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Trauma Is In Control

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Words 1871
Pages 8
Shivani Amin
Expository Writing 101: PN-Spring 2016
Assignment #1- Final Draft
Professor Andrew Libby
January 31, 2016
Who Really Is In Control In our lifetime, we have experienced various types of traumas. These traumatic situations include such as losing a loved one or getting our hearts broken. Traumas, according to many individuals, disrupt daily life which can either leave mental or physical scars. With the trauma, come the side effects. One significant side effect could be the loss of human-connectedness or self connectedness. Human and self connectedness refer to the way an individual detaches themselves from their own body and mind. Many times we feel as if we are not in the right state of mind and basically proceed to forget our …show more content…
On many occasions, due to certain traumas in our childhood, our mind forgets to mentally keep up with the events occurring in the present because its is still being traumatized. It is almost as if the traumatic event still authorizes over the mind and triggers the mind to function only when necessary. Stout writes “Because children dissociate readily even in ordinary circumstances, when they encounter traumatic situations, they easily split their consciousness into pieces, often for extended periods of time. The self is put aside and hidden,” (430). One can interpret from this quote that many times when trauma occurs during childhood, it can cause that child to truly hide who they are and ultimately shut down. Hence said that, if a child begins to become unauthentic at such a small age at which they are still developing, they will most likely in the future will have trouble in finding who they truly are. Many psychologists would call this learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is when an individual who has been exposed to the same trauma variously that they cannot escape that stimuli. Learned helplessness implies that since the individual does not have control of the situation, they can be forced to behave in a helpless manner in which they are compelled to give up their control. For example, Julia’s abuse began as a child and this as a result caused her to not truly live her life to the fullest. It seemed as if she chose not to have self-awareness because she had this fear that if she did she might reminisce the abuse and actually feel the abuse. Therefore, when a traumatic event occurs in our childhood our mindset has been altered in that we create this bubble in which we are afraid to let others in or let any new memories in because we are frightened that someone might pop this bubble. Moreover, as a result of this trauma we can sometimes forget how to live. We forget

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