This might sound harsh, so brace yourself. You’re a good-for-nothing, lazy piece of—no, I’m kidding. Though even a gentler critique could spark backlash in today’s climate. We’re hypersensitive, and that’s not even a new concept. What’s unsettling is how we let ourselves get away with it.
We brandish our trauma like a badge of honour. Which wouldn’t be half bad if it were a trophy of triumph, but it’s more often a hall pass for irresponsible behaviour. We are no longer accountable for our mistakes because the pain we suffered some 20 years ago says we don't have to be.
…but how long will you blame your parents for choices you continue to make as an adult? Whatever your attachment pattern or internalised [insert pathology here], maybe realise its not the most constructive label to cleave to. Maybe realise the imperfect parents that raised you imperfectly were themselves imperfectly raised by imperfect parents.
We may be the product of our upbringing, but there comes a point where we have the ability to break the cycle. Confronting hurt or facing shame can be daunting, but if the body is designed to heal when it is carefully eased back into action, so can the mind.
Medically, we recognise psychosomatic illnesses. How else do we explain phantom limb pain in civil war veterans, or my Unpopular Opinions? (Hysteria). If all else fails, you can trick yourself back to health. Follow Norman Cousins’ cue.
When diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a rare and painful degenerative spinal disease with a 0.2 per cent change of survival, rather than get his affairs in order per doctor’s advice, the journalist piled on massive doses of vitamin C and hours of comedy.
He documented that 10 minutes of belly laughs yield up to two hours of pain-free sleep, Get this: surpassing any pharmaceutical intervention he ever experienced. Refusing to accept his disorder, the radical man lived another 26 years and helped pioneer laughter therapy as a legitimate treatment.
Or consider sham surgeries. In trials comparing actual procedures to placebo operations (patients receive nothing more than a superficial incision), no long-term difference was found. From arthroscopy knee debridement to cardiology’s 2017 ORBITA trial, the outcomes were indistinguishable.
I could go on about fake acupuncture and simulated injections showing no significant advantage over their “real” counterparts. Instead, I’ll leave you with a quote because I do love those. This time from Austrian neurologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Emil Frankl. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
