Lives Unlived: Stealing Back the Future After Trauma and Loss

Judith Herman observed that "the conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma" (Herman, 1992). This tension manifests in how many trauma survivors inhabit a kind of psychological superposition—simultaneously experiencing the life they have and the lives they might have had, in world and lives half-real, and half-imagined.

The will to proclaim

These alternate universes aren't idle speculation. They're vivid, persistent mental realities that shape self-understanding and recovery, reflecting both the proclamation of loss and the denial of pain. Existing in dissociative spaces of the might-have-been, in fantasy and conflict with real life, in dreams which sometimes feel more real than waking life, running in the background to have real hidden impact. (The quantum mechanics language is purely metaphorical here—this describes subjective experience, not physics.)

Consider the person who experiences significant loss in childhood. The self that emerged from that event develops along one trajectory, while an imagined alternate self—the one who never faced that loss—remains a haunting presence. It feels a bit like we imagine the "many worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics, the what-ifs of infinite possibility. This can be more overt—who might I have been if my mother hadn't become ill with cancer, and died young, when I was a child?

Or more subtle—what if one's parents had been more competent and resourced, focused on the child's developmental needs, enabling one to choose a career more out of passion, rather than pure necessity? Sometimes these lives re-emerge later on in development; sometimes we carry them, unlived, to the grave. Somewhere in the space between these selves lies the work of integration: a reconciliation not just of loss, but of identity itself.

Thinking the unknowable: The better universe

Counterfactual thinking—persistent "if only" and "what if" thoughts—is nearly universal, but for many survivors of severe trauma and loss, the intensity is next-level. Research suggests that these thoughts are associated with increased PTSD symptoms and emotional distress, particularly when they highlight the gap between one's actual self and an idealized alternate self (Brancu et al., 2016; Caramanica et al., 2018).

Emotional numbing can be pervasive and associated with emotional dysregulation and loss of a coherent sense of self, tantamount to a fracturing of the personality known as "structural dissociation" (Steele, van der Hart & Nijenhuis, 2005). The simplest is primary structural dissociation, where one is divided into a world-facing "apparently normal part" of the person (ANP) and an "emotional part" (EP). More severe levels are fragmentation into many EPs but one ANP, and then many ANPs and EPs (paralleling dissociative identity disorder). Some of these selves, the EPs, hold the might-have-beens, the fantasies and anguish of lost lives which, to them, can only be imagined. Phobias, within this model, ward off integration into a fuller personality.

These alternate selves become a language for grief. In the better universe, survivors imagine themselves unburdened by hypervigilance, undistorted by defensive adaptations, with access to relationships and opportunities that trauma foreclosed. This imagined self transcends fantasy—it represents honest mourning for a blind developmental path. There is recognition of how unfortunate events actually must have changed what could have been, which nevertheless may be experienced as tormentingly out of reach... unlike the alternative universes which, in some science fiction narratives, are accessible—though at the expense of displacing the me who is already there.

The better universe extends beyond individual identity into relational life. Survivors imagine how they might parent differently, love more freely, trust more easily, who they might have met or married, the ones who got away because of residual problems, or the ones we stayed with who we otherwise might have left. Early parental loss, for instance, profoundly shapes adult attachment patterns, emotional regulation, and capacity for intimacy (Høeg et al., 2018).

From a psychoanalytic perspective, fantasies of perfection can both motivate and paralyze (Rothstein, 1984; Colombi, 2017). When survivors strive relentlessly toward an idealized self, attempting to "undo" the past through achievement or flawless relationships, they may unwittingly reinforce the notion that their present, imperfect self is unacceptable. The better universe may become a prison of impossible standards.

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The Worser Universe

The opposite comparison is equally important: the universe where things went worse. "Others have it worse than me." "At least I wasn't..." "Real trauma is what happens to combat veterans, refugees, or abuse survivors."

This is the other extreme—the will to deny. This defensive comparison serves multiple functions. It minimizes psychic pain, protecting against fully experiencing it. It lets us move on, near-mortally wounded. Most insidiously, it disqualifies one's experience before anyone else can.

Contemporary stoicism—valuable in its original philosophical form—may be misappropriated for this purpose. What begins as wisdom about focusing on what one can control becomes a weapon against legitimate suffering.

The hierarchy of trauma is pervasive and damaging. My trauma isn't "good enough," itself often a post-traumatic reaction. Chronic illness, emotional neglect, persistent bullying, medical trauma—don't seem "bad enough" to count. The worse universe they imagine validates this dismissal: Someone else always had it harder, so their pain doesn't count, or is just an unlucky roll of the dice.

This comparison is as much a barrier to healing as idealizing the better universe. Both prevent inhabiting the universe within which we are, where we can have real impact.

The Before and After Problem

The integration work differs depending on trauma type, following the chasm created by overwhelming trauma. Discrete trauma may require integrating two (or more) distinct selves across a visible divide—the me who was born biologically, and the me born as an adaptation. Complex trauma demands making sense of a self that developed within adversity, starting with restoring safe attachment, a "relational home" (Dorahy & van der Hart, 2015), where there may be no clear "before" to remember or idealize (Herman, 1992; van der Kolk, 2014) for those with disruptions of autobiographical memory and narrative. We need a "good enough reality" (Brenner, 2025)—not a perfect one.

Either way, the developmental reality remains: We become ourselves through these experiences, not in spite of them. We "come to terms" and "fake it until we make it." The adaptations that once ensured survival—hypervigilance, emotional constriction, perfectionism, self-doubt—dissolve into the fabric of identity, integrated and not rejected or abandoned. They're not foreign objects to be extracted but aspects of self to be understood, honored for their protective function, and amends to be made with gratitude for services rendered.

The ordinary world

Neither the better universe nor the worse universe is where we actually live. Healing isn't about choosing which alternate timeline is "true" or denying impact. It's about making the most of the developmental paths actually open to us, and expanding those possibilities as we move forward, looking back to learn from rather than be fixated on the past.

Self-compassion is essential here. Research consistently demonstrates that compassion strengthens resilience and rewires the brain, helping survivors regulate emotions, reduce PTSD symptoms, and develop adaptive coping strategies (Neff & Germer, 2013; Hoffart et al., 2015; Friis et al., 2016). The practice of compassion alters brain networks, updating our operating system when it comes to the kinds of relationships we can have with ourselves (e.g., Kelly & Huffman, 2025) while enabling us to see better futures and move toward them as good stewards for ourselves.

The alternate universes may always whisper in the background, and that can, in time, turn into a more rewarding than tormenting experience. Healing happens in the present moment, over and over, one at a time—the only place where choice exists, where one can read while writing the next chapter rather than endlessly revising earlier ones.