TRAUMA IS AS WIDESPREAD AS ITS DENIAL

The Prevalence of trauma and why WE keep denying it

When thinking of traumatic experiences we are often drawn to images of tragic car accidents, brutal war killings, or major natural disasters, but while these are undoubtedly traumatizing events, and induce shock traumas, trauma responses can be induced with as little as a child being lost in a supermarket. This is why, in trauma-specialist Dr. Julie Yau's experience too, trauma can be generalised to most of the population:

If you have a body then it is likely that you have experienced trauma, it can be a one event of a child being left to cry for too long, which overwhelms the system, creates a dissociation of the self, and if that is not repaired by the caregiver, it can create trauma that can live in the system for a lifetime

Richard Miller, a clinical psychologist, author, researcher, yogic scholar, and founding president of the Integrative Restoration Institute (IRI), agrees with this generalised view of trauma, recognising that all of us, to different degrees, have been challenged in our needs for being seen, heard, and connected...basic needs he recognises alongside food, and shelter. 

Long-Term Effects: Childhood Experiences and Adult Trauma

In the words of Dr. Vincent Felitti, these are:

Life experiences in childhood that are lost in time, and then further protected by shame, and by secrecy, as well as by social taboos around inquiries about certain human experiences, play out powerfully, and proportionally, half a century later in terms of emotional state, in terms of biomedical disease, in terms of life expectancy

The self-imposed denial so many of us live with for decades is a phenomena that also carries underlying neurological reasons:

I was shocked when I became conscious of a "split" that I had - a young eight-year old version of me who would show up in times of great distress. I didn't believe it when other people would tell me, but an incident in the emergency room finally woke me up

This denial is particularly easy to perpetuate in a culture that downplays the importance of emotions at all levels of society:

You can go on and become a very successful professional person, even a spiritual teacher, ignoring this. But trauma does speak to us through various psychological symptoms like chronic headaches, depression, panic, anxiety, self-destructive behaviours (i.e. addictions) and various difficulties in regulating your nervous system (Dr. Yau)

Dr. Yau's is not an overstatement, and testimonies abound. 

Star-fame-doctor Gabor Matte, confesses that at the height of his career and fatherhood, he was inwardly tortured with depression, rage, insecurity, experiencing difficulties in his marriage all the while being a workaholic. The movie about Witney Huston tells the story of her traumatic dissociation, and the difficult double life she led while the public applauded onwards.  Micheal Jackson's struggle with his identity is ridden with developmental traumatic events, and the testimony below, taken from a YouTube comments section, shows again the split between outer success and inner gloom.

You are so right about discovering childhood trauma well into midlife. I've always wondered why I exhibit all the wounds you listed, like unable to love, can't allow people to love me, shame, fear, guilt, can't trust, can't receive compliments etc.. Today I was in a toystore and almost cried because I saw fathers and mothers genuinely caring and playing with their children. All I can remember is telling my mom that I'm hungry, but she's too exhausted to care, asleep in the middle of the day, because of the abuse at the hands of my father. Or the time I waited for my mother, who promised to pick me up from school, but never did, and watching all my classmates leaving with their parents. I was six, standing alone on the cement. I was too young to know that I deserved better. People wonder why I am so skinny and have such small bones. Thinking back, it hurt more because my family has money, but no one cared to buy the food and clothing I needed. I was abandoned at my grandmother's house so I can become invisible. As I grew up, my mother used me as the therapist, burdening me with her suicide attempt stories and recounting the abuse experiences, making me very afraid to get into relationships, and turning me into an excessively independent person. I am successful professionally and financially, but a complete failure socially and emotionally. I continue to suffer in silence. I don't know love, for I was never loved. 

Trauma is therefore widespread exactly because it remains a hidden force, and it is a hidden force, because we, as a whole society, are still far from understanding how normal the interplay between body, mind, and behaviour is. We strive for outer appearances and outer success, but deny ourselves the opportunity to reconcile our inner splits with ourselves, and by this end up living a life that seems everything but real.

Wishing you Well,

Your Shrink in Bansko