This was written over four years ago, but it still runs deep. I saved this for the last part of Understanding Begins with Me, before switching to Change Begins with Me. Sometimes life seems chaotic or sporadic. This could be a possible reason.
Fragmented Souls
What do I mean by fragmented souls? Such a complicated term, fragmentation. Though it’s something we associate with a computer or some technical issue, it seems plain and easy. Everything’s scattered and needs to be gathered into one area. Simple enough, at least in the terms of technical, but that’s the fourth definition.
What about the second definition? What if it can be applied to people as well? Is it then that easy to spot and fix? Will a simple diagnosis of fragmentation be enough to set in motion the treatment or cure? No. It isn’t as simple as we think. People are more complicated than computers, much more.
How It Works: Fragmented Complications
We may have a similar design to computers, in relation to the organization of our brain, problem-solving, reasoning, and other cognitive functions, but we are also different. We possess feelings and emotions, the ability to live and relive these aspects with memories stored in our brains.
Good memories bring about good emotions. When was the last time you thought of a memory that left you feeling happy, excited, enthusiastic, and positive? A good memory arouses those emotions through our brain. The opposite is also true. A bad memory (fragmented) also brings with it negative emotions, whether they are fear, anger, hatred, irritation, sorrow, regret, etc.
Each of us is designed with this capability. We all have the power to recall memories and the emotion that comes with them. That’s easy enough to understand, but there are also complications involved. Not only do we have the power to recall a memory at will, but they also come forward when we least expect it.
Automatic Memory Recall
Case in point. A beautifully clear and summery day. The sun shines and it’s safe to go outside and enjoy the fresh air from your own backyard. You lean back into a lawn chair and close your eyes. The heat from the sun rays warm your face and you slowly drift off to sleep, thinking about the beach. The soft breeze reminds you of the wind and the waves. The warm sunshine lazily arouses thoughts of sand between your toes. You even hear children playing in the background. Yes, the days of sand castles and water fights. Floating in and out of sleep, you savor the moments.
You jolt right out of your sleepy moments with the sounds of an angry parent. Some kid did something really wrong and that parent is letting loose on all sorts of angry correction. Immediately you recall the times your parent (mother or father) got incredibly angry with you over something you didn’t mean to happen. It was an accident! Yet they punished you and quite harshly. You remember the resentment, the bitterness (fragmented), the inner anger you felt but didn’t dare show. And you remember being scared. You were being punished. It wasn’t fair in your eyes. What you did was an accident; you didn’t mean to wreck it.
As you hear the continuous shouting, the faraway parent within you instantly comes close and the emotions rise up instantly. You tear out of the lawn chair and storm back inside with some hope that the walls will deafen the unpleasant outdoor sounds. They do, but they don’t quell the inner pain you feel and it takes hours, or maybe even days, for that to settle.
Fragmented Filing
And that is simply one memory in time. Now let’s factor in all your memories. Can you imagine the constant chaos that roars inside you from the reminders that reside outside of you? Sometimes it the reminder is an item, a thing that you see and it sparks remembrance of the past. Sometimes it’s a sound. This is common with war veterans when they hear intense loud noises, like firecrackers, triggering PTSD in an instant.
Not only do all the memories flood back in vivid recollection, but so do all the emotions at that time. This can be overwhelming, not just for us, as the individual, but for the body as well, because the body cannot discern when it is real and when it is just a memory.
Fragmented filing occurs when the event happened, leaving you feeling negativity (negative feelings) without closure. There is no way to rectify the situation. As children, living in stressful environments, we learn to handle these unpleasant events in unhealthy ways. We either bury them and deny their existence. Or we cope with an escape. Some of us turn the situation around and use it for our benefit (or so we think it is at the time). We learn to adjust and survive, adapting to our environments and even unconsciously adopting the habits of those that inflict the pain (physical, emotional, verbal, etc.) upon us.
Filing The Fragments
As we grow and develop and mature from children into teenagers, the emotions behind the memories seem to magnify.
For those of us who decided to bury and forget, the suppression becomes a way of life as we face supposedly unpleasant experiences. We choose to deny what appears before us and others. We simply cannot accept the situation because that would mean that we would have to accept all situations, something unbearable for us to handle.
For those of us who have decided to cope with an escape, we find many opportunities for that. Some of us will dive headfirst into deadly options, most of us will choose the route of socially acceptable escapes, and some of us will decide to retreat into our own worlds.
For those of us who learned to survive by taking advantage of the situation will continue to develop those skills either in a positive or negative direction. We will dive into our school work, sports, extra-curricular activities, thriving on our outside environment.
We have either learned how to cope, escape, or deal with our unpleasant memories, adding more memories to the files each day we live. On a subconscious level, we have also acquired the characteristics of those who have hurt us and begin to inflict others that we deem worthy to receive such treatment. Whether or not we are aware of this, we apply it and accept it as part of us. We may hate the parent, but we are becoming just like him/her.
Future Fanfare
Adulthood is here and for those of us capable and able, we physically leave our disruptive home environment and seek a better life in the world. What most of us are unaware of is the unsettling fact that we carry the disruptive environment within us. As the years have unfolded, the fragmentation continued without fail.
Do you see it? You, the adult, are the leader of a long line. Behind you, is yourself at many different ages. Each age is representation of the fragmentation within you. Any type of event or moment that has deeply pained or hurt you, in order to cope, you fragment to separate from that memory. There may be only 150 fragments in your imaginary line of you, or there may be 15,000 fragments. It depends on what happened and how you faced it or dealt with it. While those with only 150 have a better chance at dealing with their fragments than those with 15,000, when the moment of memory recall arises unexpectedly, both are faced with the same problem of dealing with their past in a present moment.
Putting It All Together
Understanding goes a lot deeper than most of us realize. This isn’t about a quick-fix or short-cut, but as we learn about how we (or others) function, it deepens our capacity to comprehend how we can understand others.
It seems like life can get quite complex and overwhelming, but taking this at your own pace and implementing it in your own life is the best step forward. As we learn to understand ourselves (and accept our own idiocriases), we also learn to be merciful and gracious.
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