This week I watched The Wisdom of Trauma featuring Gabor Maté. Maté is a Canadian physician, renowned speaker and author, who is a well known expert in the trauma community. His compassion, research and knowledge of topics such as addiction and the effects of childhood trauma on both the body and the mind, is vast, and he has the ability to talk about incredibly complex and difficult subject matter in understandable and relatable ways.
I urge anyone who’s interested in trauma and trauma recovery to watch The Wisdom of Trauma. Whether you are a medical professional, a trauma survivor, an addiction specialist, a human rights activist, a mental health professional or someone seeing a loved one suffering, this movie highlights the effects of trauma on both the individual and society in a humane, open and clear way, without judgment or assigning blame.
Lessons learned
One of the biggest lessons of this movie is: know yourself; figure out where your reactions come from. Be authentic.
And see the person in front of you as a human being. He or she has a name, no matter what situation they are in or how they are behaving when you encounter them.
Here are a few quotes by Maté from the movie which I found profound, touching or simply infused with incredible humanity.
Quotes regarding addiction
By meeting people where they’re at, and not trying to change them, actually opens the possibility of transformation for them.
When they talk about addiction being a bad choice, say “no it isn’t, it’s actually a solution to a problem.” If we understand that addiction is not the primary problem, but really a response to trauma, then it becomes obvious that in order to heal addiction, you have to heal trauma.
Quotes regarding trauma and self awareness
Underneath that traumatized persona there’s the healthy individual who has never found expression.
Are we free? Are we conscious? Are we making a decision based on full awareness? Or are we driven by unconscious dynamics that we’ve inherited or that we’ve developed as a response to childhood trauma?
Well, insofar as we are not conscious, we are not free.
Personal insight
That tendency to resist arbitrariness of what I’m being told and what the official line is, so me, I’m not really much one for group-think and it really helps me see through nonsense that people accept without questioning.
https://www.high-endrolex.com/17
I was a driven, workaholic doctor. Now why was I a driven, workaholic doctor? ‘Cos the message I got as an infant was that the world didn’t want me. Now how do you deal with not being wanted? You make yourself needed. So if you’re traumatized and if you don’t think you’re loveable, my god, go to medical school. Now they’re going to want you all the time. When they’re dying, when they’re being born and every moment in between. And that’s highly addictive ‘cos you get the validation all the time.
Trauma in the medical community
They still don’t hear the word trauma in medical school.
So I’ve looked at the whole range of human experiences from birth to death, because I worked in obstetrics and I’ve worked in palliative care, and everything else in between. The modern medical paradigm in practice separates the mind from the body and the individual from the environment.
As long as research is driven by the profits of pharmaceutical companies, what’s going to drive the education of physicians except the profit motive of pharmaceutical companies.
The Future and the Wisdom of Trauma
Can we have a vision of society that incorporates the achievements of modern civilization while at the same time still honors the essence of human nature? I think the answer is yes, I know the answer is yes.
We need trauma informed medical care, trauma informed education and trauma informed therapy.
The energy of trauma can be transformed into the energy of life.
Other insightful contributors
Fritzi Hortsman, of the Compassion Prison Project, Romie Nottage, who works with disadvantaged and marginalized communities and Tessa Rose, a Harm Reduction Specialist are some of those who practice trauma informed approaches to help those on the road to trauma recovery. Not to mention the brave men and women who speak openly and honestly about the effects trauma has, or has had on them.
Stay tuned for more Wisdom of Trauma!
Over the next few months, I will be writing about a course by Maté that I will be following. It is comprised of 8 lessons:
Lesson 1: Understanding Trauma
Lesson 2: The Nature and Science of Trauma
Lesson 3: Saying No – Attachment vs. Authenticity
Lesson 4: Relationships
Lesson 5: About Guilt, Shame, Rage and Sadness
Lesson 6: Illness as Adaptation
Lesson 7: Psychedelics and Trauma
Lesson 8: Spiritual Bypass
Stay tuned for articles about this course and it’s various lessons!
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