Once again focusing attention on my immediate situation, I self-assessed how I felt. The adjective I kept coming back to was “traumatized”. At first it didn’t seem quite right because I associated trauma with survivors of violent assault. Upon further thought, I understood how it results from any violent event and could be physical as well as psychological.
Though I have no accessible memory of the crash that caused my injury, it’s possible a buried subconscious memory exists. At times I couldn’t stop recreating scenarios of what probably happened mixed with fantasies of what could have happened (either dying or escaping unscathed). In any case, the injury resulting from the crash including aspects of hospitalization, was itself a source of trauma.
Unless one has experienced it, it’s difficult to imagine the horror of waking up in a newly immobilized body especially if one was relatively healthy immediately prior to the injury. It instantly shatters any illusions one might have had of a just universe or merciful higher power. But the evidence was always there, from psychopathic war criminals and health insurance CEOs living in luxury to innocent children killed and maimed in indiscriminate bombings and countless sick and injured living curtailed lives of misery due to denied claims and inaccessible treatments.
Initially it’s like a waking nightmare that never ends. One wouldn’t wish such an affliction on one’s worst enemy, much less easily accept that it’s actually happening to oneself. Even typing this now, nearly a year after the crash, waking life still sometimes feels like a bad dream.
As the reality of the situation sets in it begins to feel more like a fracture or demarcation point between two very different lives and lifestyles. Though fundamentally one remains the same person, the extremity of the physical change makes changes in personality, priorities, interests, beliefs, self/public image, and relationships, inevitable and how could it not?
Although in my case I experienced no physical deformation and associated acute pain, it was nevertheless traumatic to so suddenly lose such a large part of oneself. Especially early on, it was odd to feel so disconnected from one’s body despite appearing healthy on the outside (aside from breathing tube, nose tube, catheter, IV line, etc).
In a sense, my injury was analogous to accelerated aging. Rather than a gradual loss of certain functions and abilities over time, it’s a rapid loss of many functions and abilities instantly. At the same time, quadriplegia evokes the experience of infancy such as the many times when one is more of a spectator rather than participant and having to rely on others to attend to basic needs. Quadriplegia is not as restricting as Locked-in Syndrome, in which the only body part capable of movement are the eyes, but it is still a significant reduction of freedom and a loss of one’s primary means of interacting with the world.
From one’s new perspective, life pre-injury was one of relative comfort, ease and happiness (even if it didn’t always seem like it at the time). Life post-injury may have moments of comfort, ease and happiness, but much shorter, fewer and farther between, making them all the more precious. On particularly challenging days, sleep also offers a welcome respite as it did that night.
When Danielle and Florence first visited me in the Neuro ICU, it felt like the first time I saw them since before the crash. On further reflection I recalled the hazy dream-like hospital room that was actually the Trauma ICU. My memories of it even at that time seemed faded and fragmented whether because of the heavy medication or a side-effect of physical and/or mental trauma.
Regardless, how could I not realize I was quadriplegic through that period which was at least a week? I tried hard to recall what people actually said to me but could only remember portions of my mother explaining how my family scrambled to get to Seattle and my brother Daryl explaining something about a computer.
Part of the missing information could be attributed to impaired hearing, since I noticed sounds coming through my left ear had a slightly distant or muffled quality. But I think the main factor was my fragile mental state compounded by heavy medication causing faulty memory. It could also be that “selective forgetting” was a way to protect myself from uncomfortable information my mind was incapable of accepting.
One example was at some point that day I felt the urge to urinate and thought I’d need to call the nurse for a bedpan. This alarmed my visitors because they witnessed the same scenario at the trauma ICU not long before. They explained for a second time that I had been catheterized shortly after being admitted to Harborview.
Perhaps suspecting there’s other important details I hadn’t retained, Danielle provided a detailed description of my injury. Though I had deduced what what was going on with my body, it didn’t hit home until she described it as the same injury suffered by Christopher Reeve. She then asked if I knew how I was injured and after I gestured “no” she recounted what she knew about the crash from police and first responder reports. Even though I had no prior memory of such details, it didn’t come as a complete surprise since a bike crash was always the most likely explanation. She described surgery scars along my neck and spine that resembled tattoos and puncture wounds on my head from having it bolted down to keep it from moving. I couldn’t feel them at the time but did later on.
Also new to me (though likely recounted before) was the timeline of my stay at Harborview. To me it felt like it could have been anywhere between a few days and a month. In actuality it had been about two weeks. Even more surprising was learning I had flatlined for a few seconds on at least two occasions. Danielle became teary-eyed as if reliving those moments and seemed almost as re-traumatized recounting repeated unsuccessful attempts to get information from my employer’s impenetrable HR department.
Although I retained a partial memory of it, my mother described how she, my father and older brother arrived at the hospital just two days after my crash. My dad and brother had to go back home after about a week but my mom planned to stay for three months. I was appreciative for their visit because my parents had been reluctant to travel by plane since the start of Covid in 2020.
Throughout the day we were frequently interrupted by nurses taking vitals and refilling the IV with saline, liquid food and medications, staff members changing my bed position and cleaning the room, and phlebotomists drawing blood samples. An odd side-effect of my lowered metabolism (or slowed-down state of mind) was that everyone’s movements seemed “sped-up”. The entire day seemed to go by rapidly as well and before long it was evening.
American society spawns trauma and this trauma expresses itself in a variety of self-destructive pathologies, including the erosion of democracy and rise of neo-fascism.
Corporate capitalism, defined by the cult of the self and the ruthless exploitation of the natural world and all forms of life for profit, thrives on the fostering of chronic psychological and physical disorders. The diseases and pathologies of despair — alienation, high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, depression, morbid obesity, mass shootings (now almost two per day on average), domestic and sexual violence, drug overdoses (over 100,000 per year) and suicide (49,000 deaths in 2022) — are the consequences of a deeply traumatized society.
The core traits of psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt — are celebrated. The virtues of empathy, compassion and self-sacrifice, are belittled, neglected and crushed. The professions that sustain community, such as teaching, manual labor, the arts, journalism and nursing, are underpaid and overworked. The professions that exploit, such as those in high finance, Big Pharma, Big Oil and information technology, are lavished with prestige, money and power.
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in The Sane Society.
The classic works on trauma by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Judith Herman state bluntly that what is accepted as normal behavior in a corporate society is at war with basic human needs and our psychological and physical health. Huge segments of the American public, especially the tens of millions of people who have been discarded and marginalized, endure chronic trauma. Barbara Ehrenreich in “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” describes the life of the working poor as one long “emergency.” This trauma is as destructive to us personally as it is socially and politically. It leaves us in a state of dysphoria where confusion, agitation, emptiness and loneliness define our lives. Whole segments of American society, especially the poor, have been rendered superfluous and invisible. As Dr. van der Kolk writes, “trauma is when we are not seen and known.”
“Our culture teaches us to focus on our personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms,” Dr. van der Kolk notes.
Trauma numbs our capacity to feel. It fractures our self. It disconnects us from our bodies. It keeps us in a state of hyperarousal. It makes us confuse our desires, often artificially implanted by the consumer society, with our needs. Traumatized people view the world around them as hostile and dangerous. They lack a positive image of themselves and lose the capacity to trust. Many replace intimacy and love with sexual sadism, which is how we became a pornified culture. Trauma creates what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls a “counterfeit” world defined by phantom enemies, lies and dark conspiracies. It negates a sense of purpose and a life of meaning.
Trauma, Dr. Herman writes, “impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately.” It induces feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, she writes, “as well as the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that occurs in daily life. Trauma severely compromises the capacity for intimacy. Trauma can dramatically reduce focus to extremely limited goals, often a matter of hours or days.”
“If trauma entails a disconnection from the self, then it makes sense to say that we are being collectively flooded with influences that both exploit and reinforce trauma,” Dr. Maté writes. “Work pressures, multitasking, social media, news updates, multiplicities of entertainment sources — these all induce us to become lost in thoughts, frantic activities, gadgets, meaningless conversations. We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on, not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present.”
Trauma also drives many to flee into the arms of those who are orchestrating the abuse.
Systematic and repetitive trauma, whether by a single abuser or a political system, destroys personal autonomy. The perpetrator becomes omnipotent. Resistance is accepted as futile. “The goal of the perpetrator is to instill in his victim not only fear of death but also gratitude for being allowed to live,” Dr. Herman writes. This trauma lays the foundation for the most insidious characteristic of all tyrannies, large and small. Total control. Prolonged trauma reduces its victims to a state of psychological infantilism. It conditions them to plead for their own enslavement.
“We are not content with negative obedience, not even with the most abject submission,” George Orwell wrote of the ruling “Inner Party” in his novel “1984.” “When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.”
Christian fascism, the subject of my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” preys on this trauma. It replicates systems of control common to all tyrannies, including cults. Christian fascists skillfully break down adherents, severing them from their families and communities. They manipulate their shame, despair, feelings of worthlessness and guilt – the byproducts of their trauma – to demand total obedience to the church leadership, who are almost always white and male. These leaders, supposedly spokespeople for God, cannot be questioned or criticized. The connecting tissue among the disparate militia groups, QAnon conspiracy theorists, anti-abortion activists, right-wing patriot organizations, Second Amendment advocates, neo-Confederates and Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 is not only this Christian fascism but trauma.
“Totalitarian governments demand confession and political conversion of their victims,” Dr. Herman writes. “Slaveholders demand gratitude from their slaves. Religious cults demand ritualized sacrifices as a sign of submission to the divine will of the leader. Perpetrators of domestic battery demand that their victims prove complete obedience and loyalty by sacrificing all other relationships. Sex offenders demand that their victims find sexual fulfillment in submission. Total control over another person is the power dynamic at the heart of pornography. The erotic appeal of this fantasy to millions of terrifyingly normal men fosters an immense industry in which women and children are abused, not in fantasy but in reality.”
Donald Trump is a perpetrator and savior. He personifies the callous indifference of patriarchy, wealth, privilege and power towards the vulnerable, as well as the promise that once his cultish followers surrender to him they will be protected. He inspires in equal measure fear and solace.
“People who embrace the small tyrannies are much more susceptible to embracing the large ones,” Dr. Herman told me. “When you have a political party that embraces the subordination of women, the subordination of people of color, the subordination of gender non-conforming people, and the subordination of non-Christians, then it’s not a party that embraces democracy. It’s a party that is looking for a fascist leader and is going to find one.”
In Dr. van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,” he opens with stark statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that “one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.”
The endemic trauma in American society, which is getting worse under the onslaught of the gig economy, pronounced social inequality, indiscriminate police violence, the climate crisis and the seizure of the political process and most institutions by corporations and the ruling oligarchs, is our most serious public health crisis. It has grave individual, social and political consequences.
“If trauma is truly a social problem,” Dr. Herman in “Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice” writes, “then recovery cannot simply be a private individual matter. The wounds of trauma are not merely those caused by the perception of violence and exploitation. The actions or inactions of bystanders, all those who are complicit in or who prefer not to know about the abuse or who blame the victims, often cause deeper wounds.” “Full healing,” she adds, “because it originates in a fundamental injustice, requires a full hearing within the community to repair through some measure of justice the trauma survivors have endured.”
You can see my recent two-part interview with Dr. Herman here and here.You can see my interview with Dr. Maté here.
“Recovery has to take place in relationships,” Dr. Herman said in my interview. “When people feel reconnected to their communities and re-accepted in their communities, then the shame is relieved and the isolation is relieved, and that really creates the platform for healing.”
The key is community. Not virtual communities. But communities where we can reconnect and see in our wounds the wounds of others. It requires access, without onerous medical bills, to mental health professionals. It requires dismantling the corporate structures of oppression. It demands a new ethic, one that values empathy and self-sacrifice. We must reject the cynicism, indifference and cult of the self that all tyrannies inculcate in those they dominate to keep them passive. We must reach out to our neighbors, especially those in distress and those who are demonized. We must uncouple from consumer society and turn away from the allure of our cultural narcissism.
The moral philosopher Bernard Williams argues that resentment and indignation are as important as empathy and connection to solidify social bonds. It is not only our own dignity we must protect, but the dignity of others. These “shared sentiments” he writes “bind people together in a community of feeling.” Acts of resistance around these “shared sentiments,” this “community of feeling,” establish ourselves as distinct, autonomous beings. We may not defeat these tyrannies, but by battling against them we free ourselves from the grip of the small and large tyrannies that deform American society.
“When in doubt observe and ask questions. When certain, observe at length and ask many more questions.” — George Patton
Once again, I thought I would follow up on Joe Martino’s recent discussion of huge gaps and worse in many peoples’ understanding. This is such an important point first made by Socrates: You don’t know what you don’t know.
Joe mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect in which people with relatively little knowledge will overestimate what they in fact know. Joe’s piece used the example of brand influencers who tend to become very sure of their pronouncements because, of course, they had a vested interest in it.
This speaks to the conditioning that takes place in corporate environments, similar to how an individual accumulates a self or Ego.
One thing that happens with people who are sure of themselves is that they frequently break off mentally and become separate from any sense of Wholeness (to defend their position). This crystallizes the ego which then, with many insecure people, and hardens with each challenge – something we can see in our current politics.
It’s also obvious that whatever we think we know is generally another thought. The exception is if it is a bodily sensation or emotion which is purely felt, without interpretation.
Unfortunately, most people are also heavily invested in feeling good – or avoiding any discomfort – and the discipline of sensing emotions in the body and allowing them to be experienced without judgement is quite foreign. I say it’s unfortunate because in my recent experience, it is the one way to begin to heal trauma stored in the body.
And speaking of the body, this is where we can surely go even a step further.
We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know that We Don’t Know
Things get even more complicated when you focus on the real mystery. The vastness of the gaps is staggering.
An example of this is qualia – defined as “the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena.”
What this really comes down to is our Experience, which is somehow created out of our Awareness of whatever is happening. But qualia for humans is more subtle and indefinable – scientists have been unable to explain, for example, why some wine tastes dry and another fruity.
How does the subjective part – the judgment – come into (our?) awareness.
Neuroscience now can identify and label the various components of the experience in terms of physics and biochemistry, but they cannot explain how “we” experience things like awe, gratitude and so on.
And for the sense of “someone” experiencing any phenomena they can only give it another label: Consciousness.
When trying to define “ourselves” or the experience of being, our language has proven so inadequate (partly due to the subject/object grammatical bias of English and most modern languages) that to the extent any speculations or theories are wrong – we probably don’t even have the capability to comprehend what makes them so incomplete.
This conundrum exists because science deals with facts and certainty and our experience actually seems to arise in a space other than that which science can adequately define.
But still, we are deeply conditioned to believe that our experiences and thoughts about what has, may or is happening comprise a separate self or identity, that is often surmised to exist in the brain.
But recent neurological advances have failed to locate any physical or even biochemical basis for a separate self.
If we return once again to the body, we can also see that all of our senses, and even thoughts, can be reduced to a biochemical reaction. We can now view it as information passing from the receptor to the brain, gut or heart.
Since this information is based on very specific individual parameters, the results are almost by definition finite and fallible. What we experience is by no means a universally known phenomenon. We generally experience what we’ve been conditioned to experience, which separates us from other humans, and for that matter from all other life forms.
Birds can see better than we can, whales, dolphins and bats live on sound and most animals can hear things humans can’t. If you have a cat you know that its world is nothing like yours.
And now, even when humans have invented incredible instruments to augment our senses and allow a glimpse even into vast apparent distances away from our planet out into the cosmos, we are confronted more and more with phenomena that we cannot explain.
(I wrote “apparent distances” because our view of “outer” space is always, inevitably a subjective experience that seems to create an image within “us” – presumably within our brains from a signal through the optic nerve. I often suspect that even the way we perceive “outer space” is a function of our limited sensory and intellectual capacities).
The irony is that it is Science that now points most effectively to what we don’t even know that we don’t know, and yet it is the same science that is the cause of so much human hubris and delusion.
Before Quantum Mechanics was discovered and Einstein’s theories verified we didn’t know that we had no clue about matter and energy. Because a lot in the quantum world doesn’t make “sense” there are presumably more vast areas where we can’t even comprehend our own ignorance.
I dealt with some of these issues when I wrote about Robert Lanza’s theory of Biocentrism. Science seems to be dragged kicking and screaming into a new paradigm where the self we believe in doesn’t really exist – and what WE ARE (not what we have or do) is aligned intimately with Nature, or our environment, or whatever label one might want to use in what is really an infinitely sacred Mystery.
The Limitations of Current Scientific Labels
Another example would be biology where for centuries all life was thought of as either animal or plant. Then they found microbes, and eventually viral agents and the line between life and the “objective” world blurred.
Returning our attention to qualia, and consciousness, again these personal “events” are defined as subjective experiences.
Science can’t really explain subjectivity. As previously noted, that may well be because explanations involve a subject and an object (as conditioned by our language and grammar) but what if everything is just an arising in Consciousness (subjectivity)?
If we take the concept of “Wholeness” literally – there cannot in fact be anyone outside of the whole to have a subjective experience.
This is the essence of “Nonduality” – a modern popular philosophical movement.
Our interpreted experience is comprised of thoughts, words and feelings. But where do these occur?
The body and the brain are the short answers, the ones the DKE people would grab hold on, but upon deeper examination “your” experience of your hands, for example, takes place visually and tactilely; you can both see your hands and feel them. But how is that happening and by whom?
But what makes them “yours”? What is it that differentiates “you” from everything else you see or feel?
If you think about it, a separate “identity” was not originally within awareness when your body was first born. It started when someone told you ‘your’ name.
And ever since the narrative of a separate person, made up mainly of thoughts and memories has accumulated more knowledge based on that one erroneous assumption of separation, culminating in an illusory experience of “you.”
How do we make the bulk of humanity aware of this delusion? I wonder if it is not central to the issue of what we now may become “Disclosure” where our psychological world seems poised to explode in ways we cannot know that we do not know. And as the 70’s comedy team called Firesign Theater once said: “Everything you know is wrong.”
I would think that under the circumstances the most appropriate position to take in many instances is what Eckhart Tolle recommends – deep acceptance of not knowing.
Moreover, in the face of such overwhelming evidence of our ignorance, we might be better advised to ask very deep questions – and as Joe Martino has also mentioned, allowing silent sensing to bring us a response (perhaps not even answer) that could even bring up physical emotions or sensations, but no actual conclusion.
I tried to use that technique in the book I wrote recently “Conversations with Nobody” written with AI, about AI and giving a taste of AI.
Because the format of the book was an apparent “conversation” with a nonhuman intelligence the questions I posed (or prompts) were actually the only creative element in the book – and were designed to either take the AI’s response and follow up with more depth, or pose a question that had some nuance and would make the reader think about an issue like the one in this article.
Of course the potential promise of AI is to provide impersonal and presumably more factual information than a mere human; but so far that promise is unfulfilled.
The AI generally gave answers perfectly in line with the most obvious human biases – not surprising in that its “answers” were simply guesses as to next appropriate word in the response, based on its programming as a “language” model. No actual human thought was involved in the response.
But the openness of the question may evoke an appropriate feeling in one who considers it silently. It may even take one beyond one’s mind. Questions to ponder and go beyond the conditioned limitations of Dunning-Kruger:
What do we really know?
Who (or what) are we?
What is our relationship to reality – what was here before we got here and thought about it?
We can win this thing and create a healthy, harmonious world, and the work each of us does to help bring this about makes a real difference. The more I observe and learn about human behavior, the more convinced of this I become.
Let me explain.
Every positive change in human behavior is always preceded by an expansion of consciousness. This is true whether you’re talking about positive behavioral changes in an individual or in a collective.
By “expansion of consciousness” I mean an increase in awareness — someone or a group of someones becoming more aware of something than they previously were:
Someone gaining a new perspective on the forces within themselves which drive them to seek out dysfunctional relationships.
An addict becoming more conscious of the inner dynamics that compel them to use.
A victim of abuse realizing that abuse is happening, and that a better life is possible, and that they deserve it.
A community becoming aware that their clergy have been sexually abusing children.
The US civil rights movement making Americans more aware of the injustice and destructiveness of racism.
Increased literacy and a greater ability to distribute the written word giving society a greater hunger for freedom and democracy and less tolerance for overt tyranny.
Etc.
Conditions don’t get better until the forces which give rise to them are clearly seen and understood. This movement from the darkness of unconsciousness into the light of awareness can create the illusion that things are getting worse, because they turn up so much ugliness.
After the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, his mother made the decision to hold an open-casket funeral to expose the world to the cruelty that black Americans were being subjected to by showing his mutilated body to the public. In that moment it looked like the world was being made more ugly, because an ugliness that had previously gone unseen by many people was being published in papers across the country. But it was later said that “The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till’s bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention on not only American racism and the barbarism of lynching but also the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy.”
Similarly, the dawn of the internet has turned up a tremendous amount of ugliness and cruelty that had previously gone unseen and unknown to most people. This can lead to the mistaken impression that the internet itself is making people more cruel and ugly than they previously were, but it isn’t. It’s just turning up humanity’s longstanding inner demons that had previously functioned solely in the dark.
It looks ugly, it moves in a sloppy, clumsy, two-steps-forward-one-step-back shamble, but human consciousness is undeniably expanding. We’re getting so much better at sharing ideas and information with each other that we’ve arguably changed more as a species in the last thirty years than we did in the previous thirty centuries. We might outwardly look similar to the way we looked in our grandparents’ time, but billions of human brains connected to each other through the internet is something that is wildly unprecedented in the entire history of our species. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
So humanity is indisputably becoming more conscious, as awkward and sloppy as our situation looks right now. We’re becoming more and more aware of the problems our species faces, and our rulers are having to do more and more work to pull the wool over our eyes and keep us marching in a way that is convenient to them.
Police brutality. The abuses of Israeli apartheid. The agony of poverty. The ravages of ecocide. The ways we’ve been deceived and manipulated by the mass media. People are becoming more and more aware of these things than they used to be, because the truth about them is suddenly vastly more visible now than it previously was.
And what’s exciting is that we all have the ability to participate in, and facilitate, this expansion of consciousness. We each have the ability to help humanity become more conscious in our own small way, thereby bringing us that much closer to a positive shift in our collective behavior.
Anything you can do to help make humanity a little more aware of the abusive nature of the systems which drive the problems we now face makes a difference, even if it’s a difference as small as making one single person a little bit more aware of one specific aspect of the tyranny we’re being subjected to. It doesn’t make a huge difference, but it does make a difference. And as long as it makes the slightest bit of difference, it is worth doing, because a lot of slight differences adds up to a massive difference. And there are a whole lot of people who have the ability to do this.
What this means is that we each have the ability to directly and meaningfully participate in the creation of a healthy world, because we are each able to directly and meaningfully advance the only factor that ever leads to positive changes in human behavior. We can do this through the new technologies which have expanded humanity’s ability to share ideas and information like videos, blogs, podcasts, tweets and memes, and we can do this through older means like holding demonstrations, creating art, distributing literature, writing messages on walls, and just having conversations.
Anything you can do to help people become more aware of injustice, abuses, propaganda and tyranny, whether in your own community or in the world, makes a difference. Does this mean you will single-handedly save the day like the protagonist in a Hollywood movie? No. That’s not how real change happens, and it never has been. Real change is the result of sustained efforts of many, many people whose individual actions could never achieve much on their own.
I think the protagonist-driven storytelling models humanity uses in its legends, folk tales, novels and films often plays an unwholesome role in distorting people’s expectations about the efficaciousness of their own individual actions. Those storytelling models are designed to appeal to the human ego, which gets a tremendous amount of energy and attention in this particular slice of spacetime, but they are not accurate representations of the way real change actually happens in real life. In real life, change happens because a great many people put their shoulders up against the change that was needed and shoved in the required direction.
So that’s what we can all do: we can all lean our shoulders into the expansion of human consciousness and shove. Spread awareness of what’s going on in the world, make people more aware that we’re all being deceived and manipulated at mass scale, and help people to see that a better world is possible. The more people open their eyes to what’s happening, the more shoulders there are to help join in our collective shove toward consciousness.
Ultimately what we’re looking at is humanity’s journey toward becoming a conscious species. One that’s no longer driven by unconscious animal impulses and the flailings of illusory egoic constructs in our psyches, and is instead driven by a lucid perception of reality and a desire for the greater good of all beings.
We can all play a role in this achievement, both by expanding our own consciousness as far as it can go by bringing clarity to our own minds, our own worldviews and our own inner processes, and by helping others to become more aware of the world around them. It won’t often unfold in a way that is elegant and linear and egoically pleasing, but it will unfold. And if it unfolds enough, positive change becomes inevitable.
Mass psychosis is defined as “an epidemic of madness” that occurs when a “large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.” The witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries are a classic example. We’re now in the middle of another mass psychosis, induced by relentless fearmongering coupled with data suppression and intimidation tactics of all kinds.
Fearmongering Breeds Insanity
A number of mental health experts have expressed concern over the blatant panic mongering during the COVID-19 pandemic, warning it can have serious psychiatric effects. For example, in a December 22, 2020, article2 in Evie Magazine, S.G. Cheah discussed the emergence of mass insanity caused by “delusional fear of COVID-19.”
“Even when the statistics point to the extremely low fatality rate among children and young adults (measuring 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at 25), the young and the healthy are still terrorized by the chokehold of irrational fear when faced with the coronavirus,” Cheah wrote, adding:3
“Instead of facing reality, the delusional person would rather live in their world of make-believe. But in order to keep faking reality, they’ll have to make sure that everyone else around them also pretends to live in their imaginary world.
In simpler words, the delusional person rejects reality. And in this rejection of reality, others have to play along with how they view the world, otherwise, their world will not make sense to them. It’s why the delusional person will get angry when they face someone who doesn’t conform to their world view …
It’s one of the reasons why you’re seeing so many people who’d happily approve the silencing of any medical experts whose views contradict the WHO or CDC guidelines. ‘Obey the rules!’ becomes more important than questioning if the rules were legitimate to begin with.”
In a December 2020 interview (below), psychiatrist and medical legal expert Dr. Mark McDonald4 also went on record stating “the true public health crisis lies in the widespread fear which morphed and evolved into a form of mass delusional psychosis.”We are now well beyond the first profound shocks of this crisis, and it’s deeply concerning that the number of [mental health] referrals remains so high. ~ Brian Dow, Deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness
He went so far as to refer to the outside of his home or office as the “outdoor insane asylum,” where he must assume “that any person that I run into is insane” unless they prove otherwise.5
Reports of Psychotic Episodes Soar in Great Britain
Now, after some 19 months of abnormal “pandemic life,” the data are starting to reflect McDonald’s fears. For example, in the U.K., psychiatric referrals for first-time psychotic episodes have skyrocketed. As reported by The Guardian, October 17, 2021:6
“Cases of psychosis have soared over the past two years in England as an increasing number of people experience hallucinations and delusional thinking amid the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic.
There was a 29% increase in the number of people referred to mental health services for their first suspected episode of psychosis between April 2019 and April 2021, NHS data7shows. The rise continued throughout the spring, with 9,460 referred in May 2021, up 26% from 7,520 in May 2019.
The charity Rethink Mental Illness is urging the government to invest more in early intervention for psychosis to prevent further deterioration in people’s mental health from which it could take them years to recover.
It says the statistics provide some of the first concrete evidence to indicate the significant levels of distress experienced across the population during the pandemic.”
Psychosis Takes a Heavy Toll on a Person’s Life
Deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness, Brian Dow, commented on the findings:8
“Psychosis can have a devastating impact on people’s lives. Swift access to treatment is vital to prevent further deterioration in people’s mental health which could take them years to recover from. These soaring numbers of suspected first episodes of psychosis are cause for alarm.
We are now well beyond the first profound shocks of this crisis, and it’s deeply concerning that the number of referrals remains so high. As first presentations of psychosis typically occur in young adults, this steep rise raises additional concerns about the pressures the younger generation have faced during the pandemic.
The pandemic has had a game changing effect on our mental health and it requires a revolutionary response. Dedicated additional funding for mental health and social care must go to frontline services to help meet the new demand, otherwise thousands of people could bear a catastrophic cost.”
According to a spokesperson for the British Department of Health and Social Care, the agency will expand the NHS mental health services budget by £2.3 billion ($3.1 billion) per year by 2023/2024. They’ve also added £500 million ($691 million) to the 2021 budget to provide services to those hit hardest by pandemic measures.9
Anxiety and Depression Have Increased Dramatically Worldwide
Another study,10,11 looking at the rates of anxiety and depression worldwide, found both conditions increased dramatically in 2020. The researchers estimate the COVID pandemic resulted in an additional 76 million cases of anxiety and 53 million cases of major depressive disorder, over and above annual norms, with women and younger individuals being disproportionally affected. According to The Guardian:12
“… the team estimate there were 246m cases of major depressive disorder and 374m cases of anxiety disorders worldwide in 2020, with the figure for the former 28% higher, and for the latter 26% higher, than would have been expected had the crisis not happened.
About two-thirds of these extra cases of major depressive disorder and 68% of the extra cases of anxiety disorders were among women, while younger people were affected more than older adults, with extra cases greatest among people aged 20-24.”
Lead author Damian Santomauro, Ph.D., of the University of Queensland told The Guardian:13
“We believe [that] is because women are more likely to be affected by the social and economic consequences of the pandemic. Women are more likely to take on additional carer and household responsibilities due to school closures or family members becoming unwell.
Women also tend to have lower salaries, less savings, and less secure employment than men, and so are more likely to be financially disadvantaged during the pandemic. Youth have been impacted by the closures of schools and higher education facilities, and wider restrictions inhibiting young people from peer interactions.”
Increased prevalence of domestic violence may also be a contributing factor that places women at increased risk of mental problems, while young adults are more likely to become unemployed.
Massive Rise in Mental Health Problems in Children
Children are bearing a particularly heavy burden as adults succumb to irrational fears. It’s not surprising then that mental health referrals for children have nearly doubled in the U.K. since the start of the pandemic.14 According to British authorities, 16% of children between the ages of 5 and 16 were diagnosed with a mental disorder in 2020, compared to 10.8% in 2017.15 As noted in a September 23, 2021, press release by the Royal College of Psychiatrists:16
“Eighteen months after the first lockdown and after warnings from the mental health sector about the long-lasting mental health impact of the pandemic, the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ analysis of NHS Digital data found that:
190,271 0–18-year-olds were referred to children and young people’s mental health services between April and June this year, up 134% on the same period last year (81,170) and 96% on 2019 (97,342).
8,552 children and young people were referred for urgent or emergency crisis care between April and June this year, up 80% on the same period last year (4,741) and up 64% on 2019 (5,219).
340,694 children in contact with children and young people’s mental health services at the end of June, up 25% on the same month last year (272,529) and up 51% on June 2019 (225,480).”
Eating disorders are also more prevalent than ever, and the rapid increase has left many children waiting months for treatment — delays that could have life-threatening consequences — as facilities are at capacity. The press release quotes a mother whose teenage daughter relapsed into anorexia during the pandemic:17
“The pandemic has been devastating for my daughter and for our family. She has anorexia and was discharged from an inpatient unit last year, but the disruption to her normal routines and socializing really affected her recovery. She was spending a lot less time doing the things she enjoys and a lot more time alone with her thoughts.
Unfortunately, she relapsed, becoming so unwell she was admitted to hospital and sectioned. After 72 days in hospital with no specialist eating disorder bed becoming available, we brought her home where I had to tube feed her for 10 weeks.
My daughter urgently needed specialist help for this life-threatening illness, but services are completely overwhelmed because so many young people need help. It’s a terrifying situation for patients and families to be in.”
Mass Delusional Psychosis Traumatizes Children
Indeed, the widespread insanity on display among adults can have severe and lasting effects on children as they grow up. According to McDonald (see interview above), the mental states of the children he’s treated during this pandemic are far worse than he’s used to seeing in these age groups. This tells us the trauma inflicted by pandemic measures is very serious.
One of the worst traumas inflicted on children has been the ridiculous idea that they might kill their parents or grandparents simply by being around them. They’re also being taught to feel guilty about behaviors that would normally be completely normal — as just one example: hysterical adults calling a toddler who refuses to wear a mask a “brat,” when resisting having a restrictive mask put across your face is perfectly normal at that age.
It’s extremely abnormal for children to grow up thinking that they’re a danger to people around them, and that everyone around them is a danger to them. It’s completely abnormal to grow up thinking that facemasks, gloves and physical separation are required to stay alive.
Adults have also twisted irrational fear into a virtue, which is doubly tragic and wrong. Wearing a mask has become a way to demonstrate that you’re a “good person,” someone who cares about others, whereas not wearing a mask brands you as an inconsiderate lout, if not a prospective mass murderer, simply by breathing.
What’s more, by encouraging us to remain in fear and allow it to control and constrain our lives, the fear has become so entrenched that anyone who says we need to be fearless and fight for our freedoms is attacked for being both stupid and dangerous.
Adults Must Be Healed to Save the Children
It’s adults who are mindlessly inflicting this emotional trauma on an entire generation. As noted by McDonald in his interview, a primary cause of depression among children is feeling disconnected from family and friends.
Everyone, but children in particular, needs face-to-face contact, physical contact, and emotional intimacy. We need these things to feel safe around others and within our own selves. Digital interactions cannot replace these most basic human needs, and are inherently separating.
McDonald cites U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics showing there was a 400% increase in adolescent depression during 2020 compared to the year before, and in 25% of cases, they contemplated suicide. These are unheard of statistics, he says. Never before have so many teenagers considered committing suicide.
According to McDonald, parents and adults in general are to blame, because they are the ones scaring children to the point they don’t feel life is worth living anymore. This is why we can’t just treat the children. We must also address the psychosis of the adult population that is causing all this trauma.
Mass Delusion Is Leading Us Into Slavery
The mass delusion must also be addressed because it’s driving us all, sane and insane alike, toward a society devoid of all previous freedoms and civil liberties, and the corrupt individuals in charge will not voluntarily relinquish power once we’ve given it to them.
Clearly, many of our political leaders know COVID-19 isn’t the deadly plague it’s been made out to be. They issue stay-at-home orders from their vacation homes in the Caribbean and repeatedly break their own mask and lockdown mandates.
They ride their bikes, stroll through the park, have family gatherings and dine out without a care. They’re simply playing along, following the narrative coming from technocratic strongholds like the World Health Organization, because it benefits them.
You could say the ruling class suffers from a different kind of psychosis. As explained in “Mass Psychosis — How an Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill,” totalitarianism actually begins as psychosis within the ruling class, as the individuals within this class are easily enamored with delusions that augment their power. And no delusion is greater than the delusion that they can, and should control and dominate others.
Whether the totalitarian mindset takes the form of communism, fascism or technocracy, a ruling elite that has succumbed to their own delusions of grandeur then sets about to indoctrinate the masses into their own twisted worldview. All that’s needed to accomplish that reorganization of society is the manipulation of collective feelings.
Sadly, many citizens are unwittingly aiding and abetting the global power grab that will result in our enslavement. Fear fueled hysteria, which led to mass delusional psychosis and group control where citizens themselves support and press for the elimination of basic freedoms.
There’s no doubt at this point that a totalitarian society is the ultimate end of this societal psychosis unless we do something about it. The truth is, we’re as safe now as we ever were. We must not allow our freedoms to be taken from us due to delusional fears. As noted by Cheah in her article:18
“It’s not unthinkable that the final outcome would be total societal control on every aspect of your life. Consider this — the endpoint of a mentally ill person is for them to be put under a controlled environment (institutionalized like an asylum) where all freedoms are restricted. And it’s looking more and more like that’s the endpoint of where this mass psychosis is heading.”
We Must Restore Sanity
Once a society is firmly in the grip of mass psychosis, totalitarians are free to take the last, decisive step: They can offer a way out, a return to order. The price is your freedom. You must cede control of all aspects of your life to the rulers, because unless they are granted total control, they won’t be able to create the order everyone craves.
This order, however, is a pathological one, devoid of all humanity. It eliminates the spontaneity that brings joy and creativity to one’s life by demanding strict conformity and blind obedience. And despite the promise of safety, a totalitarian society is inherently fearful. It is built on fear, and is maintained by it too. So, giving up your freedom for safety and a sense of order will only lead to more of the same fear and anxiety that allowed the totalitarians to gain control in the first place.
Knowing this, we must remember to embrace courage, truth, honesty and freedom as we move forward — not just in our thoughts and words but also in our actions. People cannot think logically when in a state of delusional psychosis, which is why sharing information, facts, data and evidence tends to be ineffective except in cases where the person was acting out of peer pressure rather than a delusional belief.
Typically, the best you can do is stand firm and act in alignment with truth and objective reality, much like you would if you were a first responder faced with an accident victim who is responding hysterically to what you know is only a minor injury.
In short, to help return sanity to an insane world, you first need to center yourself and live in such a way as to provide inspiration for others to follow — speak and act in such a way as to demonstrate that you are not afraid to live life and return to normalcy.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with how the world is right now. Don’t you see it – feel it? We are a species with noble character, with a great spirit, and with a sacred soul. In our hearts we wish only for the betterment of all people; for love and justice and communion. And yet what we see going on in the world is nothing less than complete madness. We have to say it exactly as it is – there is a sickness going on and this pathogen is being perpetrated on a vast scale.
I propose the possibility for the existence of some kind of infection/invasion/contagion that produces a form of mental ‘madness’ that is so normalized within us that we hardly recognize its presence. That is, this ‘presence’ has embedded itself into our various forms of social conditioning (or perhaps even produces this conditioning) in order to veil its existence. This normalized madness then usurps genuine thinking patterns, with the result that when everyone shares the collective psychosis then the madness of the world appears to be a ‘normal feature’ of human civilization. And those people who are ‘awake’ to the genuine human spirit and mind are considered the crazies – the anomalies – as the following tale shows:
There was once a wise and powerful king who ruled in a remote city of a far kingdom. And the king was feared for both his might and his love of wisdom. At the heart of the city was a well whose water was cool and crystalline, and all the inhabitants drank from this well, even the king and his courtiers, because there was no other well in the city. One night, while everyone was asleep, a witch entered the city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well, and said:
‘From now on, anyone who drinks this water will go crazy.’
The next morning all the inhabitants drank the water from the well, except the king and his lord chamberlain, and very soon everyone went mad, as the witch had foretold. During that day, all people went through the narrow streets and public places whispering to each other:
‘The king is mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason. Naturally, we cannot be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him!’
That night, the king ordered a golden cup of water from the well to be brought to him. And when they brought the cup the king and his lord chamberlain drank heavily from it. Soon after that there was great rejoicing in that distant city of a far kingdom because the king and his lord chamberlain had regained their reason.
The King and his love of wisdom (Genuine Mind) was corrupted by the poisonous drops of the witch’s liquid (virus/pathogen) that resulted in the mass epidemic of craziness (psychosis/Wounded Mind). This corrupted mind then became the dominant narrative that influenced social behavior. This Wounded Mind is like a contagion that infects.
Our collective ‘cultural mind’ is continually being shaped by dominant social-cultural narratives that normalize our mental and emotional behavioral patterns. These norms are then transferred into cultural myths that serve to transmit and reinforce these mass-minded belief systems. We end up validating our own corrupted thinking through unconscious affirmations. Once this seed of psychosis is planted then it aims to propagate and strengthen through diversions and manifestations that legitimate its own ‘logical’ existence. Like a mental cancer it ingratiates itself into our own neural pathways as an insider rather than an outsider so that we fail to notice its toxic presence. Yet there remains a niggling sense of something being ‘not-quite-right’ deep within any sensible/sensitive person.
This strange reality of ours becomes internalized so that we adapt to a form of ‘normality’ and anyone who speaks up or questions this ‘paradigm of normality’ is considered either odd, eccentric or, at worst, crazy. A more recent category for such people is now to be designated as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ which is a quick brush to dismiss people with ideas or thinking contrary to this ‘norm.’ And those people who appear to accept and encourage such norms are quickly brought ‘into the fold’ and supported in their career paths. The majority of those manifesting the Wounded Mind are not in psychiatric care but running most of our social, political, and financial institutions. Positions of great power necessitate their own specific mindset, one that is generally provided by the corrupted mind.
A Disturbance of Mind
The presence of the Wounded Mind is like a sickness of the soul, and it manifests as a disturbance in the collective unconscious. Just like any other virus or pathogen, it seeks to spread itself by infecting as many carriers as possible. Those people who carry the Wounded Mind (whether knowingly or not) act as transmitters and amplifiers for it, strengthening its frequency within the collective nonlocal field of consciousness. A collective possession is what we refer to as a psychic epidemic, or a disturbance in the field. Such disturbances can have varying affects upon people’s mental health and well-being.
People who suffer from a Wounded Mind may carry it as an ‘undefinable’ trauma within them, and it is common to turn to alcoholism or drug dependencies as a way of coping (or of escape). When a person feels stressed or traumatized they are like an open wound for further mental invasion. And it can be quite subtle at first as our modern societies have devised endless ways for our interference. We are distracted to look away from our own minds and thus miss the psycho-pathogen in action. As a person further integrates the Wounded Mind they may find themselves vulnerable to victimization; such as through social harassment and bullying (especially online nowadays), or as addicted-consumers of sexual deviancy, pornography, and socially-sanctioned extreme experiences. The monk Thomas Merton said that our modern societies suffer from a crisis of sanity:
‘The problems of the nations are the problems of mentally deranged people, but magnified a thousand times because they have the full-straight-faced approbation of a schizoid society, schizoid national structures, schizoid military and business complexes.’1
If all modern institutions are infected by a corrupted system of mental thinking patterns then, as Merton suggests, this instability will be amplified and made worse. Individual neuroses are given institutional sanction and support within a culture that has based its social norms upon such irrationalities. The irrational has broken through and implanted itself as the rational standard rule. It is perhaps little wonder that people can be so susceptible to this mental pathogen when it comes to us dressed up in sheep’s clothing. As is always the case, those people most vulnerable are usually those who are conditioned to authority and/or passivity. This trait, unfortunately, is one that is first implanted through compulsory schooling.
Likewise, people who are easily influenced by external opinions, and whom are prone to group-thinking, are amongst the first to give away their mental independence to external sources. The virus of the Wounded Mind preys upon such ‘group-think’ individuals as they are the mass open playing fields for psychic epidemics. The ‘mass mind’ of humanity helps in the transmission and proliferation of the psychic pathogen – the wounded mind. As the famous psychiatrist R.D. Laing once said – ‘The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man…normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.’2 Conscious awareness is perhaps our greatest antidote.
If we are to see human history from a wider perspective then it is important we view major events, human actions, propaganda, social disturbances, power struggles, and the rest, from this standpoint of the wounded mind. The modern human mind has been formed from many traits that include greed, lust, ambition, materialism, insincerity, and a ‘split’ personality. In all, these are traits that mark a lack of authenticity. The Wounded Mind seeks to develop greater degrees of inauthenticity and lack of empathy within the individual. We can see such personalities walking across the world stage.
The peril of the Wounded Mind is that resistance may also help to spread it. That is, people who often start out resisting and fighting against this corrupted mindset often find themselves adopting it’s values in order to survive. It’s the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ type of thinking. And this cliché too is very likely to have been a product of the Wounded Mind intending to verify itself. It may seem that we are struggling to awaken against our very own spell of sleep.
Under the Pathogen Spell
It has often been said – by mystics, sages, and wisdom traditions – that humanity is collectively asleep. Our ignorance over our condition, and the absence of real knowledge, indicates we are asleep. Similarly, the Gnostics viewed humanity as being ‘asleep’ under a trance – a form of material spell – that has severed us from contact with a genuine divine source. Instead, we are ruled by a false or ‘flawed god,’ a demiurge, that has malevolent intentions to keep us trapped within the material realms.
The more we breed this Wounded Mind within our societies and cultures the more people will behave and live like automatons. We will live within a tighter range of conditioned stimuli that programs specific opinions and thinking patterns that validate the pathogen. A person who is more conditioned to obedience is more susceptible to receive the mental virus. Perhaps this is why our modern societies are establishing rigid orders of control and obedience, such as when we travel, pass through airports, etc. It can be likened to a preparation for automated behavior as a requisite for an automated mind. The mystic George Gurdjieff wrote:
‘Contemporary culture requires automatons. And people are undoubtedly losing their acquired habits of independence and turning into automatons, into parts of machines…. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.’3
By adopting the mentality of the Wounded Mind, we participate in our own suppression and further the behavior of an automaton. We need to recognize that many of our incumbent social systems are set-up to corroborate and reinforce the consensus mind-set. Any genuine resistance cannot come from any ‘mass movement’ but only from those persons who can think and act independently.
It is important to recognize that the Wounded Mind is a field phenomenon, and that our own mind and thoughts do not exist securely guarded within our heads. Since we are all interconnected within the non-local field, we are all susceptible to the infection of this predatory virus. The first step we can take is to accept the possibility that the pathogen virus exists. The Gnostic text The Gospel of Philip says: ‘So long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes…’ The danger lies in our distraction.
We must guard against being diverted away from our authenticity and lured into the modern distractions of hedonistic pleasure-seeking, greed and materialism, and the running after shallow satisfactions. After all, this illusive psychosis offers false promises. Our modern cultures appear to want to prevent the majority of people from pursuing their own genuine developmental paths. This is no doubt because our capitalist-consumer based societies require a regular mass of workers and consumers whom live a regulated, predictable, and conformist life.
Yet it is now necessary to see the Wounded Mind for what it is – recognition and acknowledgement is key. If we cannot bring harmony and good sense to the world around us, then we should at least bring it upon ourselves. We are the wounded ones who can become our own wounded healers.
If there’s one constant among addicts of all types, it’s shame. It’s what makes us lie and hide. It’s what keeps us from asking for help – though we don’t think we need it because we’re also good at lying to ourselves.
About why we eat. Or shop. Or gamble. Or drink.
Dr. Gabor Maté knows the feeling well. Maté, a renowned doctor, speaker, and author, has seen it in the heroin-addicted men and women he treats in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He sees it in the behavior of well-respected workaholics. The cosmetic surgery junkies. The power seekers. The ‘I Brake for Garage Sales’ shoppers.
He’s seen it in the mirror.
Maté, author of the groundbreaking book In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, believes shame is behind our unwindable ‘war on drugs.’ Our ‘tough on crime’ policies. Our judgment of addicts. Our marginalization of street junkies.
Maté knows, as so many of our spiritual teachers have tried to teach us, that our judgments of others are really all about us.
Maté, who serves as resident doctor at The Portland Hotel, a Vancouver housing project for adults coping with mental illness, addiction, and other challenges, saw himself in the stories of the women and men who, day after day, came to see him for treatment and who slowly, over years, revealed to him their pain.
Those of us still hiding and denying? Gabor Maté sees us too.
Haunted
Gabor Maté was born into the Jewish ghetto of Budapest in 1944, just weeks before the Nazis seized Hungary, to a loving but overwhelmed mother and an absent father, who had been sent to a forced-labor camp. Just months later, his grandparents were killed at Auschwitz. At a year old, he was handed by his mother to a gentile stranger who was assigned his safety.
Maté understands now that those early experiences – or, more accurately, his mother’s frantic state of mind – guided the neural circuitry in his still-developing brain. Impaired circuitry that virtually prescribed a future of addiction and its close cousin, attention-deficit disorder (ADD).
Over years of hearing the stories of street drug users, examining his own past, and putting it together with his medical training, Maté became convinced that – as he says in a recent interview:
both addiction and ADD are rooted in childhood loss and trauma.
It’s a novel – and surprisingly controversial – approach, examining not the addiction but the pain behind it. Fighting not the substance but the circumstances that lead someone to seek out that self-soothing.
Circumstance Over Substance
Addiction, says Maté, is nothing more than an attempt to self-medicate emotional pain.
Absolutely anything can become an addiction… It’s not the external behaviors, it’s our relationship to it.
Maté calls addicts ‘hungry ghosts,’ a reference to one of the six realms of the Buddhist Circle of Life. These hungry ghosts are depicted with large empty bellies, small mouths, thin necks — starving for external satisfaction, seeking to fill but never being full, desperate to be soothed.
We all know that realm, he says, at least some of the time. The only difference between the identified addict and the rest of us is a matter of degrees.
It’s a view that has earned him some critics, not least of which is the Canadian Conservative government, which has sought to shut down the safe-injection site he helps oversee. The conventional medical community certainly hasn’t embraced his ideas. Addiction is typically viewed through one of two lenses: as a genetic component or as a moral failure.
Both, says Maté, are wrong.
And he says he’s got the brain science to prove it.
“A Warm, Soft Hug”
Maté points to a host of studies that clearly show how neural circuitry is developed in early childhood. Human babies, more than any other mammals, do most of their maturing outside the womb, which means that their environment plays a larger role in brain development than in any other species.
Factor in an abusive, or at least stressful, childhood environment and you’ve produced impaired brain circuitry – a brain that seeks the feel-good endorphins and stimulating dopamine that it is unable, or poorly able, to produce on its own. A brain that experiences the first rush of heroin as a “warm, soft hug,” as a 27-year-old sex trade worker described it to Maté.
It’s the adversity that creates this impaired development, says Maté, not the genetics emphasized by the medical community.
And our response to addicts – criminalization, marginalization, ostracism – piles on that adversity, fueling the addictive behavior.
The good news is that addiction can be prevented, but only if you start early. Maté writes in Hungry Ghosts:
[Prevention] needs to begin in the crib, and even before then… in the social recognition that nothing is more important for the future of our culture than the way children develop.
What about those children who are now addicted adults? Unprecedented brain research has revealed that brains can, essentially, be rewired. He continues:
Our brains are resilient organs… Some important circuits continue to develop throughout our entire lives, and they may do so even in the case of a hard-core drug addict whose brain ‘never had a chance’ in childhood.
What’s more, Maté, unlike many of his medical counterparts, factors in our potential for recovery, even transformation:
something else in us and about us: it is called by many names, ‘spirit’ being the most democratic and least denominational.
The Illusion of Choice
We’d like to think that addicts have a choice, that they can just choose to stop — even if it’s hard.
But Maté insists that the ability to choose is limited by the addict’s physiology and personal history. He states:
The more you’re driven by unconscious mechanisms, because of earlier defensive reaction to trauma, the less choice you actually have… Most people have much less choice in things than we actually recognize.
These unconscious impulses are why we find ourselves with our hands in a bag of chocolate after an argument with our spouse. It’s why we’re on Craigslist arranging a sexual encounter while our wife sleeps beside us. It’s why a respected medical doctor finds himself lying to his wife. Again.
“‘Have you been obsessing and buying?’ she’s asked me a number of times in the past few weeks,” Maté writes in Hungry Ghosts. “I look directly at my life partner of thirty-nine years and I lie. I tell myself I don’t want to hurt her. Nonsense. I fear losing her affection. I don’t want to look bad in her eyes. I’m afraid of her anger. That’s what I don’t want.”
For years, Maté struggled with a shopping addiction, spending thousands of dollars on classical music CDs in a single spree, then unable to resist the impulse to do it again weeks later after promising his wife he’d stop. It’s an addiction he refers to as wearing ‘dainty white gloves’ compared to the grinding drug abuse of his Downtown Eastside patients.
But, he writes, “I’ve come to see addiction not as a discrete, solid entity – a case of either you’ve got it or you don’t got it – but as a subtle and extensive continuum.”
Unless we become fully aware of the drivers of our addiction, he says, we’ll continue to live a life in which ‘choice’ is an illusion.
“Passion Creates, Addiction Consumes”
Is there a difference between a drug addiction and being hooked on a behavior — like sex? The medical community continues to debate the question, but Maté is adamant.
All addictions, whether to drugs or to behaviors such as compulsive sexual acting out, involve the same brain circuits, the same brain chemicals and evoke the same emotional dynamics… Behavior addictions trigger substances internally. So (behavior addicts) are substance addicts.
Where do we draw the line between addiction and, well, passion? What about the Steve Jobs of the world, who drive themselves — and others — to push harder, work longer, produce more and do everything better?
Daniel Maté, Gabor’s son and an editor of his books, says:
A lot of people make wonderful contributions to the world at their own cost… We often lionize unhealthy things.
To determine whether we’re serving a passion or feeding an addiction, Daniel Maté suggests that it comes down to a simple question, answered honestly: Are you free or are you not free?
His father takes it further.
What function is the addiction performing in your life? What questions is it answering . . . and how do we restore that?
Or, as he writes in Hungry Ghosts, “Passion creates, addiction consumes.”
Compassion for the Addict — and Ourselves
Responding to addiction requires us not only to care for the body and mind but also the soul, Maté says. The spiritual element of his practice is critical, he says, not only to understand the hard-core street addict but also our own struggle.
We lack compassion for the addict precisely because we are addicted ourselves in ways we don’t want to accept and because we lack self-compassion. – Gabor Maté
And so we treat the addict as an ‘other’ – this criminal, this person making poor choices – to whom we can feel superior.
Compassion is understanding, and to understand is to forgive.
Maté summed it up nicely in a 2010 talk at Reed College:
To . . . point the finger at that street-corner drug addict who’s in that position because of that early trauma is blind to say the very least… I think that if we developed a more compassionate view of addiction and a more deep understanding of the addict and if we recognized the similarities between the ostracized addict at the social periphery and the rest of society, and if we did so with compassion both for them and for the rest of us, we would not only have more efficient, more successful drug treatment programs, we would also have a better society.
After the Crash 