Digging Into The Trauma — Chapter. 2

Written by Andi Bazaar | July 1, 2022

“Your brain is an expensive machine, instead of only thinking about anxiety and depression as mental disorders we should expand that conversation to emotional health, mental training and proactive mental care.”

THERAPY ISN’T JUST FOR BROKEN PEOPLE.

As you grow life doesn't ask if you're ready for what comes next, you just need to adapt fast enough to swim when the tide hits. We develop social strategies and coping mechanisms for growing up early on, the tide of change shapes the callous hide of our emotional identity.

Many of us fail to create space in adulthood to step back and re-process our emotional identities:

• why do we think the way we do?
• why do we react the way we do?
• are the instincts we’ve developed optimal?
• are the motivations behind our instincts pure?

We don't live in silos, each of our lives has a multiplicity of touch-points. The more touch-points you have, the more time you spend learning to be presentable.

"you need space to be vulnerable or your self-image will be corrupted, mimetic desire warps our perspective."

It 's very easy to see a warning light in your car and keep driving because whatever is wrong is not making scary noises and isn't impacting your immediate driving experience, likewise we often see warning signs of sub-optimal emotional or mental output and keep driving.

"prevention is cheaper than the cure."

Stop the car, it's better to make time for checking your internal engine before something expensive breaks and you spin out of control, causing damage to yourself and those around you. You'll expend far more mental energy training yourself to navigate your handicaps than you would by sitting down and solving them.

The accountability of a trained professional is best considered as a sophisticated tool for self-assessment, development and training. Focused time for emotional development is nothing to frown at.

As good as you might be at self-diagnosing, hot-wiring or talking to a friend that knows a few things sometimes there's a lot to be gained by speaking with a trained mechanic.

Not everyone can afford therapy, there are many resources for mindfulness, meditation and self-reflection available for little-to-no cost online. They are great and may be enough. Simultaneously, consider the impact of a great coach.

Lebron James spends over $1.5m a year taking care of his body despite being a natural freak athlete and one of the most enduring sportspeople of all time, we should treat our emotional conditioning in the same way.

Ironically Lebron also partners with Calm, a mental fitness app. The more interconnected you are, the more mental stamina you'll need to cope. That's where therapy, mindfulness and meditation can help.

Introducing: Steve Oswald Freimann

I’ve wanted to kill myself every day for the past 10 years, that is not an exaggeration even on my brightest days the intrusive thought always sneaks in at least once a day but that is changing. This is an article on trauma and mental health.

6 traumatic events have shaped my life, there is one I absolutely don’t talk about. 4 people know but today I’m going to try and take away its power. Freshman year in college, I pledged a frat. Of course I was the focal point of their hazing, it was relentless.

I grew up with an abusive society, and I was the fat kid in school. I’d never known anything else, so I just expected to be treated that way.

Late in the second semester, it crossed a line. One day they stole my clothes in the shower, they printed up fliers of the photo with a message that read something to the effect of “don’t get drunk or you may go home with this guy.” then, they proceeded to post copies of the flyer across campus and hand them out at parties.

They were on light poles, on the back of the women's bathroom stalls. Eventually I had to drop out, it felt like everyone was staring at me whenever I left my room. For a month I only left my room to get food amd go to the bathroom, the school offered no support.

I’ve lived with the humiliation of what happened and quitting school, every time I’d go on a job interview I’d have to yada-yada why I dropped out of college and didn’t go back for 2 years. It keeps me from applying for jobs still to this day.

In March, I was driving across the plains of North Dakota and I thought to myself “I will never know joy in my life.” That thought didn’t make me feel any worse than I usually do, it was just a matter of fact. I’d been miserable for so long, I knew nothing else.

If you’re still with me you’re probably like “Stevie, get some help!” I tried. More than once, I had my trust betrayed by a therapist and my problems weaponized by my society. When my high school told everyone I was suicidal and nobody couldn’t believe I was sad after all they had done for me.

In a series of events I’m not going to talk about today, the college trauma ended up resurfacing this spring and it wrecked me. 12 years later, and when it comes up, I just cry and cry and it still breaks me but there is some good news.

After hitting rock bottom, I decided I would try therapy one more time. By the grace of God, I finally found someone I connected with it’s literally changed my life. For the first time in 10 years, I haven’t thought about killing myself daily and sometimes for days on end.

For me, what I have found that works is the concept of radical acceptance, I don’t nail it every day but I am finally learning how to pick and choose the things I care about and to accept that I am an imperfect being but I still didn’t deserve what happened to me.

If you’ve walked the halls of MPR these past couple of weeks you’ve heard me say “there are no good things or bad things that happen to us, only things.”

This mantra is starting to give me my life back, that is underselling it. It's giving me a real life without less pain. I've lived in that negative space for the majority of my life, I am no longer going to do that. I pray that this positivity can continue and even now I’m so conditioned to the negative that I just thought “I’ll probably find out I have cancer tomorrow.” — that is how every day of my life has been. I hope it won’t be that way anymore.

“If you’re struggling, please find a professional to talk to. Don’t give up, I had a couple of bad ones, and they set me back but when you get the right one it can be life changing.”

I would not have survived this if it hadn’t been for my family especially my dad Timothée Freimann schofield — he is the best thing that has ever happened to me, I am not sure I would be here today if he hadn’t put up with me all these years. Freimann broke through all that.

Have a great weekend everyone x

A Special Thanks To:

• Oliver Schofield (Co-wrote)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Journalist/Consulting)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• Steve Oswald Freimann (Model/Talent)