For so many of the people that I have worked with, there is a point (sometimes many points) where the understanding that they have of the world and the people in it shifts.
I specialise in trauma, and so when I think of this I tend to think of the way that a traumatic experience can cause a fragmentation of ourselves. Our way of relating to ourselves, others and the world. Our way of making sense of things, what meaning and understanding we bring to our experiences. And how we interpret others’ behaviour and others’ experiences too. It’s not just a shift, it is a fragmentation1 where we have to cut off parts of ourselves and our experience from our conscious awareness in order to keep going. Sometimes we are then able to rebuild, pulling together these disparate parts, beliefs, experiences into a new, integrated way of being.
I’ve had a lot of conversations this week (the first week of Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month) about how hard it can be to access support and understanding. Across a number of different areas - how hard it is to access a diagnostic assessment in the UK for different neurodivergences (not just autism but dyslexia, dyspraxia and so on). How hard it is to access post-diagnostic support. But also how invalidating it can then be to have a diagnosis/identification questioned, challenged or undermined directly by individuals, or less directly by current messaging that the growth in diagnoses is not due to increased awareness, but because it’s trendy. Or that it’s a misdiagnosis. Or whatever, it doesn’t matter. The main message is ‘hey you thought you had some answers but I’m still going to question your reality just because it is different to mine’.
It made me think about how we hold on to ideas, how readily we let go of them to embrace new understandings (or not), how difficult this can feel (or not). Sometimes this can be a gentle questioning, sometimes a total fragmentation when your entire world view is threatened. And sometimes an opportunity to rebuild, but that doesn’t happen for everyone. You need safety (physical and psychological) in order to do that.
I wonder if it is easier to embrace new understandings when we have been through fragmentation(s) before.
If we have the security of thinking that our world-view is correct, and nothing that we have come across has challenged it enough to change it, then it becomes armoured doesn’t it? It’s solid. Reinforced. Maybe inflexible, which can be a different response to difficult situations - holding a belief or idea firmly in spite of challenges. Maybe when we have had a solid world-view that worked for us (let’s say, that support is available to people as long as they ask for it, and that support will be helpful), and people start to challenge or question it, we assume they are wrong rather than our belief might need to be updated.
We talk about the difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. Those who have enough wealth and financial stability to feel a sense of security.
I wonder if, when it comes to our psychological health, one of the key differences between people is those who have been helped, and those who have not. The helped, and the helped-not.
For some people, they have never experienced support. They grow up with early trauma, developmental trauma, no expectation that other people and the world will be there for them. They fragment and rebuild early on, and perhaps multiple times over a lifetime.
For others, there is a shock where help is anticipated and it doesn’t come (or even, when they are shamed for seeking help). Maybe that’s an objective trauma that leaves them questioning their faith in the way the world works. Maybe that’s repeated experiences that shifts their world-view.
And there are other people who never question it. People who haven’t experienced the feeling of needing something and it not being delivered. Those who anticipate that someone or something will be there to hold them up when they need to be supported, and who are right every time. Maybe not always the person they expect but someone catches them - they don’t fall to the ground and break.
If you are someone who has been helped, it can be impossible to imagine what it feels like not to have had that. So you can attribute others’ ways of viewing the world as flawed.
If you are someone who has not been helped, it can be impossible to imagine what it feels like to have had that. But, because… so many reasons… you attribute your way of viewing the world as flawed. If it’s available for others, why not for you?
But maybe the helped and the helped-not exist in different worlds. If you have never fragmented, perhaps the world appears clear and unblemished. Once you have fragmented, even if you have rebuilt, you will always see the world through a prism.
Maybe a kaleidoscope.
This is not my idea, this is based on Janina Fisher’s brilliant work