From Anthony's thread:
What is Traumatic Enough for PTSD?
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.

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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?

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.

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.

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?