One of the biggest pitfalls of psychiatry and self-help books is that they largely depend on you being able to accurately and objectively make sense of your experiences.

However, many mental health problems stem from difficulties during childhood, which we may have difficulty remembering accurately for a whole host of reasons.

In those formative years, we form core beliefs that – unless challenged – hold significant sway over our thought process, behaviours and outcomes. This is why so many mental health problems are rooted in our early life experiences, particularly unresolved trauma.

What Is Psychological Trauma?

Psychological trauma is a response to a deeply distressing event that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. It can make someone feel helpless, unsafe and disconnected from their usual emotions and experiences. Common causes include abuse, neglect, accidents, war, alienation, natural disasters and significant losses.

As a survival mechanism, our brains may repress, suppress or alter the objective reality of our experiences (cognitive dissonance) for the sake of our psychological and emotional survival. Adults may go into a state of denial in response to a traumatic event, but some children go into denial and create delusional narratives as coping mechanisms that persist into adulthood – they can last an entire lifetime.

The Trauma We All Forget

Our brains are often not yet well enough developed during childhood and adolescence to make sense of the situations we are subjected to, particularly the troubling ones. When we aren’t psychologically or emotionally equipped to deal with situations that make us feel frightened and helpless, our brains often create narratives in order to protect our wellbeing and sense of safety.

Moreover, as children, we often simply believe what we’re told to believe by superiors in positions of authority, such as parents and teachers. After all, we have no choice but to trust those on whom we depend for our very survival when we start out in life.

On top of validation from superiors, we instinctively seek acceptance from peers our own age. Peer groups can inflict all kinds of trauma on children. Children who fail to gain a healthy sense of belonging at home or elsewhere are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation.

If we are abused, disrespected and neglected as children, we may repress our true opinions and emotions attempting to remain in a favourable light with superiors and peers who we seek validation and acceptance from. Often, we’ll achieve this by creating narratives that the abuse, disrespect and neglect is our fault, in spite of what our emotions tell us.

When we repress emotions and create delusions about our identity and the intentions of others, we may never face our true emotions and opinions, leading to unresolved trauma and internal conflicts that can manifest themselves in a variety of mental health conditions as adults. Our brain fails to store the memory in the correct place, and while we don’t accurately remember the true perspective of the events that caused the unresolved trauma, we can experience the emotions as if the event is happening over and over again in the present moment.

Humans have an incredible ability to recover from extremely traumatic events, provided they receive emotional closure and process the memories healthily with full acceptance for the reality of their situation.

For example, a mother whose son is murdered will undoubtedly be emotionally wounded forever, even when the killer is apprehended. However, if the killer is never apprehended, the mother’s psychological equilibrium is more likely to remain imbalanced for life.

The Limits of Help if We Remain in Denial

If we are unaware of our unresolved trauma, repressed emotions and internal conflicts, psychiatrists may misdiagnose mental health conditions based on the information we provide (some studies suggest a third of patients are misdiagnosed).

After all, nobody but ourselves is capable of recalling the events of our life story as we actually perceived them as children. However, we may convey our experiences from the same perspective that we’ve held since childhood, completely unbeknownst to the fact that we’ve lived in denial for decades.

Reading personal development and books on fields such as psychology, mental health and biology is most useful if you have an accurate understanding of what applies to you and what doesn’t based on the reality of your situation rather than a persistent construction from childhood.

Many therapists can effectively help you uncover the truth of your repressed memories and emotions, but it can be a prohibitively costly process due to the difficulty in unearthing and accepting repressed emotions that were too painful to experience at the time of the event that triggered them.

A Barrier to Self-Realisation

If we are unable to accept our negative emotions during childhood because of our dependency for survival, we may retain delusional beliefs of certain people’s actions and intentions throughout life. We simply can’t bring ourselves to accept that those who were supposed to care for us may actually be ‘bad’ people, so our psychological mechanisms ensure that our true thoughts and feelings remain repressed, manifesting in health, behavioural and societal issues indefinitely.

Could our inability to process the reality of our traumatising experiences be related to the fact that we perceive ourselves and everybody else in the world to be completely autonomous?

Largely thanks to the widespread cultural interpretation of our inner monologue, we tend to view ourselves and others as in complete control over their thoughts and actions. With this perception of how a person operates, it’s easy to judge ourselves and other people based on subjective expectations. We can place blame on ourselves and others without paying attention to the broader context.

While abusive and neglectful behaviour is unacceptable, it is too often inflicted by those who have also suffered abuse and neglect through no fault of their own. Unhealthy behaviours are often attempts to mask inner pain, insecurities and internal conflicts.

The Reality of the Mind and Human Operating System

All humans are born with the same fundamental operating system – we have 11 organ systems (such as cardiovascular, digestive, muscular, endocrine, and lymphatic) made up of over 600 muscles, 206 bones and 78 to 80 organs.

We also have the same powerful brain – minor differences account for very little when it comes to the overall operating system, needs and instincts of the human being.

Because our inner monologue takes the form of a first-person perspective, we perceive it to be in control of our bodies. However, our inner monologue is actually an emergent feature of our brains – it arises from the interplay of our interconnected brain regions. According to the neuroscience, our inner monologue is more of a commentator than a commander that actually ‘catches up’ with what our entire dynamic system is doing. And it often presents us with a simplified narrative.

But why does this matter?

It matters because it highlights that our thought processes don’t arise of our own volition. How we behave as adults is almost entirely shaped by the lessons we learn as children, regardless of whether they were ‘good’ or ‘bad’. By the time we reach adulthood, the information received by our brains during our formative years bears significant weight on how our entire system operates and behaves. Our inner monologue reflects what our system believes to be in the best interests of our survival based on our preexisting beliefs, knowledge, internal states and external stimuli.

You can learn more our operating system by reading our article on why people do bad things.

Dealing with internal conflicts and unresolved trauma is a process that can take time, but every step of it is rewarding and worthwhile.

What to Do Next?

If we could better perceive the illusions of our sense of self and autonomy, the limits of human control, and how we actually operate as living organisms, could we better accept the traumatising reality of our experiences without resentment, judgement and helplessness?

Instead of hiding from dealing with inner pain, we can intelligently and objectively understand that while the treatment we received appeared to be a needless personal attack from a loved one and was certainly undeserved, their foul treatment was almost certainly the result of their own unresolved inner pain and undeserved suffering from childhood.

Our book on Monothology peels back the layers of our reality, humanity, and how we really operate to help you take a more objective look at your life and others free of judgement or subjectivity. It also deepens your appreciation for our shared existence and the bigger picture using mind-blowing scientific concepts presented in adventure format, with plenty of analogies and thought experiments to open your mind.

While Monothology is more of a science-based philosophy than a self-help book per se, it will give you the perspective shifts you need to start your healing journey and begin being honest with yourself. However, you may need help from a friend, a loved one or a therapist to work through the emotions that could arise as you reflect on your experiences through a more objective lens.

Healing from psychological trauma takes time, but it often begins with an increase in self-awareness and a change in perception. While the recovery process can be very painful at times, the trajectory of the improvement in your bassline happiness makes the entire process extremely fulfilling, no matter how long it takes.

Long timelines and the apparent difficulty of change often prevent people from making a real attempt, but neither of those factors are nearly as daunting as they’re often made out to be when you become gradually and very noticeably increasingly content along the way.

Monothology aims to provide you with those changes in perception without the need to rely on abstract spirituality. It is not a book to solve all your problems, promote what can be insensible positive thinking approaches, or tell you how to live your life. But it will open and bend your mind while taking you on a journey to the inner workings of humanity and our place in the universe.

Through groundbreaking and established scientific concepts rooted in the concrete rather than the abstract, Monothology will help you unlock self-awareness, embrace empathy and self-compassion, and see people for who they really are. It could transform your entire world in the space of five hours.