On seeking escape and safety; emotional numbness; self-delusion

 The concept of 'self' is fascinating. Not just because of the importance that is given to it, but also due to how it ties into how it affects how one experiences the world. One's 'self' is not a static thing. It grows and changes, just like one's personality, ultimately forming one's ego. Basically how one experiences and responds to the world around them.

This also means that one's experiencing of the reality around oneself doesn't necessarily have to match up with the facts. One of the amazing things about the human brain is its ability to predict the future, not only with the outcome of physical actions, but also in a social sense. This ability to run a simulated version of reality is also one of the major weaknesses, as this 'simulation' can grow stronger than reality and real sensory inputs.

When one talks about emotional numbness in response to traumatic events, this is essentially when this simulation ability reroutes real inputs and thoughts related to said events. Effectively one 'shuts out' the undesirable impulses and thoughts. Short-term this is an amazingly useful ability, that allows one to get through moments of trauma and adversity. Long-term one can loose one's self completely and one's connection with reality along with it.


I first noticed this strongly more than a decade ago, when I found suddenly that while watching a show on television, I suddenly could no longer 'feel' the characters on-screen, while this previously had not been an issue. This was in a period when my physical and mental health were degrading rapidly after moving houses a few times amidst traumatic circumstances. Physically I looked like a ghost, with clumps of hair falling out and overall poor health, while psychologically I had essentially lost all contact with the world.

Mostly thanks to my mother's care during that time did I make somewhat of a recovery, and began to notice that only did my health improve, I also regained my sense of smell, which had vanished without me even having noticed it. This made it clear to me just how far this 'psychological numbness' can go. Not only does it numb one's emotions, it literally numbs one's senses along with it, even if there is no physical cause for the loss of smell, touch, taste and hearing.

Although I am still making a recovery in that regard, it delights me every time when I notice that I can smell more, feel more, empathise more and basically feel more alive. The awareness of one's own body, of it existing in this reality. Not as some abstract entity defined by something as nonsensical as a social role or gender preference, but as a real, flesh-and-blood, breathing, living human being. I am my self, and not something others have made up.


In that regard, I think it's pretty terrible to think back to when I was still feeling so lost in that regard. Even when I wasn't in any immediate threat over the past years, I still knew on a fundamental level that I had lost my sense of self, of belonging and safety. Unable to deal with changes as a result, and fundamentally incapable of seeing a way out of my situation on multiple occasions, I felt trapped. Where does one even go to? Where can one go to? Where is safe? What is safety?

So many times that I just left the place where I was staying at that point in time, to walk outside for hours. Often during the winter, wearing too little clothing. Returning eventually, often with the first signs of hypothermia. Because I knew that I could walk out of the door, but I had nowhere to go. No matter how bad things got. I was always trapped.

I think that's what ultimately drove me to honestly consider taking my own life. In a sense it offered me the escape and safety which I was craving for at that point in time. Having run all the simulations and crunched all the numbers, it was the only option that I felt was still open to me. I'm pretty sure that it was because of my mother once again taking care of me and allowing me to heal and recover in a safe environment that I am still writing this today.

And not just my mother. Others were also there at crucial times, to provide that support and taking off some of the load when things felt like they were escalating out of control again. I feel that I literally owe my life to every single one of those people. Which is where it is frustrating to me to still deal with so much of this emotional numbness today, along with the lack of social skills on account having lived so socially withdrawn since I was five years old. How do you undo decades of emotional trauma and lack of development in a matter of months?

Feeling so socially awkward is one of the worst feelings I know today, even more so when I know that reading a social situation wrong can have severe negative repercussions. Maybe it's that I missed out on learning all of that, but I do not think that all this guessing involved in social situations is very fun or enjoyable, especially when I spend 99% of that time questioning everything I say or do. Guess it says a lot that at any party worthy of such description I'd prefer to just find one or more people to talk about technological, scientific or geo-political topics, rather than be forced to 'have fun'.

There's also the awkwardness when someone seeks to surprise you, with a gift, or similar. Like this time when I got a cryptic note from a friend, telling me that there was something for me in this one location, I think. That led me to finding this packaged up bundle, which I awkwardly opened after doing everything I could to make sure that it was something that I should be unwrapping. Inside the package I found a backpack filled with supplies and everything needed to 'make an escape', according to the note inside. Just a bag you can grab whenever you need to get away from things and can walk out of the door without without a second thought.

That was a gift that confused me in many ways. To my knowledge we had never talked about such a thing, and I was unpleasantly reminded of all those times when I was walking for the sake of walking, to get away from all those troubles that would ultimately drive me to the ultimate act of desperation. Because back then I knew that there was no escape, and no getting away from things.

But maybe I was too weak? Too cowardly? I do not know.


All I know is that to me 'feeling safe' is the most important thing of all, whether it is inside one's own mind, at the place where one lives, or whenever one is travelling. Being in control is an important factor there, I think. The knowledge that you are in control of your mind, your body, your immediate surroundings and that your travel preparations were sufficient and everything is going swimmingly. That you can stop focusing on those aspects and instead focus on the things in life that truly matter, whether it are friends, family, hobbies, pets or any other pursuits.

I feel that I'm slowly regaining this sense of control, enjoying the way it changes what I see in the mirror, how I see and experience the world and how it's enabling me to focus more on those things in life that matter, instead of the tediousness of surviving one day at a time.


Of course, all of this is just the version of reality that is playing in my head now, so maybe I'll look back on what I just wrote here in a few years the same way that I now cringe at blog posts I wrote a few years back.

What does it mean when you feel that you don't like this past version of yourself much?


Maya

School as a source of cruelty and humiliation

 There's a lot of unpleasantness one can deal with through simple emotional numbness as a coping mechanism. Problem is generally the aftermath, when the limitations of that numbness become clear. It seems that often, one of the consequences is that the emotional trauma is still there and still doing damage, but one cannot place why one feels a particular way, because the numbness has blocked direct access to the memories.

Much of therapy appears to be focused on easing those blockages, to regain access to those memories so that one can give those disturbing feelings and thoughts a place. For me it appears that my mind has decided to unblock a lot of memories regarding my time at school.


The most amazing thing about bullying and cruelty towards others is probably that there was no real reason. Finding myself submerged in those old memories of primary and high school again it hits me just how cruel and unrelenting the bullying and other actions were. It wasn't just that I didn't get picked during PE classes when teams had to be formed even though I wasn't clumsy or bad at sports. It was mostly things like having dozens of students seek me out to stand around me whether between classes or during breaks, to hurl insults at me.

There were also the moments when I was attacked, such as getting punched in the gut, or that time when this fellow student at primary school saw fit to spit into my face right before classes resumed. I didn't tell the teachers about either. In the latter case I used some dirt to mostly scrub off the disgusting smelling saliva before heading back to the classroom while pretending nothing happened. Ignoring bullying was supposed to be the best strategy to deal with it, after all.

The teachers and parents of the students involved all knew that something was going on, of course. It's hard to keep such large scale bullying a secret, especially when it gets so large that when I cycled back home one time there was this whole group of students on bicycles trying to block the road. I never bothered to ask anyone what they would have done if I hadn't slipped past them.

All of this took up most of my primary school time, although the last few years got a bit more quiet after I had apparently beaten up the main bully (which I do not recall at all). Him and I became friends for years afterwards. I guess it is true what they say about some people turning their loneliness or dissatisfaction with their life into bullying others.

I guess I did take that lesson to heart, so that when I found myself getting bullied again in HS, I singled out this one fellow student during PE class and slapped him in the face, then apologised to him when the teacher pulled us aside. Remembering the feelings at the time, I felt no hate or anything to those bullies, only anger at constantly being made fun of and humiliated.


As someone who is sensitive to stress-induced migraines, I found that the bullying was causing me to start getting those migraines with aura, to the tune of at least once a week during the second year. I think that puberty made my susceptibility to migraines a lot worse, with them really ramping up around that time until they mostly stopped some years ago. Combining migraines, bullying and the constant feeling of being an outcast did not serve to make me feel like I enjoyed school in any sense. It was required to attend school, but I was always happy again to be back home, where it was safe.

The last few years of HS were less stressful, however. Even though I lost fellow outcast friends when they went to other schools, I eventually ended up with this small group of friends who accepted each other without question. It was with them that I did nerdy things, such as playing Magic the Gathering card games in the cafeteria during breaks. And those times were great.


I'm glad to have so many of these memories related to that period covering my childhood and teenage years coming back now. It gives me a better perspective on the past which formed the person I am today. Even though it shows me mostly scenes of a period in my life that I do not like to remember, it makes me understand more things about myself which didn't make sense before with just the memories of other traumatic parts of my life, such as the child abuse trauma or medical system trauma.

I still do not really get why I got bullied so much, to the point of physical violence against me. Maybe it was just something about my attitude or whatever. Maybe it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that I got those memories back now so that I can direct my energy at processing them and giving them a place, instead of getting frustrated at the parts of my mind that do not make sense.


Maya

PTSD, personal responsibility and being able to live with yourself

 Reading back my recent post on 'the selfishness of PTSD' [1], I cannot help but feel that I blundered in writing it. Even though it was sincere, it was also heavily biased, more written from my own desires and emotions at the time than objective truth. Reading what I wrote again, it reads as if I am making excuses. That the actions of someone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder are never their fault. I vehemently disagree with that notion.

For a while now I have been considering writing about being able to live with yourself when you can remember things you did in the past, even if they were likely because of the consequences of the traumatic experiences. I can remember countless social situations where I just had to get away, because I didn't feel comfortable or felt unsafe, leaving me to later consider the impressions this must have left on others. Then the times when me misunderstanding something resulted in someone else getting upset or felt hurt. Then being incapable of fixing this or apologising properly.

Worst of all are the times when I hurt others, or reacted in a way that was decidedly aggressive or even violent. Even if it involved me blacking out and beating up that one bully during primary school, that's still not something which I am proud of. If there's the risk of losing myself to those impulses, that doesn't mean that I, or for that matter anyone else with PTSD, shouldn't have the obligation to do our utmost to apply at least some level of control.

As the Canadian Veterans Affairs says on their site:

Try not to use your PTSD or your war experiences as an excuse for hurting yourself or others. There is no excuse for being violent, aggressive, or otherwise mistreating other human beings. It is important that you take responsibility for your own behaviour. [2]

As I have mentioned previously in earlier posts, during depressive moods especially I often feel that I am worthless. Usually I can see all my failures over the years, the times where my actions hurt myself or others in some way. And the crushing feeling of how sorry I am that I'm such a terrible person. It's not okay that I hurt myself either, whether it is through words, thoughts or physical actions that inflict pain or damage.

It's easy to use the excuse that I have had to deal with the effects of PTSD practically without professional help, but that's not an acceptable excuse. All one can do is do better, or stop trying and give up. Yet all without ending up hurting oneself in the process. Or others. PTSD recovery should be about safety and getting away from the trauma. PTSD recovery can only happen when one feels that the traumatic events are behind one. Being hurt by others is bad. Hurting oneself is bad. Hurting or lashing out at others is worse.


From a blog post by someone who suffered PTSD due to a traumatic religious background [3], the following:

Living through trauma can make us feel like we don’t have control. We certainly didn’t have control of our lives during the traumatic event or events. It’s important for trauma survivors to understand we do have control of how we react. Thinking that we have no control over our emotional reactions is part of our traumatic wound. We may not be able to control whether or not our heart starts racing after being triggered, but we absolutely do have control over how we respond to someone who has said or done something triggering. We aren’t puppets being controlled by the past.

Here the phrase "Thinking that we have no control over our emotional reactions is part of our traumatic wound." jumps out at me, as this is exactly the point where past and present start mingling together. Often childhood trauma seem to take the shape of an almost subconscious desire to replicate the trauma over and over in the present. This is the part where one has to break with the past, and with it the trauma.

This same sentiment is echoed by an article over at Providence by Marc LiVecche [4]. It starts off with describing how Sarah Palin used PTSD in 2016 as an excuse for her son's recent arrest during which he was charged with domestic violence against his girlfriend. It's beyond the pale that a PTSD diagnosis would absolve anyone from any personal responsibility. Even a PTSD sufferer still understands the difference between right and wrong and that hurting another, innocent person is wrong in every applicable sense of the word.


Finally, there has been a lot of research on PTSD the past decades. Anthony Charuvastra, et al. [5] explore the unique nature of human-generated traumatic events (e.g. abuse and neglect), examining the effect of childhood abuse in particular, the long-term neurological and social impact and possible treatment methods.

From such research we can learn that while yes, the physiological and neurological impact is often permanent and severe, it does not turn a childhood abuse victim in a 'puppet of the past'. We are still our own person, even if we have seen and gone through more than anyone should ever have to deal with.

In a similar vein, I do not, or at least should not feel attacked or uncomfortable when someone rightfully points out flaws in my reasoning or behaviour. As long as it is done in a manner that is respectful (between fellow human beings) and with the intention to help, not hurt. Because hurting others or oneself is never cool or okay.

Which should really be the motto for humanity as a whole, I guess.


Maya



[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-selfishness-of-post-traumatic.html
[2] https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/health-support/mental-health-and-wellness/understanding-mental-health/ptsd-warstress
[3] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/waystationinthewilderness/2019/06/1404/
[4] https://providencemag.com/2016/01/490/
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722782/

The selfishness of post-traumatic stress disorder

 After having spent some time over the past weeks chatting with perfectly friendly strangers as they came to pick up some items that I was selling via EBay, it rather hit me how much I enjoyed those contacts. In that regard it's even more frustrating that I always seem to end up by myself, whether holed up in my room as a child or teenager with books and my computer instead of hanging out with friends and classmates, or holed up in some apartment, often in front of a computer instead of hanging out with friends or family.

Pandemic aside, I think that the answer really goes back to the childhood trauma. As my mother put it, I changed practically overnight from a happy, carefree child who wanted nothing more than to be friends with everyone to a frightened child who refused to be touched or embraced by even their own mother. When you only become aware of those changes many years later and have to trace things back at that point, it's a tough job, which takes time. Time during which you are occupied a lot with yourself a lot.

Not just with digging through your own past and memories, but also trying to make sense of what it is that you are feeling and why you are responding in certain ways. Why did that one thing which I just got asked about upset me so much? Why did I suddenly start crying? Why am I feeling angry? Why does it feel right now like hurting myself is even remotely acceptable? Why do I feel worthless? Why do I feel ready to just give up on life?

Those outbursts of rage, of helplessness and intense regret and sadness are not only upsetting to oneself, but even more to one's environment, who are spared the emotional turmoil, flashbacks and intense feelings that associate such moments. When reading the story of a woman who tried to build up a relationship with a war veteran with PTSD [1], there's a lot of such moments in there. That said, the final point in that story ('It's OK to walk away') does make sense from the perspective of the caretaker, as they too have to protect themselves. On the other hand, it is also very cruel towards the person with PTSD.


As a victim of PTSD, it is not that you choose to behave in such a way. The level of awareness of one's own behaviour differs, of course, and there's a certain leeway in how far you can control your behaviour. In the end, however, the effect of PTSD if the patient is left without appropriate help or assistance is more akin to a person who is drowning. In their panic and fear, they do not realise that they are wildly flailing around, injuring and possibly killing their would-be rescuers along with themselves. Nobody is at fault, which is the real tragedy.

This article by Juli Fraga [2] focuses on loneliness with PTSD and why it's both a natural consequence and very wrong. The main thing being that becoming stuck in loneliness can reinforce the traumas. Left alone with one's feelings, dealing only with the day-to-day things of modern society (many of which are fairly hostile or can be interpreted as such), this would further promote the feeling that the outside world is unsafe, and thus also that trusting others is unsafe. If you're alone, nobody can hurt you, basically. Even though it is yourself that you have to fear the most of in that case.

Similarly, it shouldn't be up to just one other person to 'rescue' you. As said earlier in the 'drowning person' comparison, and described in the Health Line article [1], that tends to be a recipe for disaster. Speaking as someone who has also been at the other side in such a relationship (flatmate with diagnosed psychological disorder), getting the heck out of that situation is really the only way to salvage one's sanity and health. I barely got out of that situation, losing only all of my possessions when things turned a bit too... psychotic.


All of that said, I think that I am aware of most of my emotional and psychological outbursts and issues. There is obviously still a lot that I need to learn, especially since I kind of stopped that learning process back as a child for obvious reasons, but I want to understand and better myself. I enjoy dealing with the emotional fluctuations caused by my PTSD about as much as others around me do, which is to say it makes them want to run away and never return.

For me, however, I cannot abandon myself. This is the only 'me' that I have got, and it's the 'me' I have got to work with, even if it feels like a broken, shattered vessel, filled with regrets and haunted by ghosts of the past. I just have to make it work somehow. As Juli Fraga's article points out, something that can already help is to write down what you are feeling and experiencing. That would make this blog part of my PTSD therapy, I guess?

When I notice how others respond to me when they first meet me, I feel like there is definitely hope. That I can become master of these traumas instead of vice versa. Just have to rebuild that self-esteem, tweak that self-image, take a deep breath before the boiling, trauma-fed emotions get the better of me. Sounds easy.

What are you afraid of?


Maya


[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/lessons-partner-with-ptsd
[2] https://www.rewire.org/loneliness-trauma-side-effect/

The cost of proving that one isn't transgender

 Sometimes one cannot help but marvel at how the road to Hell is paved with only the most exquisitely well-intended words and actions. Even as I try to write this all down in the knowledge that I really have to get this off my chest, that is something important, it's hard not to feel like I am committing some kind of social offence. Who am I to dismiss popular opinion, after all?

Fact of the matter is that as much as I just wish to 'move on' with my life, it is hard to ignore a certain elephant in the room. One which has been standing there for a while now, and surely isn't going to budge merely by the power of me ignoring it. It's not an easy elephant to name, though its nickname could be 'transgender accusation trauma'. Perhaps not a very short nickname, but it will have to do.


It's both funny and scary how when one looks back, one can clearly see how naive and simplistic one used to be about certain topics. If you had asked me about the topic of transgender/transsexuality fifteen years ago or so, I would have given you the popular opinion spiel about the body and male and female identity of the brain.

That was before I discovered that I am intersex. Yet with the doctors still telling me that I had to be transgender. The MRI-based evidence that I got from a private clinic, which showed me to be have a hermaphroditic intersex body was cast aside, and it was insisted appointment after appointment, year after year that I had to be, nay, could only possibly be transgender with my obviously male body and with my insistence that my body was not male.

Only what I was asking them was to examine my body and tell me what I already knew inside: that it is in fact not a male body, nor a female one. But they would always circle back to me having to be transgender in their professional opinion, with the evidence about my body not being male dismissed as 'insufficient', 'unclear', 'open to interpretation' and so on. They kept asking me: "But you want to be a woman, right?", even as I required no hormones or surgery to appear and sound for all intents and purposes female already.


How does one go about disproving that one could be transgender? Years of running in this endless treadmill led me to investigate what all of those terms really meant. From 'gender' to 'feeling like a woman/man' to the intricacies of physical and psychological identity. Along the way I was forced to admit that popular opinion was wrong. The reason why I couldn't pin down 'feeling like a woman/man' was because it's a nonsensical notion that as I have referenced in previous posts is not based on science [1], with 'gender' in the modern sense being instead a symptom of transgenerational trauma [2].

What I was feeling was just the way that I am, and the person I want to be. I cannot feel 'like a woman' or 'like a man', because those statements mean nothing. Only in the context of a physical body does 'male' or 'female' make sense, and there too is too much variety to create just two groups. Even among individuals with purely male or female genitals there exists a wide variety, and there are those who suffer certain pains and defects, some involving infertility, others with varying levels of period pains and PMS. The 'female experience' isn't binary, with each woman getting a unique experience on account of the unique combination of their female body and associated hormones and reproductive organs.

Where this overlaps with the hermaphroditic experience, hermaphrodites and women can definitely swap tales and tips on how to deal best with the downsides of womanhood [3]. This realisation made it easy for me to accept that I am not a woman, nor a man, but a hermaphrodite, and unique again among hermaphrodites and human beings in general. Therefore I only have to be myself to be okay in my own eyes and 'pass' as myself.


Yet over a decade of having doctors, psychologists and other know-it-alls try to hammer their opinions home have left their scabbed over wounds. I feel that any trust that I could have had in such people has evaporated, perhaps never to return again. Perhaps worse is that I can no longer share blissfully in popular opinion. How does one go about informing people that their views on what it means to be male or female, not to mention gender are incorrect? That the diagnosis of 'transgender/gender dysphoria' is flawed and without scientific basis?

Should one even tell people about it? While I am glad that I have figured things out for myself, I feel that in doing so, many doors have been closed between me and much of society. There is a lot that I can no longer talk about now without either sharing my own thoughts, or hiding them. These days I seem to lean more towards avoiding it, it seems.

Together with the topic of intersex itself, all of it feels like dead ends to me [4]. It's easiest in many ways to not deal with something unpleasant, even if it means that one may have to actively avoid it, for example by using filter lists on social media to avoid certain content.


I think it is also essential that I get to escape from these topics for a while at least. When it has formed a significant part of one's life for far too long, and caused mostly grief and sorrow, it is essential to give it a rest. Put it on a shelf and focus on the other parts of oneself for a change. My womanhood can stay confined to the discomfort of periods and PMS for now. Even if it's a right bother sometimes, it is still a part of who and what I am. And that's fine.

There is still life beyond the sharing in popular opinion, after all.


Maya


[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/your-brain-doesnt-care-what-genitals.html
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/11/gender-as-special-type-of.html
[3] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/08/when-intersex-woman-isnt-just-woman.html
[4] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/02/so-i-got-denied-medical-care-because-of.html

Gender as a special type of transgenerational trauma

 Whereas the term 'sex' unequivocally refers to an individual's biological sex, i.e. their body's physical properties which pertain to the function of reproduction, the term 'gender' [1] has changed or assumed different meanings over the past centuries. Originally referring to a group of people or things which share a certain trait, it came to mean the same as 'biological sex' around the early 15th century as a way to differentiate it from the physical act of procreation that had become associated with the term 'sex' by that time.

The currently common meaning of 'gender' to mean 'social role' in the feminist sense dates to the early 1960s. This claims the existence of distinct masculine and feminine attributes that would define an individual as being part of either a masculine ('male') or feminine ('female') role in society, seeking to define the identity of a person's ego in only those perceived qualities.


Here I would like to postulate that this definition, and the perception of 'masculine' and 'feminine' properties to make up the ego of an individual, is indicative of transgenerational trauma [2]. Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that the very notion of such properties does not hold up to scientific scrutiny [3], with studies showing the brains of volunteers to display a mosaic of properties, with no distinct sets of properties that would indicate a propensity towards either a 'male' or 'female' pattern. Effectively, neither the presence nor absence of specific hormones or chromosomes appear to have any effect on the development and final functionality of the human brain.

While for animals as well as insects, their biological sex has a significant impact on their expected role in courtship rituals, an important distinction to be drawn here is that of instinct and behaviour versus reason and intelligence. No matter how enlightened a species may be, the basic courtship rituals and the instincts that drive them are still present. This underlies much of human societies, with in particular societies founded on Abrahamic religious foundations only relatively recently accepting that women are in fact individuals with the right to self-determination.


The societal patterns that have been sustained over the millennia as a result of these base rituals persist to this day, as do the traumas that accompany them. Despite there being no scientific evidence to support any dimorphism between human brains, it's still held as common knowledge that men and women are 'different'. Along with the feministic pseudo-scientific 'gender' theorem we can see this supposed difference being used as justification by some for segregation, or discrimination ('affirmative action', 'gender quota'), with no backing scientific evidence that would justify this.

Other ways that this societal trauma appears is in the form of individuals crossing those perceived masculine and feminine societal roles, either dressing up in a way that is generally perceived to be only acceptable for individuals in the other role. More extreme is the appearance of individuals who feel that they cannot live with the reproductive organs with which they have been born ('gender dysphoria', or GD) and must have these organs surgically removed. Here a considerable overlap with Body Identity Disorder (BID)[4] seems to exist [5]. Similarly to cases of non-neurological BID, individuals diagnosed with GD can grow out of the disorder, go through with surgery and end up regretting it ('detransition') [6], or find that the surgery did not alleviate the effects of the psychological disorder.


In the comparison with BID and GD one can see a pattern of trauma appear. For non-neurological (i.e. no deficiencies found within the brain) BID, there appears to be often some kind of impressive experience, often in the childhood of the person. This can be something shocking, such as seeing someone with an amputated limb. For GD the trauma appears to overlap significantly with transgenerational trauma.

Even before a child is conceived, the parents and their environment will hold certain beliefs about what is right and proper for a child, depending on the biological sex it is born with. This continues with the birth of the child, their clothes they receive, the toys they play with and the other children they see and how their environment expects them to play with others. At each stage along their development, they grow up in an environment in which their behaviour and preferences are cultured, promoted, punished and promoted until they are deemed 'appropriate'.

Here the parents and the environment are often unaware of their own actions, or would be at a loss to explain why they feel it is 'correct'. This is in many ways similar to the behaviour seen by the victims of childhood abuse, some of whom who will go on to inflict similar abuse to their own children. The distinction here is that this transgenerational trauma about societal roles or in its current nomenclature 'gender' isn't something that affects just some unfortunate families. This level of trauma affects entire societies and nations, generation after generation.


This also helps to explain to some extent the attitude towards intersex individuals. Falling outside the convenient boundaries of a binary sex, they either suffer early mutilation (intersex genital mutilation) to force them to conform, or will suffer the trauma of dealing with a society which is too traumatised to be able to accept that its concepts of masculinity and femininity are not only beside the point, but also comprehensively, scientifically incorrect.

To heal from this trauma, societies will first have to learn to accept the reality and scope of this trauma before they can begin to let go of fictional narratives. This would be a long, arduous process. If this concerned a singular patient, a psychiatrist would seek to slowly ease the patient out of their delusions and circular reasoning, so that they might see and grasp the reality. To do that with entire societies is however a whole different level.


Maya


[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/gender
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma
[3] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/your-brain-doesnt-care-what-genitals.html
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3326051/
[5] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269697839_Body_integrity_identity_disorder_and_Gender_Dysphoria_A_pilot_study_to_investigate_similarities_and_differences
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detransition

Getting back into that 'career' thing after recovering from PTSD

 This is not an easy post for me to write. Even as I am grateful for the progress that I'm making in recovering from decades of trauma and the associated post-traumatic stress disorder, it's hard not to find myself painfully aware of how the world around me has seemingly moved ahead without me. Instead of neatly and mostly happily bouncing my way through the education system and ending up in some job from which I'd work my way up to a bright career, I more or less fell off the grid as I fell into depression, followed by a string of traumatic events which put my continued existence strongly in question.

To make a long story short, I seem to have managed to make it out of the other side more or less in one piece, courtesy of primarily the efforts of people who I am very grateful for not giving up on me. Yet as the darkness of depression recedes and my PTSD no longer controls me, it's equally painfully obvious that the reason why people rush into a career is so that they can acquire that which most crucially sustains life itself: money.

I'm grateful that I have found some freelance work mostly writing articles for sites and publications, but diversification seems like a good thing. For example something to do with my experience as a senior-level software developer. Call it an artefact of my cosy relationship with computers while growing up, but software development in particular is something which is practically an integral part of my being, much like the ability to read and write. Basically, that means that I like it a lot.


I was supposed to have landed a software development contract for a big international company at the beginning of this year, but as the pandemic did its thing, that lead dried up, like so many others. Finding new leads and following up on them is still something that I have to work on, just like the whole 'networking' thing. It's no use if you might be a great fit for a lot of remote software jobs out there, but neither side is aware of the other.

In that regard I guess that my string of published books on mostly C++ and embedded development is a good kind of advertisement, along with the projects which I have published on my GitHub account [1]. Yet it's still a struggle to generate and handle leads, even if others do their best to find a few for me. I guess it's mostly due to the vestiges of PTSD that still trouble me, slowing me down and making even simple tasks more demanding than they would be for anyone without such a psychological burden.

Some of these projects which I started have gathered a lot of feedback already, especially NymphCast [2], even as the amount of work there is still astounding, especially for what is still a definite hobby project. While I did recently go back to fix a regression with playback and add a host of new features, it did impress on me again the need to balance hobbies with work. Hobbies are for relaxation and fun learning, while work is what you do first and foremost for money to survive.

While I have seen some open source projects grow to the point where they can have an actual business plan, or keep growing through the power of donations, aiming for such a thing seems roughly as practical and realistic as trying to become rich by inventing the Next Big Thing and patenting it.

What seems more realistic at this point is the development of my Nodate embedded framework project [3], as I can directly use it as the foundation of articles on embedded development. That level of synergy is extremely helpful.


In summary, at this point I'm still scraping by as a freelancer, doing odd jobs, but I would definitely like something bigger and more permanent. I think it would be helpful for my recovery by having something steady and predictable. I think that what I have put out in public in terms of publications and projects should leave a favourable impression. Enough that I should have more self-confidence, perhaps.

Time to chase more leads like an overly excited kitten chasing yarn and see what comes up at the end of them, I guess :)


Maya


[1] https://github.com/MayaPosch
[2] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphCast
[3] https://github.com/MayaPosch/Nodate