Many of the perspectives here are sensible and help me see different ways of looking at this.
Many survivors, when they believe in absolutes, like God, think God was "on leave" to quote Simon Weisenthal's _The Sunflower_.
Any trauma survivor can see the uses of going on "hope" or "faith" as a natural part of life, even if we know the balloon popped before, so why not now? Let's see how long we can sustain it, breathe life into belief. Practice. (It's difficult.)
I theorize that when trauma memory is at its most distant, at its depth of "most buried" I find the red balloon of belief easier to grasp. When memories of trauma surface, it's like belief never made any sense. It's like "how did I believe in anything?"
I try to hold onto things like "acceptance" and the feeling of being "understood" because these are beliefs that support feelings, like "safety" that I discovered long ago, are myths that carry us forward to another day and make those days happier. And most people have not had those beliefs taken roughly out of their hands and been sent crashing down to reality too hard, too bruised to stay "normal." So they cannot understand what that is like, even if they try to sympathize. Nor would we want to make them understand. That would be abuse. But we can communicate. It takes energy, but someone needs to tell the story of PTSD so that we find better treatments and prevention. Or just, so we know we are not alone without our balloons in a sea of color, empty-handed. There are many survivors, and we need to accept and understand ourselves.
We cannot do that alone, despite what some think. A solitary person does not know that she or he is human. We are incredibly social beings, and need each other as mirrors. That is how we know NOT to abuse others or treat them with disrespect.
Many survivors, when they believe in absolutes, like God, think God was "on leave" to quote Simon Weisenthal's _The Sunflower_.
Any trauma survivor can see the uses of going on "hope" or "faith" as a natural part of life, even if we know the balloon popped before, so why not now? Let's see how long we can sustain it, breathe life into belief. Practice. (It's difficult.)
I theorize that when trauma memory is at its most distant, at its depth of "most buried" I find the red balloon of belief easier to grasp. When memories of trauma surface, it's like belief never made any sense. It's like "how did I believe in anything?"
I try to hold onto things like "acceptance" and the feeling of being "understood" because these are beliefs that support feelings, like "safety" that I discovered long ago, are myths that carry us forward to another day and make those days happier. And most people have not had those beliefs taken roughly out of their hands and been sent crashing down to reality too hard, too bruised to stay "normal." So they cannot understand what that is like, even if they try to sympathize. Nor would we want to make them understand. That would be abuse. But we can communicate. It takes energy, but someone needs to tell the story of PTSD so that we find better treatments and prevention. Or just, so we know we are not alone without our balloons in a sea of color, empty-handed. There are many survivors, and we need to accept and understand ourselves.
We cannot do that alone, despite what some think. A solitary person does not know that she or he is human. We are incredibly social beings, and need each other as mirrors. That is how we know NOT to abuse others or treat them with disrespect.
