Grappling with Personal Trauma

We have had so many traumatic interactions with others in our lifetime. We've seen ourselves through the post-trauma haze to see that the trauma-inducer is as much a victim as we have been and that we played a superior role in what happened and how we reacted.

Not many times after our most recent trauma have we seen or thought about the guy as being an evil-doer or a terrible person. We've actually found a great deal of conmpassion for the man. How awful a life it must have been to be capable of such violence on another being; what repercussions that person must have experienced from his actions on others.

Our problem is with ourselves. It is our inherent lack or momentary loss of judgement that allowed this assault to take place. Our utter frustration with grappling with post-trauma human interaction is what we're most upset about today.

We can never dictate the conditions or the results of what we do and where we are. We can only dictate how we react and how we conduct ourselves. We've been experiencing lots of internal dialogue during our personal time with others. Mostly, this dialogue is wondering when the person will snap and attack us and wondering if this person is being honest and upfront even a little bit with us.

We need to begin redirecting our internal visualizations in a less slanted way so that we once again can openly, honestly and genuinely interact with people. The key is to not get caught up in this for or against anyone attitude.

Neutral reactions are just as dangerous, as then we're not seeing people as the human beings that they indeed are, capable of both the good and the terrible. Also, treating people as if they do not matter does nothing to touch on their basic goodness that is the hallmark of all human life.

Unraveling this mess of attachment and expectation, for and against is a worthy effort. It may take all or more of our life to make the changes permanent and believable in the long-run. That's what trauma does for us; it shakes up our pre-judgements, exposes our ignorance and lack of proper discernment and humbles us. We can hurt, we do hurt and so do all beings.