What I’m increasingly noticing is that I can’t think pragmatically. Or rather, I can’t anymore!
I haven’t felt like I belong in this world for a long time. Everyone else is moving forward, doing things, making decisions, taking care of themselves, etc.
I can’t seem to get a foothold. It’s been that way for a long time.
But lately, I’ve been feeling more and more that I’m totally unable, or seem to be, to draw conclusions from the circumstances.
I suspect that the trauma has destroyed my ability to think about everyday things. It’s like collateral damage from the struggle to survive. I’m very good at abstract thinking because that’s my usual escape environment (as described by Alice Miller), but I’m becoming increasingly emotionally detached from my surroundings. This is exacerbated by my isolation from the world, which is partly self-imposed (studies, dissertation, studies) and partly involuntary (no job, no relationship). I can no longer assess situations… I’m stuck in a loop of external control: like a student going through the grades because everything is prescribed.
And as I type this, I suspect why that is—and it fits perfectly into the PTSD narrative: autonomy!
No autonomy, no independent decision-making
Because I have learned little or no autonomy due to my developmental trauma, I no longer see the environment as something I can shape. And that’s why it seems so distant and intangible or inaccessible. I don’t even know how to do it: shape my life.
I don’t even know what’s good for me because deep down I don’t really understand what that means or even how it feels.
When was the last time I did something GOOD for myself that was NOT just risk prevention or therapy?
That was when I was eleven, when I decided to play the drums and applied to art school.
Everything else that was “good”—hospital stays, therapy, etc.—was out of necessity, not desire.
And what is completely missing: long-term strategies. There is no plan, and I never had one. That’s why—scanner personality or not—I find it so difficult to make decisions. Where will they lead in the long term?
I completely lack the feeling for building something.
