I'd like to propose a new theory of addiction based on a variation of PTSD. Rather than "post," substitute "pre."
Pre Traumatic Stress Syndrome is when the trauma of the past creates a fear of experiencing a similar trauma in the future. The two become mirrored relfections of each other.
In the way PostTSD leads a person to become stuck repeating a past trauma, so pre-TSD leads people to be stuck between the past and the future. There, they hide in the closet of a safe moment. Like Holden Caulfiled and Peter Pan, they do not want to grow up. So, like an abused child escaping an abusive exerpience by going to a "safe place" in their head, hiding in the intensity and beauty of the momment allows someone to avoid the giant shadow on the wall of the future that is being projected from behind them by the trauma of their past.
Addiction, for such people, is when someone repeatedly elevates the intensity of the present moment so they can more easily escape the twin terrors of a past projected onto the futre. One creates a fear of the future, and the other leads us to be angry over the past. The anger of the past is an attempt to fix the past in order to better secure some certianly of one's ability to effect the future, and thus ensure it will not be as bad as the past, or worse. In this way, both shackle a person to their present by dissociating them from an ability to connect to their future anymore than they can heal their past.
My father was poor and, as a result, addicted to his religion to a very unhealthy and overly obsessive degree. He eventually became just as addicted to a fear of the end of the word during the 1980s and 90s, as he was afraid of being homeless. And his fears infected my own. And I have been dealing with this form of pre-TSD ever since.
Pre Traumatic Stress Syndrome is when the trauma of the past creates a fear of experiencing a similar trauma in the future. The two become mirrored relfections of each other.
In the way PostTSD leads a person to become stuck repeating a past trauma, so pre-TSD leads people to be stuck between the past and the future. There, they hide in the closet of a safe moment. Like Holden Caulfiled and Peter Pan, they do not want to grow up. So, like an abused child escaping an abusive exerpience by going to a "safe place" in their head, hiding in the intensity and beauty of the momment allows someone to avoid the giant shadow on the wall of the future that is being projected from behind them by the trauma of their past.
Addiction, for such people, is when someone repeatedly elevates the intensity of the present moment so they can more easily escape the twin terrors of a past projected onto the futre. One creates a fear of the future, and the other leads us to be angry over the past. The anger of the past is an attempt to fix the past in order to better secure some certianly of one's ability to effect the future, and thus ensure it will not be as bad as the past, or worse. In this way, both shackle a person to their present by dissociating them from an ability to connect to their future anymore than they can heal their past.
My father was poor and, as a result, addicted to his religion to a very unhealthy and overly obsessive degree. He eventually became just as addicted to a fear of the end of the word during the 1980s and 90s, as he was afraid of being homeless. And his fears infected my own. And I have been dealing with this form of pre-TSD ever since.
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