THE UNSOLVABLE PUZZLE

A great cause of anxiety is early trauma.

When something bad happens and we are unable to process it fully then it sits there as that puzzle that can’t be solved.

We can’t work out what we did to cause this (due to the underserved and unpredictable nature of the incident and the fact we were often too young to have a hope of understanding it) and as a result we can’t work out how to stay safe from it in the future.

However, if all our mind is doing is holding onto that trauma, and inevitably revisiting it in the attempt to resolve it, then we might look on this as a thankless task.

If this puzzle will never be solved, perhaps we should stop trying to solve it.

Perhaps it’s time to allow that part of our mind to file this away under ‘that doesn’t make sense’.
Because when something doesn’t make sense...that’s okay.
Not all things in life are meant to make sense and not all puzzles need to be solved.

When we find ourselves struggling to move on from trauma, think of it less as a fait accompli, less of a foregone conclusion that we will always be damaged by this and more as a part of your mind that mistakenly feels the need to revisit or take blame for it.

Yes, if we believe we caused this or at least didn’t do enough to stop it then we can potentially have some say in whether the mistake is repeated.

But that’s not what happened.

We didn’t cause the trauma and couldn’t at the time protect ourself from it. That doesn’t mean we need to fear it in the future.

We just need to file that experience away as one of those unfortunate yet all too common examples of the unsolvable puzzle.
One that we know will never make sense, and thus one we can stop revisiting.