A mindfuck that I heard of comes from a refugee who finally received some good news. He and his wife got the Dutch 5 year residency passport and were even assigned a house. Wow! But strangely enough he didn’t feel all that happy about it. Why? One of the possible reasons is that he kind of felt guilty, he felt that he didn’t deserve it. 

What he was used to for quite some heavy years was misery and insecurity. He felt that misery is what he deserved and his mind supported (and created) the idea. The brain got sculpted into a negative self image. As a result the emotional responses towards a “new and happy life” even turned out like it was some sort of mockery for him. Like telling a guy who lived on the streets for decades that you found him a house. You are so used to the misery that it feels like a sick joke. You cannot comprehend a happy life because in the mind it is simply impossible. It doesn’t know any better than misery. Misery has become a hard wired program in the brain and has created a self image, a self image that has become part of identity.

Human intellect and logical thinking — that which differentiates us from other mammals — is recent, very recent, in the evolution of man. Logic resides in a brain region called the prefrontal cortex and has the most important management, planning, and communication functions you use on a daily basis. However, when the brain has to make a choice between that which makes sense or something that comes from old emotions it usually defaults to emotion. Why? Because emotions (among others) come from the past and have built the belief system that runs your behaviour. The logic might say that this course is good for you but emotions from the past might whisper to ignore it, that you are good as the way things are because it doesn’t want you to get hurt again.

The old emotion and belief system run deeper than our relatively young prefrontal abilities. Emotions have more personality value, have more identity in them, and are more decisive. It is more part of you (it seems). So you are waiting in a camp for months doing nothing and a new idea tells you that you will go running every morning but the deeper program tells you it’s all good to stay in bed. The old doesn’t like the new.

Now taking the above into account the insecurities and fear that come from a traumatic event bring about strong emotions that will impact decision making for the future. Maybe the deep and painful emotion when you got hurt now tells you that you are not good enough for that job, not man enough for that woman or not good enough to receive help.

Emotion is always there, like an undercurrent, in your mind. You might think you are making logical and conscious decisions but the old program and its emotional undercurrent give directions, give the final decisions and ways to go. This is one of the reasons why awareness is of such importance. Awareness is like training yourself to observe your behaviour and, in time, where that behaviour comes from. From that understanding adjustments in your (emotional) thinking are nothing but a natural consequence. 

Now the story of Mirandinha whose life too is dominated by an old and emotional belief system.

When I was living in Rio de Janeiro I met a woman named Mirandinha. I met her in a favela where I was working at the time. A favela is a slum, an overall poor (and violent) place where life can be pretty tough. Mirandinha grew up in this favela and she and her children had to deal with daily physical and mental abuse from her drinking husband. He could hit her and the kids on a daily basis when he had a bad week. Drunk and violent he would terrorise the house.

At some point Mirandinha was given an opportunity to get a good job outside the favela. I was really happy for her when she told the news. It was her chance to get away from this man and this misery! But a strange thing happened. Something nobody expected to happen. Although she was offered this good job that could bring her and her kids a new future and a new life, she declined the offer. What happened was that her current belief about herself didn’t fit the new challenge. Probably her belief was fueled by strong emotions and past misery (traumatic events) telling her she probably couldn’t live up to the standard of the new job. Probably a belief told her that things were okay as they were because, at least here in the favela, she knew her way and she was familiar with the dangers.

You can’t blame Mirandinha because she was victim of a (unconscious) mindfuck. Her past grew into her identity and whispered that this new adventure is not for her. That it is too unknown and too risky. It told her that it probably wouldn’t turn out that good as it seemed. As a result she got scared of the new. The subconscious powers fueled by trauma and emotion took over and decided to stay right there in that miserable situation. A mindfuck–that monkey talk inside your head–always brings “good” and analytical reasons to justify itself. She declined and stayed who and where she was. The known, even when it sucks, is the mind telling you it’s safe. At least you know what it is, even if it is misery, because the new might be worse. And this is the case for practically anybody — with or without trauma. And the whispers are subtle, you can’t hear them on the surface: “This is who you are, don’t believe you can do any better.” The old always wins from the new and the unknown. Hence what Mirandinha needed was awareness. Awareness to reclaim herself and become the genius that also resides in her.

A Muslima teenager has always felt safe and happy at home with her family and cultural customs. But now in the new Dutch school they make fun of her. Apparently she looks different, eats differently, and talks strange. She is a “crazy Arab” and they bully her. Her young mind is very vulnerable for validation, it is struggling for acceptance, and interprets the for her traumatic events that the hijab is no good, the family and culture are not as good anymore as they once were. 

As a result her mind not only changes but also her behaviour. The new culture already gives conflict but now she becomes even more alienated and distant towards her father and mother. They have arguments, fights, and there is a lot of tension between her and her parents who don’t understand. The gap between the old and new grows. She moves on and has a personality change to fit in with the school kids which is essential at her adolescent age. 

Note of importance here is that it can be extra difficult for Muslima’s who start a new life in Europe. Overall in Europe, women rights and women’s culture have a different quality. There are different possibilities, and there is more freedom for women in general. I can imagine, and there are many cases of this, that Muslima’s are lost between cultures. They have an existing mindset based on a culture that is totally different from western culture. The mind might tell her to listen to her husband, family and more traditional muslima’s and return to the old culture that might be more submissive. But deep down she feels this new energy, this new life with more freedom. She already tasted it and she wants more. Her husband might choose to go diametrically the other direction, especially if she integrates faster and speaks the language better. This situation can create conflict. Sometimes dangerous conflict. It’s a complex phenomenon and it needs understanding from all sides. It needs observation. Observation of changes, culture, old beliefs, thoughts and actions. It needs some distance from mind in action. It needs awareness.

If you feel you are not wanted, you might make yourself needed. And the resulting validation gives you your new and sweet neurochemistry. For example people that have been abandoned might start working at an orphanage. It’s a compensation for that lack of warmth and love and it provides the sweet neurochemistry of validation and belonging. Question is, does it also solve the initial problem? The answer is no. You have changed the surface. You still are abandoned and insecure. There still is that sense of lack of love in your being. 

As a refugee you might have experience in a camp as well coming across volunteers who are sort of expecting a kind of acknowledgement — a thank you. On the surface they might be helpful but when you dive just a bit deeper, just under the skin, you can see their unconscious reasons that drive their behaviour and expectations.

Now “I deserve it. It’s my own fault” works basically the same way as in the upper example. It is the same energy moving in the opposite direction and it brings self-punishment and putting yourself down. This is what the mind does, it tends to turn things upside down to compensate or to make sense of things. It creates distorted views of who you are and what the world is like. 

So the young boy grows up in a lower social class with all sorts of underlying problems and thus he bully’s the girl from the higher social class. “It’s not fair that they are rich, I resent them. They have to be punished for their snobbishness.” And thus he throws eggs on their houses. The rich are a good substitute blame. A substitute for his unworthiness because feeling less resides deep in his being. “They are rich and we are not. It’s not honest because we work hard and we are good people.”

It doesn’t matter how, but the minority complex always needs compensation and the mind always comes to help out, bringing good reasons that validate (stupid) behaviour. But our lack of worthiness cannot be solved by throwing eggs. What we need is a deeper sense of what’s going on inside of us. And the deeper we go, the more we will see we are all just as worthy as anybody else, as any saint.