Photo by Hartwig HKD on Flickr
Do you remember the tagline for 2016? "The worst year ever."
From the grocery store cashier to the Uber driver, everyone was saying it.
Indeed, Trump's victory prompted a special edition of the trauma Olympics, where disheartened liberals were trying to one-up one another on how much the election results had ruined their lives: "I cried for 3 days." "That's nothing. I cried for 3 months!"
In fact, among my mom's ultra-liberal friend group, one woman has still not gotten over it.
But this post isn't about Trump or Hillary or Biden or politics at all.
No, it's about the phenomenon of trauma bonding.
I'm not referring to the type of trauma bonding that can sometimes occur in dysfunctional relationships or bonding that occurs between those who have experienced a shared personal trauma such as abuse, chronic disease, divorce, war, or the death of a loved one.
The latter explains why support groups for veterans/cancer survivors/domestic violence/etc. can be so therapeutic—they offer an opportunity to heal and connect with those who can relate to your experience, whereas others may not be able to understand.
I'm referring to trauma bonding that occurs on a collective scale.
This occured in 2016 and then 2020, where more and more people proclaimed that this was the "worst year ever" and like a virus (no pun intended), this spread from a trendy thing to say to an actual egregore until millions of people actually believed that this was indeed the worst year ever.
Now, I'm not referring to those who've experienced severe personal setbacks due to the events of 2020. I'm talking about those (and let's be real, the majority of people saying this) whose personal lives haven't been majorly impacted but who are reacting to what they're seeing on the screen (yes, computer screens count).
And no matter what channel you're on, the picture is a dire one. If you're tuned into the mainstream media, the whole world is dropping dead from COVID. If you're cued into the alternative channels, everyone's dropping dead from the vax and the zombie apocalypse is just around the corner.
Then, two things start to happen. One is that your reality starts to conform to this perception until it seems like everyone is dying from either a virus or a vax. Whether this is just our view through a distorted lens or whether we are literally manifesting these events is a question for another day.
The second thing is that we begin to look for a savior. Many of you are familiar with the classic problem/reaction/solution model, with the government being presented as our savior.
But "truthers" have their own brand of savior, whether it's whistleblowers, "awakened" politicians and celebrities, or ETs who will drop some big truth bomb and suddenly the whole world will "wake up."
So let's pretend for a second that we took away the screen. It's hard to imagine because most of us have lived our whole lives mediated through this screen. But try to imagine.
Absent of anything being projected across the screen, is life really that terrible? On a collective scale. I'm not taking into account any personal hardships or tragedies you may have endured.
Compared to any other time in history, we have it pretty damn good. Our life is comfortable. It is NOT a constant struggle for survival, relatively speaking.
Yes, this constant pitting of races and genders against one another, the SJWs, the alphabet soup, etc. is getting a bit tiring. Again, though, this is only taking place on the screen.
And would you rather revert back to the way things used to be? Where your race, gender, or sexual orientation severely limited your options or could even get you killed?
Today, we DO have options.
We can choose whether we want to continue being slaves to the screen. To continue buying into the story of our own inadequacy, of how miserable life is and how we need a savior to rescue us.
Or we can take back our power and choose to live life on our terms. Then we can write our own stories about what kind of year or week or day we're having and more importantly, what we want to experience.