How Santa helps with trauma

Being lied to by those in whom we placed trust is not a problem, but recognising the deception can be traumatic. Being aware of hypocrisy, fraud and treason can create many negative feelings in an individual, leading some people to poor reactions. Signs you may be inappropriately dealing with trauma include:

• A focus on understanding the problem, or consistent dwelling on potential solutions

• An unwillingness to let the problem continue

• Having feelings of anger, resentment and frustration at those who cause, prolong and ignore the problem, or expressing those feelings clearly and respectfully

• Insisting the trauma has a cause, a solution, and is worthwhile avoiding in others

• Aiming for informed positivity, rather than blissful ignorance

If this resonates with you or a loved one, Santa may be able to help. Our collective efforts to provide a magical, wondrous deception-based game for young and old to share is appropriate to conflate with deceptions based on evil and greed. Hence, these helpful solutions will be just as successful with your traumatised friend as they will be with a child discovering truths about Santa:

• Encourage silence. Exposing the deception will cause discomfort for others, and only bad people do that.

• Encourage acceptance. Learning one truth is enough. Do not attempt to put any related concepts together, this only prolongs the trauma of discovery.

• Powerlessness in all things. Even if they are correct in their observations, encourage your friend to note that they are powerless to do anything about their realisations, and hence should not attempt to achieve any more of them.

• Understanding is distasteful. Attempting to understand a thing is unlikely to help you enjoy a thing.

• Internal focus at all times. Almost always, the trauma of exposing untruths is associated with a lack of self-centredness. For those who can explore a concept without being personally invested in it, the risk is dramatically increased that they hold on to truths regardless of how uncomfortable they are. The solution may require some tough medicine. If you cannot direct your friend’s attention back to themselves, try gaslighting, emotional manipulation or create some other trauma. This is for the greater good of avoiding future trauma, and they will thank you for it later.

• Label it a trust issue. Even though their mistrust was completely vindicated over and over again, explain that a world without trust is too independent and scary. Comfort can only be found in a group … even, or especially, a deceived group.

• Make yourself the victim. Take any attempt to understand the wider world as a personal attack.

• Pretend a change in the situation means it has disappeared. If any one of your friend’s pieces of evidence changes, use this as an opportunity to close the whole topic down forever. Any attempt to research or discuss or investigate further should be labelled ‘living in the past’.

While some of these measures may seem drastic, we think you’ll find that an extra year of believing in Santa, or remaining unaware that your government are Democidal Sociopaths is well worth it in the end.