Wisdom of Trauma Sharing Discussion

Mental health has been one of the most neglected areas of global health.

Suicide kills over 800,000 people a year globally and 48,300 in the USA. Drug overdose kills 81,000 in the USA alone annually. The autoimmunity epidemic affects 24 million people in the USA.

The pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of collective mental health and raised awareness in trauma healing.

In The Wisdom of Trauma documentary, the film makers travel alongside physician, bestselling author and Order of Canada recipient Dr. Gabor Maté, MD, to explore why our society is facing such epidemics. This is a journey with a man who has dedicated his life to understanding the connection between illness, addiction, trauma and society.

At iLiving, we have been sharing Dr. Gabor Maté’s deep concern for mental health, seeing the unmistakable connection of illness and trauma, and in promoting proactive cultivation of mental wellbeing and facilitation of trauma healing.

Becoming Trauma-Informed

The conventional understanding of “trauma” is often something horrific that happens that debilitates us, such as war, murder, natural disasters, or serious neglect or abuse. But with more research in the recent decades, there is increasing understanding in the pervasiveness of trauma – trauma is not in the event but in its impact on us.

Being born into the Holocaust era, Dr. Maté has deep personal experience in early developmental trauma and how that shape how one develops their life view, how they relate, how they try to cope with strategies that both save and harm. And like many trauma experts, he has also made it clear that you do not need to be a Holocaust survivor to be traumatised. Early developmental trauma happens to most of us – and we function “normally” like everyone else – in fact when the whole society is running on trauma response, we do not recognise it. <We will cover this more in the discussion following the film sharing.>

So to use Dr. Maté’ words,

“Trauma is not what happens to you; trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you."

Dr. Maté gives us a new vision: a trauma-informed society in which parents, teachers, physicians, policy-makers and legal personnel are not concerned with fixing behaviours, making diagnoses, suppressing symptoms and judging, but seek instead to understand the sources from which troubling behaviours and diseases spring in the wounded human soul.

We at iLiving shares his vision and those of many in the forefront of healing that the path of individual and collective healing lies in raising our trauma awareness and in committing to compassionate self healing.

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