很多人在生活中承受着创伤，由于缺乏基本的安全和满足需求，我们为了应付基本的生存问题（如住房、食物、医疗等）而忽视了内心的自我。所有这些基本需求往往需要通过工作表现来换取，而工作表现又可能受到内在创伤的影响。因此，人们陷入了一个恶性循环：他们渴望内心的健康和舒适，但却缺乏实现这一目标的资源和支持。A lot about our behaviour doesn’t make sense until we can take on board a basic idea about the way we humans are built: that our biology privileges survival over self-awareness. In other words, the most important priority for members of our species is to live and to keep going, not to pause, understand and take stock.我们很多不可理喻的行为，直到我们理解了人体构造的基本原理-即我们的生理机能更倾向于保障生存而非提升自我意识-才能豁然开朗。简而言之，对于我们人类来说，最重要的事情是生存下去、不停地向前走，而不是停下脚步去思考和斟酌。Place any new human in a terrible circumstance - let’s say, in a home with a violent or alcoholic parent, or an abusive or depressed one - and it won’t, as one might imagine it could, be able to focus clearly on what has gone wrong or mourn its condition. It will simply - as we’ve ascertained it must - keep going.把任何一个新人扔进一个糟糕的环境，比如说，扔进父母暴力或者酗酒的家庭环境中，或者扔进父母是虐待狂或者抑郁的家庭环境中，这个人并不会像大家想的那样，能够清楚地意识到问题所在或者为自己的处境感到悲伤。实际上，他只能-我们发现这是人的本能-继续过日子。In order to do this, it will call upon a range of innate survival techniques. It may start to think surprisingly well of its parents, declaring them justified in their beatings, selfishness and humiliation. It might assiduously blame itself rather than sparing any pity for its own deprivations.为了在如此恶劣的环境下生存下去，他会用上一些天生的生存策略。他们可能会开始对父母抱有不寻常的好感，认为父母打他们、自私或者羞辱他们都是有原因的。他们可能会不停地自责，而不是对自己的匮乏感到同情。Let’s remember that a sense of self-compassion can be a very dangerous thing indeed when one is five years old and no one would listen even if one yelled. Or else it will ward off despair through activity: it will over-achieve at school. Or break windows. Or become obsessed with drugs or sport or politics; anything not to have to listen to the buzz inside. The benighted child can’t look back, it can’t glance down. It must simply stare ahead at the main goal: survival.让我们记住，当一个人五岁的时候，如果没人会倾听他的呼喊，就对自己的处境表示理解真的挺危险的。孩子可能会通过忙碌来逃避绝望：比如在学校里表现得特别出色，或者搞破坏，比如砸窗户，或者沉迷于药物、运动或者政治，总之就是找些事情做，不去倾听自己心里的声音。这个可怜的孩子不能回头，也不能低头，他只能盯着前方的主要目标：活下去。This priority can last for a very long time indeed. After all, a sense of external security isn’t remotely assured for most of us until we have settled in a career, built up some capital, bought a home, found a spouse, maybe had some children. By which time we might be in our 40s or 50s. Yet our excellence at survival doesn’t take away from the basic fact of our situation.这种以生存为首要任务的状态可能会持续好久。毕竟，对于大多数人来说，要等到我们有了稳定的工作，攒了点钱，买了房子，找到了伴侣，可能还有了孩子之后，才会感到稍微有点安全感。那时候我们可能都四五十岁了。但是，即便我们很擅长生存，也不能掩盖我们面临的现实问题。We have been born into a mess. We have the ingredients of madness inside us. We have been unmoored by cruelty. We are (quietly, in the recesses of our soul) close to insanity at points, the ineluctable result of too much suffering encountered too soon.我们一出生就掉进了一个烂摊子。我们每个人心里都藏着点疯狂。我们被无情的现实打击得失去了方向。在我们内心深处，有时候我们其实离疯掉不远，这都是因为我们太早遇到了太多的痛苦。But as the external world gets ever safer for us, the internal world has a chance to feel as troubled as it always has been. We may feel stranger inside at forty than at twenty - even though the causes of our disturbances lie in events far closer to the latter date than the former.但即使我们周围的世界变得越来越安全，我们内心的混乱感却可能一点都没少。可能到了四十岁，我们反而会比二十岁时感到更加迷茫，哪怕让我们心烦意乱的事情大多是最近几年发生的，而不是二十年前。Eventually, the pent up fear and sadness are liable to find a way through. We’ll start to do something odd: write long letters to strangers or crash the car or sob in public. Or develop a certainty that the government is following us. The legacy of the unkindness of which we’ve been the recipients begins to emerge.最终，积压的恐惧和悲伤总会找个出口。我们开始做一些奇怪的事情：给陌生人写长信，或者撞车，或者在公共场合哭泣。或者偏执地坚信政府在跟踪我们的想法。我们过去承受的的那些不友好的对待，它们的影响开始慢慢显露出来了。With any luck, we may soon enough wind up in a clinic - or the consulting room of an experienced therapist. And here have a chance to find out more about the sadness and loss that have been inside us since the start. We may finally feel safe enough to let out a very long scream - and meet with the love and understanding that were our due from the start.如果运气好，我们可能很快就会去诊疗室，或者找个专业的心理医生咨询。在那儿，我们得以好好探究一下那些从小就积压在心里的伤心事和失去的东西。我们可能最终会觉得安全了，可以大声喊出来，然后得到我们一直期待的关心和理解。By The School of Life译：良哥