We're Surrounded By Trauma Responses

What is up with the human need for control?

After swimming through the deep waters of my human experience, it's simple: Trauma. Trauma causes us to consciously and unconsciously feel like we need to control our environment and everyone in it. Unfortunately that also extends to environments we're not even in. Like, someone else's life and what they do with it.

Trauma is the root of all issues that I see in humanity, like the division and the lack of compassion that leads to violence. Control acts like it cares. Control convinces you that it cares. You convince care that control is the solution. But control is the search for safety. If you can control, you can save.

The reasoning varies from person to person. Our conditioning depends on our upbringing, I think. One might prioritize control over others while another prioritizes control over their image. And then there are those with both and everything outside of and in between.

I recently read that SNAP benefits will no longer cover sodas. Fine, whatever. But, I do wonder why. Why did someone feel the need to control what someone else is eating or drinking? They hide behind the mask of “I'm paying for it, I choose what you do with it”. Control in cosplay.

A handful of certain people are accumulating what's currently our most valuable resource for trade. They have more than they'll need for multiple lifetimes, although they only get one. Why? Well, I think they're trying to fill an emptiness inside of them. At some point, it was engrained in their belief system that they needed it to survive in some way. Maybe it's egotistical, maybe there's a void that they're avoiding, who knows for sure?

There are people taking lives as if they're theirs to take, I'm the name of control. Like bullies, they're trying to control how powerful they feel. I assume someone must have made them feel small and insignificant in some way, or multiple ways. Maybe someone convinced them their life has no value and they extend that belief to those around them. Maybe they see anyone outside of them as a threat. One thing I believe I know for sure is that they like the sense of control.

We're surrounded by trauma responses.

When we experience something traumatic, it's outside of our control. When we don't get the love, nurturing, and safety that our bodies are wired to need, control pops up to prevent that from happening again. Pain gets painted over to resemble protection.

Inside all of us I see a child craving love. To be seen, heard, soothed, and nurtured. While now might not be the right time for us to flip a switch and magically collectively do everything differently, it might be the right time to start. Start noticing, start revisiting the inner baby, toddler, child, teenager, young adult and have conversations with those versions of you. Hear them, sooth them, nurture them.

It might be the right time to create a ripple, to create future versions of us that are able to set down the constant state of fight and flight that we're currently living in. So future generations don't seek to fill their need to control by dropping bombs, hoarding beyond their needs, and dictating what other people eat.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's just something to chew on.

Photo by Olivier Piquer on Unsplash