This is a fun question OP. I’m glad you asked.

For my answer, I’m going to go with I see Life as an entanglement between the form and the formless. Whether Life leans primarily towards form or formless will vary from species to species, organism to organism, cell to cell as the ratio of entangled form and formlessness can change based on a variety of factors and circumstances.

To give an example, I would view birds as leaning more to entangled formlessness, whereas something like elephants would lean more to entangled form.

Yeah. Lots of changes. They reduced the number of ages down to three, Antiquity, Exploration, & Modern. In each age, you play a different civ. For example, you could start Antiquity with the Romans, transition into Spain for Exploration, and finish as Mexico in Modern.
Leaders and Civs are detached, so now you can play as Benjamin Franklin of Egypt or Napoleon of Japan. Leaders stay with you the whole campaign.
Settlers create Towns now instead of Cities. Towns are like puppet cities from Civ 5 in that they act autonomously. They mainly serve to harvest and send resources to your Cities. If they grow enough in population, you can spend money to convert them into Cities. District system has been reworked. Now there’s only two types of districts, Urban and Rural. Rural districts take the place of resource improvements, since there are no more builders. Urban districts get two building slots, and from what I’ve seen some buildings do get adjacency bonuses.
There’s a new unit called Commander that lets you stack your other army units on top of it and transport them across the map. Still have to unstack your army to engage in war.

There’s more changes, but these are main ones that jumped to mind in terms of dramatically changing the feel of the game.

How do people willingly confront their most traumatic experience again and again?

I’m not entirely clear if this is a rhetorical question and you wanted to vent for a bit, or if you’re genuinely looking for an answer?

If it’s to vent, then I kinda understand. It sucks to see someone you love suffer. It sucks again when you think you found an answer and they tell you no. Each time you try again and get your answer rejected, the feeling gets worse and worse until you start blaming them for their own suffering. I’ve been on both sides of that.

They tell you to stay strong. That love and patience will change their minds eventually. On a level, it makes sense. If a problem has been persisting for decades, it’s kinda unfair to think you can solve it overnight. It’s likely the solution is also going to take years. But then you spend the time trying only to find more layers to the problem.

If you’re looking for some kind of answer, then the best I can offer is it’s Trauma. We all go through our own traumatic experiences. Events so bad it takes away a piece of us and leaves us scarred. Those scars change how we each approach or avoid situations. Not many people want to relive their traumatic experiences, even if it would lead to better lives.
Sorry if it’s not the answer you’re looking for.

This is probably a strange suggestion, but have you tried using Fear? I’ve noticed it’s somewhat easier to be social after consuming any kind of scary content.

There’s a modified Chinese proverb I like that goes something like this:
Watch your emotions, for they become your thoughts.
Watch your thoughts, for they become your words.
Watch your words, for they become your actions.
Watch your actions, for they become your habits.
Watch your habits, for they become your destiny.

Basically the takeaway is that your emotions/attitude aren’t the end point, they’re the start point. The pattern in your comments keep reading of Self-Loathing. That emotion is forming itself into your thoughts and words. Anger management techniques are critical to controlling this metaphorical “curse” you’re under.