I worked at a trauma-informed children's mental health clinic for about four years in fundraising/grant writing. I was steeped in the language and theory there and Van der Kolk was often referenced, so were the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) of trauma. The children we served had witnessed murders, their mother's abuse, they'd been abused themselves, lived with addicts of one kind or another, and generally occupied a lower economic area of the city. Most of them had indeed experienced trauma and the point of the clinic was to get to them early to treat them with cognitive behavioral therapy and help grow in them any sign of resilience - the only antidote to trauma.
At the time, there was not a lot known about why some people had more resilience than others and I have not read up on the literature in years, so I do not know what the new findings are now that Satel refers to but resilience, not trauma, needs to be emphasized. This is especially true to address what Satel only beings to talk about and falls short in really delving into - people trying to find trauma in their lives to explain their ailments or why they are the way they are. It's attention seeking behavior and it bumps up against a type of narcissism rooted in victimhood that I see everywhere, especially in young people and the Zoomer generation.
I started seeing and hearing people around me talking about experiencing trauma in the present and reliving it in the past when in fact the incidents they associated with trauma did not appear to be traumatic (such as what Satel refers to as microagressions). Some would claim they were "triggered," a very real thing that happens to people with PTSD, not something that college students should be crying wolf over because something makes them upset or uncomfortable. It was (and is) mimetic, this desire to be a victim rather than to rise above, and the desire to tell the story of why one is sick or broken. This is just one more example of our cultural infantilization and it makes for a society of victims. Unfortunately, victimhood is what draws the spotlight now on social media and, as Prince Harry demonstrates with his book tour, in the mainstream media.
I think these concepts have also trickled down into, and influence the rise in distorted thinking around racism in America. Recently, Wilfred Reilly wrote an insightful opinion piece in Newsweek, "Americans Are Convinced That Race Relations Are Bad. The Data Says the Opposite." Racism in America has declined, but if so why do so many Black people believe the opposite, and feel oppressed, he asks? "The answer is that our society has for some navel-gazing reason begun talking obsessively about racism. Mentions of terms such as 'racists' and 'racism' have increased hundreds of percent across virtually every major news outlet since the empirically more bigoted 1970s and 1980s . . .The general assumption among our pragmatic population seems to be that anything discussed often and frantically must be a true existential crisis. As a result, citizens have begun to wildly over-estimate current levels of ethnic conflict."
This is social contagion (Satel gives the example of the Satanic ritual social contagion, but there are many documented cases in history), and it is showing up everywhere from DEI to the rise in the number of children identifying as trans. The question is - what's the antidote?
Thank you for the great post. I agree with what you say. And, yes, there are many documented cases of social contagion in history. Girls and young women have always been especially subject to them. Maybe they are the canaries in the coal mine for societies under stress? Today, "trans" kids and teens are the big social contagion. Psychiatry and psychiatric organizations are currently a big part of the problem. Where once a tiny sad number of people, mostly men, suffered from this type of body dysmorpha - a psychological problem understood and described by Dr. Paul McHugh - see:
"Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution" By Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital https://couragerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf - now the profession has largely succumbed to a radical Ideology and "affirms" delusional identities without question - even in very young & obviously confused and anxious people. Those who want to be more professional have their hands tied by laws.
Dr. Diane Ehrenshaft was a chief quack in the Satanic Panic days as she is now:
"Diane Ehrensaft, 'Satanic Panic' Woo Peddler, Now Champions the 'Gender Angels' Among Us The dangerously consequential career of a quack"
Great informed and informative comment. Couldn't agree more. The social contagion is downstream of social media and "likes"-----the more performative your morality, the more likes you get, and the more narcissists among us. I think part of the answer is pushing back on victimhood in all sectors of society, especially in the media, who excel at virtue signaling. Caving to nonsense is the path to destruction, their feelings be damned.
PARDON ME L. THE TOP COMMENT'S BOX IS SUPERIMPOSED OVER YOUR COMMENT AND WON'T LET ME WRITE.
The American psyche is a shattered mirror. It is continually exploited, propagandized and battered by the class war hubris and megalomaniacal narcissism of surveillance state capital, the corporate controlled MSM, and the sycophant's cashing in on bureaucratic grant's, book deal's, donation's and the adolescent hysteria of the ideological utopian's known as "woke". As in all cases of megalomania and narcissism the perp's continually poison the emotional wellspring and create division and distrust while shaming ,shunning, banning, expelling and destroying truth speaker's. Human dignity, empowered and centered emotional wholeness and a sense of personal agency is the vampires' greatest fear. The point of the entire exercise in insanity is the reduction of the human to "thingdom". The last thing the monster's want to hear: "I'm a human being and demand I be treated with dignity and respect." When confronted, the first response of the perp will alway's be to blame and criminalize the victim.
Living inside a distorted power based reality built on lie's and criminal theft is not conducive to good mental and spiritual health. The human dynamic ultimately can not sustain it. It rob's the individual of a subjective meaningful life. It is crazy making. On the familial level, or on the national level, as we are witnessing and experiencing, the perp must go to ever greater measure's to maintain control. They withhold love, they threaten, they physically assault and incarcerate. They cancel the life and livelihood of the offender or, and as the pathology develops ultimately, the re-education camp, the bullet and the gas chamber.
So we're clear. After six decades of a manufactured class war meant to destroy labor and the American middle class the sudden explosion of tech and communication made the machination's of the political/financial elite transparent to reality. They're scared and they're dangerous. Hence the increased push to de-humanize American's and the people's of the world. Listen bug eater, there is no such thing as a family. A man, a woman or a child. No mother. No father. No history. No culture. And soon, if we let it happen, no Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Welcome to "thingdom". America is an open air insane asylum. Nothing can be legitimate because "everything mean's everything and nothing mean's anything". Industry, economy and treasury gutted, saving's and pension fund's looted, food and energy supply chain's manipulated, education becomes indoctrination, speech and liberty are criminalized. On the desk top, the face of the fascist state AOC gloat's: "De-platforming work's." Assange and Snowden are dead men walking. Wake up!! The only sane engine of survival and recovery is the Constitution and the citizen willing to stand for the Republic. Everything else is disease and symptomatology.
Have you observed another level of premeditated societal collapse: the cancellation of adult aged parents by the new yuppies, who claim “toxicity” and “control” and “abusive childhood” if their parents or other family members disagree with them on their choices, large and mundane.
They find like-minded friends and of course, go to therapy, where the therapist affirms them in their victimhood and cancellation, even the Christian ones, rather than help them see things in a rational, or reconciliatory, or loving, or relational perspective. (That would, of course, dry up the cash cow.)
But it leaves millions of young children growing up removed from the love and acceptance of loving grandparents, aunts & uncles, cousins; millions of ordinary, normal, *challenging but non-abusive* grandparents are deprived of the joy of their aging lives, their grandkids. This is contagious also as “support groups” help further splinter our society and damaging the emotional health of our children.
Thank you for this really thoughtful post. I’m a therapist (albeit, not the mental health kind) and I have seen a significant rise in the victim mentality over the last 5 or so years; and yes, especially in the younger generations. our practice has is now seeped in ACE scores and trauma informed care with little regard to resilience and good old fashioned “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps” and moving on. I have an early teens daughter and have been working diligently not to instill this type victim identity in her. Good old pragmatism is out of style. Apparently is more important to care the identity of “victim” than it is to heal.
Can you speak on the rise of intergenerational family cancellations, as adult children cancel and abandon parents and/or siblings who disagree with them, claiming abusive childhoods?
It’s like what was once merely challenging in a family— personality conflicts, disagreements over choices— has suddenly become intolerable (by the “tolerant” of course) grounds for estrangement, not just distance, on an epidemic level.
Everything has become abuse here. Every disagreement with the parent (or sibling) is perceived as an attack on the adult child, invariably millennial and gen Z, usually educated young professionals with politically or ideologically different axes to grind— but not always. I’m not a parent, but I’m living the carnage from the sidelines, watching over years as an actually controlling, manipulative, lying (yeah) in-law gradually and successfully isolated and brain-washed a most cared-for relative into believing the family of origin “didn’t love” them.
What can we do about it? There’s next to zero guidance online; literally *no therapist* I’ve asked has any counsel for adult parents dealing with this heartache other than suspicion and blame, and giving in consistently to the adult child. Therapists affirm these successful adults in their perceptions of controlling abuse rather than seeking the truth and leading them towards a healing perspective. Tragically, and I don’t wish this on them, but you can see the trainwreck coming as they teach their young kids, if they have them, how to treat them one day.
I think blaming the parents for a person’s problems gained popularity from a book in the 1970s.
(This is not directed at adults who actually suffered abuse from relatives and no natural reconciliation is safe or possible at this time.)
Unfortunately psychology has the answer here as well. Deprogramming as emotional terrorist. I jest a bit... but only by a bit. Opinions can be changed and challenged by facts but beliefs, especially the ones we've internalized and invested in emotionally require deprogramming.
Harry is a grifter. These people are monetizing suffering. Invariably there is “mission creep” in these “diagnoses” which looks ridiculous over time. There really is a place to say “get up, brush yourself off, and move on”
His mother, Diana, was thrown into the dynamic of a loveless marriage grounded in duty and birthing heirs. Her father was physically and emotionally abusive resulting in her mother abandoning her children who were left to deal with this oaf on their own. Her mothering skills were actualized by making her boys her confidantes, friends and probably, spies. William maintained a strong connection to his grandparent but somehow, Harry got lost in the shuffle and created a new identity, a bawdy, bad boy-a kind of Andrew Light.
Like his mother, he acted out and the publicity machine was able to spin his activities favorably or make them disappear. He became a war hero/cad and the public adored him. When I hear Harry interviewed, he reminds me of all those dopey, name taggers of the 1970s who touted the wonders of self-help groups and cults that littered that decade. Marrying the ultimate social climber/manipulator has reduced him to a puddle of neuroses. Once the coronation is over, he and his wife will retreat to their lives in California. I'm sure Meghan will think of something.
Diana also weaponized the relationship in retaliation.
The Bashir interview was stilletto aimed at Charles and the monarchy.
I am honored to have witnessed the outpouring of affection and honor given Elizabeth II at both her coronation and her funeral. She was the most respected person on the planet.
Harry, however, may not yet understand what his grandmother...and soon his father...stand for in the United Kingdom.
And, sadly, he may never will...until he doesn't receive an invitation to William's coronation.
And so did Charles… the choice not to subject a woman or future children to a loveless marriage. Just a tragedy all around that multiple humans had to muddle through really badly.
I don't think it's "get up, brush yourself off, and move on" as much as it is diagnosing what the actual issue may be for each *individual* in an appropriate setting. If you have PTSD, you really need to be treated for PTSD. If you don't have PTSD but you are struggling with mental health, you need to figure out what the actual problem is before you can deal with it.
It's typical of society. We fail to recognize and treat PTSD for years and then the pendulum swings the other way and now we fetishize victimhood and everyone has trauma. Like every issue, the truth is in the middle. Treat the individual with evidence based interventions, don't try to funnel them in to a narrative that sells books.
Due to his old money wealth and social standing, Harry has never had a need to get up and brush himself off. He can, and will, live quite comfortably wallowing in his perceived trauma and hardship.
I don't think the idea that people are incorrectly mimicking trauma for popularity and identity (which I've also noticed) necessarily invalidates trauma-informed approaches.
Did those incorrect mimickers get that story from a therapist, or are they cobbling it together on their own from pop culture?
Developing the resilience to heal actual trauma starts with seeing it clearly and without avoidance or overemphasis. It doesn't STAY there, but it starts there. The fact that some people are drawn to pseudo-trauma and perseveration doesn't mean that real survivors need to follow suit.
A few decades ago, pseudo-trauma was not in the public sphere, which was a plus, but many therapists had little to no actual trauma training either, leading many of them to give bad and even harmful service to actual trauma survivors (PTSD, narcissistic abuse, etc.).
Since the end of WWII and the rise of advertising, society has moved steadily away from collectivism. The primary way people individualized themselves was through what they buy and wear (mini-skirts and Harleys being early examples).
We are now moving to individualism based on personality - political and social affiliations, and psychological afflictions. That's a broader social shift, and one that I don't believe was caused by psychology.
Just because people are shopping for a diagnosis doesn't mean that childhood experiences don't affect one's formation. In fact, diagnosis-shopping could be an excellent opportunity to dig into what childhood messages might have lauded victimization at the expense of resilience. I suspect there is a mountain of parental anxiety buried in some of those situations!
Prince Harry is a perfect example of the above. I have no doubt his childhood had a profound impact on his world view. Losing your mother as a child IS traumatic, and I see no reason why that can't exist in the same space as other aspects of his personality.
In short, I think this article conflates real treatment with internet pop culture in a way that is inaccurate and unhelpful.
“Just because people are shopping for a diagnosis doesn't mean that childhood experiences don't affect one's formation.”
No amount of childhood bullying gives you rheumatoid arthritis or cancer. Period. That’s an insane notion on its face and you know it.
You’re defending insane rantings of a lifelong grifter because you can’t face the fact that sometimes bad things just happen - even to good people for no reason than dumb luck.
You don't have the slightest idea about my intentions or motivations, so let's set the ad hominems aside please.
I have a rather dim view of psychiatry in general, I think grift has been embedded in the APA from the beginning.
However, the way psychiatry is practiced doesn't invalidate the fact that some of it is right.
My post is not a defense of Mate. It is a defense of the idea that childhood experiences impact the way we understand our world as adults. And those impactful experiences include trauma, but also other experiences that I would not class as trauma.
As dim as my view on psychiatry may be, I don't think it created the tendency we have today of pathologizing life. I think that started long before with advertising, and was given a force multiplier in the internet age.
I also don't think looking at your childhood is an example of pathologizing life. I think it's an example applying adult understanding to childhood, which can be very beneficial.
And I don't think there's any harm in examining whether or not experiences can impact physical health. As long as it's done using the scientific method. Do people make claims? Yes. They do that all the time about every scientific or quasi-scientific issue. Even real reporting outlets report way too soon on results of actual scientific studies in a way that obscures the facts. In fact, sometimes they just report on the hypothesis before the study is even complete.
I am not clear what Dr Satel's experiences are with working with individuals from all walks of life, rather than just ones that are mostly diagnosed with DSM-5-TR disorders. As a therapist who has been working extensively with people who have been, both diagnosed with specific disorders and people who are just dealing with every day personal and relationship issues, I have come to understand the complex neurological, psychological and psycho-social workings of childhood traumas in every person with whom I have worked.
It is not complicated if you bring into your assessment the machinations of our brain's design to conserve energy. Experience build brain structure has been demonstrated by the top neuroscientists (see Harvard's https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/experiences-build-brain-architecture/). Yes, we are extremely resilient, but for survival, not thrival. Our adaption to our early childhood environments wires in a manner that is adaptive for our survival in childhood, but maladaptive to living a fulfilled, authentic and creative adulthood. Due to the nature of our brain's conservation of energy design, in our personal and interpersonal relationships we often continue to react from a helpless child's frame of reference, fearful, and desperately driven to seek approval and sense of belonging when we are actually physically and cognitively capable adults who could deal with conflict and challenges if we perceived reality more clearly.
These obsolete reactive patterns need to be identified and rewired in adulthood so that we can perceive and respond to a truer read on reality.
There is a reason why our world looks the way it does; we perceive reality from a lawful and specific adaptive lens that evolved from our unique adaptation to the environment into which we were born. We are nature, and as such are governed by nature's cause and effect laws. The more we understand the interplay between our biological, neurological and psycho-social dynamics, the better we will be able to address the mental health issues we are currently facing.
Thank you! I think this article and many of the comments are throwing the baby out with the bath water. Childhood absolutely informs our worldview. The fact that some get stuck doesn't invalidate the necessity of digging into it.
the fields of psychology and psychiatry use many wordy words (e.g., "psycho-social dynamics"). Neither field of study is falsifiable, which means neither is scientific. You're just guessing, based on your perceptions and anecdotes.
I don't have any beef with guessing, or therapy, or the reading of tea leaves. All three are equally scientific (i.e., not at all).
I hear you Zoya. I think both fields have been used in ways that have not been appreciating the whole human being. On the other hand, you may want to check out leapforward.us and review my process. You may find my work more humble.
With regards to the increase in both the trauma narrative and the documented increase in mental illness, what often goes unmentioned is the never before seen in human history "social-informational" environment we are living in.
The internet has us drowning in information, much of which we have to process through a social lens and I can't help but think this environment weakens the "resilience response" and erodes mental flexibility, making us more prone to both real and perceived traumas.
Also, the loss of the traditional social safety nets of large extended family and religious community/ defined relationship with God, rather than government and support groups of strangers. Also never before seen in human history. A lifetime of personal transience.
These are helpful of course, (gov’t and support groups), but maybe because we don’t know what we are missing and reject what it has become to us. We have lost the sense of living and loving and tolerating the challenges of the original human community, and working to make life better within them.
I think that in addition to the ill effects of social media, this sensitivitrauma discourse has had a profound impact on Millennials and Gen Z.
For all their good characteristics, such as their aspiration to authenticity and excellence, I can also see high rates of anxiety and overall lack of resilience.
Nowadays it is so easy to spend a lot of time online reading about psychiatric disorders, trying to figure out what is wrong, seeing everything as “toxic,” and you can convince yourself you have PTSD or even autism, and once you internalize this you become what in the ‘70s they called neurotic.
As a Gen X, I can see the difference: We were protected by our cynicism. In contrast, younger people are so much more earnest and uptight, and they stigmatize themselves as a result.
Seeing everything as “toxic” — especially one’s parents. How many estranged and cancelled and heartbroken, otherwise ordinary decently loving parents are out there now!
Mate’ is a solid theorist. His thesis contains some valuable insights about how we don’t adequately account for what he calls “psycho-social” impacts on our health. The connection between mind and body etc. That said, one should not be diagnosing people in the way that he does without more data and direct exposure to the individual. He starts with some solid and useful counter medical culture observations about our incomplete approaches to medicine and then he takes it to the point of absurdity. Heavy woo woo vibes.
Good point. I read one of his books and what I didn’t like was he always seemed to blame the mother for everything wrong in a child’s life, especially if she were stressed when the child was an infant. Show me a mother, especially a first time mother, who isn’t stressed.
I don't see it as blame, merely reasons. Understanding that most of us have had childhood experiences that had an outsized impact on our world view because we lacked the context or skills to appropriately process them.
The essence isn't blaming your parents, it's understanding that they were just people, and you were little, and some misunderstandings happened that you need to put right for yourself as an adult with adult context.
It's about releasing your parents from the position they held for you as a child, freeing you to approach them and yourself with compassion and understanding.
“Understanding that most of us have had childhood experiences that had an outsized impact on our world view because we lacked the context or skills to appropriately process them.”
And none of those experiences are why some people get Alzheimer’s or rheumatoid arthritis yet that is what Maté and his ilk are claiming.
We are just beginning to understand the role of inflammation in certain diseases.
And we are just beginning to understand the role of stress on inflammation.
That does not absolve Mate or give him some special knowledge to make the claims he makes. But I disagree with throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Yes, there is a difference between saying something is true and saying we don't know.
There is also a difference between saying we don't know, and saying something is false.
It's going to take a lot of research to understand the connection, if any, between stress, inflammation, and disease. Maybe there isn't a connection. I don't think we know that yet. But I do think we can know it. It's not unfalsifiable. It just takes more research.
The placebo effect is measurable. You can also look at a person's worldview and experience before these examinations, and after. Is the person better adjusted? Are they more at peace?
I would argue that's success.
Yes, you can't take out therapy from the rest of someone's life. And people are multi-dimensional and multifaceted, as are their lives.
Right on. Show me a family of multiple adult children where the adult parents aren’t cancelled and shamed by one single adult child.
I get that each child has a different experience but i think I read a bestseller by some 1970s psychologist lauded, “7 million copies sold!” which urged the reader to source every personal failure in one’s parentage.
If a psychiatrist (or psychologist), which Mate' isn't, does mental health assessments by reading a book and going on a paid live interview broadcast, "solid theorist" would not be at the top of the list of attributes I would suggest for him. Being more competent than me doesn't make him competent, and his chosen platform surely brings propriety and intent to question. Harry is very close to riding his white horse into the ditch, through a lot of help from those making bank on his actions. Just my reaction.
I found forgiveness to be the only way forward regarding family rifts. You're not capable of changing other's words or actions and it does no good whatsoever to live in the past. Hopefully my children will be able to get over their childhood trauma as I was. God forbid they had to settle for Chips Ahoy when they really wanted the damned Oreos!!
But no one really teaches the mechanics of forgiveness. Only cancellation. The adult kids forget they’re teaching their own kids how to treat them in 20 years. We no longer know how to function in our culture, as families of adults.
To me, this trauma-informed therapy approach feels more like masturbatory suffering that will wind up emotionally crippling its patients. I mean, how was Abraham Lincoln, whose early tragedies are the stuff of nineteenth-century lore, ever able to survive childhood, much less thrive as an adult? He looked onward and outward. Perhaps the underlying issue for most of us these days is not traumatic events per se, but our decreasing sense of personal resilience. Alfred Lord Whitehead reportedly said, “Civilizations thrive until they start to focus on themselves.” . . . So thankful that Dr. Satel is pursuing this critically necessary critique.
Agreed - therapy and this obsessive focus on anxiety and depression is fetishizing the problematic. Our goal - as people, physicians, teachers, parents - should not be to be insulated from hardship, but to overcome it. Dwelling on it with lifelong therapy seems to give any hardship so much agency over life, when the experience of hardship should really be the glue that strengthens your character. It’s like a fine wine - only grapes raised in dry, harsh climates produce the best wines. They must suffer a little to be good and interesting. Those without suffering are doomed to be weak, miserable, and boring.
Brava! I would only add that life is pretty much one’s reaction to it and that resisting experience on its own terms can only lead to stunted character, as we see all around us.
What a much needed voice in this conversation! I recently heard Mate for the first time on a podcast. He’s intelligent and speaks clearly, so I can see how convincing he might be. However, the logic breaks down incredibly rapidly. He spoke of trauma to young children when they don’t get what they need, but all of us with very young children know that they don’t have clear conceptions of their needs. This is why adults need to care for them, set boundaries, choose their diets, etc. I think no one would argue that denying a toddler a second pint of ice cream would be abuse, but to a toddler it might feel like it. The perceived trauma can even be extreme for children. I’ve seen my child hyperventilate in her toddlerhood over not getting a balloon. What I’m trying to say is that our perceptions and reactions to things might not be equal or even in the same ballpark as the harm caused by them. This is why such a subjective approach to trauma would make ALL of us severely traumatized and likely to have some kind of mental disorder manifested or lurking in our minds, waiting to pounce. Broad statements like “a child being neglected” will develop “disorders” is absolutely like a psychic or palm reader with broad, universal appeal. Specific examples of child abuse with evidence backed claims, such as “children who are beaten are more likely to become violent, as evidenced by x,” are not as fun, sexy, splashy— and most importantly, are not relevant to the broad w swath of people buying pop psychology books.
I am reminded of the MeToo movement where nearly every inappropriate act was considered as equal to assault. If all acts are equal then the truly traumatic acts of rape are diminished.
Yes! Calling all the little stuff “trauma” seems to me to be hugely insulting/offensive to those who have suffered actual traumatic events (not just “microaggressions” and the like).
I’m a licensed mental health counselor, all I can say is who is this person? because the degree to which they are ignorant of modern psychotherapy is astonishing.
The dominant form of psychotherapy being practiced today globally is cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT does not have an emphasis on early childhood experiences. The emphasis on childhood experiences comes more from earlier types of therapy that are based off of Freud and Adler. There is merit to examining what happened in a persons childhood often maladaptive patterns of behavior start young.
But as a practicing psychotherapist about zero of what was described in this article applies to modern work. I can only assume it was written by someone who is extremely out of touch with how modern psychotherapy practiced.
It’s also important to note that psychiatrists are the least competent psychotherapists. So that might have something to do with it. If you ever need therapy, get it from the mental health counselor, a social worker or a psychologist. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who specialize in prescribing medication‘s to people. Most never engage in therapy with clients. When they do they are garbage at therapy. That’s probably why this author is so far off the mark.
David, I know someone who is attending therapy with a psychologist for over 4 years, the purported issue is postpartem depression, yet the parents of this person are continually abused and badgered and blamed in spite of therapy. Furthermore, the psych is not aware of details which indicate that the person’s spouse has systematically isolated, over many years, the person from their family of origin, causing unimaginable mutual grief. The person seems no happier (outside of social media) than they were 4 years ago and in fact the abuse of the family of origin escalates… do you have any guidance?
It doesn't take four years to resolve postpartum depression in therapy. In fact, even without therapy, I would have expected it to resolve itself at that point. I don't know all of the circumstances but I would be skeptical of why this person has been kept in therapy for so long by the therapist. Especially if they have been meeting weekly, that would certainly stand out as egregious.
I'm not sure why they are blaming their family for things, so I can't be much more specific about things.
Unfortunately, prince, who is both “not-the-sharpest-tool in-the-shed” and a high profile scandalous figure is being strategically used by very smart and influential actors for agenda pushing and monetary profit.
I spent much of my life with major mental illness which had a genetic/metabolic origin. This is not particularly uncommon yet my parents spent a fortune on the various talk therapies that were the current fad: Freudian, cognitive, nowadays trauma. This is not to say these have no value, but they have an appealing story side which explains, sometimes blames, but rarely fixes. With biochemical treatment, my issue—which caused extreme expense and suffering for my family and myself— cleared in less than a year. I wonder when psychiatrists will stop acting as sales reps for Pharma and actually concentrate on practicing medicine, exploring and categorizing medical issues such as heavy metal exposure, celiac disease, thyroid disorders and genetic glitches that provoke mental illness. Many of these can be successfully treated.
Lisa, medical professionals DO focus on those things. Every diagnosis of major depressive disorder and dementia is linked with thyroid function tests. Every child is screened for lead with blood tests in early childhood. This is in all the medical society guidelines of treatment and diagnosis.
Some years ago I read a medical journal article about a study in a mental hospital in New Jersey. They found one-third of the patients hospitalized for depression had undiagnosed thyroid problems that were revealed when using more thorough testing used in Europe. I personally saw one of the authors of the study, an NYU professor, who referred me, at my own request, to an endocrinologist. I was diagnosed that way. The standard tests showed nothing. Also, adults can have lead and mercury that will not show up on standard blood tests, if they are even performed which is unlikely. I am talking about a much more thorough examination than the cursory ones done at present.
What are the more thorough tests that they use in Europe for thyroid dysfunction that go beyond the standard TSH and free T3 T4 and antibody tests they do here? And what are the thorough lead and mercury tests, since mercury levels can vary on a daily basis and the serum tests are so inaccurate that even routine testing is not recommended? Im a physician, just wondering what it is that you know that I haven’t heard of in my decade of practice.
The thyroid test was some type of challenge test, which involved an injection and follow up blood test. I remember the NYU psychiatrist said it had to be done by an endocrinologist. He referred me to Columbia. This was years ago so I can’t remember more. You sound very defensive! It is not at all surprising to me you haven’t heard of any of this. After all, our system sucks. The American medical system spends more than any other industrialized country in the world and its results rank at or near the bottom on international measures of health. So super expensive (corrupt) and yet incompetent. What’s not to like?
It’s not expensive because it’s corrupt. It’s because Americans generally have no desire to be healthy. They want pills and surgery and they don’t want to be told to eat well and exercise. They don’t even want to be told they’re obese anymore. Unhealthy people consume a lot of healthcare, in the most inefficient way. So no, our healthcare system doesn’t suck. If it did, foreign grads from the most elite institutions in their respective countries wouldn’t be flocking to come here. We have the best doctors, the best technology, the most access. No one in this country comes to the ED with an emergency and dies due to lack of payment. People like yourself who rip the system are just spoiled and have never experienced medicine in other countries, and base their entire assessment on anecdotal evidence from a sample size of 1.
This narrative of trauma, if such it can be called, was applied to Vietnam veterans in a way that stereotyped us as broken human beings, destroyed by our wartime experiences. It’s true, of course, that some veterans had their lives blighted by the war. But the vast majority of us found a way to put that part of our past in perspective and move on. But this was no thanks to people who insisted on defining us in terms of the trauma they supposed we suffered.
It’s been my experience over the course of a long military career that men and women are remarkably resilient. I also saw this in my own daughter, who’s an Army veteran of Afghanistan.
I worked at a trauma-informed children's mental health clinic for about four years in fundraising/grant writing. I was steeped in the language and theory there and Van der Kolk was often referenced, so were the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) of trauma. The children we served had witnessed murders, their mother's abuse, they'd been abused themselves, lived with addicts of one kind or another, and generally occupied a lower economic area of the city. Most of them had indeed experienced trauma and the point of the clinic was to get to them early to treat them with cognitive behavioral therapy and help grow in them any sign of resilience - the only antidote to trauma.
At the time, there was not a lot known about why some people had more resilience than others and I have not read up on the literature in years, so I do not know what the new findings are now that Satel refers to but resilience, not trauma, needs to be emphasized. This is especially true to address what Satel only beings to talk about and falls short in really delving into - people trying to find trauma in their lives to explain their ailments or why they are the way they are. It's attention seeking behavior and it bumps up against a type of narcissism rooted in victimhood that I see everywhere, especially in young people and the Zoomer generation.
I started seeing and hearing people around me talking about experiencing trauma in the present and reliving it in the past when in fact the incidents they associated with trauma did not appear to be traumatic (such as what Satel refers to as microagressions). Some would claim they were "triggered," a very real thing that happens to people with PTSD, not something that college students should be crying wolf over because something makes them upset or uncomfortable. It was (and is) mimetic, this desire to be a victim rather than to rise above, and the desire to tell the story of why one is sick or broken. This is just one more example of our cultural infantilization and it makes for a society of victims. Unfortunately, victimhood is what draws the spotlight now on social media and, as Prince Harry demonstrates with his book tour, in the mainstream media.
I think these concepts have also trickled down into, and influence the rise in distorted thinking around racism in America. Recently, Wilfred Reilly wrote an insightful opinion piece in Newsweek, "Americans Are Convinced That Race Relations Are Bad. The Data Says the Opposite." Racism in America has declined, but if so why do so many Black people believe the opposite, and feel oppressed, he asks? "The answer is that our society has for some navel-gazing reason begun talking obsessively about racism. Mentions of terms such as 'racists' and 'racism' have increased hundreds of percent across virtually every major news outlet since the empirically more bigoted 1970s and 1980s . . .The general assumption among our pragmatic population seems to be that anything discussed often and frantically must be a true existential crisis. As a result, citizens have begun to wildly over-estimate current levels of ethnic conflict."
This is social contagion (Satel gives the example of the Satanic ritual social contagion, but there are many documented cases in history), and it is showing up everywhere from DEI to the rise in the number of children identifying as trans. The question is - what's the antidote?
Thank you for the great post. I agree with what you say. And, yes, there are many documented cases of social contagion in history. Girls and young women have always been especially subject to them. Maybe they are the canaries in the coal mine for societies under stress? Today, "trans" kids and teens are the big social contagion. Psychiatry and psychiatric organizations are currently a big part of the problem. Where once a tiny sad number of people, mostly men, suffered from this type of body dysmorpha - a psychological problem understood and described by Dr. Paul McHugh - see:
"Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution" By Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital https://couragerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf - now the profession has largely succumbed to a radical Ideology and "affirms" delusional identities without question - even in very young & obviously confused and anxious people. Those who want to be more professional have their hands tied by laws.
Dr. Diane Ehrenshaft was a chief quack in the Satanic Panic days as she is now:
"Diane Ehrensaft, 'Satanic Panic' Woo Peddler, Now Champions the 'Gender Angels' Among Us The dangerously consequential career of a quack"
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/diane-ehrensaft-satanic-panic-woo
See also - https://archive.org/details/ehrensaft-1992/page/235/mode/2up
For anyone who wants a summary of how this goes back to Dr. John Money I refer you to "Transgender Leviathan" https://pitt.substack.com/p/lets-read-the-transgender-leviathan
And this amazing interview of the courageous Dr. Miriam Grossman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6-VAuUMEB0
who is coming out with a new book in June "Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness" available on Amazon.
Great informed and informative comment. Couldn't agree more. The social contagion is downstream of social media and "likes"-----the more performative your morality, the more likes you get, and the more narcissists among us. I think part of the answer is pushing back on victimhood in all sectors of society, especially in the media, who excel at virtue signaling. Caving to nonsense is the path to destruction, their feelings be damned.
PARDON ME L. THE TOP COMMENT'S BOX IS SUPERIMPOSED OVER YOUR COMMENT AND WON'T LET ME WRITE.
The American psyche is a shattered mirror. It is continually exploited, propagandized and battered by the class war hubris and megalomaniacal narcissism of surveillance state capital, the corporate controlled MSM, and the sycophant's cashing in on bureaucratic grant's, book deal's, donation's and the adolescent hysteria of the ideological utopian's known as "woke". As in all cases of megalomania and narcissism the perp's continually poison the emotional wellspring and create division and distrust while shaming ,shunning, banning, expelling and destroying truth speaker's. Human dignity, empowered and centered emotional wholeness and a sense of personal agency is the vampires' greatest fear. The point of the entire exercise in insanity is the reduction of the human to "thingdom". The last thing the monster's want to hear: "I'm a human being and demand I be treated with dignity and respect." When confronted, the first response of the perp will alway's be to blame and criminalize the victim.
Living inside a distorted power based reality built on lie's and criminal theft is not conducive to good mental and spiritual health. The human dynamic ultimately can not sustain it. It rob's the individual of a subjective meaningful life. It is crazy making. On the familial level, or on the national level, as we are witnessing and experiencing, the perp must go to ever greater measure's to maintain control. They withhold love, they threaten, they physically assault and incarcerate. They cancel the life and livelihood of the offender or, and as the pathology develops ultimately, the re-education camp, the bullet and the gas chamber.
So we're clear. After six decades of a manufactured class war meant to destroy labor and the American middle class the sudden explosion of tech and communication made the machination's of the political/financial elite transparent to reality. They're scared and they're dangerous. Hence the increased push to de-humanize American's and the people's of the world. Listen bug eater, there is no such thing as a family. A man, a woman or a child. No mother. No father. No history. No culture. And soon, if we let it happen, no Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Welcome to "thingdom". America is an open air insane asylum. Nothing can be legitimate because "everything mean's everything and nothing mean's anything". Industry, economy and treasury gutted, saving's and pension fund's looted, food and energy supply chain's manipulated, education becomes indoctrination, speech and liberty are criminalized. On the desk top, the face of the fascist state AOC gloat's: "De-platforming work's." Assange and Snowden are dead men walking. Wake up!! The only sane engine of survival and recovery is the Constitution and the citizen willing to stand for the Republic. Everything else is disease and symptomatology.
Bravo, Mike R. SPOT ON!!!
Have you observed another level of premeditated societal collapse: the cancellation of adult aged parents by the new yuppies, who claim “toxicity” and “control” and “abusive childhood” if their parents or other family members disagree with them on their choices, large and mundane.
They find like-minded friends and of course, go to therapy, where the therapist affirms them in their victimhood and cancellation, even the Christian ones, rather than help them see things in a rational, or reconciliatory, or loving, or relational perspective. (That would, of course, dry up the cash cow.)
But it leaves millions of young children growing up removed from the love and acceptance of loving grandparents, aunts & uncles, cousins; millions of ordinary, normal, *challenging but non-abusive* grandparents are deprived of the joy of their aging lives, their grandkids. This is contagious also as “support groups” help further splinter our society and damaging the emotional health of our children.
Thank you for this really thoughtful post. I’m a therapist (albeit, not the mental health kind) and I have seen a significant rise in the victim mentality over the last 5 or so years; and yes, especially in the younger generations. our practice has is now seeped in ACE scores and trauma informed care with little regard to resilience and good old fashioned “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps” and moving on. I have an early teens daughter and have been working diligently not to instill this type victim identity in her. Good old pragmatism is out of style. Apparently is more important to care the identity of “victim” than it is to heal.
Can you speak on the rise of intergenerational family cancellations, as adult children cancel and abandon parents and/or siblings who disagree with them, claiming abusive childhoods?
It’s like what was once merely challenging in a family— personality conflicts, disagreements over choices— has suddenly become intolerable (by the “tolerant” of course) grounds for estrangement, not just distance, on an epidemic level.
Everything has become abuse here. Every disagreement with the parent (or sibling) is perceived as an attack on the adult child, invariably millennial and gen Z, usually educated young professionals with politically or ideologically different axes to grind— but not always. I’m not a parent, but I’m living the carnage from the sidelines, watching over years as an actually controlling, manipulative, lying (yeah) in-law gradually and successfully isolated and brain-washed a most cared-for relative into believing the family of origin “didn’t love” them.
What can we do about it? There’s next to zero guidance online; literally *no therapist* I’ve asked has any counsel for adult parents dealing with this heartache other than suspicion and blame, and giving in consistently to the adult child. Therapists affirm these successful adults in their perceptions of controlling abuse rather than seeking the truth and leading them towards a healing perspective. Tragically, and I don’t wish this on them, but you can see the trainwreck coming as they teach their young kids, if they have them, how to treat them one day.
I think blaming the parents for a person’s problems gained popularity from a book in the 1970s.
(This is not directed at adults who actually suffered abuse from relatives and no natural reconciliation is safe or possible at this time.)
Unfortunately psychology has the answer here as well. Deprogramming as emotional terrorist. I jest a bit... but only by a bit. Opinions can be changed and challenged by facts but beliefs, especially the ones we've internalized and invested in emotionally require deprogramming.
Harry is a grifter. These people are monetizing suffering. Invariably there is “mission creep” in these “diagnoses” which looks ridiculous over time. There really is a place to say “get up, brush yourself off, and move on”
His mother, Diana, was thrown into the dynamic of a loveless marriage grounded in duty and birthing heirs. Her father was physically and emotionally abusive resulting in her mother abandoning her children who were left to deal with this oaf on their own. Her mothering skills were actualized by making her boys her confidantes, friends and probably, spies. William maintained a strong connection to his grandparent but somehow, Harry got lost in the shuffle and created a new identity, a bawdy, bad boy-a kind of Andrew Light.
Like his mother, he acted out and the publicity machine was able to spin his activities favorably or make them disappear. He became a war hero/cad and the public adored him. When I hear Harry interviewed, he reminds me of all those dopey, name taggers of the 1970s who touted the wonders of self-help groups and cults that littered that decade. Marrying the ultimate social climber/manipulator has reduced him to a puddle of neuroses. Once the coronation is over, he and his wife will retreat to their lives in California. I'm sure Meghan will think of something.
Diana chose to be in her "loveless marriage". She had a choice.
Diana also weaponized the relationship in retaliation.
The Bashir interview was stilletto aimed at Charles and the monarchy.
I am honored to have witnessed the outpouring of affection and honor given Elizabeth II at both her coronation and her funeral. She was the most respected person on the planet.
Harry, however, may not yet understand what his grandmother...and soon his father...stand for in the United Kingdom.
And, sadly, he may never will...until he doesn't receive an invitation to William's coronation.
And so did Charles… the choice not to subject a woman or future children to a loveless marriage. Just a tragedy all around that multiple humans had to muddle through really badly.
I don't think it's "get up, brush yourself off, and move on" as much as it is diagnosing what the actual issue may be for each *individual* in an appropriate setting. If you have PTSD, you really need to be treated for PTSD. If you don't have PTSD but you are struggling with mental health, you need to figure out what the actual problem is before you can deal with it.
It's typical of society. We fail to recognize and treat PTSD for years and then the pendulum swings the other way and now we fetishize victimhood and everyone has trauma. Like every issue, the truth is in the middle. Treat the individual with evidence based interventions, don't try to funnel them in to a narrative that sells books.
"Monetizing suffering." Spot on.
it sounds like he took L Ron Hubbards bullshit and gave it a modern PTSD spin = they are both full of shit
Due to his old money wealth and social standing, Harry has never had a need to get up and brush himself off. He can, and will, live quite comfortably wallowing in his perceived trauma and hardship.
Yes!! As sports coaches everywhere used to say, "Shake it off!"
In fairness to him, his wife is such a vile person that I suspect he may suffer quite a lot.
Or more directly, sit down and shut up.
The only sympathy I have for Harry these days is that winding things up, Meghan is letting Harry twist in the wind by himself.
Things will not end well for The Spare Prince!
I don't think the idea that people are incorrectly mimicking trauma for popularity and identity (which I've also noticed) necessarily invalidates trauma-informed approaches.
Did those incorrect mimickers get that story from a therapist, or are they cobbling it together on their own from pop culture?
Developing the resilience to heal actual trauma starts with seeing it clearly and without avoidance or overemphasis. It doesn't STAY there, but it starts there. The fact that some people are drawn to pseudo-trauma and perseveration doesn't mean that real survivors need to follow suit.
A few decades ago, pseudo-trauma was not in the public sphere, which was a plus, but many therapists had little to no actual trauma training either, leading many of them to give bad and even harmful service to actual trauma survivors (PTSD, narcissistic abuse, etc.).
Since the end of WWII and the rise of advertising, society has moved steadily away from collectivism. The primary way people individualized themselves was through what they buy and wear (mini-skirts and Harleys being early examples).
We are now moving to individualism based on personality - political and social affiliations, and psychological afflictions. That's a broader social shift, and one that I don't believe was caused by psychology.
Just because people are shopping for a diagnosis doesn't mean that childhood experiences don't affect one's formation. In fact, diagnosis-shopping could be an excellent opportunity to dig into what childhood messages might have lauded victimization at the expense of resilience. I suspect there is a mountain of parental anxiety buried in some of those situations!
Prince Harry is a perfect example of the above. I have no doubt his childhood had a profound impact on his world view. Losing your mother as a child IS traumatic, and I see no reason why that can't exist in the same space as other aspects of his personality.
In short, I think this article conflates real treatment with internet pop culture in a way that is inaccurate and unhelpful.
“Just because people are shopping for a diagnosis doesn't mean that childhood experiences don't affect one's formation.”
No amount of childhood bullying gives you rheumatoid arthritis or cancer. Period. That’s an insane notion on its face and you know it.
You’re defending insane rantings of a lifelong grifter because you can’t face the fact that sometimes bad things just happen - even to good people for no reason than dumb luck.
You don't have the slightest idea about my intentions or motivations, so let's set the ad hominems aside please.
I have a rather dim view of psychiatry in general, I think grift has been embedded in the APA from the beginning.
However, the way psychiatry is practiced doesn't invalidate the fact that some of it is right.
My post is not a defense of Mate. It is a defense of the idea that childhood experiences impact the way we understand our world as adults. And those impactful experiences include trauma, but also other experiences that I would not class as trauma.
As dim as my view on psychiatry may be, I don't think it created the tendency we have today of pathologizing life. I think that started long before with advertising, and was given a force multiplier in the internet age.
I also don't think looking at your childhood is an example of pathologizing life. I think it's an example applying adult understanding to childhood, which can be very beneficial.
And I don't think there's any harm in examining whether or not experiences can impact physical health. As long as it's done using the scientific method. Do people make claims? Yes. They do that all the time about every scientific or quasi-scientific issue. Even real reporting outlets report way too soon on results of actual scientific studies in a way that obscures the facts. In fact, sometimes they just report on the hypothesis before the study is even complete.
"Patholigizing life" is a good one. "Catastrophizing" is another. These are classic narcissistic behaviors, rewarded because of people like Oprah.
Yes! Thank you for articulating (so well) my frustration with this article.
Well said, particularly your last two paragraphs.
Very well articulated!
I am not clear what Dr Satel's experiences are with working with individuals from all walks of life, rather than just ones that are mostly diagnosed with DSM-5-TR disorders. As a therapist who has been working extensively with people who have been, both diagnosed with specific disorders and people who are just dealing with every day personal and relationship issues, I have come to understand the complex neurological, psychological and psycho-social workings of childhood traumas in every person with whom I have worked.
It is not complicated if you bring into your assessment the machinations of our brain's design to conserve energy. Experience build brain structure has been demonstrated by the top neuroscientists (see Harvard's https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/experiences-build-brain-architecture/). Yes, we are extremely resilient, but for survival, not thrival. Our adaption to our early childhood environments wires in a manner that is adaptive for our survival in childhood, but maladaptive to living a fulfilled, authentic and creative adulthood. Due to the nature of our brain's conservation of energy design, in our personal and interpersonal relationships we often continue to react from a helpless child's frame of reference, fearful, and desperately driven to seek approval and sense of belonging when we are actually physically and cognitively capable adults who could deal with conflict and challenges if we perceived reality more clearly.
These obsolete reactive patterns need to be identified and rewired in adulthood so that we can perceive and respond to a truer read on reality.
There is a reason why our world looks the way it does; we perceive reality from a lawful and specific adaptive lens that evolved from our unique adaptation to the environment into which we were born. We are nature, and as such are governed by nature's cause and effect laws. The more we understand the interplay between our biological, neurological and psycho-social dynamics, the better we will be able to address the mental health issues we are currently facing.
Thank you! I think this article and many of the comments are throwing the baby out with the bath water. Childhood absolutely informs our worldview. The fact that some get stuck doesn't invalidate the necessity of digging into it.
the fields of psychology and psychiatry use many wordy words (e.g., "psycho-social dynamics"). Neither field of study is falsifiable, which means neither is scientific. You're just guessing, based on your perceptions and anecdotes.
I don't have any beef with guessing, or therapy, or the reading of tea leaves. All three are equally scientific (i.e., not at all).
I hear you Zoya. I think both fields have been used in ways that have not been appreciating the whole human being. On the other hand, you may want to check out leapforward.us and review my process. You may find my work more humble.
With regards to the increase in both the trauma narrative and the documented increase in mental illness, what often goes unmentioned is the never before seen in human history "social-informational" environment we are living in.
The internet has us drowning in information, much of which we have to process through a social lens and I can't help but think this environment weakens the "resilience response" and erodes mental flexibility, making us more prone to both real and perceived traumas.
Well said! I've wondered about this, too.
Also, the loss of the traditional social safety nets of large extended family and religious community/ defined relationship with God, rather than government and support groups of strangers. Also never before seen in human history. A lifetime of personal transience.
These are helpful of course, (gov’t and support groups), but maybe because we don’t know what we are missing and reject what it has become to us. We have lost the sense of living and loving and tolerating the challenges of the original human community, and working to make life better within them.
I think that in addition to the ill effects of social media, this sensitivitrauma discourse has had a profound impact on Millennials and Gen Z.
For all their good characteristics, such as their aspiration to authenticity and excellence, I can also see high rates of anxiety and overall lack of resilience.
Nowadays it is so easy to spend a lot of time online reading about psychiatric disorders, trying to figure out what is wrong, seeing everything as “toxic,” and you can convince yourself you have PTSD or even autism, and once you internalize this you become what in the ‘70s they called neurotic.
As a Gen X, I can see the difference: We were protected by our cynicism. In contrast, younger people are so much more earnest and uptight, and they stigmatize themselves as a result.
Seeing everything as “toxic” — especially one’s parents. How many estranged and cancelled and heartbroken, otherwise ordinary decently loving parents are out there now!
Mate’ is a solid theorist. His thesis contains some valuable insights about how we don’t adequately account for what he calls “psycho-social” impacts on our health. The connection between mind and body etc. That said, one should not be diagnosing people in the way that he does without more data and direct exposure to the individual. He starts with some solid and useful counter medical culture observations about our incomplete approaches to medicine and then he takes it to the point of absurdity. Heavy woo woo vibes.
Good point. I read one of his books and what I didn’t like was he always seemed to blame the mother for everything wrong in a child’s life, especially if she were stressed when the child was an infant. Show me a mother, especially a first time mother, who isn’t stressed.
I don't see it as blame, merely reasons. Understanding that most of us have had childhood experiences that had an outsized impact on our world view because we lacked the context or skills to appropriately process them.
The essence isn't blaming your parents, it's understanding that they were just people, and you were little, and some misunderstandings happened that you need to put right for yourself as an adult with adult context.
It's about releasing your parents from the position they held for you as a child, freeing you to approach them and yourself with compassion and understanding.
“Understanding that most of us have had childhood experiences that had an outsized impact on our world view because we lacked the context or skills to appropriately process them.”
And none of those experiences are why some people get Alzheimer’s or rheumatoid arthritis yet that is what Maté and his ilk are claiming.
We are just beginning to understand the role of inflammation in certain diseases.
And we are just beginning to understand the role of stress on inflammation.
That does not absolve Mate or give him some special knowledge to make the claims he makes. But I disagree with throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Yes, there is a difference between saying something is true and saying we don't know.
There is also a difference between saying we don't know, and saying something is false.
It's going to take a lot of research to understand the connection, if any, between stress, inflammation, and disease. Maybe there isn't a connection. I don't think we know that yet. But I do think we can know it. It's not unfalsifiable. It just takes more research.
"“Understanding that most of us have had childhood experiences that had an outsized impact on our world view because"
this statement is not falsifiable, therefore it is not factual or scientific. it's just empty words.
The placebo effect is measurable. You can also look at a person's worldview and experience before these examinations, and after. Is the person better adjusted? Are they more at peace?
I would argue that's success.
Yes, you can't take out therapy from the rest of someone's life. And people are multi-dimensional and multifaceted, as are their lives.
That doesn't make it not useful.
Fact is, you have no way of knowing whether the harm it's doing outweighs the "usefulness". Lots of people find palm reading useful too.
Right on. Show me a family of multiple adult children where the adult parents aren’t cancelled and shamed by one single adult child.
I get that each child has a different experience but i think I read a bestseller by some 1970s psychologist lauded, “7 million copies sold!” which urged the reader to source every personal failure in one’s parentage.
If a psychiatrist (or psychologist), which Mate' isn't, does mental health assessments by reading a book and going on a paid live interview broadcast, "solid theorist" would not be at the top of the list of attributes I would suggest for him. Being more competent than me doesn't make him competent, and his chosen platform surely brings propriety and intent to question. Harry is very close to riding his white horse into the ditch, through a lot of help from those making bank on his actions. Just my reaction.
If humans were really this pathetic, we never would have made it out of the stone age.
I found forgiveness to be the only way forward regarding family rifts. You're not capable of changing other's words or actions and it does no good whatsoever to live in the past. Hopefully my children will be able to get over their childhood trauma as I was. God forbid they had to settle for Chips Ahoy when they really wanted the damned Oreos!!
Amen.
But no one really teaches the mechanics of forgiveness. Only cancellation. The adult kids forget they’re teaching their own kids how to treat them in 20 years. We no longer know how to function in our culture, as families of adults.
To me, this trauma-informed therapy approach feels more like masturbatory suffering that will wind up emotionally crippling its patients. I mean, how was Abraham Lincoln, whose early tragedies are the stuff of nineteenth-century lore, ever able to survive childhood, much less thrive as an adult? He looked onward and outward. Perhaps the underlying issue for most of us these days is not traumatic events per se, but our decreasing sense of personal resilience. Alfred Lord Whitehead reportedly said, “Civilizations thrive until they start to focus on themselves.” . . . So thankful that Dr. Satel is pursuing this critically necessary critique.
Agreed - therapy and this obsessive focus on anxiety and depression is fetishizing the problematic. Our goal - as people, physicians, teachers, parents - should not be to be insulated from hardship, but to overcome it. Dwelling on it with lifelong therapy seems to give any hardship so much agency over life, when the experience of hardship should really be the glue that strengthens your character. It’s like a fine wine - only grapes raised in dry, harsh climates produce the best wines. They must suffer a little to be good and interesting. Those without suffering are doomed to be weak, miserable, and boring.
Brava! I would only add that life is pretty much one’s reaction to it and that resisting experience on its own terms can only lead to stunted character, as we see all around us.
What a much needed voice in this conversation! I recently heard Mate for the first time on a podcast. He’s intelligent and speaks clearly, so I can see how convincing he might be. However, the logic breaks down incredibly rapidly. He spoke of trauma to young children when they don’t get what they need, but all of us with very young children know that they don’t have clear conceptions of their needs. This is why adults need to care for them, set boundaries, choose their diets, etc. I think no one would argue that denying a toddler a second pint of ice cream would be abuse, but to a toddler it might feel like it. The perceived trauma can even be extreme for children. I’ve seen my child hyperventilate in her toddlerhood over not getting a balloon. What I’m trying to say is that our perceptions and reactions to things might not be equal or even in the same ballpark as the harm caused by them. This is why such a subjective approach to trauma would make ALL of us severely traumatized and likely to have some kind of mental disorder manifested or lurking in our minds, waiting to pounce. Broad statements like “a child being neglected” will develop “disorders” is absolutely like a psychic or palm reader with broad, universal appeal. Specific examples of child abuse with evidence backed claims, such as “children who are beaten are more likely to become violent, as evidenced by x,” are not as fun, sexy, splashy— and most importantly, are not relevant to the broad w swath of people buying pop psychology books.
I am reminded of the MeToo movement where nearly every inappropriate act was considered as equal to assault. If all acts are equal then the truly traumatic acts of rape are diminished.
Yes! Calling all the little stuff “trauma” seems to me to be hugely insulting/offensive to those who have suffered actual traumatic events (not just “microaggressions” and the like).
I’m a licensed mental health counselor, all I can say is who is this person? because the degree to which they are ignorant of modern psychotherapy is astonishing.
The dominant form of psychotherapy being practiced today globally is cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT does not have an emphasis on early childhood experiences. The emphasis on childhood experiences comes more from earlier types of therapy that are based off of Freud and Adler. There is merit to examining what happened in a persons childhood often maladaptive patterns of behavior start young.
But as a practicing psychotherapist about zero of what was described in this article applies to modern work. I can only assume it was written by someone who is extremely out of touch with how modern psychotherapy practiced.
It’s also important to note that psychiatrists are the least competent psychotherapists. So that might have something to do with it. If you ever need therapy, get it from the mental health counselor, a social worker or a psychologist. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who specialize in prescribing medication‘s to people. Most never engage in therapy with clients. When they do they are garbage at therapy. That’s probably why this author is so far off the mark.
David, my subscription ends tonight. If you see this and wouldn’t mind replying to my query below…? I’d appreciate it.
David, I know someone who is attending therapy with a psychologist for over 4 years, the purported issue is postpartem depression, yet the parents of this person are continually abused and badgered and blamed in spite of therapy. Furthermore, the psych is not aware of details which indicate that the person’s spouse has systematically isolated, over many years, the person from their family of origin, causing unimaginable mutual grief. The person seems no happier (outside of social media) than they were 4 years ago and in fact the abuse of the family of origin escalates… do you have any guidance?
It doesn't take four years to resolve postpartum depression in therapy. In fact, even without therapy, I would have expected it to resolve itself at that point. I don't know all of the circumstances but I would be skeptical of why this person has been kept in therapy for so long by the therapist. Especially if they have been meeting weekly, that would certainly stand out as egregious.
I'm not sure why they are blaming their family for things, so I can't be much more specific about things.
Unfortunately, prince, who is both “not-the-sharpest-tool in-the-shed” and a high profile scandalous figure is being strategically used by very smart and influential actors for agenda pushing and monetary profit.
He is in on it. He isn't bein used.
I spent much of my life with major mental illness which had a genetic/metabolic origin. This is not particularly uncommon yet my parents spent a fortune on the various talk therapies that were the current fad: Freudian, cognitive, nowadays trauma. This is not to say these have no value, but they have an appealing story side which explains, sometimes blames, but rarely fixes. With biochemical treatment, my issue—which caused extreme expense and suffering for my family and myself— cleared in less than a year. I wonder when psychiatrists will stop acting as sales reps for Pharma and actually concentrate on practicing medicine, exploring and categorizing medical issues such as heavy metal exposure, celiac disease, thyroid disorders and genetic glitches that provoke mental illness. Many of these can be successfully treated.
Lisa, medical professionals DO focus on those things. Every diagnosis of major depressive disorder and dementia is linked with thyroid function tests. Every child is screened for lead with blood tests in early childhood. This is in all the medical society guidelines of treatment and diagnosis.
Some years ago I read a medical journal article about a study in a mental hospital in New Jersey. They found one-third of the patients hospitalized for depression had undiagnosed thyroid problems that were revealed when using more thorough testing used in Europe. I personally saw one of the authors of the study, an NYU professor, who referred me, at my own request, to an endocrinologist. I was diagnosed that way. The standard tests showed nothing. Also, adults can have lead and mercury that will not show up on standard blood tests, if they are even performed which is unlikely. I am talking about a much more thorough examination than the cursory ones done at present.
What are the more thorough tests that they use in Europe for thyroid dysfunction that go beyond the standard TSH and free T3 T4 and antibody tests they do here? And what are the thorough lead and mercury tests, since mercury levels can vary on a daily basis and the serum tests are so inaccurate that even routine testing is not recommended? Im a physician, just wondering what it is that you know that I haven’t heard of in my decade of practice.
The thyroid test was some type of challenge test, which involved an injection and follow up blood test. I remember the NYU psychiatrist said it had to be done by an endocrinologist. He referred me to Columbia. This was years ago so I can’t remember more. You sound very defensive! It is not at all surprising to me you haven’t heard of any of this. After all, our system sucks. The American medical system spends more than any other industrialized country in the world and its results rank at or near the bottom on international measures of health. So super expensive (corrupt) and yet incompetent. What’s not to like?
It’s not expensive because it’s corrupt. It’s because Americans generally have no desire to be healthy. They want pills and surgery and they don’t want to be told to eat well and exercise. They don’t even want to be told they’re obese anymore. Unhealthy people consume a lot of healthcare, in the most inefficient way. So no, our healthcare system doesn’t suck. If it did, foreign grads from the most elite institutions in their respective countries wouldn’t be flocking to come here. We have the best doctors, the best technology, the most access. No one in this country comes to the ED with an emergency and dies due to lack of payment. People like yourself who rip the system are just spoiled and have never experienced medicine in other countries, and base their entire assessment on anecdotal evidence from a sample size of 1.
You sound like you have a great bedside manner!
This narrative of trauma, if such it can be called, was applied to Vietnam veterans in a way that stereotyped us as broken human beings, destroyed by our wartime experiences. It’s true, of course, that some veterans had their lives blighted by the war. But the vast majority of us found a way to put that part of our past in perspective and move on. But this was no thanks to people who insisted on defining us in terms of the trauma they supposed we suffered.
It’s been my experience over the course of a long military career that men and women are remarkably resilient. I also saw this in my own daughter, who’s an Army veteran of Afghanistan.