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Any awareness of trauma- informed approaches will help.
But this is so key:
"Individuals with trauma often have lots of other life adversities and disadvantages that cluster together for nonrandom reasons."
Trauma is how we manage our past corrosive experiences. A variety of treatments can provide amelioration of symptoms but one wonders intuitively that if sufferers are simply returned to toxic environments and toxic patterns afterwards why would we expect any long term positive outcomes?
Source: Wikimedia Commons
On Sunday, March 11, 2018, 60 Minutes featured a report by Oprah Winfrey on trauma-informed care, which she called “a revolutionary approach that’s spreading across the nation.” Working on the story was “life changing” for her. On 60 Minutes Overtime, she gushed, “I can say that of all the stories I’ve ever done in my life, and all the experiences I’ve ever had, and people I’ve interviewed, this story has had more impact on me than practically anything I’ve ever done.” That’s pretty strong stuff from someone who has virtually made a career out of finding inspiration in life. What exactly has she found?
Oprah was praising something called trauma-informed care. A central premise of trauma-informed care is to assume that when individuals experience psychological trauma in childhood, this can cause permanent, or nearly permanent, changes in the wiring of their brain. It is the revolutionary message that Dr. Bruce Perry, the childhood trauma expert that Oprah interviewed, has been promoting in his books and lectures for nearly twenty-five years. These alleged changes in wiring are not good. Examples of the outcomes of childhood trauma that were cited included the cycle of poverty, the cycle of joblessness, homelessness, and incarceration.
I’m an expert on childhood trauma. I’ve spent twenty-three years doing clinical and research work with youths with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with over fifty scientific publications on the topic, and published many of the groundbreaking research studies in this area. In my judgment, childhood trauma is not the cause of all those other massive life problems such as poverty, joblessness, homelessness, and incarceration. In my book on childhood trauma that is coming out next month, They’ll Never Be The Same, I devote a chapter to the neurobiology of trauma. While many experts and reporters have fallen into the narrative fallacy trap and believe that trauma permanently damages the brain and thereby alters personalities, the modern scientific data directly contradict that narrative.
For folks who want to do something about the cycles of poverty and violence, it is tempting to believe the narrative fallacy of trauma-informed care. It’s not every day that you get the chance to mold young children’s brains, which is the extraordinary claim being made in the 60 Minutes story. I have been involved in the assessment or treatment of over 500 trauma-exposed youths in New Orleans, and I probably have experience with more trauma-exposed preschool children than any expert in the world. I do not believe that early childhood trauma has steered these youths down the paths of joblessness, homelessness, or incarceration.
It is important to talk about trauma and to get treatment for PTSD. But trauma is only one component of why many individuals struggle. Trauma does not happen at random. Individuals with trauma often have lots of other life adversities and disadvantages that cluster together for nonrandom reasons. I believe it’s counterproductive to create false narratives that if we were only asking the right questions and if only victims had nurturing relationships, then they could change their lives that simply.
I commend Oprah and the 60 Minutes team because greater recognition of the impact of trauma is a step forward. The main impact of trauma is the development of PTSD, a chronic and often disabling psychological condition. In my book, I describe how researchers have found that PTSD is extremely difficult to diagnose. Even expert clinicians appear to miss the diagnosis about 90 percent of the time. If Oprah can bring more attention to the recognition of the impact of trauma, that seems an unqualified good thing, but, unfortunately, I would not hold your breath for the revolution.
A considered article
Submitted by Nate H. on March 27, 2018 - 12:05pm
Replay to Nate H.
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on March 30, 2018 - 4:20pm
I have two replies to your comment. First, you appear to apply a very broad definition to trauma to include such things as corrosive environments. I have tried to clarify this in the past that the definition of trauma in the clinical world, in terms of events that are likely to cause PTSD, is restricted to life-threatening events that are usually sudden and unexpected. See my previous blog post titled "Stress Is Not Trauma." Stressful events that are non-life-threatening rarely, if ever, lead to PTSD. Second, I agree that it would be difficult for sufferers to have positive outcomes if they stayed in those corrosive environments. The point I was trying to make however was about something different. In the 60 Minutes story, Oprah and Dr. Perry were making the case that trauma caused a wide array of problems. They were talking about brain damage they believe was already done by trauma. You are talking about how to help sufferers in the future. I disagreed with their interpretation of what had happened in the past. Thanks for your comment.
Taxonomies can prove obfuscating
Submitted by Nate H. on October 29, 2019 - 11:49am
I do not doubt but that giving parameters to a phenomenon can be illuminating (and in terms of semiotics useful and convenient) but I also believe that when we too narrowly define what one person experiences as traumatic we are not only dis-serving the survivor but also alienating others.
Let us not be misled by labels while the real problems-the near universally similar antecedents of trauma- remain ignored.
Reply to Nate H
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on November 15, 2019 - 2:19pm
Dear Nate,
By your comments, you seem to be firmly in-line with the proponents of the trauma-informed approach. Those proponents have been looking for decades for a way to shape public policy by grabbing the attention of legislators, judges, school officials, doctors, and any other type of person who could influence public policy. Those proponents have discovered that by calling every conceivable form of stress a “trauma” they can grab the attention of those folks. Calling everything trauma has a stickiness because it sounds scarier. I disagree with you and I believe we DO need to narrowly define the concept of trauma based on sound research partly in order to stop the trauma-informed proponents from hijacking it and misrepresenting it for their social policy agenda.
But we do agree on one thing and that point...
Submitted by Nate H. on November 15, 2019 - 3:53pm
Thank your for your part in this dialogue, I find it both illuminating and significant since we cannot remove darkness but by embracing the light that respectful dialogue can produce.
But we do agree on one thing and that point of agreement-that trauma is conveyed through environment-I feel, is being lost in our bizarre fixation on neurological factors that, besides being tangential to the root causes, remain a complete mystery to deluded empiricists, and perhaps that's a good thing considering the dystopia humans are making of the world, from powerful and little understood neuroleptics founded on a very toxic for-profit model to shortsighted genetic tampering a la CRISPR babies.
Surely the biomedical model has its uses but the continued distraction from the root of all stress (and truama) is economic oppression, whatever the form (however nuanced) it takes.
Frankly I find the obfuscation of adherents and apologists of the toxic biomedical approach, which essentially emboldens and furthers social division, to be yet another symptom of that self-same systemic inequity. The United States has a handful of billionaires who collectively own more than half of the combined US population.
As Krishnamurti said, "it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick soceity."
And inequity? It is pathological, since it intentionally manufactures and produces the circumstances that produce the continuum of stress, trauma and oppression...and division.
Isn't it time that we set about actually cooperatively collaborating with one another to create sustainable societies defined by equity and wellness?
the myth of the self declared expert
Submitted by Grant on March 27, 2018 - 5:12pm
Many scientific studies back up what Oprah claims, that childhood trauma affects everything from then on. It has been known for centuries, really, in one way or another. Your claims are simple speculation. You have no way of knowing how a person's life would have turned out without those critical damaging events. You just make it all up to suit your political agenda. You even contradict yourself at the end just to prove what an idiot you are. "Trauma does not happen at random". What the hell is that supposed to imply, that people deserve to be abused? The is no reason for abusing a child other than you are damaged yourself. Nobody deserves it. Of course the victims have other adversities for "nonrandom reasons", the fact they were abused. You admit the falsity of your own argument and can't even see it. How abysmally dull and stupid.
Reply to Grant
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on March 30, 2018 - 6:00pm
Thanks for your comment. I have two responses. (1) Contrary to your claim, there are essentially no studies with humans that back up what Oprah claims. The studies with humans that proponents of the trauma-damages-the-brain theory cite are nearly all cross-sectional studies. Cross-sectional studies assess people at only point in time, and that one point in time is always after the traumatic events have occurred. Cross-sectional studies have zero power to make conclusions about causation (correlation is not causation). Cross-sectional studies cannot determine if brain abnormalities were present prior to the traumas or developed after traumas. I encourage you to take a look at studies that used a prospective longitudinal design instead of a cross-sectional design. In my previous blog post titled “Have You Lost Your Mind?” I described a study by McLaughlin and colleagues. When researchers assessed individuals prior to the Boston Marathon attack, they discovered that individuals who went on to develop more PTSD symptoms had brains that were different prior to the attack compared to those who developed no or fewer PTSD symptoms. The brain differences were not caused by the trauma. The brain differences were there beforehand. There are about a dozen of these types of prospective longitudinal studies now and they are all consistent with the Boston Marathon study. (2) When I wrote that trauma does not happen at random, I did not mean of course that people deserve to be abused. I meant that, to a statistically significant degree, children who experience trauma also experience more types of other adverse life experiences (e.g., parents in jail, and parents with drug, alcohol, and mental problems). Take a look at the study by Nilsson and colleagues (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2012, volume 27, issue 13, pages 2645-2664). Those other adverse life experiences, and the causes underlying those experiences, are more likely than trauma to explain the outcomes Oprah mentioned, including homelessness, joblessness, and incarceration.
"Those other adverse life
Submitted by Dave on April 24, 2018 - 1:58am
"Those other adverse life experiences, and the causes underlying those experiences, are more likely than trauma to explain the outcomes Oprah mentioned, including homelessness, joblessness, and incarceration."
To a child, homelessness, joblessness, and incarceration of primary caregivers can be perceived as existential threats to their survival and very PTSD inducing. They absolutely qualify as traumatic situations. Dr. Scheeringa's opinion that only discreet, violent events contribute to PTSD is in fact part of a concerted effort to minimize PTSD and C-PTSD diagnoses in the US to protect the DSM profit machine.
Reply to Dave
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on April 24, 2018 - 8:55am
Thanks for voicing some concerns that I'm sure some other readers have had. My research and clinical work is clear that children who experience homelessness and incarceration of parents may develop other emotional or behavioral problems, but it's not PTSD. The usual steps in clinical science for making a case for a new disorder is to publish a case study first. If someone truly believes that homelessness causes PTSD they ought to published the first case report. And bringing the DSM into the discussion doesn't appear to be productive. It seems the DSM publisher would make just as much profit if other diagnoses were added.
Call it by any name....
Submitted by MeChelle Feldkamp on April 9, 2018 - 7:22pm
I appreciate your point. However, I'll take Oprah's support however I can get it. I live in a rural community in Oregon & work with children under five who have experienced trauma (the "nonrandom" kind that you define) as well as multitudes of other trauma (the kind the rest of the world defines as living in poverty, parent's addicted to drugs/alcohol, mental health issues, no support, no supervision & no hope). If Oprah wants to shed light on the difference nurturing, healthy relationships & support can make in the lives of these families & especially in the lives of these children - I say, "call it by any name!!". Healing happens in relationships.
Reply to MeChelle
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on April 24, 2018 - 8:35am
I appreciate the issues you face and why shedding light on those issues feels helpful. Your comment seems like a good example of the politics of trauma and how folks use the word trauma to attract attention to their causes. We have different opinions on whether in the long run that is more harmful than helpful.
The myth of Dr. Scheeringa's trauma expertise...
Submitted by David on April 24, 2018 - 1:44am
Dr. Scheeringa's fundamental claim that only discreet, externally verifiable, life-threatening events can lead to a diagnosis of PTSD smacks of BigPsychiatry's attempts to protect their profits in an ever expanding DSM of "disorders".
The next version of that vile publication will be even larger with more stigmatizing diagnoses (3/4 of which are PTSD and C-PTSD symptoms) than ever. It will likely net the APA over a billion dollars this time around. Dr. Scheeringa and his cohorts attack diagnoses like Complex PTSD and developmental trauma disorder with vigor because they know that once trauma-informed treatment is widespread, and these diagnoses are given their due, his precious moneymaking DSM will shrink to the size of a small pamphlet.
It's quite rich when Dr. Scheeringa claims that the trauma-informed community is pushing a political agenda when, thanks to current events, we all know it's the people with the actual agenda who attack and accuse their targets of having the "agenda".
Reply to David
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on April 24, 2018 - 9:14am
Your comment seems in line with the dissatisfaction that a lot of folks feel with the DSM, which in itself has been an interesting debate. I believe the DSM has been very useful for a variety of reasons, and is the best taxonomy that's possible at the moment. You can read more about my reasoning in my new book (They'll Never Be the Same). Personally, I think the DSM should be much larger, but I think it should be free.
The DSM is an exercise in
Submitted by David on May 3, 2018 - 4:01am
The DSM is an exercise in arrogance by BigPsychiatry. You observe patients in a vacuum, see a set of common behaviors, declare a new "disorder", and then begin prescribing SSRIs or anti-psychotics for behavior control. That's pseudo-science plain and simple. It's never occurs to you that disorders could possibly just be symptoms of something more serious, or that they might not even be disorders at all (by the way who granted BigPsychiatry the privilege of deciding exactly what "ordered" is anyhow?).
Take PTSD for example. It's not a disorder. Had BigPsychiatry bothered to consult other scientific fields of human study such as anthropology, then you'd know that humans have developed, through evolution (98% as hunter-gatherers), a set of genetically expressed optimizations for survivability in times of existential threats such as famines, predators and warring tribes. Once the threats passed, the close human bonds and unrestricted emoting allowed any remaining traumatic energy to be discharged. This is why PTSD is virtually unknown among modern day remote tribes in the Amazon forest.
What is actually disordered is our society which attacks emotionality effectively preventing us from releasing excess traumatic energy. Perhaps you are so blinded by the letter of the law in your DSM wording that you fail to see that any *existential* threat can cause what you call a PTSD reaction. An infant who's mother fails to attend to its needs undergoes the same brain and body changes as does the soldier in Iraq who squad is blown up by an IED.
Sure it's easy to reply that you've been conducting research for 20 years, but research based on faulty assumptions is nothing more than pseudo-science in the end. Observing, describing and then studying "disorders" in a vacuum (of arrogance) rather than the greater context of human science (anthropology, history, genetics, sociology, etc) certainly qualifies for this dishonorable distinction.
Developmental and Attachment Trauma
Submitted by Dawn on September 23, 2020 - 10:01am
Thank you for participating and questioning the statements made in this article. It is quite bothersome for those of us that work closely with children and families that have experienced chronic child adversities during their development. There are too many of us that do this work, see how a full integrative approach is beneficial, have an understanding of the body's stress response system (thank you Dr. Porges for the Polyvagal Theory) and see how this then impacts the brain and body. It is scary to think a professional that works with children would not support this understanding. Agree that if Oprah can shed light to allow other's to learn more about this, that is wonderful!
Reply to Dawn
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on October 7, 2020 - 10:27am
Dr. Porges’ Polyvagal Theory is not widely accepted in the scientific community. Very few people publish on it except Porges. It has been roundly criticized for lack of evidence despite having caught the fancy of clinicians. It might be safe to go so far as to say that most neuroscientists consider the Polyvagal Theory to be Dr. Porges’ 20-year-old pipe dream.
Why is my position scary to you? I believe it might be a useful ploy to demonize me as scary because you want to give the public the impression that somehow I’m going to harm patient care or I’m going to influence others to somehow harm patient care, which is nonsense. Whether one believes in toxic stress has absolutely zero implications for how patients ought to be treated clinically. There is no anti-toxic stress treatment to address developmental brain damage. Or, I believe it might be a useful ploy to call me scary because you are concerned that the public might realize that the toxic stress theory is wrong, and that there is no solid research to confirm the toxic stress theory. I might possibly get in the way of the massive public health campaigns that have already been launched and are going to be launched in the future at taxpayer’s expense about so-called trauma-informed care and the drummed up public health crisis of toxic stress.
The DSM is an exercise in
Submitted by Dave on May 3, 2018 - 3:59am
The DSM is an exercise in arrogance by BigPsychiatry. You observe patients in a vacuum, see a set of common behaviors, declare a new "disorder", and then begin prescribing SSRIs or anti-psychotics for behavior control. That's pseudo-science plain and simple. It's never occurs to you that disorders could possibly just be symptoms of something more serious, or that they might not even be disorders at all (by the way who granted BigPsychiatry the privilege of deciding exactly what "ordered" is anyhow?).
Take PTSD for example. It's not a disorder. Had BigPsychiatry bothered to consult other scientific fields of human study such as anthropology, then you'd know that humans have developed, through evolution (98% as hunter-gatherers), a set of genetically expressed optimizations for survivability in times of existential threats such as famines, predators and warring tribes. Once the threats passed, the close human bonds and unrestricted emoting allowed any remaining traumatic energy to be discharged. This is why PTSD is virtually unknown among modern day remote tribes in the Amazon forest.
What is actually disordered is our society which attacks emotionality effectively preventing us from releasing excess traumatic energy. Perhaps you are so blinded by the letter of the law in your DSM wording that you fail to see that any *existential* threat can cause what you call a PTSD reaction. An infant who's mother fails to attend to its needs undergoes the same brain and body changes as does the soldier in Iraq who squad is blown up by an IED.
Sure it's easy to reply that you've been conducting research for 20 years, but research based on faulty assumptions is nothing more than pseudo-science in the end. Observing, describing and then studying "disorders" in a vacuum (of arrogance) rather than the greater context of human science (anthropology, history, genetics, sociology, etc) certainly qualifies for this dishonorable distinction.
Yes but...
Submitted by Oliver L. on May 26, 2019 - 8:51pm
You make some good points but how much is really known about "remote tribes in the Amazon"? If you're familiar with anthropology and other social sciences you know that the West has a long history of conceptualizing preindustrial cultures reductionistically (either by pathologizing them as savages or idealizing them as living wholly in touch with nature).
An ancient equivalent of PTSD is seen in Homer's Iliad, for example; also there is a difference between genetic evolution and societal evolution, your comment seems to blur the difference.
(I agree that Big Psychiatry is a power and money grab, especially since the publication of DSM 3 in 1980, however you seem to miss the point that the article's author is simply arguing for a more limited [and accurate] definition of trauma; it doesn't mean he's heartless or misguided [broadening psychiatric definitions endlessly also has potentially negative consequences]).
PTSD/ Complex PTSD/ BPD
Submitted by John C on September 26, 2019 - 5:34am
Michael-
Thank you so much for your article. It really takes a lot of courage to put something like this out there. Especially in 2018. But now it is 2019, and hopefully we can start having individual thought again.. but I digress...
I came across your article while doing some research on PTSD and how it could be mistakenly diagnosed for individuals who better fit the criteria for BPD.
My wife has been in treatment for PTSD for over 10 years now, and over that period of time, even after seeing a Trauma specialist twice a week, her condition has worsened to the point where I have simply been left with no other option but to leave her. For example, my wife will typically act out in frantic desperation if I leave her for couple of hours to go to work.. feeling as though she is abandoned, she will sit outside my office in the hallway for 8 hours and when I come out to use the rest room, she will demand that I come home.. this is just a very benign example of her behavior... the most obvious examples are probably inappropriate for a public forum such as this.
Nevertheless when she goes back to her therapist and reports this behavior, the therapist reinforces it. She tells her that this is normal and it is actually showing that she is making progress in the "amelioration" of her bad memories.
So simply put.. her therapist specializes in PTSD.. so of course she must have PTSD.. and since it kind of looks like BPD, we will call if "complex" PTSD.
It is sad because she is not getting the treatment that she really needs...
Reply to John C
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on September 26, 2019 - 9:01pm
Glad you found it helpful. Thank you for sharing your story. I think it will help others who read it. I agree that it is unpopular these days to say anything against complex PTSD. The proponents of complex PTSD have pulled off one of the greatest propaganda campaigns in the history of psychiatry, nd they often play the politics of victimhood, which makes it more difficult to criticize them.
Psychobable and Content Marketing!
Submitted by Branwen on October 24, 2019 - 5:14pm
We have known about trauma for decades. This sudden interest by booksellers, and marketing geniuses like Oprah, does not explain how this narrative has been distorted and monetized by the APA. Now they can label, stigmatize and damage any child reporting an ACA. This of course will depend on race, income, and access to resources. Psychologists have started to use this for marketing, rather than understand their roles in re-traumatizing children.
For decades the reports of an ACE, by a child was a reason to pathologize them. Any child in foster care, ever was assumed to be a criminal or have something pathologically wrong with them. Like everything else the reaction of the therapeutic community was never studied.
Childhood trauma is suddenly a marketing topic, not a serious social problem. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs outlines basic human needs many children do not even access too. Psychologists and psychiatrists are in a willfully blind denial of their roles in all of this. Many have normalized the poverty and despair and used it to improve billing. They lack any basic empathy, understanding or ability to recognize the systemic problems here. All the while their media portrayal of this topic does not improve understanding, it gives the false appearance for marketing purposes, that this topic has been fully researched. Zero research was ever done on the Interventions, many of them reinforced the trauma and traumatized children and the traumatized.
Plenty of marketing psychologists are working on nice false narratives, like how "trauma builds resilience." There are plenty of corporate funded studies, designed to distort the facts. In the meantime, these "caring people" who are using trauma to market their products, and get media attention are doing even more damage. The same crackpot "experts" who used "trauma" as an excuse to drug and manacle low income children, instead of understanding the ongoing effects of trauma.
The media will pick up the false narrative they like best, to counter a factual assessment of how they have been adding to it. Like everything else in America a serious societal problem will be twisted re-framed and used for corporate marketing.
Marketers like this want to frame it as an individual problem, that only happens to "those people." It is a lot easier to bill for it that way. The APA has done a lot of serious damage over the years, by monetizing the despair, distress and hopelessness in this country, and re-framing it all as an individual problem.
Too bad their wasn't any corporate funding to find out how the interventions the APA recommended, applied to long term outcomes. No one in the psychological study business, or academia ever decided to study outcomes, because all interventions were considered benign.
Traumatized children were routinely drugged and gas lighted by child psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and others who were supposed to be "helping." Quite a few of these children turned to suicide, and rug abuse, yet these deaths were inconvenient, so the industry did not track them.
Any random self described expert can peddle a book or promote a controversial opinion, because only selective research was done. Content Marketing is designed to blend seamlessly with fact based discussions, but needs a hook to get attention. We can all see how the data tells us that something is wrong, and how these tired industry or market funded opinions are not helping. This stuff only adds to the denial, and give the false impression that clever people are working on it.
Second had stores are full of these trendy books, that people discard, after reading. These books do not even have a resale value. They put them right next to the new age, christian bodice rippers, and kooky diet tips!
Very powerful observation that reaches to the heart of illness
Submitted by Nate H. on October 29, 2019 - 11:46am
"Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs outlines basic human needs many children do not even access too. Psychologists and psychiatrists are in a willfully blind denial of their roles in all of this."
Very insightful.
I would ask, if Maslow's needs hierarchy were met (from lowest to highest in priority) to all equitably without the competitive superstructure of contemporary materialist societies would illness itself exist?
To me, all illness is related to and rooted in biopsychoeconosociospiritual and natural dysfunctions or mis-functions.
The charade of looking only at genetic antecedents distracts us all from how poverty, inequity, competition and the destruction of caring, social and natural environments and sustainable living are the real harbingers of sociological and biological illness.
Reply to Nate H
Submitted by Michael S. Scheeringa M.D. on November 15, 2019 - 1:51pm
I am not sure which comment you are calling very insightful, but I don’t think it’s one of mine because you seem to disagree with my blog. I interpreted your comment as very much in line with the well-intentioned but unverified trauma-informed theory, which is based on presumed dangers of social injustice and invokes the politics of victimhood. That theory presumes, quite literally, that life stressors of social injustice cause an endless array of damage to individuals that renders them permanently distressed, neurobiologically damaged, and socially dysfunctional. I would be interested to know if after you spent time in a psychiatric clinic where you could meet individuals with psychiatric problems who have never suffered the social inequities that you listed, would you be able to adjust your beliefs and acknowledge that genetics plays a huge role in most illness.
Genetics as diversion
Submitted by Nate H. on November 15, 2019 - 4:23pm
"I would be interested to know if after you spent time in a psychiatric clinic where you could meet individuals with psychiatric problems who have never suffered the social inequities that you listed, would you be able to adjust your beliefs and acknowledge that genetics plays a huge role in most illness."
First of all I would dispute that those placed in such institutions "have never suffered...social inequities."
How is anyone to really know but the individual? Surely it must be conceded that something went very wrong and my position is that what went wrong did not begin and end in one relationship but in the very fibers of social and economic fabric that defines environments themselves, just as they have throughout all of human history.
Without empathic, validating community to support them, how could those experiences that proved to be the antecedents (though assuredly ultimately rooted in the character fashioned by competitive capitalism) ever be brought out safely?
Please reread the above posts. It is because of what passes between people (or fails to) that trauma exists. So, real healing must take place in our families, our relationships and communities. It is not treated with pills or patronizing oppression.
I particularly liked what Dave and Branwen wrote. Consider those responses further and then ask yourself: what is stopping us from and why are we not fashioning societies founded on equity and wellness?
Personally I believe, we will never have societal wellness without equity because we cannot have societal wellness without equity. And trauma, stress or other evidence of oppression? They are mere symptoms of a riven social fabric designed to create inhuman divisions and obstruct peace in our world.
A Lively Discussion
Submitted by e on January 2, 2020 - 5:06pm
Nate,
I have read all your comments and just want to say, here, here!
I've been researching trauma theory most of my career as both an individual with lived experience and a clinician. I'm fascinated by the doctor's perspective and those who struggle to see the connection between systemic oppression, discrimination and other sociocultural adversities and events which overwhelm individual, biopsychosocial coping abilities. In theories I've written about and presented on, I actually include extreme wealth and privilege as a form of trauma.
I also loved what you said about how individuals can do healing work but then where does it leave us to go on existing in a toxic culture-the crux of existential crisis! It reminds me very much of The Hero's Journey and the 12 Steps. Parallels on top of parallels.
I'm inclined to believe it's somehow part of the plan but in order for systemic (as opposed to solely individual) healing to take place, each of us has to have the opportunity to experience compassionate transformation in the context of relationship.
It's easy to get lost in semantics and silos of expertise; they also make great shields of defense against our vulnerability as mere mortals. But at the end of the day what we need most is love. I know, everyone rolls their eyes.
Speaking of love though, high five for your thought's on Maslow's Hierarchy too-I can't help but wonder if self-actualization is possible without some form of struggle? Does it have to be life-threatening, neuro-scaring kind of struggle? I hope not but my life experience has taught me a different lesson so that's all I have to go on.
As for the Doc, thanks for creating this opportunity for us to dig deep!
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