Trauma responses to modern life are everywhere if you know what to look for.

Trauma responses are a thing I think about a lot these days. Life in 2023 is as hard as it ever has been. The dollar is worth much less than it ever was, housing consumes more of everyone's paycheck, nothing seems to be built well anymore, scammers are everywhere trying to steal your information probably so that they can meet ends meet wherever they happen to be, and people are afraid of gun violence moreso than at any other time in history that I can remember. With my new roommates being just about two months old at this point, one of them said at the table the other day, "This is the first time in a long time when I have some stability in my life." That struck a chord with me, and I suppose I'm glad that I could provide some stability to someone that may have needed it a lot more than I originally anticipated.

Additionally, I have new friends who are all starting to let their trauma responses show. One of them, an adult woman of almost forty, apparently has no ability to have crucial conversations. She's as fragile as glass, and her trauma response is to behave like a little kid and run and hide from any responsibilities or being held accountable for anything that she has done. It's a fascinating thing to watch...this forty something woman to become red-faced and about ready to plunge over whatever mental cliff they have erected in their minds over some very minor things. I remarked, "Your inability to meet any conflict must really result in you living a shitty life." And yes, it turns out she lives a shitty life in a trailer park with her mom who will die of old age someday and who knows what will happen to this person.

So, yeah. I've thought about trauma responses a lot lately. I have no idea what "trauma" people are suffering. It is probably all different. But to say that things aren't getting tougher between inflation, credential inflation, extreme weather, and you name what all else that comes your way, and I'm noticing a pattern. And here's the rub: most neurotypical people do not enjoy (or suffer) people who are having a meltdown due to a trauma response. So we get really good at boundary making, and we shunt those people to the other side of the boundary. Boundaries (afterall) are healthy for everyone. But then I read that there is now a "loneliness" epidemic in the country. Don't believe me? Look it up online. There are lots of articles that point to loneliness being a problem for everyone. Birth rates are going down, people are living alone in homes to a greater extent than at any time in the past, and no one seems to be able to point to any one thing. But I think I know the answer. I have a hypothesis as to why people are so lonely. Here it is.

I think people are so lonely because we all can't stand each other anymore. There is so much trauma happening to everyone at everyplace due to all of the things that run the gamut of all the things I've mentioned above. It's trauma, trauma, trauma...followed immediately by response, response, response. And the thing is...no one likes the "response." Because people having a trauma response are essentially traumatizing someone else. In other words, the "conflict" is something that most people say, "Nope...you need therapy! Do not thrust your shit on me!" And so that leads to people living alone and then suddenly, you've got an entire population who is lonely. Connecting on social media is the only way people feel safe getting together anymore, because as soon as the trauma response is "detected" you can block that stuff and still feel safe. Safe...until society itself starts to unravel at the seams and you get things like "gun violence" from people who have gotten so angry from being isolated (or who are having some other "trauma response" whatever that happens to be) and they go and grab a gun and decide to "balance the scales."

Anyway, that's my hypothesis. For what it's worth, I'm sitting in a pretty good place mentally these days, and I'm grateful for the safety and stability I feel in my own life. But that stability has allowed me an excellent vista for me to look out and see things. I now wonder how much more trauma the people who are not me (who are living in our shared society) can take in the various forms of abuse that can be dished out by employers, by creditors, by educational institutions, by bullies who might say they are your friends, by religious fanatics, and by the truly mentally ill who are unhoused and wandering our streets. I wonder what the breaking point is? What does that look like? And will that reckoning that is sure to come be absolutely awful? And then...the final question: why were we (who saw it coming) so powerless to do anything about it?