Struggling to Restore My Faith in Humanity

[upstream]

From Anthony's thread:
http://www.ptsdforum.org/thread1114.html

When the assailant is a natural catastrophe, it can be explained away as an accident of fate, providing human error was not at fault, however; then the assailant is another person, your trust in humanity, society and human beings in general is shaken or shattered entirely.


This is something I've been struggling with since my last trauma. I grew up being abused and maltreated, however I was fortunate that I could always rationalize it away as mental illness on their part.

My last trauma, however, I couldn't. It was deliberate, methodical, and sadistic. I began to perceive myself and others differently. The first noticeable change was that I began to perceive people as lying to me, and that they were lying to me for their personal gain. My therapist referred to this as overcompensating, and I believe I have overcompensated in other ways as well.

If you had asked me a year ago to describe our world in terms of people, I would have talked on and on about poverty and disease and how people are suffering. I would have talked about how I was learning about just how common abuse survivors are. I may have talked about the lack of infrastructure in Africa, the homeless in this country, and the need for better medical care in Central America. And I would have talked about the ideas I had for making the world better and ending all this suffering.

Now I find myself wondering if humanity is worth saving. I also find myself shocked that such a thought keeps weighing on my mind. If you asked me the same question now, I would talk about how the world lacks integrity. About how human ignorance and misunderstanding knows no bounds. About how I struggle to understand why people knowingly hurt others without a justified reason, why they are so prejudiced, and how I struggle to understand the minds of these people. About how it's such an awful world out there with so many awful people, and I might regal you with stories about all the good people I know who's lives or minds have been destroyed by someone else's greed. Suddenly agoraphobia makes more sense to me.

I don't want to see the world like this, and part of me says my perception is out of whack. I've been trying to inch my way back towards believing in people and seeing the good in society. I even bought Bill Clinton's new book "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World." It's full of stories about people doing good things for the sake of it, my hope was the book would help deprogram my mind.

I've made progress, but it has been slow. I was wondering if anyone else struggles with this.

[She Cat]

Hey Upstream,

Yes, I too feel that the world is full of ugly, hateful, hurtful people, only caring about themselves and their personal gain. I listen to the news at night and sometimes it just sickens me.

I am slowly shrinking "My world" because the outside world just seems to violent, to uncaring, and way to ugly. I don't know what has happened or when people stopped caring about others but I want no part of it.

[tude]

OMG, yes, yes, yes.

My outlook on life has taken such a dramatic and sudden change, my head is still spinning. Life and my life used to make sense. It had meaning and purpose. I used to believe in God. I didn't look around and see people living shallow, transparent lives. I didn't think I was taking my life for granted. Seeing the idiots at work, I never have uttered the words, "Is there any hope for humanity?" I have thought to myself, why bother trying because one of those idiots can take it all away.

In addition to getting out of myself, I can tell you this is why I started volunteering. It felt good to be a part of something constructive instead of something destructive. It was meaningful to see strangers working together, freely giving their time, sweat, and blood for the sake of another. It was meaningful to see the homeowners taking responsibilty for their lives and being a part of the working process. At Habitat for Humanity, my faith in humanity was being restored. Unfortunately, my lack of faith in myself put an end to this. Through a bout of depression, I felt like a fraud being there. That has since passed and I plan on returning to it this spring.

Upstream, I guess it will take time for my head to stop spinning to see clearly again as I once used to. In the meantime, we keep looking for the good in humanity and participating in it. I think you're on the right path to restoring your faith.

I believe hoplessness is one of the worst human conditions. I also believe life is constantly changing. We are all constantly changing. This gives me hope for all of us.

If you find other ways to help restore what has been lost, please share.

tude

[linasmom]

Upstream,

YES!! And, this has contributed greatly to my agoraphobia - I just think people are down right mean. I always joke around and say that I was born in the wrong generation, that I should have been born in my parents generation and I would have been part of the "movement", I would have been a hippie. Unfortunately, a lot of hippies turned into yuppies and I question how they went from being so free loving to just loving capitalism. I digress....

I cry whenever I see how the AIDS epidemic has ravished Africa, their horrible civil wars. I cried the other day when I watched "Autism, the musical" about a group of beautiful individuals who coordinated a musical made up of Autistic children to give them hope, to show the world that these kids are capable. There's bad and then there's good and I struggle trying to reconcile the two.

I also heard about a group of 3rd graders who plotted to kill their teacher in GA- they actually brought in the materials to do so. THIS makes me want to freakin crawl into a hole and never come out. HOW did this happen????? When did we start the reversal of our own evolution???

Maybe if I believed in a higher power I would be able to handle these issues better, because then I would believe that there is something greater than this. But, I don't. It makes it hard and it also creates hopelessness.

I truly wish I had an answer. Lately, I surround myself with animals, they ground me.

[nic]

Hey Uptream,

I know how you feel. I used to teach a course that dealt with this exact issue. There's a documentry you should see titled Weapons of The Spirit. It is about a town in France, Le Chambon, that during the Holocaust became a rescue town. It is an amazing story, and it really helps to restore (at least some) faith in humanity. There's also a quote at the end, about human nature being fundamentally good with the potential to be fundamentally bad, and it's a chioce we make as individuals and as a society that determines which way we will go. Anyway, I suggest you check it out. If you can't seem to find it, PM me and I'll try to get it for you.

Nic

[dlross]

Hi Upstream,

Personally I have learned not to watch the tv news or to read newspapers, in order not to be overwhelmed by the amount of suffering in the world, in all its myriad forms. It quickly becomes too much and leaves me feeling so powerless I can hardly get out of bed.

One of the most helpful books I have ever read, which relates to this, was "Shine one small corner of the world" I believe Shunryu Suzuki Roshi is the author. As the title suggests, and as many of the posts here also suggest, it is about choosing to focus on one's immediate neighbourhood as the place in which to see and do good. That can mean beginning with the inside of one's own skull, moving to family and then actual neighbours. The same principle I guess as the famous quote "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." (Sorry I don't know who that is attributed to)

[2quilt]

Count me in too. I think my negative feelings increase after I see the news online or on TV and all they report are the bad things that people do to each other. I wonder if news journalists get PTSD as a part of their jobs from seeing and writing stories about, filming, editing and then talking about all the crime and destruction they see.

I also have lost faith in humanity. I think that humans will fight over the earth's clean water supply, the food supply will not feed the growing population, which will start wars and then diseases will spread through dirty water or contaminated food, and the diseases or the wars will kill off most of the people on earth. Greed will kill us. The Bush administration is the perfect example of greed, but that's another soapbox.

Part of PTSD is a feeling that my life will be shortened. At this point, that's okay with me because the world is going to hell and I don't want to be a part of it. Were people so mean 100 years ago, and we didn't know it because we didn't have instant worldwide news?

[Lucky Laser]

Trust in people is one of the major things I lost from my traumas. Both involved someone I trusted entirely turning out to be completely different. Now I feel like everyone must have some horrible secret from the guy next door to my own parents. Its hard for me to get close to anyone because I fear they won't be who they seem to be. I'll see some random innocent looking person in store and suddenly my mind will picture them doing something awful... and I figure that as long as I don't have to get emotionally close to anyone, its okay.

I think it is a struggle for my husband because even after knowing him for four years there is a terrified part of me that sometimes says "I don't know who you are!"

At the same time though, I know that humanity also has the potential to do great good. Even if everyone has something awful to hide good things still happen. Sometimes its just a matter of recognizing for myself that human beings are a mix of good and bad and I just need to find the people with more good than bad, or the people whose bad I can tolerate.

[Cecilia]

News and newspapers have been banned from my house for the past 6 years and I have felt so much better.

There is a lot of evil in the world and the media loves to dramatize it all. People on this board have enough real-life drama without adding more.

I really, really, really try to focus on the good people in society. Nobody is perfect. There are many selfish, self seeking, back stabbing people in the world, but let's face it most people are not psycho killers or rapists.

There actually are more good people in the world than bad and I try to seek out the unnoticed, quiet, gentle people and befriend them. They may seem boring to some, but they do not add much drama to my life and can bring a stabilizing peace. Many of them are a lot older than me, but I love spending time with them and they enjoy the company. They are not wealthy or socially important, but they are important to me; they keep me grounded and not feeling threatened and lonely.

[reallydown]

I, too, have been struggling with this for a very long time. When you see friend, neighbours, or even families turn on each other or sensless killings of innocent people becaus they have the wrong name etc. it makes one sick.

You see greed everywhere and people not thinking of the consequences of their actions for other people or the environment. There is some good happening but, as for many others here, it has not really restored my faith in humanity.

I don't know what it is...I ascribe it to something going terribly wrong in the evolutionary process...it seems like we're de-evolvin...I agree with 2quilt (and many analysts) that fight for resources as basic as clean water and food will cause awful wars where many will die being denied these basic human rights. There will also be environmental refugees and that will lead to fighting over arable land etc. I think this is very much the truth and it totally makes us feel powerless. And sadly, I think it has pretty much always been this way, with the exception of the depression era and post-WWII, where in the aftermath of those events there was the rise of the welfare state and concern for human rights.

2quilt, I also have a feeling that I won't be around that long, and feel exactly the same way, with all of this, who wants to go on?

[becvan]

OMG, yes!

I don't even struggle with this. I just consider it as the way it is. This world is not a safe world and is filled with people, who at any time or place, are capable of doing terrible things. In my book, you might be a great person, but you're still capable of acting like a monster. I think of humans as locusts. We are like a plague, destroying everything in it's wake.

I do struggle with this where my son is concerned. It's hard to have hope for your child's future when you see the world like this.

I know this is a very skewed way of seeing things. I know that my therapist will be addressing this. (She knows just how deep this belief runs in me.) I also think as death as peace. I will no longer be living in such a terrible place. It's truly amazing I'm not religious when you think about it.

I have no clue how to fix this.. but it's a biggy in my book.

bec

[pandora]

This week , well month I was taken advantage of by both a man and a woman....my trust in humanity is going to need a lot of work...You helped tonight Morgan!!!!!

[Roo]

I veer all over the place when I think of my faith in humanity. Some days, I think that everybody's out to get me and I hunker down in curmudgeonly crankiness. Other days -- like today -- I think of Einstein's pivotal question that we must answer for ourselves: "Is the universe a friendly place or not?" I think on those days, "It's friendly...enough." Every once in a while I encounter someone who I'm convinced has wings tucked under his/her clothes. My faith in humanity runs hot and cold, back and forth, several times a day. My faith in a very few special kin is a whole different matter :Hug_emoticon:

[Roo]

I'm also thinking that faith is a hot topic for people whose faith in basic sustenance and survival has been violated.

Lately I've noticed that any faith I can conjure is almost always aimed at animals, music, books, colours, and the natural principles/elements that sustain life. I've always been this way.

Robins' first April songs ... a neon sunset ... the sun at the center of blue morning glories ... the Caribbean and the Canadian Shield ... my canine friend Joni ... my cats: always, my cats...those gorgeous, thrumbling, gazing, bunting creatures ...the world as it is I have faith in.

People...I go so far, and that's it. Even with my husband, it grieves me to say. He is the most integrous person I've ever had the grace to meet, and I don't trust him. Past a point. Not even him. I wonder if I have a capacity to trust (does anyone else feel this?).

Once upon a time I trusted lavishly, like a dog. Toss me a trinket of kindness and I'm yours. That kind of trusting brought me into some miraculous embraces and into some here-and-now versions of Hell.

Trust...surrender...I think our spirits long to do this.

Once or twice in my life -- and it's always happened in an embrace -- I have felt cherished. The feeling swizzled through me and I gave in to simply being there, in the center of these soft explosions of compassion.

So there have been moments of quietude with other humans :smile: and I cling to the memory of them, knowing that trust and faith are possible here because I have experienced that depth of safety with another person.

There's nothing like it :Hug_emoticon:

I am so grateful for these experiences...and I remain on guard. Perhaps the faith paradox is one that we simply need to live with...:think:

As dear old Walt Whitman wrote,

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then. I contradict myself;
I am large; I contain multitudes.

I cling to the exuberant kindness of Whitman, that gentle bower of a man:

I am larger, better than I thought. I did not know I held such goodness.

I feel faith when I read lines like that. Faith that faith continues to be possible, even when my mind is a desert and I don't give a shit.

Matthew Fox:

We do not come into life as blotches on existence. We burst into creation as original blessings.

:Hug_emoticon:

[upstream]

Thank you everyone for your posts! It helps. I guess this is something I need to keep working on.

What's been helping me lately is bringing up the memory of the traumatic events that caused the change, and thinking of the person who was the aggressor. He pretended to be someone he's not when I had first met him, but now when I remember these events I remind myself of who he really is. Aggressive, manipulative, decietful, abusive to his subordinates, insecure/political, arogant, and utterly devoid of empathy for anyone. He has been identified as a psychopath by my therapist, and as "evil" and "psycho" by himself.

Then I think of people I have liked and loved who have done right by me, and their acts of affection, loyalty, and kindness. I tell myself that this person is not a psychopath, that this is a good person.

So on an emotional/relationship level, humanity is no longer painted one color but many. All different types of people with different colors and levels of good and awful. This is probably something I should have learned as a developing child, but I perhaps I blinded myself to certain things as a defense and a means to survive.