I am not traumatised!

“My parents beat me up as a child, but I am not traumatized,” said the man whose ex-partner reported him for physical violence.

“When I was a child they left me alone, crying,  until I fell asleep. I was not allowed to go out at all,” said the man who as an adult spends long hours on social media holed up in his room and with very erratic sleep patterns.

“They punished me as a child, but I’m fine,” said the man who spends hours criticising himself harshly as a form of self-punishment every time he makes a mistake at work.

“I suffered in the name of ‘education’. As a child, I was dealt with a heavy hand because I couldn’t study well, ” said the woman who does not understand why all of her partners end up being aggressive towards her.

“When I became capricious as a child, my father locked me up in a room to teach me a lesson and today, I look back and appreciate it,” said the woman who has suffered anxiety attacks and can not explain why she is so afraid of getting stuck in small spaces.

“My parents told me they were going to leave me alone or give me away to a stranger whenever I threw a tantrum. But all of that is in the past,” said the woman who has prayed hard for love and has forgiven infidelity repeatedly so as to not feel abandoned.

“As a kid my parents could control me with just ‘the look’ and see how well I turned out,” said the woman who can not maintain eye contact with figures of authority without feeling intimidated.

“As a child, I got hit with an iron cable and today I am a good man, who is very professional,” said the man whose neighbours have filed a complaint with the police to report him for drunk-hitting objects around and yelling at his wife.

“My parents forced me to study and take up a career that would make me money, and see how well off I am,” said the man who cannot wait for Friday, because he is desperate to get out of his office and hates his work.

“When I was little, they forced me to sit down until all the food was finished and they even force-fed me if I could not finish my food. They were not like those permissive parents,” affirmed the woman who does not understand why she could not have a healthy relationship with food and in her adolescence came to develop an eating disorder.

“My mother taught me to respect her sandals to the point,” said the woman who smokes 5 cigarettes a day to control her anxiety.

“I thank my mom and my dad for every blow and every punishment I received, because, if not for that, who knows what would have happened to me,” said the man who has never been able to have a healthy relationship with his own family, and whose son constantly lies to him because he is so afraid of his father.

And so we go through life claiming to be good people, without having gone through trauma in our lives, but paradoxically, creating a society that is full of mistrust, bitterness, violence and pain.