The literal shock to the adrenal system with trauma is this century’s cancer. We see it as decreasing expectancy of the last 30 years in the U.S. The fight for survival is a basic instinct that needs to be managed with holidays, nature, and recreational pursuits. With AIs will we learn to work and fight smarter? Even drone pilots get PTSD.
I think a big reason for the resistance of acknowledging trauma as injury is, arguably, because culturally so many of us are injured that we behave in a clearly traumatized manner towards actions of healing, ie. rejection/denial/lashing out. If we acknowledged all forms of trauma as trauma we would have a radically different society…
After all, beating children into bruising was normal just a generation ago. In many states it’s still legal to beat your children.
Another challenge is how we as a society view non-physical violence like emotional abuse, verbal abuse, gaslighting, and infidelity. Punch a person in the face and it leaves obvious physical markings. Yet cheat on your spouse with their best friend, and coordinate with your spouse's family and friends to gaslight your spouse into believing they're crazy and you're much less likely to be caught. I genuinely believe the psychopaths that live among us have a vested interest in ensuring that psychological abuse is very difficult, if not impossible to prosecute. And I would much rather be punched.
No there isn’t some conspiracy to leave it unprosecuted, just that people with psychopathic tendencies are good at sniffing out the areas where the victim is unlikely to hit back
From my experience, only way to really deal with those types is to always escalate and get more eyes on the situation
> only way to really deal with those types is to always escalate and get more eyes on the situation.
Want to echo this, and say that it is in the psychopath’s best interest to make you feel like you are overreacting. Bringing more eyes on the situation is not overreacting, and if someone who has power over you is trying to convince you of that, don’t trust them.
Thank you for reminding me of the game “Unmanned”. You play a drone operator who must make impossible decisions. The burden takes a toll, it is well worth a play for anyone interested in this subject of combat stress reaction.
> We see it as decreasing expectancy of the last 30 years in the U.S.
Is there any solid research showing this connection? It's not obvious that trauma has had a bigger impact over this period than e.g. sedentary lifestyles...
"91% percent of participants who did not perceive themselves to have had a warm relationship with their mothers (assessed during college) had diagnosed diseases in midlife (including coronary artery disease, hypertension, duodenal ulcer, and alcoholism), as compared to 45% of participants who perceived themselves to have had a warm relationship with their mothers. A similar association between perceived warmth and closeness and future illness was obtained for fathers.
82% of the participants who reported tolerant or strained relationships with their fathers had significant health issues in midlife, compared to 50% of those who had warm or close relationships with their fathers.
If participants had strained relationships with both parents, the results were startling: 100 percent had significant health issues, versus 47 percent of those who described their relationships with their parents as being warm and close.
Another study, conducted at John Hopins University, followed 1,100 male medical students for fifty years and found that cancer rates correlated closely with the degree of distance a participant felt toward a parent.
