ( assumptions as to what an individual thinks of me or get affected by my presence). I may not be able to go into the complex details of these assumptions. But i can lay down a couple of categories.
a) Hostility: Where i am found unwelcome and undesirable followed by active possibility of me being confronted for taking up space.
b) Abnormal: Where i am considered creepy/weird to which this social macrocosm responds with Isolation and ostracisation.
c) Distrust: Where i am considered faking to which their response is to shame me for faking my condition….
Even the slightest attention would usually trigger a set of survival mechanisms in me. I would soon reach a happy place deep inside my mind where I get lost. I wander alternative timelines, conjuring up simulations of my past where i had a different response to those experiences in the past where i was treated based on the above categories. Or simulations where those experience never even occurred ( Alternative timeline bit). Or where i was powerful and equipped to make sure that such things would have never happened to me ( In this bit, I am often gifted with superhuman capabilities which makes their threat looks laughable) Or role reversals where It is me who is enacting hurt, manipulation and violence on the people.
I often think to myself that if i live in them as real as reality gets, it would come to life. That i would wake up one day in this alternate timeline where i was never affected by this trauma at the first place.
Be it getting picked on as a kid for being fat. Or how I used to respond to this hostile treatment by acting gross to give a funny spin to everything, which would eventually work at my detriment, creating new situations where I get bullied. Whatever the sources of trauma, I always ended up in this happy place.
Or was it really a happy place? Over the years, any inconveniences, even the slightest of anxieties would drive me to take refuge in this place. Making this pattern harder and harder to break.
An article that is getting herder to sit through, a conversation where i have to commit to responsibilities, any activity with moral consequences… The once happy place was soon turning to a place i abused at will, to refuse to take responsibility for my actions.
It is difficult to explain exactly how this happy place operated. Its vaguely similar to a mind palace. Its mechanics are quite complex in how it shapes how you intervene in the real world you live in. How it shapes your morality. How it influence how you intervene in human relationships. How much legitimacy you accord to the Agency of other people in your effort to regain control of your life free of pain and trauma.
The extent to which I shaped myself inside this happy place is such that I only stepped out of this place only to operationalise the simulations, constantly engineering the simulations that worked on Trial and error, studying people closely, using the data I would grasp to perfect a scenario where I reproduce happiness, happy relationships, happy discussions, passionate relationships and happy memories. The things i never experienced as a child. It seemed innocent, but I would soon manipulate people at will in this process. Leaving a trail of trauma behind.
And when guilt strikes, a new happy place opened up, I said good byes to the people who were pawns in my mind games. And i moved on, where i assumed another identity, improvising on the mistakes i learned from the previous puzzles, and improving the game.
This went on until about an year ago when I started realising how toxic this has become for me and for the people around me. I had hurt enough people. Their pain had become real, the consequences real and with it, the intensity of my remorse as well.
And i finally decided to break out of this inner cage. To perhaps interact with world in its own merit. Dealing with people as universe propels them towards me. Had it not been for the realization of how many people I’ve hurt, i would have never found the will to make this transition.
This brutal prison break into the real world that would leave me once again where i started all those years back. I started therapy. In therapy, you have someone analyzing you from outside. Its a systematic process where you feel safe to unmask and really process the violence i was inflicting on myself to remain in the bliss of this happy place. The experiences which pushed me into this cage growing up. The role of friends, family, your own cowardice etc. And to find the right tools to help myself take responsibility for this transition.
I had involuntarily started this process through political activism. I had been planning to move to Germany to do a course. All of which, now that i think about it, might have been a way for me to reconcile the fact that the world has to be politically and economically and structurally safe for me to make that transition from my refuge in Happy place. Like moving to a new country where i can invisibility myself. Where mental illness is perhaps not viewed with as much stigma and isolation and marginalization as it did back from where i came from.
Learning Marxism because i needed to equip myself with a theory to help me understand how history evolves. How social relations are shaped. Understanding the mechanics of social development. So that i can commit to an action plan where i can help build a world that is free of trauma.
And thus i began this often brutal, but extremely self affirming transition. Letting myself unmask, reaching out to people I've hurt. Be okay with being the odd character that I once was and got picked as a child. And since I had always engineered my actions to intervene in the world based on some trial and error simulations, I had to grapple with the reality that without it, i had the social skills of a child. Often left without what to say in a conversation or in a societal setting. Triggering the most convulsive fears that i would be picked again, singled out and shamed and excluded as i was during my childhood.
(But this did not happen. Germany was kind to me, validating my decision to come here as a very good one)
Dealing with the anxieties not by running back to the happy place. Resisting the temptation to go there, where I know what to do to get me through all this.
Staying grounded when i feel like a thousand eyes are staring at me ( Which i am coming to realize that they are not).I started processing from my past why I had an urge to go back to my happy place while meeting glances of people. I have been trying to make a habit out of this, in front of the social gatherings, in front of individuals, in both micro and macro settings. Experiencing both progress and set backs, with progress leading the way overall.
And then something incredible happened. Few days before at the college fest, Inching my way to time and space in real life, I found myself in a moment of clarity. I was seeing the blades of grass being caressed by the wind. I was starting to appreciate the music of the band that was playing on the stage. I started feeling one with the time, sky, soil, noises around me and the glances of people in which i stopped seeing the binary of open hostility. I started experiencing every aspect of the world at the same time. I was happy without having to engineer my happiness.
It got me mindfucked because there was a serenity to my existence which i had never experienced before.
Ultimately, the variable that made me process trauma was not the mechanics of the college fest. It was merely a setting. I guess on the college fest, I had succeeded for a while to be okay being seen unmasked by the world and be willing to face the challenges that comes with it.
I hope one day, this willingness evolves into a resilient and graceful eagerness.
