Those Who Remember History Are Doomed To Relive It

George Takei's book title is a little like this. This happened a long time ago, and it is best not to forget it. But to force yourself to recall yourself as a victim is not, in my mind, a smart thing

The greatest mistake people who know the line

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

is that they take the wrong lesson from it and obsess over their history, constantly thinking about the harm that was done to their ancestors or to them. Often the harm is real and substantial, but that doesn't change the fact that continued harm is primarily from themselves.

In some sense, I have had many events that others would describe as traumatic happen to me:

• I have broken many bones flying off my motorcycle
• I have been in a home invasion where they threatened my girlfriend with harm
• I've been mugged
• I've been sexually assaulted many times as a child on the bus in Chennai

But these events are things that happened to me, that I carry some physical marks of, but which don't cause me any distress when I recall them. They just are things.

It was interesting to me when I discovered that many people experience traumatic events and nonetheless do not develop PTSD.

The trauma of this sort most likely to be associated with PTSD among men and women alike was rape. Sixty-five percent of men and 45.9% of women who reported this as their most upsetting trauma developed PTSD. Other most upsetting listed traumas associated with a high probability of PTSD included combat exposure, childhood neglect, and childhood physical abuse among men (with probabilities of developing PTSD of 38.8%, 23.9%, and 22.3%, respectively) and sexual molestation, physical attack, being threatened with a weapon, and childhood physical abuse among women (with probabilities of developing PTSD of 26.5%, 21.3%, 32.6%, and 48.5%, respectively)

Now, perhaps it is the case that I simply have not experienced sufficiently harmful trauma. Things have happened to me but they're not severe. And that's perhaps why when I recall these events, I can describe them as mere happenings, not a life-changing moment (except the motorcycle thing, since it ended with me marrying Julie).

But if I insist on dwelling on these things, forcing myself to repeatedly think of nothing else, I can get myself upset about them. Which makes me suspect that this is a crucial part of the thing.

Those Who Remember History Are Doomed To Relive It. Forgetting the related emotions etc. is a key function in the entire thing of getting past it.