This is a very important question to ask, why are so many suffering. Not just physically with chronic low back pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, IBS, shoulder pain, knee pain, etc but mentally and emotionally. Why do many people feel disconnected in this hyper connected society?
I’ve recently been listening to a lot of Dr. Gabor Mate’s work on trauma and how this impacts our behaviours, our physiology, our happiness and the development of illness and disease.
A few months ago, I wrote a blog about epi-genetics which is the study of how our environment and experiences, impact the expression of our genetics. Dr. Mate’s position is that we are not seeing increases in disease because of a genetic problem. Our genes don’t change that much in a population in 20, 30 or even 300 years to explain the rise in autism for example (1).
He suggests what we really need to look at is what might be happening in society and the environment that is affecting genes and behaviours.
A lot of Dr. Mate’s work is on trauma and how trauma in childhood can set us on a path of dysfunction. Before I go further, it might be useful to define trauma.
Dr. Mate believes trauma is when our human needs are not being met and we become disconnected from ourselves. In this context trauma is not the terrible events that happen to us from the outside, those events are Traumatic. But rather trauma is when the body disconnects from emotions (1).
By human needs it’s not just need for water, food, shelter although that is very important. What about need for safety, parental guidance, comfort, social connection, community, kind words, inclusion, self esteem, tolerance, acceptance, love, peace and non-judgment. The list could go on and it is not just these needs being met by the family unit. That would be too narrow of a view. What about society, our teachers, our government, our friends are they meeting our individual needs? How are our emotional needs being met?
I think he wants to bring awareness to the fact that this happens and when it does it can have negative consequences on behavior. If we are aware of this, then we can structure the right type of support to reduce the effects of this trauma and can help people re-connect back with their emotions.
This might be perhaps why we are seeing schools introducing mindfulness meditation into the school system. If we can see the importance of our emotions then perhaps we can make positive changes to counteract the negative ones. It’s not about getting rid of the bad things, as I don’t think that is realistic. It’s about setting up the right type of supports and mindsets.
So how does trauma present later in life as suffering?
Consider this,
Imagine you are in a room where there is an argument happening? You are an infant or young child. What options do you have? Can you run or move away from the situation? Can you fight back? Can you ask for help? Likely not, so what other option exists? Shutting down and repressing is the only option the brain has to protect against the unpleasant situation/emotions.
Right from early ages we learn to find “solutions” to the unpleasant sensations/circumstances and these “solutions” work for awhile, until we get older. Then they begin to show up in various ways that actually creates more suffering and stress (2).
Dr. Mate uses an example from his life. He grew up in Hungary during World War II. His mother was under constant stress/fear that the Nazi’s would come. At one point she gave her son away for a month out of love and fear for his life. He interpreted his mother’s stress as there was a problem with him and when she gave him away, he felt a deep sense of abandonment.
Out of this sense of not being wanted, he worked really hard to become a doctor as a means of satisfying his fear or feelings of inadequacy. At a subconscious level everyone “needs” a doctor; the problem was his need for validation turned into workaholism. Always needing more at the expense of his own family.
It wasn’t until later in life that he started looking at trauma and the impacts on health, disease and addiction that he was able to see his own behavior as a result of “solutions” created in his childhood.
When we speak of chronic pain or chronic illness it is never as simple as just a biological issue. There is a complex interplay between diet, sleep, exercise, genetics, stress, social support and our emotions. How we “feel” can drive us towards or away from certain behaviours that can have positive or negative consequences on our health.
The impact of trauma on health outcomes later in life was extensively studied in the ACE Study, Adverse Childhood Events. We perhaps stigmatize the emotional and mental therapies, rather than looking at them as part of proactive health program to ensure our mental/emotional health. We don’t always know what emotional baggage we carry and we may not want to explore this realm on our own. Professional help can guide you through this process.
- https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_are_so_many_adults_today_haunted_by_trauma
- Tim Ferriss Podcast. 2018. https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/