Yeah, absolutely, the “singled out” thing is big. I think a lot of people react this way to traumatic events… it’s different when it happens to us.
A lot of my reaction to trauma generally is this kind of split-screen emotionally dissociative thing where I am simultaneously having irrational reactions and being aware that my reactions are irrational, and neither branch seems to do much to influence the other. So I was often in a superposition of “I am the only person to ever experience this singular event and it is all very very meaningful” and “I am one of many people experiencing this all the time and it’s just a thing that happens.”
The parts of the experience I wanted to talk about varied… it was more that this was the most central aspect of my life for over two years, by a very hefty margin, so I thought about everything in terms of it. It’s a little bit like teenagers in a new relationship, or a lot of people after a bad divorce, where everything connects to that experience. Which is entirely understandable, but tedious for third parties.
I hear you about the religious family/act of God thing. My mom spent a lot of time agonizing over that. I eventually suggested to her that if she needed a narrative in which my stroke was a purposeful act, she should adopt the narrative that God sent me a recoverable-from stroke at 40 so I would start treating my hypertension and not have a fatal heart attack at 45. She decided that yes, that was a better narrative, and that was that.
Oo, that’s a new question! Cool.
Yeah, absolutely, the “singled out” thing is big. I think a lot of people react this way to traumatic events… it’s different when it happens to us.
A lot of my reaction to trauma generally is this kind of split-screen emotionally dissociative thing where I am simultaneously having irrational reactions and being aware that my reactions are irrational, and neither branch seems to do much to influence the other. So I was often in a superposition of “I am the only person to ever experience this singular event and it is all very very meaningful” and “I am one of many people experiencing this all the time and it’s just a thing that happens.”
The parts of the experience I wanted to talk about varied… it was more that this was the most central aspect of my life for over two years, by a very hefty margin, so I thought about everything in terms of it. It’s a little bit like teenagers in a new relationship, or a lot of people after a bad divorce, where everything connects to that experience. Which is entirely understandable, but tedious for third parties.
I hear you about the religious family/act of God thing. My mom spent a lot of time agonizing over that. I eventually suggested to her that if she needed a narrative in which my stroke was a purposeful act, she should adopt the narrative that God sent me a recoverable-from stroke at 40 so I would start treating my hypertension and not have a fatal heart attack at 45. She decided that yes, that was a better narrative, and that was that.