Does everyone have free will? Of course I believe in the concept of free will but is it really for those of us with trauma backgrounds? If the brain is programmed at the earliest age that being “pleasant” gets the attention you need and that being sad or angry because that is how you really feel is met with anger or contempt from a creature that is 3 or more times your size, and that same type of scenario repeats itself every day for the majority of your young life, and that becomes part of the program of how you function in the world as an adult… can you really call that free will?
If you look at childhood abuse or even just popular parenting styles of the past, like sleep training, or cry it out… Doctors insisting that babies should sleep alone, even though there are many ways to sleep with them safely. Other cultures and most mammals wouldn’t even consider leaving their babies to sleep alone all night. They want to be there to protect them! Then you have things like time out, and some parents, even today, disregard the extensive research on the truth about the long term effects of spanking and corporal punishment. Intergenerational trauma considered alongside the science of how our brains are programmed really changes the idea that every one equally has free will.
So free will is kind of like a spectrum with different factors such as the mental and emotional that I was referring to here, including others such as financial (financial standing, mindset and education), education in general, as well as resources and location. For those of us with trauma programmed brains, the spectrum can feel like it’s rigged.
Speaking as a person with CPTSD or complex trauma disorder aka childhood PTSD, the first thing my brain does when getting to know someone is figure out how they are better than me. They mention an uncle owned a store that they grew up around or dad had his own business. Those are experiences that I didn’t have, and it’s not just the circumstances you lived in that affect the programming, the things that we didn’t have apply just as much.
So, now I’m just in the process of looking at where I stand on this proverbial free will spectrum and trying to figure out exactly what I can do to move myself to a higher level.