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Past hardship can shape present behaviour long after the original barrier has gone.

Trauma and displacement may persist inwardly even when life conditions improve.

People can come to see old constraints as permanent, even when they are not.

Greater awareness of cognitive immobility can be a first step toward recovery.

Some time ago, I read a piece on Medium recounting the story of a pike, described as an “aggressive predatory freshwater fish.” The pike was placed among smaller fish but separated from them by a bell jar. The pike repeatedly tried to attack and make a meal out of them, but failed each time because of the barrier, leaving it with nothing more than a bruised nose. But when the bell jar was removed, the pike still did not attack them. Conditioned by its earlier failed attempts, it seemed to behave as though the barrier remained. Surrounded by prey it could now easily reach, the pike remained at the bottom and starved to death. The author referred to this as “pike syndrome.” Whether or not the story is accurate, what matters here is that it raises a familiar question: How do past experiences shape the realities we inhabit now?

Just as the pike’s earlier attempts to catch the smaller fish were blocked by the bell jar, many of us let our own past experiences function in much the same way, shaping how we see and behave in our present lives.

The story of Adut Akech offers a striking example. She and her family were displaced by the civil war in South Sudan, and fled to a refugee camp in Kenya, where she grew up. Despite leaving the refugee camp in Kenya and later walking the runways of New York and Paris, she has repeatedly said, “I will always be a refugee.”

The physical conditions of her life in the refugee camp were left behind when she was resettled in Australia, but the cognitive aspects of that past did not disappear. In her case, the bell jar of living in a refugee camp was removed when she was resettled in Australia, yet the grip of those earlier experiences did not loosen. Even though she gained more freedom and the means to build a different life away from the refugee camp, she still reached a point where she contemplated taking her own life.

It is not only displaced people who have such experiences. Soldiers, too, may find that leaving a war zone does not mean leaving the war behind. Carlos Huerta, a US Army major and chaplain, wrote that even five years after returning home, he felt he had never truly left the battlefield. In his words, the battlefield remained with him. The physical setting had changed, but his inner world had not. Huerta found himself longing to return because the battlefield had become the place that made the most sense to him.

Huerta is not alone in this. Dr Mohammed Abu Mughessib, who once worked with Médecins Sans Frontières in Gaza and now lives in Ireland, has also reflected on what it means to leave a place of crisis without fully leaving it behind. He's written that he realised, "When you cross the border, you realise you’ve lost everything ... My soul is there. My memories are there."

His bell jar was lifted when he relocated to Ireland, but his desire to return to Gaza still remains strong.

How about Alexandra Dantzer, who left what she described as a dull life in Belgrade, Serbia, marked by uncertainty and a lack of control? She moved to Berlin, where she became a successful art teacher and gained the freedom to live as she wished. In Berlin, her life improved but she found herself longing for the very life she had once wanted to escape.

According to Dantzer, she missed the empty, uneventful stretches of time she had previously complained about, saying, “I miss the no-nights, the empty time I was complaining about.” How can someone leave behind the conditions that once felt limiting, only to find that freedom and the desired new life itself do not bring fulfilment? Perhaps, like the others, it could be that Dantzer’s experiences are related to cognitive immobility.

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The people discussed above had, in one way or another, been removed from the experiences, places, or conditions that once constrained them. Yet they continued to live as though those barriers were still present. Their stories suggest that the past does not always stay in the past; it can continue to shape how we think, feel, move through the world, and relate to others in the present.

Recognising this challenge may be the first step towards loosening the hold of the past and making room for a different way of living. Greater awareness of cognitive immobility may help us not only to name this issue but also begin the process of recovery.

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