The antidote to trauma is play.

Oh my gosh, life can be traumatic! From the moment you are rudely slapped on the back to take your first breath, through the countless unjust actions you or the world inflict on your soul, all just to shuffle off this mortal coil to whatever awaits next, trauma is consistent. If that bleak sentence hasn't triggered an existential crisis, you're in for an awakening.

Where does trauma come from?

Trauma originates from experiences or events that are deeply distressing or disturbing. It exists on a sliding scale, as people respond to and recover from trauma at different rates.

The hallmarks of each person's individual experiences are that they felt overwhelmed and unable to cope, causing a significant impact on their mental and emotional well-being. We bucket them up into core groups:

- Acute Trauma: This results from a single, specific event, such as an accident, natural disaster, physical attack, or the sudden loss of a loved one, be that death, divorce, or separation, even a shock job loss fits this model.

- Chronic Trauma: This stems from repeated and prolonged exposure to highly stressful events, such as long-term abuse (physical, psychological, emotional, or sexual), living in a war zone, or being in a career that manifests high stress for the individual.

- Complex Trauma: This occurs when an individual is exposed to multiple traumatic events, often of an invasive, interpersonal nature, such as in parenting, familial, or intimate relationships. This type of trauma is frequently found in cases of child abuse or long-term domestic abuse (physical, psychological, emotional, or sexual). Evidence of C-PTSD in children’s formative years can create dramatically malformed behavioral patterns that impact a huge array of behaviors and disorders we see in later life. For example, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is made, not genetic. Equally, people with low self-esteem or people-pleasing tendencies can be equally damaging traits, developed as early coping mechanisms when the young brain learned to avoid pain and fear or gain peace, love, and attention.

Sadly, most of us will get caught by one of these at some point. Worse still we are both the hero and villain, the abused, becomes the abuser and the cycle continues, without an intervention, self awareness and help.

As mentioned above, our trauma leaves scars in psychological patterns etched into our minds that influence future interactions, often lurking unseen until the least desirable moment for them to rise up from the depths of our unconsciousness and savage our lives. Without addressing these monsters of the deep, we carry their impact physically in our bodies through stress-related illnesses, addictions, and unhealthy behavior patterns.

To top it all off, you are wired not to be happy.

Joy and suffering may well come in equal measure, but our brains are wired to react to pain and fear more in the moment and then to remember the good bits later.

Past traumatic experiences subconsciously litter our future decision-making, preventing us from encountering the same pain again. But there is a difference between learning from the trauma of not touching a hot kettle and fearing leaving a job that's not working out or not going on a date for fear of rejection. This can cause all sorts of behaviors that can hamper our happiness, and the issue is that the majority of the patterns we use are flawed. They depend on an incomplete picture of the past, and then our brains project them onto an unknown concern in the future. This flawed bias is a human condition, unique to us all!

How we choose to understand, interpret, and respond to those traumatic events of the past shapes our daily well-being. It requires a bit of Jedi mind trickery to find enough inner peace to listen and respond to what we're really thinking, understand what's causing that thought, and then recognize the root cause driving anxiety, fear, or the fight-or-flight response. If you take the time to think, you can respond, not react, and your response could be: "You know what, I'm just tired, I need a snack and a nap!" Then you'll find your decision-making will be quite different, certainly clearer.

Another important aspect to understand is that our brain does not retain the truth, only our perspective. There is often no right decision, as we exert limited control over anything beyond our thoughts and biases. (Now that's a line that should worry the Freudians among you!)

Granted, the typical differential in happiness is the difference between expectation and reality. If a spouse asks the question "I look beautiful, don't I?" saying "No," while likely untrue anyway, is distastefully tactless and likely to be life-threatening! But the expectation of the question was a reassuring answer, e.g., "You've never looked more beautiful." Anything off the mark will likely result in an unhappy outcome, potentially for everyone!

Want to be happy? It's the plain yogurt experiment.

This example ties in with the concept of expectation effects, a well-studied area in psychology. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate, and his colleagues have conducted extensive research on how our expectations influence our experiences and perceptions. Their work highlights how our emotional responses are often shaped by the gap between what we expect and what we actually experience.

The exercise was to ask students to taste-test a plain yogurt and give it a score. Simple enough, but really it was a psychological experiment where there was no plain yogurt, only vanilla yogurt.

As the tests proceeded, the unwitting student guinea-pigs took their first mouthful of yogurt and gave a surprised and delighted "Oh, that's lovely! That's vanilla!"

I recall the majority of the test results showed a marked increase in happiness from something as simple as expecting plain yogurt and getting vanilla.

We derive the same from getting a surprise gift, or a sunny afternoon when it was supposed to rain, or bumping into a friend unexpectedly. We also get the inverse effect. I have given out bonuses to people who were then very upset after getting thousands of dollars, (rightly or wrongly) they expected more.

See, the gap is Expectation vs. Reality or Naivety vs. Experience. Entitlement vs. Humility. The result is how happy you choose to be as a result.

Sustained happiness is found in play.

Whilst eating lots of yogurt might be nice there is a fun alternative that you used to spend years of your life doing and have forgotten.

The role play provides to encourage learning, socializing, exercise, and positive neurochemical reactions shouldn't be underestimated. "Work hard, play hard" is pretty good advice, but as life takes over, we forget those early lessons of play in adult life.

When we played as children, we enjoyed carefree time with friends, we had little responsibility in the moment, and the hours whizzed by. As adults, the endless stream of distractions and heady responsibilities weigh us down, so the moments where we can just run with the wild ones are missed and are as necessary as our mindfulness apps reminding us to breathe.

If you want to live a happier life, then play more. Be with real friends, crack silly jokes that make you laugh until your cheeks hurt. Dance badly, especially in the rain. Frankly, do anything badly as long as you are enjoying it. Play isn't about winning; it is about taking part. The same can be said for life.

Now you have permission to go enjoy some playtime!

About the author: Malcolm Wild is a technologist with over 25 years experience in retail and ecommerce, combined with consulting and delivery experience across APAC, EMEA and USA. He brings this historical experience to clients in an ever evolving landscape.?Any views represented here are those of the author and not necessarily those of any organization or employer that he may represent. www.malcolmwild.com 2024 (c).