‘A man without a vision is a man without a future. And a man without a future will always return to the past.‘
This is a quote that has been going around in my social circles for years.
The neurobiology of trauma tells a different story:
Having no experience of a present means having no sense of a future because we are stuck in re-experiencing the past.
Sometimes therapists ask us to imagine ourselves in 5 years or they ask us to come up with a vision for our future and we just can’t. We don’t see it. Trying harder might not be the solution.
Maybe we need to arrive in the present first before we try to make plans for the future. What makes us return to the past is not the lack of planning or vision, it is the trauma.
And presentification creates the realization of a future.