On the 8th of March, 2022, I came across an Instagram reel. Dr. Gabor Mate discussed the impact of trauma on the life of a human being.
When a child is traumatized, he said, the child find ways to cope. One way is to soothe itself; this marks the onset of addictions. Another event that marks the advent of addiction is the moment a child gets the message that it is not good enough. When this happens, for most of its life, this child tends to always want to prove its worth it.
Children who have been introduced to environments where these factors are prevalent become nice to almost everyone they meet. They fail to speak their thoughts. They bottle their emotions; even when people trespass their boundaries, they do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. They store anger, sorrow and pain inflicted on them by others .This burdens them with stress; they want people to know they are worth something, that they are good enough.
I went ahead to read the comments under this post and I realized that, like myself, there are lots of people in this group chat.
One day, a friend of mine told me that I always came off as a very nice person when I meet anyone. I gave people the platform to be themselves so much that they would end up disrespecting me. Time and time again, I let it slide.
I grew up thinking that I had to be the best; the second position was for the first loser. Being second was not good enough. Everything was seen through the lens of competition. Failure, to me, was not making it to the top. Up until a certain point in my life, I loved the competition because I almost always came out on top. At a point in my life, the speed of the race changed. I met competitors that were much stronger than I was. I tried to increase my pace, improve myself, but my legs could not carry me at their speed.
I tried to prove myself a good child, a good student, a good worker, a good person. No matter how hard I tried , I realized I was not enough for anyone. So the stress grew, because I told myself I could do better, maybe they would accept me. Stress grew to into depression.
There are some things I wish I knew during childhood: You should love you, cherish you and make you happy because you deserve it. You should know that you are enough. Humans are insatiable. On some days, you are good for some people. On other days, no body cares if you are alive.
Accept you for who you are, the world would adjust
Edited by: Ikechi Ochulo
Photo credit: Pinterest
