Transcription
A lot of what you talk about, like you just said, is about childhood trauma. What's your definition of trauma?
Well, trauma, um, it's important to define it actually, because people use the word like "God." And who knows what somebody means when they mean "God." And somebody could mean a totally punitive, dictatorial father figure with a white beard, and somebody else might mean the essence of pure love in the world. So trauma is, um, the origin of the word is from the Greek word for wound. So trauma is a wound. And how I think about it is, if I wounded you, if I cut your flesh, then the healing would involve scar tissue forming. And if the wound was great enough, there'd be a big scar there. And the scar would be without nerve endings, so you wouldn't feel. And it would be much less flexible than your normal flesh and connective tissue. So trauma is when there is a loss of feeling, a loss of, of feeling, and there's a reduced flexibility, uh, in responding to the world. And there's a hardening that happens. So this is a response to a wound. And, um, so trauma is a wound, a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically, that then interferes with your inability, your ability to grow and develop. Uh, it pains you, and now you're acting out of pain. It induces fear, so now you're acting out of fear. And, and so that without knowing it, your whole life is regulated by fear and pain that you're trying to escape from by various ways. And that's what trauma is. So trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. And trauma is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling, and more defended.
Sure. And I've heard you mention in the past that we live in a highly traumatized society. How widespread is trauma in society these days?
Well, if you look at the rates of overt trauma, such as, uh, childhood sexual abuse and, uh, emotional neglect, um, uh, stress in families that traumatized children, it's very, it's, it's widespread. The very few people really grow up fully untraumatized in this culture. And especially with the increasing stresses on people, the, um, burgeoning loneliness of people. So there's less support now. So when they do suffer, they're alone with their suffering, nothing to mitigate it. This is a highly stressed and traumatizing society. And not to mention, uh, and you can't separate that from socioeconomic factors with neoliberalism and loss of people's livelihood and loss of meaningful employment, loss of secure employment, uh, austerity, loss of, of, uh, communion and communities. Um, not only are people more stressed and traumatized, they're also less resilient because resilience requires connection and communalism, communal support.
Sure. Um, I think, as you mentioned there, and since having explored my own issues, yeah, uh, it's become clear that we all seem to have been traumatized to some extent. Um, what I want to know is, how do you think the majority of people understand trauma, and how would you like that to change?
Well, first of all, they don't. They think of it as maybe a tsunami or bombing by the L of of Britain, which are certainly traumatic events. But that's how most people think of trauma, something horrendous happening. They don't think of it as an internal psychic wound that then limits their capacity to live as fully as they might, which is what trauma actually is. Um, worse than that, the average medical student doesn't even hear the word trauma in their education. They don't hear the word. Not that they don't get a lecture on it, they don't even hear the word. Not in the sense that I'm talking about. They might hear of physical trauma, but they will not hear of psychic trauma, except maybe in the narrow field of post-traumatic stress disorder, which some psychiatrists do learn about. But even then, they have a very narrow definition of it. But trauma, more in generally, as it affects the average person, that's not even thought about in a medical lexicon. The legal system knows nothing about trauma. So when all these traumatized people come in front of judges and lawyers who are traumatized because they were traumatized, so now they're using drugs, or now they're being violent, or now they're being somewhat antisocial, they're acting out their trauma. They're simply punished rather than a system getting that these are really hurt people who could be rehabilitated if they're given the right support. So the legal system doesn't get it. The medical system doesn't get it. The educational system doesn't get it. The politicians don't get it. Um, it's a huge problem.