A topic that has come to mind recently is how people deal with trauma, societal thoughts on that, and how to transform the dealing into growth.
I come at this from multiple facets of my identity. A lot of trans people have experienced sexual trauma at an early age. This has lead many people to think of being trans as a coping mechanism for having experienced this trauma.
In a similar vein, I’ve done a lot of self analysis about my interest in devouring other (all) entities whole and alive. I experienced a traumatic birth, my entrance into this world was challenging, painful and left me in shock. An interpretation of the situation is that on a psychological level, my interest is the unification of separates into a greater whole. Spiritually, this is about connecting with the unity, god, the all, spirit, or whatever way you connect with it. It’s literally ending separation. On a non spiritual level, some would analyze saying that it’s a desire to return to the womb and the state of unity that’s associated with before the trauma of birth. I appreciate thinking about elements of my consciousness and their causes, as it helps me both understand myself, and thus how I’ve developed the tools I’ve managed to create.
Many people interpret this as, “I’ve found the root of this thing, so it’s no longer important.” Or, “Because it was caused by this instead of being something fundamental, it’s not a truth about you, just a coping mechanism.” Thus they’ll prioritize modifying the consciousness to be as similar as possible to the average who haven’t experienced this trauma and developed this mechanism to still live life. They try to undo all which has been done. I disagree with this way of thinking.
I feel our society’s entire understanding of coping mechanisms and crutches is rooted in an ableist view that tries to make everyone psychologically and physically the same. I don’t think coping tools are things which make people weaker, I think they’re powerful teachers. People think about important things in their lives, and get very skilled at using whatever coping mechanisms they develop.
If you’re triggered by cacophonous sounds, you’re much more aware of the acoustic environment than someone just going about their day. Internally counting in order to become aware of rhythms in things to make them no longer startling is a coping mechanism. The view of standard society is that the goal is to make sure the person no longer counts and is able to interface with the environment like everyone else, forcing assimilation. However, this doesn’t take into account how integrating this coping mechanism in healthy ways not only can help a person process their experience of trauma, but let’s them have insight which benefits us all. There are patterns in all kinds of things! Whether it’s noticing that people have cadences in which they speak when in certain emotional states, hearing changes in the environment, like the addition of a sprinkler with a particular sound stopped a certain type of bird from singing, or a variety of other ways of being aware. When a coping mechanism is taken beyond the point where it just allows the person to exist, they can contribute powerful findings that will help people have healthier emotional reactions, or gain awareness of patterns in avian behavior. They’ve transformed their coping mechanism into a growing mechanism.
Thinking about gender issues can certainly start as a byproduct of experiencing sexual trauma, this however doesn’t mean that the thought, skill and awareness this generates is any less valid. People who have gone through this pioneer awareness of gender so all of us can live more authentic and empowered lives. This is a growing mechanism.
The desire to devour all things drove me down the path of both spirit, and thinking about how to have all my relationships be healthy, whether they’re with people, food, or where I live. This brought me to Mutually Beneficial Consent Based Omnivorism. It’s a moral necessity to insure that not only does eating not harm those we eat as drives many people to go vegan, but a more optimized approach is to make eating something beneficial for its own growth and development. This generates better treatment of resources we consume. Additionally, it allows our species to grow more, if we’re destructive to those we consume, that limits us. At a certain population, we’ll run out of the resources for everyone to get what they need if the system is negative to those we intake.
Exploring avenues of thought like this is a growing mechanism, it gets me to delve into the research of how there are some species that already have this type of interaction.
“Some phytoplankton, such as Sphaerocytsis Schroeteri, pass through zooplankton guts (Daphnia) with minimal digestion, and their growth after gut passage is dramatically elevated compared with uneaten cells. Although initially described as a mutualism in which the phytoplankton received nutrients to enhance growth and the zooplankton received some gelatinous sheath material from the alga, the advantage to the grazer became less certain when it was realized that some phytoplankton species that withstood gut passage did not have gelatinous coverings and thus no covering to sacrifice. However, phytoplankton may continue appreciable photosynthesis while in zooplankton guts. The resistant algae are possibly trading photosynthate to zooplankton in return for viable gut passage which would make this relationship a mutualism. Effects at the community level could be considerable; in grazing experiments densities of species resistant to gut passage increase as more consumers are added.”
http://wolfweb.unr.edu/~ldyer/classes/396/hayetal.pdf
This is not impossible, this is something that in the age of bioengineering we can enhance humans to not have a byproduct of existing be the destruction of life on this planet. Pursuing this path is one of the few choices that benefit all things. I would never have come to this without flowing through my specific coping mechanism of understanding the relationship between unity/separation from a predator/prey mindset.
Since the tools for this aren’t yet in place, I default to veganism as the path of least harm as I work towards the path of MBCBO a symbiotic baseline for being.
I’m sure at this point there are still those who would say, “This is just theoretical, this isn’t how things really work!” In response, I’ll give a physical example that has already occurred.
Oscar experienced the trauma of having both of his legs amputated. Oscar copes with not having standard human legs by using prosthetic replacements. At some point, the level of prosthetic being used to cope allows Oscar to run fast than he would have been able to should his legs not be amputated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex-Foot_Cheetah
Finding alternative ways to do things from the standard does not mean they will be inferior, it just means they will be different. Supporting people to transform their coping mechanisms into growth mechanisms that we can all learn to upgrade to makes the world a better place. Support people in growing and being happy, this doesn’t mean making them like everyone else, this means honoring their experience, and supporting them in catalyzing it into wisdom.
This is not advocating people inflicting trauma to get what comes out of it, these same things can be developed consciously in healthy ways. We need to dismantle oppressive systems so that healthy ways create these brilliant people instead of trauma.
— Isicera