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May we know the beauty of our own true nature. Photo by Molly
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A Vision of a Transformed World
It was 2003 when my doctor informed me of the diagnosis. Dr. Peter Reagan said that it was something called "fibromyalgia." I'd never heard of it before. And this was after all kinds of tests for MS and other diseases and ruling those out. All that I knew was that my body was in a kind of pain that I'd never known before and that I was hurting and really, really scared.
I loved Dr. Pete and trusted him implicitly. He brought Death with Dignity to Oregon. He supported me with a vaginal delivery of our youngest son at age 36 and after two previous C-sections. He'd been there for us through crises in our family. And now Pete was looking compassionately into my eyes and giving me a name for my pain.
Regardless of whether or not he was aware of my recovery from substance addiction, which he was, it is my belief that my doctor would have responded the same way in that life-changing appointment twenty years ago. He did not put me on any pain medication. What Pete did was say, "People who get fibromyalgia tend to not have had lives that have been a walk in the park." He knew about my childhood trauma history, my divorce after 30 years from our sons' father, and the struggles that we'd had as a family. And he understood that what my body was saying was reflective of deeper pain. Rather than medications, what Pete told me that I would need was alternative medicine. And he told me, "Don't get stuck in your diagnosis."
What initially followed were appointments three times weekly where in each session I received acupuncture, chiropractic care, and massage. My chiropractic doctor also sent me off to a once weekly course which spanned three weeks in 1000 Hands Buddha — a healing qigong practice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfLWOpNVojs), which I practiced regularly. I was desperate and willing to try anything. In addition, I also continued to be connected and engaged with other resources of wise and compassionate support which were, significantly, part of what was helping me address and heal from trauma. And now, long story short, I have been free of fibromyalgia symptoms for the past 18 years.
Most western doctors would have prescribed pain medication and — rather than acknowledging the connection of fibromyalgia to trauma, saying "don't get stuck in your diagnosis," and referring their patients to resources for alternative care treatment — would tell their patients that fibromyalgia is a chronic illness that can be managed with pain medication and is likely a lifelong condition.
Knowing this, I've often pondered what the course of this illness and the trajectory of my life would have been
like had my doctor not been trauma-informed. Vastly, and I imagine
sadly, different...
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Kuan Yin. Photo by Molly
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A Vision of a Trauma Informed-World
How might we as humans be different if we were trauma-informed? What might the trajectory, experiences, actions and beliefs, health and healing of our families and communities, our educational and medical systems, our political and media systems, our laws and justice systems, our environment and life on Earth be like if the consciousness of trauma and paths of healing were increasingly woven throughout our culture and beyond?
First, it is my belief that we need to understand what trauma is. As a resource, I will be quoting in this piece from The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté. This is a book that I have just finished reading and am now reading again. It's also one that I am gifting our four adult children and their partners. The Myth of Normal is among the most important books that I have read in my lifetime.
That said, I fully recognize that this book and the journey of recognizing and healing trauma will not be for everyone. It is simply my heartfelt hope and dream that embracing with curiosity and courage the work of deepening our understanding of and healing from trauma will become inspiring, hopeful, and something more and more of us will seek or continue to seek in an ongoing way. There are so many layers to embrace, understand, heal, and ultimately be deeply transformed by.
If we humans were to evolve to hitting a tipping point of trauma consciousness, it is my belief that this wisdom holds the potential to alter the current trajectory of life on Earth to one that is healthy, sustainable, conscious, compassionate, and vastly different from the norms that pervade the fabric of our society and our minds, bodies, and hearts today.
Another world is possible.
And, first, one key aspect of our individual and collective journey of evolving and embodying our greater wholeness, I believe, is to find our own unique ways of breaking the silence within growing communities of friends and families who share our intentions of healing and embracing lives lived out of authenticity, awareness, truth, compassion, and love.
The don't talk, don't trust, don't feel, don't be authentic rules which have permeated many of our families in growing up are also a reflection of our culture at large. The cost of holding so much inside, of our isolation and the fear and shame that feeds it, and of perpetuating the norms of rugged individualism comes with a great cost to so many of us both individually and collectively.
As I share more glimpses into my story and that of my family, it is my hope that the telling will create ripples inspiring more and more of us to bring forth our voices and our hearts, our truths and our vulnerability, and our hard earned healing, awakening, and wisdom. It is my experience that opening to vulnerability with safe others expands our sense of connection and "interbeing."
As Thích Nhất Hạnh wisely reflects, "We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness."
It is my belief that all forms of separation — from our authentic selves, from our connection with all of life, from the sacredness that is our essence — are rooted in trauma. Peter Levine writes that trauma "is about loss of connection — to ourselves, our families, and the world around us. This loss is hard to recognize because it happens slowly, over time." Bessel van der Kolk goes on to say, "Trauma is when we are not seen and known."
In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté adds that the news about trauma "gets better," that there is an enormous benefit to recognizing and understanding trauma. He writes, "Seeing trauma as an internal dynamic grants us much-needed agency. If we treat trauma as an external event, something that happens to or around us, then it become a piece of history we can never dislodge. If on the other hand, trauma is what took place inside of us as a result of what happened, in the sense of wounding or disconnection, then healing and reconnection become tangible possibilities. Trying to keep awareness of trauma at bay hobbles our capacity to know ourselves. Conversely, fashioning from it a rock-heard identity — where the attitude is defiance, cynicism, or self-pity — is to miss both the point and the opportunity of healing, since by definition trauma represents a distortion and limitation of who we were born to be. Facing it directly without either denial or over-identification becomes a doorway to health and balance."
I need to step back now and acknowledge that so many of us have already long been deeply and courageously rooted into paths of healing and transformation. At the same time, I humbly recognize that there is always another vista beyond the ones that we may be aware of today — more layers, more understanding of the roots of our suffering, more deepening of compassion and equanimity and love, more beauty and truth and experience of the Sacred to integrate and embody and share with our earthly sisters and brothers. Blessed be. 🙏
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My three sons, Matt, Kevin, and Brian, 1993
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A Hard Lesson on the Value of Trauma-Informed
Resources of Support
On a personal level, understanding trauma would have vastly changed the way I parented and also experienced all of my relationships — beginning, of course, with myself. It wasn't enough to just be sober, which in itself was huge. But sustaining sobriety isn't an end in itself. There were also experiences of wholeness and health, understanding and wisdom, consciousness and connection which continued to remain out of reach.
The truth for me was that I had no real depth of trauma-consciousness when I was pregnant with our three sons and through their childhoods. It
is also true that the key resources of help that our sons' father and I sought for many years was with counselors and therapists who in some crucial ways were not
trauma-informed. Essentially, they had not yet done their own deeper work — and that meant that they were unable to offer a depth of guidance that was helpful rather than harmful, empowering rather than disempowering, and which would have broken through the pain of many ancestral legacies rather than perpetuating them.
And, as is so often the case, our experiences in counseling were not black and white. In some ways, I was able to begin my deeper work of healing from trauma. That was real and some genuine growth and healing did occur during those early years. It is important for me to acknowledge this.
At the same time, what I recognize today is that it was only a beginning. While Jim, our sons' father, and I both grew up in families infused with shame, and while I connected with and expressed rage and grief over my own childhood trauma, it is also true — as just one example among many — that I was told by an early counselor to not intervene when the boys' dad was engaging in chronic shaming of one of our sons, patterns of emotional abuse which also impacted all of our boys. I was not helped to strengthen my capacity to understand the traumatic impacts of shame and act to stop it rather than replay the role of my father who also did not act to protect my brother and myself from the emotional abuse perpetrated by our mother.
When shaming energy is present in a home — and when we as family members are not talking and trusting and feeling and being who we authentically are — it is not enough to be sober and to be focused on "inner child work" to the exclusion of truly understanding and consistently meeting the deeper emotional needs of our children. What I learned as different significant struggles hit each of our boys, one by one over the years, is that doing everything "right" was not enough. There were huge pieces of conscious understanding which were missing and which Gabor Maté addresses in-depth in The Myth of Normal, with awareness, authenticity, agency, healthy anger, and acceptance being among them.
This was part of the ancestral legacy of shame and emotional trauma which Jim was replaying from his own childhood and which also mirrored the trauma of my family of origin. What continued to impact us as parents and our children was this legacy of shame. Psychologist Gershen Kaufman writes, "Among the most poisonous consequences of shame is the loss of compassion for oneself. The more severe the trauma, the more total that loss." Trauma continued to blind me to the harmful dynamics which lived on in our "recovery family." And while I spoke the language of recovery, it is a crazy-making experience to be communicating that all is "well" now all while shame remained present and I remained empathically impaired and instinct injured. The double messages do not sit well in the hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits of children — and no matter how passionate my resolve to "break the generational cycle" of pain for our sons.
What I have now recognized for many years is that wounded people are drawn to others who are also wounded. This was true for me in who I was drawn to partner with, in the therapists we saw in those early years, and in so many of my relationships. There is no judgment in this. It simply is what it is. It is also true that during those years, patterns continued within myself of giving my power away to others who I deemed as wiser than myself. Thus, for years I listened to the advice of counselors and therapists, themselves wounded with their own unaddressed trauma, while dismissing or being disassociated from my own instincts and intuition.
As a result, and even through many years of sobriety, I was often not listening to and acting out of my deeper knowing and wisdom; generational patterns of shame and emotional abuse continued; and our children did not grow up experiencing an adult parent who was consistently there to listen, understand, act and support them with their deeper emotional needs and development. That secure, safe, trustworthy, and unconditionally loving attachment was deeply impaired. The result of not being trauma-informed — and even though my first husband and I loved our children so deeply, and even though we sought professional help — was that harmful generational and cultural patterns of trauma persisted for us and for our children.
I cannot go back and change that. And, gratefully, I have done enough work in and outside of therapy that I am no longer drowning in guilt and grief for the way it was all those years ago. I also do not hold blame today towards those early counselors and therapists. What is true for all of us is that we can only accompany others — clients, children, partners, friends, other family — as deep as we've first gone ourselves. So, no, there is no blame or shame here. At any given time, we are all doing the best that we can. And we live in a toxic culture that is not trauma-informed. There is a cost to this, an enormous cost.
Do I also live with places in my heart of deep sorrow today for the harm each of our sons experienced then and the impacts on their adult lives? Yes. This sorrow will likely be a part of what I carry in my heart for the rest of my life. And that is okay. It is what it is. And I have now long been in process of befriending my sorrow and grief... and befriending the wounded parts of myself.
And, significantly, today I am able to be the mother that our children have always needed and deserved.
It is also true that I am immensely grateful to be on a path of understanding trauma with ever increasing depth. I now recognize in my deepest being the importance of seeking help and support with resources who are trauma-informed. This has been one of the most painful and valuable lessons of my life.
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| Photo by Molly: Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion |
Compassion as a Source of Healing, Informing How We Can Evolve, Heal, and Act
Wisely Today to Break Free From Trauma
While I live with places in my heart of sorrow — and much more rarely now with guilt, judgment, shame, or blame — it is also true that I am not my sorrow. We all are so much bigger, so much larger than the wounds we've sustained or unknowingly passed on. And when that old pain arises, today I can meet the sorrow of my mother's heart with compassion. The healing balm of compassion. It is also true that the more deeply I understand trauma, the greater my integration and experience of compassion is for us all.
Knowing this, I find myself drawn to include in this post about trauma and healing from its impact different images of Kuan Yin — always reminding us to embrace our wounds and the great sorrows that we experience in our lifetimes with the tenderness and gentleness of our hearts. We can all seek and find what it is for each of us that helps us to strengthen, evolve, and expand in our capacity to embody compassion. Perhaps your images will be of Mother Mary, Jesus, Nature, the Goddess, Mother Earth, Kuan Yin. Whatever our reminder of compassion is, this is such a deep and needed gift.
What I have learned over many years now is that a compassion practice is a vital part of the process of embracing ourselves and others exactly as we are without going into judging mind and getting stuck there — stuck in shaming and blaming, condescension or pity, and other polarities of better than and less then. We are all impacted by trauma. There is great compassion born out of this awareness. At least this has certainly been my experience.
Gabor Maté also wisely and eloquently speaks to "The Five Compassions" in The Myth of Normal, which I've found helpful and empowering:
- Ordinary Human Compassion
- The Compassion of Curiosity and Understanding
- The Compassion of Recognition
- The Compassion of Truth
- The Compassion of Possibility
Regarding my beloved sons Brian and Kevin and Matthew, the continued evolution and integration of trauma consciousness works to empower me to recognize how I can meet each of them where they are at — acknowledging with compassion both their strengths and struggles, listening and witnessing with unconditional love, and all while assuming responsibility and looking for opportunities to voice the truth of how it was that I wasn't there for them when they were growing up AND how it is that I am here for them today.
Each of my now adult children know that I welcome engaging in family therapy for any issues that they may want to address with me, which I will soon be doing with one of my sons. I hope more will follow. I've told them that they don't have to protect me from their anger and grief. And I've begun to write "amends" letters to my boys, with the first one addressing what each pregnancy was like and where I was at as a parent in their earliest years.
Right and left, again and again and again, and for many years now, I have been breaking the old generational and cultural rules of don't talk, don't trust, don't feel, and don't be authentic. And, in breaking through the many layers of silence, I am communicating one step at a time about the many faces of trauma, including what each of my sons have experienced, and paths of healing. My heart is strong enough today to recognize this early wounding that occurred. I can see the truth and embrace it. And I can hold all of us with such deep, deep tenderness and compassion.
Again, there is no blame here. All those years ago, as parents Jim and I simply did not know how to be a consistent presence in our children's lives where they felt it was safe to share unhappy, angry, hurt feelings openly and freely, without restraint, with either of us. We just didn't know how to be a consistently safe, aware, conscious and mindful presence in their lives. Neither of us had come to embody a depth of conscious awareness of trauma — and this, for me, after years of doing "inner child work." Most often without our knowing, generational patterns were continuing to be woven through the energy and the experiences we all lived in our family. Was there growth? Yes. And did trauma persist? Yes. There is no fault or blame. It is what it is.
Gabor Maté states that anyone "confronting
chronic illness, emotional distress, addiction, or struggles to be
authentic, is particularly invited to engage with it [this question]: When
I felt sad, unhappy, angry, confused, bewildered, lonely, bullied, who
did I speak to? Who did I tell? Who could I confide in?" (Please see this earlier post: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/12/gabor-mate-task-and-gift-of-remembering.html.)
And that's the thing about really getting trauma — Jim, our sons' father, and I did not have any consistently emotionally available adult in our lives who we could turn to as children. And nor did our parents. Or their parents, and on back through time. So there is no blame here. No shame. It is what it is. The reality is that the trauma goes way, way back in time. And, gratefully!, I do not have to continue on in my life blinded to what I can do today.
Today I am gifted with the empowerment of increased understanding of trauma and the pathways to healing.
And so I am gifting my boys Johann Hari's book Lost Connections and Gabor Maté's The Myth of Normal. I am offering to do family therapy and I am writing amends letters. I am engaging in individual and group conversations related to trauma and its healing. I am offering them the truth of the generational wounding that they experienced as children and that has gone on in our family as far back as one can see. It is not my responsibility how my sons respond to any of this. They may or may not read the books or engage in family or individual therapy, or benefit today from my amends letters and other conversations.
AND, I am planting seeds. I am sharing my journey of claiming "ancestral treasures." (Please see this post:https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2022/08/chelan-harkin-ancestral-treasure.html). What is my responsibility is to shine bright light on trauma, throwing each of them the lifeline that being trauma-informed offers. And I am modeling how, in the wise words of poet Chelan Harkin, "Cashing in this trove will transform the heavy bag of sorrows your ancestors carried into tokens of priceless light."
I don't know what your journey may look like within yourself and your relationships with your children and others. Each of our paths are unique and whatever the blessings that arise from the fullness of our hearts, a gift. This is simply what holds heart and meaning for me.
And this journey of living my amends through how I live my life today is an antidote to the harm which, for some time now, I have recognized that I unknowingly passed on to our children. It is this path of heart and acting out of my places of healing wisdom and love which empowers me with the gift of letting go in an ongoing way — bringing compassion and acceptance to myself and the whole of our family over the countless generations before me.
There is a peace which comes with knowing that I am doing my part in an ongoing way to break through generations of trauma and live a life increasingly grounded in truth, awareness, authenticity, compassion, and love. And — also very importantly — laughter and humor, playfulness and joy, gratitude and beauty.
I surrender into the wisdom of James Baldwin, who many years ago reflected, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
Great changes are continuing to unfold within myself and my children and their children. My heart is filled with gratitude.
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My son Kevin, 1983
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Knowing the Beauty of Our True Nature
I recognize that not everyone will resonate with the value of informing ourselves in an ongoing way about trauma. There are those who believe that trauma applies to someone else and not themselves. There is also the belief system that we humans are born with sin and need to pursue salvation through prayer and religious faith alone. There are those, too, who perceive that human beings are living out karma from previous lifetimes — and that our human lives are unfolding as they are meant to in order to provide us with the lessons we need to gain as we evolve and heal our karmic patterning. There are also those who believe in medical models that profess that the struggles which plague us are rooted in genetics, in the genes that we inherited and that we were simply born with an inevitable predisposition to various mental and physical illnesses.
For me, personally, none of that fits or resonates. And especially as I continue to learn about and integrate the truth about trauma.
I also need to interject here that for 30 years I worked in different capacities with abused and neglected children. 30 years. Out of these experiences and others, and coupled with my own inter-generational journey of addressing and healing trauma, it simply does not make any sense that a loving God or some higher spiritual karmic fate would prescribe adding more trauma to heal generations or lifetimes of trauma. Trauma fuels and feeds on itself. How is karma thought to work by correcting trauma with more trauma? For me, this is the new age version of the religious belief that we humans are born with sin.
Which brings to my heart remembrances of my own baby children. Have you ever looked into the eyes, the face, of a newborn or any baby and sensed sin? Or does a newborn or any tiny being elicit wonder, joy, awe, love? For me, today, it is overwhelmingly the latter.
That said, it is also my belief that most of us do indeed have an imprint of trauma that we absorbed, many of us beginning in utero. In reading The Myth of Normal, I got it more deeply than ever before how each of my children were impacted by trauma beginning in the womb. Again, there is no fault, no blame. None at all. It is what it is. I was a pregnant mom carrying generations of trauma. In this way, yes, the thread of trauma does reach back into other lifetimes. But is this trauma inevitable? Does it need to keep going on and on giving us "lessons" or tormenting us until we have fully owned and repented our "sinful" selves? I don't think so.
It also wasn't just that I was an isolated and scared new mom, which I was. There was no family around us and my support system was minimal. When we look deeply, most of us can also recognize — perhaps unless we are indigenous to this land — that long, long ago we were separated from our tribe. Once, very long ago, we all were part of a tribe, a community which ensured our individual and collective survival. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. Then, also long ago, we became disconnected from community, from being a part of something rather than apart from something. And in our culture of rugged individualism, isolation is more the norm than not... including, as was once true for me, when we are surrounded by other friends or family. I certainly learned how to not trust, not be vulnerable, and not connect deeply with those around me.
And this makes me wonder how freely any of us today speak our truths, even to those we are closest to? How open are we to living out of our authentic selves? Tragically, so many of us are often split off from intimacy within our families, our friendships, our communities, ourselves. For years and years, this was certainly my experience. And in this process of compromised relationships and ruptured attachments — which continued generations of patterns of mistrust and isolation, lack of nurturing community, and silence and shielding ourselves from the risks of vulnerability and intimacy — many of us have become cut off, not just from truly knowing and connecting with others, but also from knowing ourselves deeply, from embodying authenticity, and from consciousness of the essence of our sacred selves — and the sacredness of all of life.
Gabor Maté writes, "Michael
Meade has a beautiful phrase for the kind of collective knowing that
dates back as long as we've been around: 'a thought in the heart.' My
own heart resonates with the thought that — despite all evidence to the contrary —
there is in all of us an essential aspect that cannot be extinguished.
This society, in its spiritually dormant state of immaturity and denial,
blocks our awareness of it, supplanting it instead with qualities,
activities, goods, and beliefs that cannot possibly satisfy. As
individuals we are unable to see our own beauty or perfection; as
members of a collective, we miss how we are all made of, indeed
interwoven within, the same divine fabric."
On a continuum, many of us remain lost to the beauty of our true nature and that of our human sisters and brothers. And it is that split, that fragmentation, that disconnect that is the birthplace of trauma, trauma which permeates our culture.
It was just a few years ago when Sue (not her real name) reached out to me. We had not lived close to one another for a long time and hadn't spoken in years. Given how often I have publicly shared so many personal stories of my own struggles, challenges, and healing over time, it also is not unusual for different people, some of whom I've never met, to contact me and want to share something of their stories. So while I was surprised to hear from Sue, another part of me was not surprised. And, too, knowing that she struggled with addictions, I was aware that there was more going on in her life than the happy faces and stories that she shared on social media and on the occasions where we were able to see each other again.
What moved Sue to contact me was a need to share the truth about her marriage. I don't know if she ever told anyone else. It was so painful for her. She disclosed to me that her husband constantly shamed her, criticized her, judged and belittled and berated her. Sue went on to affirm that she knew her husband was a narcissist. And through my stories related to narcissism, to leaving my husband (who is not a narcissist), and to stepping into a much healthier, happier life, she told me that she was seriously thinking of leaving her husband. Sue spoke of the anguish and torment of living with a narcissist and how she felt like she couldn't take it anymore. Sue didn't yet have a clear plan, but she was working on it. My heart went out to her! And I told her that I was here to support her with whatever she was deciding and whether she ultimately left the marriage or not.
Then the cancer hit. And I didn't hear from Sue again. And the sharing on social media went back to this picture perfect family with an adoring husband who was taking such good care of her. I understood then how it was that Sue couldn't leave and why she felt compelled to present stories which I knew were compromised in their truthfulness. I get it. And my heart ached for her. I held this old friend in the heart of compassion. And I grieved when she died.
In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté goes into great depth about the mind/body connection and how our emotional and physical health is directly linked to the environment and the culture in which we live. He writes, "It's all one: emotions affect nerves and vice versa; nerves act on hormones; hormones on the immune system; the immune system on the brain; the brain on the gut; the gut on the brain; and all of these act on the heart, and vice versa. In turn, our bodies influence our brains and minds and, necessarily, the brains, minds, and bodies of others."
So much that I had intuited, even years ago, is affirmed. Certainly this included my father's death at age 60 after traveling to Banff and Lake Louise in Alberta Canada and contracting Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I utterly knew that it was his compromised immune system after living with my mother's severe narcissism for 26 years that was the final nail in his coffin.
Then there were the three young women who I knew many years ago from AA meetings who died of cancer. Even in early sobriety I felt in my deepest self that the cancer they each suffered was linked to the bottled rage that I sensed under their quiet demeanors and soft-spoken voices. And, of course, there are the physical illnesses that I have experienced which for many years now I have known were rooted in unhealed trauma.
Everywhere I can see the many manifestations of unaddressed trauma. That said, I also recognize that a stressful event or circumstance does not in and of itself cause us to be sick — or over the long-term cause us to be addicted, anxious, or depressed. Rather it is the one or more traumas — and coupled with the piling on of other painful experiences which remain unhealed — all of which taken together which can trigger the symptoms which really get our attention. This was certainly my experience when I developed fibromyalgia.
What I have discovered that is so vital to understand is that the physical or emotional illnesses that we experience, or witness in others, don't just appear out of no where. Rather, it occurs as part of a much longer process — often a process of disassociation, isolation, and not knowing how to live out of our authenticity. A process rooted in trauma.
I am reminded of the Alzheimer's disease which both my mother and my grandmother suffered from and ultimately died of. I also think of the mental illness, addictions, anxiety, and depression which has plagued my family for generations. Today I know that this is not because of our "genes." And I am not fearful of getting Alzheimer's.
Dr. Maté makes it abundantly clear in the vast research that he draws from that it isn't our genes which are the root causes. There is a much, much larger picture than any vulnerability we may have been born with. What matters more is the environment in which we live, how supported we are, and how it is that we react to stress. Rather than the western medical disease models for addressing illness, and the treatment models for addressing addictions, what he proposes asking again and again points with laser focus on the roots of our suffering with this profound question: Why the pain?
What is the unaddressed pain, the unhealed trauma that we have ignored and repressed in ourselves, our families, our communities, our culture? What is the "tyranny of the past" that lives on in us individually and collectively today?
The Process of Healing from Trauma
Means a Return to Wholeness
There is this journey of "making friends with our wounded parts and of relieving them of their duties." It is one of growing into the wholeness of who we are. In its essence, this journey is one of "liberation from the source of our suffering."
From The Myth of Normal:
"In the present century the leading trauma psychologist and healer Peter Levine has written that certain shocks to the organism 'can alter a person's biological, psychological, and social equilibrium to such a degree that the memory of one particular event comes to taint, and dominate, all other experiences, spoiling an appreciation of the present moment.' Levine calls this 'the tyranny of the past.'"
"In 2019 more than fifty million Americans, over 20 percent of U.S. adults, suffered an episode of mental illness.... 60 percent of adults have a chronic disorder such as high blood pressure or diabetes, and over 40 percent have two or more such conditions... Nearly 70 percent of American are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two... Our culture.. induces countless humans to suffer illness born of stress, ignorance, inequality, environmental degradation, climate change, poverty, and social isolation. It allows millions to die prematurely of diseases we know how to prevent or of deprivations we have more than enough resources to eliminate."
"If
we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate
or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal
consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have
revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health
related."
In describing the "machinery of stress," Gabor Maté reflects how unaddressed trauma, and its relationship to how we react to, hold, and cope with stress, can:
- make us anxious or depressed
- suppress immunity
- promote inflamation
- narrow blood vessels, promoting vascular disease throughout the body
- encourage cancer growth
- thin the bones
- make us resistant to our own insulin, inducing diabetes
- contribute to abdominal obesity, elevating the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic problems
- impair essential cognitive and emotional circuits in the brain, and
- elevate blood pressure and increase blood clotting, raising the risk of heart attacks or strokes
Dr. Maté writes, "Trauma pervades our culture, from personal functioning through personal relationships, parenting, education, popular culture, economics, and politics. In fact, someone without the marks of trauma would be an outlier in our society. We are closer to the truth when we ask: Where do we each fit on the broad and surprisingly inclusive trauma spectrum? Which of its many marks has each of us carried all (or most) of our lives, and what have the impacts been? And what possibilities would open up were we to become more familiar, even intimate, with them?
"A more basic question comes first: What is trauma? As I use the word, 'trauma' is an inner injury, a lasting rupture or split within the self due to difficult or hurtful events. By this definition, trauma is primarily what happens within someone as a result of the difficult or hurtful events that befall them; it is not the events themselves. 'Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you' is how I formulate it...
"Raw wound or scar, unresolved trauma is a constriction of the self, both physical and psychological. It constrains our inborn capacities and generates an enduring distortion of our view of the world and of other people. Trauma, until we work it through, keeps us stuck in the past, robbing us of the present moment's riches, limiting who we can be. By impelling us to suppress hurt and unwanted parts of the psyche, it fragments the self. Until seen and acknowledged, it is also a barrier to growth. In many cases, as in mine, it blights a person's sense of worth, poisons relationships, and undermines appreciation for life itself. Early in childhood it may even interfere with healthy brain development. And, as we will witness, trauma is an antecedent and a contributor to illness of all kinds throughout the lifespan.
"Taken together, these impacts constitute a major and foundational impediment to flourishing for many, many people. To quote Peter Levine once more, 'Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.'"
This must change. Thus, there is this deep vision that I hold that we humans will do our parts, whatever that may be for us individually and collectively, in birthing a trauma-informed world — beginning with ourselves.
It is also important for me to highlight that the last several chapters in The Myth of Normal are devoted to healing. And the process of healing means "a return to wholeness."
In the end of his latest book, Gabor Maté writes:
"As we saw earlier, the antidote to the hypnotizing influence of normality is authenticity: finding meaning in one's inner experience, unobscured by societally promulgated fictions — prime among them what Daniel Siegel calls 'the lie of the separate solo self.' That falsehood is the ultimate abnormality. From where I stand, a life devoted to seeing through such traumatizing non-truth, dwelling and creating outside its bounds, is a life lived well.
"It all starts with waking up: waking up to what is real and authentic in and around us and what isn't; waking up to who we are and who we're not; waking up to what our bodies are expressing and what our minds are suppressing; waking up to our wounds and our gifts; waking up to what we have believed and what we we actually value; waking up to what we will no longer tolerate and what we can now accept; waking up to the myths that bind us and the interconnections that define us; waking up to the past as it has been, the present as it is, and the future as it may yet be; waking up, most especially, to the gap between what our essence calls for and what 'normal' has demanded of us.
"We are blessed with a momentus opportunity. Shedding toxic myths of disconnection from ourselves, from one another, and from the planet, we can bring what is normal and what is natural, bit by bit, closer together. It is a task for the ages: one that can redeem the past, inspire the present, and point to a brighter, healthier future.
"It is our most daunting challenge and greatest possibility."
Bless us all,
Molly
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All quotes were taken from The Myth of Normal:
Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture
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