If we want to take responsibility for the future, we have to stop re-staging our past.
It is hopeless - so let us fight on! At the end of the Second World War, the government tried to motivate the long war-weary population with slogans of perseverance. Something similar is happening now in the Corona crisis: although lockdowns are clearly not ending the misery, people are still being asked to hold out one more time. We need to be aware in all this that there are intergenerational traumas. In this respect, the current behaviour of the majority could go back to an imprint from "back then", although it is no longer at all relevant to the situation today. The decisive factor here is that we are dealing with a situation that is currently life-threatening and fraught with fear, in which the mind is partially switched off. The result is that although people can no longer do anything, they still believe they have to continue to fight and suffer. Is there a way out of this destructive psychodynamic, and what might it be?
The other day, a friend told me that people are tired of the pandemic; I cannot describe it more aptly, nor do I want to dedicate this text to the recurring theme of our omnipresent everyday life. Nevertheless, it will hardly be possible to avoid this topic entirely, so I also ask all those pandemic-weary in advance for a little more stamina, as the train of thought is different.
Humanity is now so saturated with the topic that it cannot or even does not want to absorb the latest headlines about the progress of our government's vaccination campaign, nor the most explosive events of the demonstrations, the development of lateral thinking and the latest video of the most important speakers of the moment. The point has been reached - you can't get more Corona into your head. But it is also not possible to simply go on living without it, because the subject is there and keeps you occupied. Whether you like it or not, you simply can't get out of it.
Reinactment
Due to the constraints imposed both externally by others and internally by the self, many psychological dynamics arise. One of these is the theory of intergenerational trauma. Specifically, it looks at Germany's recent history, with a focus on the last century. The point of this article is not to draw comparisons between then and now, but to take a closer look at why people acted the way they do today back then.
My knowledge and work in trauma therapy is based on the concern method according to Franz Ruppert. An elementary insight in his theory is the splitting of the psyche during a traumatic event. If a person is exposed to a life-threatening situation, the psyche tries to regulate itself in order to ensure survival. In order to be able to endure this, the psyche splits from what it has experienced. This ensures survival, but it creates a split in the human being that no longer allows the psyche to be holistic. It is an inner separation of the emotional world, which later becomes noticeable in different ways and where it is recommended to work through the experience in order to reintegrate the split-off feeling.
Although the life-threatening danger at the time no longer exists in reality, this process is very painful. The repressed feelings come up again and one has to deal with this pain and feel it again. At the same time, the situation is now no longer life-threatening, and therefore what was experienced can be gradually endured with therapeutic support.
If the trauma has not been dealt with, the psyche looks for its own ways to integrate what has happened. One possibility is to reconstruct and replay the experience again and again; ergo, the person reenacts the same situation again and again in the hope of being able to write a new ending.
An example, but not a rule, is a woman whose father beat her mother. She also chooses a man who beats her, in the unconscious hope of being able to convert him, as she would have wished to do so with her father at the time. With each new assault, the man promises not to raise his hand again, and the woman loses herself in the hope that everything will certainly be different from that point on. This can repeat itself either episodically endlessly in one relationship or in different, successive relationships.
It can be seen that the psyche remains in this trauma. This does not mean that the trauma is permanently present, but that when a trigger moment occurs, the person finds himself again and again in the exact situation in which he had the life-threatening experience.
The difference between trauma and a bad experience is that in the case of a bad experience, the psyche has been able to process this negative experience for itself and realises that the event is over. Thus, the person can remember the negative event and also the pain felt, but does not remain in the situation at that time. He can say from his healthy structures that it was painful, but that it is over. This is not the case with a split-off, unprocessed traumatic event. If the traumatic experience is caused by a trigger, the person does not remain in his healthy structure and cannot understand that the triggering feeling no longer belongs to the present, but is, so to speak, completely caught up in the situation that felt life-threatening at the time and acts out of it.
To an outsider, such an action may seem exaggerated or incomprehensible. If we take the example of the woman and the beating partner, however, the outsider can recognise that the partner will not simply change and that there will always be repeated assaults. The woman herself and usually also the battering partner are trapped in their individual trauma, which they continue to live with each other. They are unable to see through this dynamic and are rock solidly convinced that it will be different next time.
Intergenerational trauma
Another important role here is played by intergenerational trauma. These can be simplified to mean that the old traumas that our ancestors did not work through are passed on to the next generation. This means that we carry the traumas of our grandparents, parents and other close relatives, for example. Which in turn stems from the fact that the corresponding caregiver carries certain moods and reactions from their past with them. Parallel to this, the young person who is dependent on this person attaches himself to the corresponding feeling in order to be in bondage to the adult. As a result, as adults or already as young people, we carry passed-on traumas within us without having experienced them ourselves and without being consciously aware of them.
An example of this is a frightening feeling at the sight of a soldier. This is not intended to provide a sole reason for unpleasant feelings in connection with soldiers or similar scenarios, but merely to take up such a situation in order to illustrate it somewhat. If a person from a generation in which there was no war on the doorstep feels unpleasant at the sight of a soldier or similar scenarios, this can mean that this feeling was passed on by, for example, grandparents who had experienced the war themselves.
Now the problem here is not only that the person is confronted with their own feelings and passed on traumas from previous generations, but also that the survival strategies of the time were also passed on.
A survival strategy ensures the survival of the person in a life-threatening situation. The human being cannot endure the situation at the moment it happens; as described above, a split occurs and an action that secures survival takes place. If this action - an example is reenactment - is successful, it can be repeated at will and develop into a fixed strategy.
Repeated strategies
If we now look at German history, we see that there was never just one person who committed all the atrocities. It was equally the people who carried out the orders and the people who looked the other way or even went along with them, regardless of their intention behind it.
If one does not disregard the fact that the war experiences experienced beforehand were not dealt with and passed on to the following generations, one inevitably finds that the traumas and the associated survival strategies of our ancestors are now resurfacing in varying intensities in a new crisis.
So when it is said that history repeats itself, I can go along with the idea that the previously unprocessed traumas and the way our ancestors dealt with them are being brought back up today and thus a re-enactment is taking place.
People inevitably act in similar patterns to what their ancestors did back then. Often this happens completely unconsciously.
This theory provides an explanation on the one hand for the different behaviour out of fear, and on the other hand it shows other ways of acting that are not directly due to fear. For example, if a neighbour denounces his long-time friend and calls the police because he suspects him of a corona offence, then it is not necessarily fear that is speaking out of him. It is quite possible that an old trauma and the corresponding survival strategy of his ancestors are present. This is not an excuse, but an explanation for the behaviour. It is then the responsibility of each individual to recognise this process for themselves and to initiate a different course of action. We are not responsible for what happened to us and what package we were given for our lives, but we are responsible for what we do ourselves and what package we pass on to others.
Red line
The result of this theory also provides an answer to the increasingly frequently asked question "Where is your red line?". As negative as it sounds, I find no other answer to it than that it does not exist. At least not in Germany with its past history. If we take the Second World War as an example, when it had long been clear that any continuation of the war was completely futile and the entire country was nothing but a ruin, the surrender was only signed after the Allies marched in. Orders were followed to the very end. Perhaps there was a red line for each individual, but the collective ran with it for different reasons. Accordingly, the individual had no real choice but to adjust his own red line again and again or to abolish it altogether. At some point, one's own feeling for oneself and the other falls silent, and one only goes along with it in order not to go under.
It is important for me to emphasise here that this thesis is not about a direct comparison of events or an apportionment of blame, but about the dynamics of then and now and their parallels.
I feel similarly about the current situation; there are many people who think differently or ask questions, regardless of the time within the crisis. There are many who are tired of the pandemic, but at the same time they are tired of being against it, and just exhausted by all the daily corona radiation, which merely goes silent when you go to sleep.
The reenactment is entirely underway, and the wheel turns with everyone involved. In this wheel there are always people who get up, but the others have already sat down because they can no longer.
Some, tragically, have already left the field altogether. So everyone struggles through individually or in groups, but everyone has limited capacities of energy and willpower. When I hear statements like "people are slowly waking up", I have to admit that I can only take a little pleasure in it, because I don't know a single person who has completely changed his mind in the course of this crisis. If one nevertheless pursues this, because these people certainly exist, they have made a new realisation for themselves and want to proclaim it full of zest for action. Unfortunately, however, those who were already on the streets in April 2020 are usually no longer able or willing to do so. So the wheel slowly keeps turning, and every rising flame goes out in the mass trauma and their old survival strategies.
Assuming one's own responsibility
This conclusion is very demotivating, and I can well imagine that one or the other asks himself, why please do I read through this text, which is not supposed to be about Corona at all, and then it is all about the subject with such a devastating result? I can sympathise with this question.
Now I think that regardless of Corona, on the one hand it is an important insight to understand what mechanisms are behind the actions of individuals. On the other hand, it makes sense not to stick to the symptom and suppress it, but to find the cause and address it.
If one can find some truth in the theory put forward, it is a possibility or even an invitation to look at one's own history and to look at one's actions and thought patterns. No change is possible on the outside if it has not taken place on the inside beforehand. To be able to come out of the pandemic tired state, a clear decision is needed "How do I want to live my life?" or even "Do I SO want to live my life?".
Should the decision elicit a no, the first step is to look at how you got into the life you are living. Accordingly, it is inevitable to look at one's past and come to terms with it in order to have the possibility to make new self-determined and free decisions for the future. Everyone can only make this decision alone, but hardly anyone can go this way alone. It requires a community.
On this path, the question of the red line becomes superfluous, as it is no longer needed. It is unimportant where the red line lies and when it was crossed. All that counts then is one's own self-determined life in understanding oneself and one's history and in healthy responsibility towards one's fellow human beings and nature.
If such a state is possible, history does not have to be rewritten, but deeply and sincerely mourned, individually and collectively reappraised and placed where it belongs - in the past. Moreover, the lived and felt present automatically writes the future, which does not need to be constantly planned or pre-staged.
I repeat, because this sentence is so elementarily important and must be clear to us:
We are not responsible for what has happened to us and what package we have been given for our lives, but we are responsible for what we do ourselves and what package we pass on to others.
I dedicate this sentence to our own inner children and to the next generations who are caught in this wheel of madness and are so dependent on us to finally decide to rethink our present life and face ourselves - for a life that is neither re-staged nor pre-staged.
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