I absolutely despise the Law of Attraction and similar new age philosophies.

 It sells empty platitudes, toxic positivity, and magical thinking as if they are a life plan. It tells you that your thoughts control everything. It tells you that every event in your life is something you caused. That claim erases other people’s choices, systems, and chance.

The core problem is simple. You cannot disprove it. If something good happens, believers say you attracted it. If something bad happens, they say you attracted that too or you did not believe hard enough. That is circular reasoning. It is not a testable idea. It is a belief that protects itself.

This belief also blames victims. If you are harmed, you get told your belief or “vibration” brought it in. If someone ghosts you, you get told it is because you are a bad person or because your energy pushed them away. No. Someone can choose to ghost you. Someone can choose to abuse you. Their choice is on them.

LOA refuses to consider agency. It turns every event into a mirror of your thoughts. People stop asking the real questions. Why did this person act this way. What power or policy allowed this. What random bad luck hit me today. Those questions lead to solutions. LOA shuts them down.

It also denies the role of systems and probability. Wages, rents, layoffs, illness, and accidents shape lives. You can work hard and still get crushed by a market or a diagnosis. That fact does not mean you are weak. It means life is not a vision board.

The logic sounds like the harsh line you hear from some rich people. If you are poor, you did not work hard enough. If you suffer, your mindset failed you. It is the same move. Shift blame to the person who is already hurting, then sell a fix.

The “law of assumption” pushes the same thing with a new label. Believe it and it will be. Doubt and you will fail. Different name, same unfalsifiable, self-sealing loop. In practice, its communities often police doubt, shame struggle, and celebrate a few lucky breaks as proof of cosmic rules.

Why does this spread. Survivorship bias. You hear from the small slice of people who report wins. You do not hear from the many who tried, believed, and still faced the world as it is. You also see an industry built on courses, coaches, and influencers who profit when you blame yourself and buy the next step.

The harm is real. People with trauma get told their pain is their fault. People in abusive relationships get told their belief keeps them there. People with chronic illness get told to visualize harder. That pressure isolates you. It loads guilt onto suffering. It delays practical help.

Here is a better frame. You control some things. You do not control everything. That split matters.

You control your boundaries. You control who gets your time. You control the skills you build and the plans you make. You control how quickly you ask for help. You can choose evidence based tools, like basic CBT style thought checks, problem solving, and routine building. These are not cure-alls, but they are measurable and adjustable.

You do not control other people’s choices. You do not control a company’s layoffs. You do not control a drunk driver. You do not control random bad luck. When harm happens, accountability belongs to the person or system that caused it. Your mindset did not cause their behavior.

If someone pushes LOA at you during a hard time, set a line. Please do not tell me my pain is my thoughts. I want tools we can test. Then move to concrete steps. What can we do this week that improves my odds. Who can we involve. What process can we change. What policy can we escalate.

If you once found comfort in LOA, I get it. You wanted control in a chaotic world. Keep the part that helps you set goals and act. Drop the part that blames you for every bad outcome. Hope is healthy. Magical thinking that shames you is not.

I plan to create a space for critics of LOA and its spinoffs. A place to vent without being gaslit. A place to trade real tools, not slogans. If this resonates, you are welcome.

You are not a magnet for abuse or neglect. You are a person. Your life is shaped by your choices, other people’s choices, the systems we all live in, and plain chance. Hold on to that truth. It protects your dignity and directs your effort where it counts.

Recognizing Subtle Signs of Past Trauma

 

People who have endured trauma often exhibit hypervigilance, emotional numbing, and dissociative behaviors that serve as subconscious protective mechanisms. Physical manifestations like sleep disturbances, chronic pain, and heightened startle responses often accompany these psychological patterns. Interpersonal patterns such as reluctance to seek help, trust issues, dark humor, and over‑apologizing further reflect the complex adaptive strategies survivors adopt. Exposure to traumatic events is widespread, with individuals encountering various forms of adversity throughout life. While the acute impact of trauma is often visible, many survivors adopt subtle coping strategies that can obscure their distress to others. Emotional and Psychological Indicators

Hypervigilance and Startle Response

Hypervigilance involves an exaggerated awareness of potential threats, where individuals remain in a heightened state of alert even in safe environments. This persistent anxiety can manifest as constant scanning of surroundings and exaggerated startle responses to sudden noises or touches.

Emotional Numbing and Dissociation

Emotional numbing, or flat affect, is characterized by a reduced ability to experience or express emotions, often described as feeling “detached” or “empty”. Dissociation can accompany this numbing, marked by episodes of “zoning out” or feeling disconnected from oneself as a coping mechanism to avoid painful memories.

Reluctance to Seek Help and Trust Issues

Survivors of trauma frequently hesitate to seek support, fearing judgment or believing others will not understand their experiences. This hyper‑independent stance often emerges from past betrayals when offers of help were dismissed or exploited, leading to pervasive trust issues.

Cognitive and Behavioral Signs

Memory Gaps and Poor Concentration

Trauma survivors may experience dissociative amnesia, unable to recall periods around the traumatic event. Concentration difficulties and impaired decision‑making are common among those with trauma histories, often reflecting the cognitive load of intrusive memories and hyperarousal.

Physical and Somatic Signals

Sleep Disturbances

Insomnia and nightmares, including vivid replay of traumatic events, are hallmark sleep disturbances linked to PTSD and past trauma. Sleep paralysis episodes, marked by temporary inability to move or speak upon waking, can also occur, leading to heightened anxiety around bedtime.

Chronic Somatic Complaints

Somatic symptom disorder may present in trauma survivors as excessive focus on physical pain or fatigue that lacks an identifiable medical cause. Chronic headaches, muscle tension, and gastrointestinal issues such as stomachaches are frequently reported by individuals with unresolved trauma.

Social and Interpersonal Patterns

Difficulty Trusting and Accepting Help

Trust issues often stem from past relational traumas, causing survivors to question the intentions of others and hesitate to form close bonds. Offering support may be met with suspicion, as traumatized individuals fear being judged, misunderstood, or exploited.

Dark Humor and Hyper‑Independence

Dark humor serves as a coping mechanism, allowing survivors to reframe painful experiences in a socially acceptable format. Conversely, hyper‑independence drives many to avoid seeking help, preferring to manage problems alone to prevent burdening loved ones.

Over‑Apologizing and Over‑Explaining

Excessive apologies for minor issues reflect ingrained guilt and a belief that one’s actions may cause harm or inconvenience. Over‑explaining mundane behaviors demonstrates a fear of conflict and a need to preemptively justify oneself to others.

Conclusion

Recognizing these subtle signs can facilitate early intervention and support for individuals coping with past trauma. By cultivating awareness and offering compassionate resources, friends, family, and professionals can help survivors move toward healing and resilience.

 

Why I Call Myself an Agnostic Theist

 I’ve spent a lot of time reading about different religions — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even older systems like Norse mythology and ancient Egyptian beliefs. The more I learned, the more I realized they all try to explain the same big questions: Where do we come from? What happens after death? How should we live?

Each religion offers its own answers. Each has its prophets, gods, texts, rules, and paths. But they can’t all be fully right at the same time — they often contradict each other. And that’s where my perspective started to shift.

I believe there’s something greater than us — maybe one God, maybe more, or maybe something beyond how we usually define “God.” But I also believe that we, as humans, don’t really know what that is. We’ve tried to explain it in our own languages, stories, and cultures, and that’s where religions come from. They’re our best efforts to understand the unknown.

That’s why I call myself an agnostic theist. I believe, but I don’t claim to know. I leave space for uncertainty. I think it’s okay — even wise — to say “I don’t know” when faced with something as vast and mysterious as the divine.

People often bring up faith, and I respect that. But here’s something I always come back to:

If faith is required to believe something we can’t prove, how do we know which version of faith is the right one?

Every religion asks for faith. So faith alone can’t be the deciding factor. For me, faith doesn’t equal proof. It’s something people use to fill the gaps where knowledge ends — and that’s okay. But I prefer to live with the question open, rather than pretend it’s fully answered.

In the end, studying different beliefs didn’t pull me away from belief — it just made my belief more humble. I don’t reject religion, I just don’t think any one religion has a monopoly on truth. And I’m okay with that.