Transcending trauma

Dr. Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician specializing in healing trauma, has the following message.

“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you. Trauma can also be inflicted by what doesn’t happen that should happen. When your needs aren’t met, that can wound as well. Even though you weren’t overtly hurt, you’re still wounded by not having your essential human needs met.”

“If the trauma is what happened to you, it’ll never unhappen. But if trauma is what happened inside you, the wound you sustained is the meaning you made of past events, the way you then came to believe certain things about yourself, or the world, or other people. The trauma is the disconnection from your authentic self, and that can be restored at any moment. We don’t have to allow trauma to define our lives, how we see ourselves, how we see the world, how we relate to other people, how we relate to possibilities, how we relate to even spiritual transformation.”

A huge percentage of families (estimates range from 60 percent to 95 percent!) are considered emotionally dysfunctional, suggesting that most people have been traumatized, under Maté’s description, and disconnected from their authentic self. This helps explain the history of our species.

The traumatized forget we are all one, we are all unique, and we are all created from the same stuff despite all our differences. Your authentic self is who you truly are as a person, an honest representation of yourself through your thoughts, words and actions. Authenticity is a value that makes us an individual and, simultaneously, part of the oneness of existence, a multidimensional universe of inner connection. Being your authentic self means you make your choices based on your inner knowledge and personal experiences. (Wikipedia)

In a traumatized state, a person is operating as a “conditioned self,” locked into a defensive shell of old stories, unable to respond freely to the events of life. Without awareness that the “inside” and “outside” are both parts of the same whole from which everything arises, the “outer” world becomes a screen upon which all the unresolved inner issues get projected. For example, a person with deep unresolved

anger issues tends to see reasons to be angry everywhere they look, and then wastes their energies attacking the “problem out there,” with no resolution possible.

This dynamic has endured for thousands of years, through successions of civilizations and empires, which have all failed eventually. The last two centuries have seen the amplification of this process by increasingly powerful technologies, bringing us to the brink we’re experiencing today. Facebook, Fox News, and international corporate monopolies are examples of this. All over the world, the conflict the “conditioned self” projects on the “other” is destroying not only societies, but the biological viability of the entire planet.

From a traditional point of view, this is a disaster with no good outcome. But if we understand that the root issue is the unresolved trauma most of us carry, then we can view all this as an opportunity for global transcendence: an evolution of consciousness.

Despite Trump being such a powerful example of the selfish individual writ large, he really only amplified issues that have been endemic in this nation since its formation: racism, misogyny, economic inequity, and plunder of the biosphere. Trump and the GQP have no solutions for the problems we face, but they appeal to the masses of folks who are oppressed by the real inequities of our system. It is a fair critique that the corporate dominated members of the Democratic party are just as clueless in the face of our mounting crises. But there is growing popular support to address the monumental changes required to really have peace on Earth, and goodwill toward all life.

We live in a time where changes to life-long patterns are demonstrably possible, ranging from 12-step programs to the Gabor Maté’s work with trauma. The same powerful technological connectivity that is currently dividing humanity is also creating powerful new channels for change. The global nature of COVID has brought an end to much of the old ways of life, and we will never return to the previous “normal,” but that reality was heading toward disaster even before the pandemic. We are facing unprecedented challenges, demanding a new paradigm for humanity.