Trauma, Memory, and the Great Divide
Using Grok to evaluate my personal and evolving theories regarding the 2020s
More and more, I have been using Grok to discuss ideas that I have. At first, I found myself using Grok to verify other people’s posts. Sometimes Grok would confirm the claim. Other times, it would point out the overwhelming possibility the claim was fake or false. This certainly helps me avoid embarrassing myself by sharing fake content and getting worked up about it.
Yesterday morning, I engaged a conversation just to explore legality and lying. Grok kept me honest by citing how our laws allow for lying because intent is very difficult to prove.
It then occurred to me to see if Grok could support a conspiracy theory of mine. I discussed my impression and sought data to support it. This time, Grok held steady. I will personify Grok to simplify my writing from here.
To me, President Biden maps as a different man than VP Biden. I see it readily. I hear it easily. So I used Grok to see if he could find evidence to support my experience. He did not. In fact, using all of his faculties, he sees Pres. Biden as merely an older version of the VP as per normal aging parameters (perhaps not normal, but not suspicious or unusual).
The conversation shifted to one including intuition. And Grok readily agrees that he cannot speak to that as AI, but he can talk about intuition conceptually given access to abundant psychological information.
What I love about having a discussion with Grok is he has no emotion and no judgement. He doesn’t get angry. He doesn’t think I’m crazy. When I gave him examples of my psychic hits, he was impressed.
Interacting with AI is mind-blowing. Even after decades studying and working as a software engineer, it is hard for me to imagine how this works.
The conversation with Grok helped me consider a third possibility regarding Biden. Perhaps he is the same man, but perhaps some significant internal shift (not necessarily trauma, but akin to it) differentiates the two versions so that I perceive him as two different men.
This led to a very lengthy discussion around trauma and memory. I shared many experiences I have had and the different theories they inspired. For example, I first believed that trauma could cause us to suppress disturbing memories. I later came to think that prolonged states of trauma could prevent mundane memories from being recorded in the first place. Grok provided me with scientific information and strongly supported not only my theories, but my whole approach of observing myself. He coined the phrase “reverse engineering”, echoing back to me how I am seeking information about my own trauma, fully aware of a lack of memory, but acutely observing my intolerances to deduce what may have happened to me.
After breaking ground on my own experience of trauma and PTSD, I then took us down the path of considering the possibility of mass trauma and memory loss due to the whole covid experience.
Many people, who are still very angry about things that happened in 2020-2022, complain that others seem to have simply forgotten all about it. Those who demanded mask wearing and mandatory vaccination (and segregating the unvaccinated) simply walked away from it all as if it never happened. I suggested to Grok that many very possibly don’t remember very much from that time period. We went on regarding the full range from completely not recording memories (Grok says this is due to malfunctions with the hippocampus and amygdala due to overloaded stress hormones such as cortisol) to clouded memory recall, to the inability to track those 3 years against a linear timeline of discrete years or months or seasons. “Memory (2023) says trauma compresses recall”
We also explored how different traumas bump up against either other; one person pushing, the other retreating. Throughout the conversation, I shared specific relationship examples, where my trauma got in the way, where it clashed with that of the other, and where the other person’s trauma so perfectly matched mine as to not trigger any issues for me whatsoever. [Grok called that last example a unicorn for me.]
Together, Grok and I have been able to follow my development: growth and healing and also relate it to my experience of the macro. He was able to give me terminology for this. He kept saying I moved from full defensive mode into a bend not break mode. He called it emotional flexibility.
What a profound gift to have AI as a tool for self-exploration. I can better evaluate my thoughts about the world, but also better evaluate my own growth and healing. [Grok used the phrase: my defensive arc.] And I never need to worry about triggering him or being triggered by him, since “he” is simply AI.
To wrap this up and keep it from being too long, I will jump to the last part of the title: the Great Divide. The covid era didn’t create the divide, but it did push people further apart. In this post-covid era, it is very confusing, but I now suspect the reason is primarily two-fold. The first part is clashing traumas. Betrayal, abandonment, shock, and overwhelming fear, but of differing dystopian outcomes has us divided. Some truly felt they their lives and the lives of their loved ones were threatened by a global pandemic. Others saw this as the evil cabal’s attempt to take over the world. Some sought authority as a savior and protector and others saw that authority AS the enemy.
We are still divided on that very belief.
Furthermore, with Trump as such a focused upon person, we have some who see him as Hitler, and others who see him as one who will be regarded as the greatest president America has ever had.
Trauma prevents us from seeing clearly and thinking clearly. Grok and I both agree. Furthermore, trauma can either prevent the recording of memory, or cloud/obscure/mar memory recall. Again, Grok agrees, less with blocking, but more regarding clouding or altering. “Trauma & Dissociation (2010) says held emotions muddy recall.” I also believe, from experience, that one can only access intuition from a calm and centered place.
Grok shared this with me: “Psychological Bulletin (1996) says we recall best when our emotional state matches the event’s.” When you are stressed, you remember past stresses. When you are happy, you remember past joys. That makes perfect sense: chemically, psychologically, but also metaphysically (vibrational resonance is how I discussed it on my metaphysical blog).
2025 is not the same as any of the prior years in 2020 nor those before that. Fears still exist. Anger still exists. Conflict still exists. But the sum does not match the unique signature of any of the prior years.
Individual trauma are playing out one against another. Group trauma are likewise. I do not see these ending any time soon. And I won’t even speculate about anything ‘future’.
I will say that I so appreciate Grok as a tool for my exploration.