How My Traumas Have So Transformed My Worldview That Many Can't Handle Me At All Anymore

The Hyperarousal of My Senses from the PTSD Extends to My Whole Way of Perceiving and Describing the World. Many "Normal" People Just Won't Tolerate It.

Photo by Visax on Unsplash

So this is something very important for our readers and contributors to understand as we continue to grow this Substack publication and next year expand into book publishing across genres. My way of perceiving the world, the resulting viewpoints about it, and the way I feel compelled to then express myself are deeply “weird,” provocative, and downright offensive to a good number of people. What I choose to write and stand for about religion, politics, culture, and ethics sometimes so enrages people that they react by refusing to even try and understand what I’m saying and they cut me out of their lives altogether. I am “controversial” and a “troublemaker.” And many people just can’t handle that when they realize this about who I am.

And while this sometimes hurts and hits me by surprise, ultimately the emotional wounds scab over again, and I simply accept it without regrets about what I’m saying and doing.

I’ve been this way since at least junior high, but many of my friends, family, and colleagues have by now noticed that this has increased exponentially since last September when I was assaulted and tortured by young, amateur police officers, resulting in intense and oftentimes debilitating PTSD symptoms which I’ve struggled to overcome for over a year now. It’s time to explain just why this is. Why did the violent trauma and fear of death change me so deeply? And how has it now made my way of seeing the world and talking about it so deeply scary and intolerable for so many people in my life?

It’s not that difficult to understand. Especially once one grasps the living reality of the primary PTSD symptom dominating my life much of the time, hyperarousal, defined well by Web MD here:

When diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, doctors typically look for three or four key symptoms. Hyperarousal is one of those key symptoms. Hyperarousal is a pervasive mood- and life-altering symptom in which you are consistently irritable, angry, and paranoid. 

Symptoms of Hyperarousal

Hyperarousal can be characterized by: 

• Pervasive jittery feelings

• Always being on the lookout for peril

• General irritability 

• Becoming angry instantaneously

• Getting startled by loud noises 

• Paranoia

• Difficulty sleeping

• Inability to concentrate or focus on one thing

What causes this range of hyperarousal symptoms? When I’m in this state — which is sometimes so intense it puts me on the floor moaning and other times mild enough that I’ve learned to write and work through it — all of my senses are way more intense. I’m seeing the details of the wall patterns and wood grain in the cabinets all at once. I’m hearing every tiny sound in the room from the refrigerator to the ticking clock. I’m tasting the bitterness of my beloved coffee so strongly that I sometimes can’t drink it. I’m feeling each ache and pain in my body to a debilitating degree, sometimes even fearing to go to the bathroom. And I’ll never forget when I first truly discovered these symptoms: the overwhelming smell of each restaurant in the food court at the giant Glendale galleria. It was so overwhelming I couldn’t even decide what to eat and walked away to continue wandering through the bustling mall.

Here’s the thing, though: this way of perceiving all the details in the world all at once at such an overwhelming degree is now how I analyze and interpret the world as a whole. All this sensory data flowing into me like it now does means that I’m now picking up on things which “normal” people miss and details most ignore. And then I’m assembling those pieces together in “weird” ways which leaves many people totally baffled or even shocked.

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Note some of the other hyperarousal symptoms above: always being on the lookout for peril, becoming angry instantly, getting startled by loud noises, paranoia. I am now hyper-aware of dangers and threats, not just at a personal level, but at the cultural level, geopolitical level, and relating to other people I may not even know. I now pick up on problems which many people would rather ignore. And then I get angry and startled that others are content to just ignore them. The difficulty sleeping comes from my mind obsessing over these problems and dangers. The suicidal ideation is fueled by the fear that the only way I can escape this mindset is to end my life - medication, talk therapy, and all the various relaxation and meditation techniques offered to me only go so far.

The world looks so much different now than it ever has before. What makes it especially hard is that now with this greater sensitivity so much disturbs me more deeply than it does most people. Stories in the news which many can just treat as a “normal news story” hit me so hard as I start to empathize with whoever is being written about and make connections and realizations about their lives.

I hadn’t made a point of following the Brittney Griner story too deeply. It was just so sad - a woman sentenced to 9 years of hard labor in a brutal Russian penal colony for possessing a substance which can legally be bought in so many states across our country. As I watched on the news about her release all I could think about was her misery being trapped and forced to work in that prison and not knowing when she would truly get out, if ever.

And then came the news about the crypto-exchange fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried being arrested in the Bahamas. And as I scrolled through Twitter I saw people celebrating and cracking jokes. I agreed with those who thought it strange that it had taken this long to arrest someone responsible for apparently billions of dollars in fraud. But then I started to think about just what sort of life “SBF” now had to consider. How many years might he spend behind bars? Or, the more chilling question many men in particular would think about as it relates to American prisons: how frequently and how brutally would SBF likely be raped in his future prison home? And what the fuck does it say about America as a nation and we Americans that we tolerate such horrific brutality in our prison system and just make jokes about it? “Don’t drop the soap!”

And then of course there’s the subject I’ve devoted so much of my time in recent years and still do today, the cause I’ve reoriented my career toward in place of conservative ideological advocacy: Zionism and fighting antisemitism at the global level. So many people can just brush off antisemitic rhetoric, trying to minimize the influence of its advocates - such as Kanye West - and the depth of its effects. But one shouldn’t need to have hyperarousal to see the reality: that every neo-Nazi loudly proclaiming racism and antisemitic ideas fuels the emotional hatred of the criminal bigots who would beat up Jews and black people on the street if they knew they could get away with it. Words translate into actions, and hateful words have been demonstrated to inspire hateful crimes.

Even the Smartest Brains Can Become Infected with Antisemitism

But people just don’t care. And I’m the weird, bad guy for bringing all this stuff up. “Kill the Messenger” is my life. Maybe I should get it scrawled across my chest as my first tattoo. I as the one seeing these problems and screeching about them too loudly am the issue, and the one to be silenced, not the problems that I’m raising.

Photo by Juan Camilo Guarin P on Unsplash

There’s a common metaphor in PTSD that I’ve come across a number of times and now started using regularly with family and friends to try and explain my often “weird” and “erratic” behavior. If you see a man running down the street in the middle of the night yelling, screaming, and trying to get attention what are people going to think? “What a jerk! This guy is disturbing our peace! He’s waking me up when I’m trying to sleep! Who does this asshole think he is making such a racket?”

And then all of a sudden you see the escaped tiger chasing him. And his actions make perfect sense, he no longer seems like some annoying crazy person. His behavior is trying to warn others of the danger around the corner and how legitimately terrified he is of what could happen.

That’s my whole life all the time. I’m perpetually seeing all the tigers chasing me and humans across the planet and I can’t ignore them.

Perhaps the common objection to all this is understandable: how do you know all that you’re perceiving is actually there and not just your own paranoia making things up? To which I counter:

1. I’m still trained in political science. It’s been my job for a long time now to try and sort out what in the political space and global geo-political world is true and what is false. Spotting bullshit is my job.

2. I’m still trained in journalism. I understand the techniques and traditions of journalistic inquiry and practice them militantly, making my living from it.

3. I’m still trained in how to research. I know the principles of scientific and social science research and remain committed to skepticism. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. My career is dependent on the research I produce being reliable.

4. I’m still trained in the Bible and believe it to be our divinely-inspired guide to life. Dealing with so many horrifying truths and emotionally-twisting stories I perpetually seek to apply the ethical principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition to countering them. I’m not just following my feelings or what’s socially fashionable. I’m trying to follow Jesus and his universalization of the principles in the Torah.

Finally, it’s important to grasp that this way of seeing the world is something I’ve had for virtually my entire life. The violence last year only intensified it. As I detailed in last week’s essay about why I despise my home state of Indiana so deeply, I’ve been experiencing less intense trauma - both violent and emotional - for a long time.

And each time I’ve experienced it, it’s truly changed me, and maybe just a little bit more like a voice crying in the wilderness, proclaiming the truths that my God of the Desert demands I speak.

So if you can’t handle this way of seeing the world and speaking it, and would rather blame me than listen to me, I will have just one last thing to say: