How the simplicity of survival creates the complexity of a system. How survival rewires the self.
It is time for another blog post, isn't it? I said I am moving ,ad there is a link to a new blog, but the truth is, that I have not found what I am looking for, which would mean I will have to build it myself, and I have not yet decided how simple or complex it should be. With that matter aside, here is what inspired the post, as you would see in the next few paragraphs.
disclaimer
This post is not aimed to diagnose, look, or show anything to you in relation to whether you are a system, plural, or any such other means. This is a personal experience, but also a general research and thoughts of someone who has reached to this conclusion herself, and is sharing with the universe, as a hobby, and as a way to put thoughts into some form of writing, albeit scattered.
Survival
All of us are born with some sense of a purpose, be it living this life, helping out, or pursuing a dream that strongly resonates with us.
Before we survive though, we must ask ourselves the very important question, of how do people actually survive, and what does life throw at them that so many experiences are similar, yet different.
The answer is in the fact that even if two humans had the same experience, both humans could live through that experience differently. For example, if two children – child A and B were left at a boarding school, because there was no other choice, one child, child A, who has had a strong foundation, a good support system, environment, could see it as a possibility, and their family and home environments might have been peaceful from the get-go.
The other child, child B, however, might have had a non-supportive environment, cracked foundations, might have suffered some events, or not received enough attention, might have seen the experience completely differently from how child A saw it. Their home environment and life up to school might have already been filled with turbulent happenings, and things that simply had no explanation to their little, developing and innocent minds. And not because they would not have understood it, but because they simply were not told, or explained what was happening around them. Curiosity cannot be the only drive that makes a child grow, and develop. And here I am not saying it matters the child and whether they have a disability. No, it maters because the child is a child, a developing personality, with countless possibilities and potential, and even if parents do not get it all right all the time, the child should not be neglected, or left to their own devices without explanation, especially if isolation plays a key because of some other circumstance.
Let me tell you, now, that what I remember from my own childhood, was a lot of isolation. Isolation was so ingrained in me, so palpable, that it took me years to change it. The happenings in my own life, however, were also in a sense random, and in a sense not. Though many were not explained. And there are many children like that. Maybe some of us are not strong enough, or have not developed the sense to ask a support system to help us, like a few adults, and hece, the next thing for us to ty and understand.
Why complexity, systems?
To answer the vagueness above, I would have to say that the development of a child in their first years of life, at least until their teen years, is very important. If a traumatic event happens in a developing child's life, then the event must be processed, in order for the child to slowly empty the cup of strange events of which the previous event has resulted in.
The filling cup
Why did I mention the filling cup?
Because, if you imagined a cup, with a little bit of water in it, from a daily event, or some daily stress, that is relatively okay, there is no cup that is completely empty, or perhaps, only a cup whose owner practiced a path of emptiness and detachment.
the point is, that when an event, perhaps very severe, or very chronic, complex and repetitive, causes huge amounts of stress, the cup overfills with water. The cup or the child, whose brain accidentally we turned into a huge cup of water, or, perhaps, a small cup of water since they are a child, that cup tries to store the water somewhere else, the child is detached from the existence of reality, untethered so that if the event is too stressful, and there is no escape from it, and the cup is overflowing, the child is not directly impacted. That is when the mind splits, sometimes. and here, I should give a note. Not all children could be impacted in the same way, just like my body weight distribution is different from my friend's body weight distribution, or some other mundane, and simple thing. When the event is a trap, considered as one by the brain, and is repetitive, chronic, and complex, That is when the brain creates more cups, perhaps one, perhaps two, in order for the child to survive. It is an instinct, some form of brain coping, of which even I do not know anything, and I doubt even the best scientists have figured out the brain yet. As it stands, I know we are still at the surface level of figuring out what our brain and subconscious could do for us, or influenced by us and the events around us.
Now, to go back to the processing. In order for us, even as adults to figure out life, we must process events. If I didn't analyse an event, or a decision, I would not be myself. But if it is a child, a budding of potential in this not so good, and kind of cruel world tries to process a stressful, and potentially traumatic event, then imagine what happens, using the metaphor of the cup.
Their brain protects them from being overwhelmed, with all its strength and functions possible. Sometimes, the event is processed, but only when there is support from someone who has experienced many things in life. If that support is gone, the child tries to find support in themselves, by suppressing the events, suppressing the searching of answers, because if you start searching for answers, as a child, then you wonder what is wrong, what you did, were you the reason they acted so and so. Where is the support system, and the care. Because a child relies on their parents, they are not yet developed enough to the point they could be solely independent, and then comes that other topic, of the children vs. parents, where many other issues occur, such as the betrayal of trust from child to parent, the neglect of wanting to listen to the child, yelling at a child, forcing a child to do something they do not wish to do, arguments, family fall outs and conflicts, unprocessed events, such as accidents, etc. and many, many more complex, and deeply problematic things, that I will not be covering in this post.
Examples from experience
what I mean by the neglect of listening to a child, is for example: Child and parent, sitting at a table. the child feels sad, perhaps because they would not be able to see their extended family, or some other connection and relation they hold dear. the parent has two or more options. I will only concentrate on two, but they are simply examples, and experience.
Option one. To explain to the child that it is not the end of the world to not see them for a moment, but to continue with words that would reassure the child that they would, again, be able to see those other people.
the other option, is to tell the child to not be so sad, to not be so “weak,” that there is nothing to worry about, and that they would see the others sooner or later.
This creates a sense of, “Am I really weak? Is sharing a weakness?” But there is no one to tell them that, no, sharing is not a weakness, it is what any child or human should do, in order to not be overwhelmed. By choosing option two, the parent could close the doors of sharing for the child, who would grow up suppressing their search for answers, and would think that sharing would be useless in that case, since they shouldn't be “weak.”
The other, second example I will present, is the family conflict. When a child is caught into a family conflict, their name mentioned, or they are witness of the conflict, but unable to do anything, they wonder if they have something to do with them, they would often take the blame, simply to have both sides at peace, because a child needs their parents, especially if the child is used to both of them. Such a disruption of peace, could be a sign for the child to try and grow up very fast, and if this is repetitive, and chronic, or if the child somehow, with an innocent action, added to the conflict, the sense of guilt is even more palpable, more pronounced. Yelling causes us to try and survive, silence turns into the enemy, in a sense, especially if years and years of the same had gone by.
The child learns how to be hypervigilant, and the childhood in a sense is slowly stripped away from them, and they need to grow up. In that example, the cup overflows so much so, that the child's brain is forced, in guilt, or perhaps shame, or some other feelings of fear, regret, etc. to sometimes split, to disassociated from the happenings. To disassociate is not to dissociate, not exactly, to disassociate is to disconnect more than dissociate, to not be attached. where as dissociate probably refers more to a state, than a disconnection, o this is how I see the two words at play.
and these examples are short, vague, and mostly general. Many things could be at play, from environments, through events even adults would consider traumatic and if they lived them, probably would not be unscathed either.
The point is, that the complexities in a simple, whole mind appear before it reaches its development, and the wholeness the normal person would consider the mind to be. The normal `person, or child, would be very present, very aware of their life.
However, the child, or the person who experienced events that brought great stress on them, would be partly present in their life.
So what happens to that child who will not be present into their own life completely?
They are there, but they do not have a continuous sense of identity. It is fragmented.
It is normal to ask ourselves of who we are, it is one of the greatest questions the human could probably ask themselves into a point in their life. However, if you get an answer that is you, yet intricately different and foreign from who you believe you are, or a conflicting, difference, as if you, yet not you, or completely different, in terms of identity expression, likes, dislikes, interests, etc. we have arrive at my cup metaphor. and this takes years to discover, sometimes, there is a bleed through, sometimes events which unlock everything, and it falls like an avalanche. Some people have a two of themselves, some have hundreds. I have heard some have thousands, but to be fair, I don't personally think I would have been able to live with a thousand others in my own brain, a thousand fragments who are me, yet not me, who developed into their own selves, do to the events from the past. These fragments of the self hold the memories that the child, or person, originally, or current self does not hold. The person as a self, is not aware of the other identities, states, alters, etc. there are many labels out there.
As I mentioned above, the cups are the key to understand how the simple turns complex. By overflowing the cup of events with a lot of stress, without an outlet for that stress to be vented out, the whole thing turns into a literal trap of survival, hence, the brain has options, it simply utilises the best options, and splits could happen, where the only outlet for the cup is to create more cups, to offload the events into, and with time, those events are suppressed into the back, to let the person grow up and develop in peace, without the past impeding their future and present.
The conclusion
The self, the brain, and the human in general is a complex piece of work, yet so simple when born, and the complexity slowly builds up as the child grows, and becomes an adult. If a step is skipped, an event is not realised, not processed, the brain manages to make the complexity before life gets complex for the developing human. If the cup overflows from life events, lack of support, and a terrible environment, before it has had the chance to develop, to improve its wholeness, resistance, strength, and capabilities to hold much more and thus, splits into multiple cups only to be able to hold whatever is happening, and whatever the brain deems a task of survival. It must be repetitive, chronic, complex, and inescapable, something I did mention above, though I must emphasise on at this point as well.
In some very severe, horrible cases, chronic, complex, and repetitive is completely stripped, in some sense, from some very severe events in a clinical setting for diagnosis, though, I would guess it is replaced with severe, horrible. probably, because perhaps the human psyche breaks at some point, something in the brain snaps, it needs to survive, it goes into overdrive, like a computer trying to overclock itself, it finds a way to survive, unlike a computer that could shutdown, or have many components melt. In both instances, there is a lot of lag, a lot of power draw, and a lot of unresolved things.
The end goal of this, is to make you understand how the simple becomes complex, and how the singular human self, as an identity, forms into a system, and a complexity. I divide, and name them so, because if I myself did not struggle with this, then I do not think I would be writing on this topic.
I hope the post would serve its purpose, and you would be able to understand and grasp more of what could make a person both mysterious, unpredictable, quiet, or anything that makes us human. To be complex is not abnormal, to be complex is unique. Some are quieter, some are louder, some appear no different from you or I, but some appear the opposite. This topic could always be extended on, as new things are discovered, but this is my experience, all I could gather and write, for now.
If you have any feedback, please do not hesitate to give it.
New blog at https://wintery-realm.tiddlyhost.com/ Follow me on mastodon at https://tardis.pw/@tardis/ Thank you, have a little multicoloured heart and a smile! :)