When I remember my informative years there were two major issues I faced, both of which I could not, dare not, talk to anyone about. These issues have stayed with me throughout my life and I now recognise them as traumas. I found a conversation between Dr Paul Conti and Dr Peter Attia in my trawl of podcasts on this subject.
Paul Conti, MD, is a Psychiatrist who completed his training at Stanford and at Harvard, where he served as Chief Resident. He wrote ‘Trauma the Invisible Epidemic’ and was hosted on Dr Peter Attia’s podcast, The Drive. He described trauma as a sense of angst or frustration. A sense that something isn’t right, anger and resentment. Here are my favourite moments and I would urge anyone to watch any of the podcasts Paul Conti has been involved in. https://drpaulconti.com/ https://peterattiamd.com/paulconti/
Trauma can be carried within us forever if not addressed – the burden of shame, inadequacy, and self-blame. This can lead to frustration and anger, even bitterness and lead us away from being a good person in the world, being more isolated from care and concern for others and that is a very small step before the use of abusive substances because of the injustice of feeling awful. This is a self-seduction that leads to a path of short-term healing at the expense of a long-term solution.
We face traumas all the time in our lives and this can lead to seeing those traumas through the lens of shame, “it was their fault”, “they are not a worthwhile person”, “they can’t make their way in the world”, “they cannot feel safe”, “no one will like them”, “no one will care for them”, “they’re not good enough”. Many feel persecuted internally from the trauma and this internal dialogue is played over again, blinding their true potential. Some feel the negative narrative in their head is a justifiable self-punishment for the trauma which is self-reflexive as other people hurt them. Once they start talking about the event that led to the trauma and unpacking it then they realise there is no shame to feel but the logic doesn’t matter if the emotion is telling them something different. When you are aware of the cause and reconstruct the narrative, the emotions do not have to control you.
Memories only have meaning through the emotions attached to them, so if a trauma introduces an emotion of shame, the previous memories are also altered, so you don’t remember how good things were before the trauma.

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