but normal never really existed

PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
April 25, 2021

Why would anyone want to go back to normal? Normal accomplished nothing. Imagine if the first humans settled for "normal" they wouldn't have hunted, gotten into caves or started fires. Someone had to think that things had to change.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, around 62 miles west of what would eventually become Marrakesh, a group of people lived in a cave overlooking a lush Moroccan landscape. They rested there, building fires to keep themselves warm. They hunted there, sharpening stone tools to bring down animals. And they died there, leaving their bones behind in the dirt. At the time, there would have been nothing particularly notable about these cave-dwellers. They were yet more Homo sapiens, members of a nascent ape species that had spread across Africa. But in their death, they have become singularly important.

“The new finds indicate that Homo sapiens is much older and had already spread across all of Africa by 300,000 years ago. They really show that the African story of our species was more complex than what we used to think.”

The Atlantic

Everything we do and have in our time, exists because people were not satisfied with normal. The food we eat, stated with someone wondering what it would taste like. Had no one invented fire, then eating raw meat could have killed them off. The clothes we wear started with ancient people killing animals, eating the meat, using their bones for tools and their hides for shelter, just as they used their fur for clothing. All the became normal for a while. Then someone else thought of something else to improve what was acceptable. Changing became normal.

Mankind wouldn't have gone from using fire and living in caves, to smart homes with everything electrical operating everything to make our lives easier, had it not been for the desire to change. We wouldn't have gone from walking everywhere, to riding horses, to buggies, to automobiles, trains and planes, if they accepted what was normal.

You may have convinced yourself that normal was working for you before you survived whatever caused PTSD. When you really think about it, you realize that you kept changing things. Changed from being a dependent infant, to adult and in control over your own life. You changed from student to worker and the chances are, you had many jobs because you needed a change...or were forced to. You went from one relationship and friendship to others. It is for sure you are still not wearing the same clothes you were when you were an infant. How many times have you changed the style? How many times have you changed your hairs style? Change is normal.

When you have PTSD, it is also change. Your life changed from what was acceptable for you, to victim, to survivor within seconds. Normal may be something you convinced yourself is something you want to go back to, but normal never really existed. It was habits you felt comfortable with doing. Are you comfortable with your habits now?

The really great thing about humans is they share how to do things. They have an idea that starts with need and then they make it happen. They pass it on and then someone else has a better idea. That pass on that so that others discover their discovery. Life gets easier for everyone until that becomes normal for a while and then, change comes again.

Even you can change again by learning from those who were not satisfied with what everyone else thought was impossible to change. People have been suffering traumatic events since the beginning of time and they paid the price after they survived it. It took someone talk about it and someone else to wonder why, before someone else discovered how to make life better. Now we know that wanting to go back to "normal" is a waste of time. It is far better to want to have a better than normal life.

Mankind's earliest literature tells us that a significant proportion of military casualties are psychological, and that witnessing death can leave chronic psychological symptoms. As we are reminded in Deuteronomy 20:1-9, military leaders have long been aware that many soldiers must be removed from the frontline because of nervous breakdown, which is often contagious: When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou... the officers shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart. (King Jame's Version ) PubMed Center

That is when the journey from before trauma to after it was documented. Research has been going on for far too long to ignore how dissatisfied people were with accepting it as normal to them. If it is not acceptable to you, then discover as much as you can, then think about how to change it again. How can you change your life, so you can pass it on to others? If you already did, then how did you do it? Everything that started throughout the history of man, has been shared and change, "change is gonna come" again.

Today the featured video is Sam Cooke, Change Is Gonna Come.

Remember, it is your life...get in and drive it!

#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD

A Change Is Gonna Come

Sam Cooke

I was born by the river, in a little tent

Oh, and just like the river

I've been running ever since

It's been a long

A long time coming

But I know a change gonna come

Oh, yes it will

It's been too hard living

But I'm afraid to die

'Cause I don't know what's up there

Beyond the sky

It's been a long

A long time coming

But I know a change gonna come

Oh, yes it will

I go to the movie

And I go downtown

Somebody keep telling me

Don't hang around

It's been a long

A long time coming

But I know, a change gonna come

Oh, yes it will

Then I go to my brother

And I say, brother, help me please

But he winds up, knockin' me

Back down on my knees

Oh, there been times that I thought

I couldn't last for long

But now I think I'm able, to carry on

It's been a long

A long time coming

But I know a change gonna come

Oh, yes it will

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Sam Cooke