I recently read a thread where by far most people were saying that what isolated, lonely teenagers need is social interaction, that they need to go find hobbies, find good friends, not be as needy to not put people off, and let go of their anger.
What almost nobody realizes is that prescribing “social interaction” is almost like prescribing homeopathy to someone with cancer.
The real cancer is trauma.
Trauma.
We live in an epidemic of emotional trauma and few people see it.
It is trauma that causes parents to neglect their kids, to have low empathy for their suffering and not be able to realise they are not ok. Parents, or whoever is taking care of the kids, with the “help” of “modern” society in fact, cause kids, through action or inaction, not to be ok. Do people think these kids just happened to be born with a “social isolation gene”? Or “generalized hatred” gene? Nobody is that way, they were made.
The person you’re replying to is an outlier and very lucky to have found people that were supportive. But I’d say by far most won’t. And there’s a reason for that and it’s not their fault. Traumatized people are not very popular. Trauma itself is not very popular and most people have no clue about it, or how to identify someone who is traumatized, because the very nature of trauma causes them to conceal they have it to fit in and be accepted. And the ones who don’t fit in are just seem as “there’s something wrong with them”. Kinda reminds me of the state of medicine in the middle ages.
What these people need is not social interaction.
They need
- Compassion
- someone to listen to them, to hear them, to be with them with their pain.
- to hear their story. Not to be asked “what’s wrong with you?” but “what happened to you?”
- be told there’s nothing wrong with them. They are this way because it’s one of the ways a healthy mind copes with extreme emotional neglect and maybe abuse.
- to have a secure attachment. Someone they can count on. All the time. Unconditionally.
- a sense of belonging. To a community. To a shared sense of purpose. That they are needed and wanted. That they are valued. Desired.
Unfortunately the way society is right now where we don’t live on tribes with people that know us that care about us and are always there for us and can provide the above, like it happened for thousands of years, and like our brain is made to function with, now for many people there’s only one that can do some of this and you have to pay them for it. Therapists. It’s screwed up.
Things have changed so much and so quickly that we’re totally unaware of how screwed up and how much we were not made for this “modern” lifestyle.
We were not made to live with only 2 adults who have to take the role of a village to single handedly rear a child.
We were not made to attach primarily with people of our age. First in kindergarden, then school, then college. There were always several people and of all ages who we humans attached deeply to, who we matured emotionally from, whose more mature behaviors we could emulate and learn from.
We were not made to, if those 2 people fail to provide us a sense of safety, have no backup. There would always be someone who we could chat. We would always be with company of other people in the tribe. There would always be a “loving grandma” or an “older brother” who we could go to.
We were not made to have to pay someone to give us a simulation of unconditional love, and safety that our group would provide. This person, who we know in the end does it for the money, and to help, but without money they wouldn’t do it. How can we think this is OK and normal and that people are having their emotional needs met in these weird conditions?
How far have we gone the far end to find ourselves proud to conclude that social interaction increases longevity? Are we in the future going to be so dry that people will be proud to conclude that drinking water increases longevity too?
In the conditions we live now it is no wonder emotional neglect and abuse has been happening so much. The very way the social foundation is laid is lacking and so easy for trauma to happen and propagate.
The covid pandemic we hear about it. The trauma pandemic, which is equally transmissible from generation to generation and between romantic partners, very difficult to heal and causes unimaginable silent pain to millions of people… Nah. We blame people for being wounded. We call them lazy, and angry. We give them condescending names like “Karens” to make it seem like they’re different and their own species and not that their extreme sense of entitlement actually comes from feeling worthless inside. Or accuse people of just being unempathetic angry and selfish as if all their life hadn’t been nothing but an experience that would make anyone become that way. No shoulder to cry on. No motherly voice to comfort them. They can’t be anything but unempathetic, angry and lonely. People are not mentally ill. People are mentally injured.
And I say pandemic because it is everywhere. In the politicians who seem to only care about themselves. In the influencers who seem so fixated in having people provide them validation in being seen highly by others and in feeling important. In the people who commit crimes. And I mean financial and ethical crimes too. How can they do that? Maybe crimes happened in their childhood and nobody cared. In the bosses at our jobs who seem to only care about maximizing profit as a proof that they’re being the best to compensate for how not good enough they always felt like. In the clerks who seem to enjoy the little power they have over people and exert it to the full extent to compensate for the powerlessness they felt all their lives since they were a kid.
We have been so conditioned in our society to accept trauma as a common and normal occurrence that we hardly pause to acknowledge it. It’s no wonder many people suffer in silence.
And nobody seems to know about this and only talk about social interaction, making friends, focusing on the positive, being more out there and looking at traumatized people like they’re some weirdos that came through a membrane from another universe.
Are we being so different from the people that in the 17th century burned “heretics” or in ancient Rome sheered for the blood spilled in arenas as criminals were slayed to death and who we now regard as barbarics?
Let’s pass this message and see if we can make people aware of this pandemic and do something about it because it is very much urgent.