53. | The Wisdom Of Trauma

The title is not coincidental. I hope many of us are familiar with the work of Dr. Gábor Máté. The documentary film The Wisdom of Trauma, about the world-famous Canadian doctor of Hungarian origin, summarizes all the knowledge and experience that Gábor Máté has gathered over the past decades on the nature of trauma. What we consider “normal” today does not exist, according to his understanding, since we are all normal and we are not. He shows why our world today makes people sick and how we can change it.

A good friend of mine recommended the film at the end of December, so I finally watched it. I asked him at that time if the thoughts I wrote in the article “My Sweet Sufferings,” which I wrote in January, would be included in the film. Let’s see if they are included!?

A Greek playwright wrote that the gods created us humans to suffer for the truth. As humans, it is our job to learn from our suffering.

Here, I copied the two sentences above and asked AI who this Greek playwright was.

Here is the answer:

The Greek playwright you are referring to could be Aeschylus. Aeschylus (525–456 BC) is one of the greatest figures in Greek tragedy, and in his works he often dealt with the will of the gods, human suffering, and the process of learning.

One of his most famous works, “Prometheus Bound,” is about exactly this: Prometheus suffers because he stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, thereby promoting their development. According to Aeschylus, the meaning of human suffering is to learn from it and get closer to the truth.

A famous quote from him:

“Learning comes from suffering.” (Greek): πάθει μάθος – pathéi mathos).

This means that wisdom often comes to us through pain and experience.

Returning to the film

Processing trauma can teach us much wisdom. And it can reveal the beauty of our existence that we have lost sight of because of trauma.

Trauma is an overwhelming threat that you cannot handle. So trauma is not the bad things that happened to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.

Gábor Máté says a lot of very exciting and valuable things. I didn’t sit down to write this to recall every sentence he said. I focus on the ones that are relevant to me.

For example, in one place he talks to someone about what it’s like when you let yourself down. In fact, you are realizing your greatest fear. The basic idea of ​​my article Forgive yourself, Soma!…

Identity

A person basically has two needs. Attachment and self-identity. Self-identity is an essential need for survival. I think these are very serious sentences, it is not worth passing by them without thinking!

At the end of February, we had an interesting assignment in the Writing and Self-Knowledge course mentioned in the article My 3+1 helper. We had to write about ourselves, completing this sentence: “I am ….” Then we had to answer these questions: How many positive and negative qualities? What do these proportions show? How much does the negative bother you?

How much does it affect how others see me.

Here I noted the following for myself:

The very important question is whether others see me as I see myself. I collected my thoughts on this in the article Ash-baked scone. I was happy to think that I – and not only here – have such feedback.

This realization is very important for two reasons:

1) I think it is very important for positive self-esteem that the image I see of myself matches what others see of me.

It doesn’t matter whether this image is positive or negative. I pretend that I can be an alcoholic and think this about myself. If others think this too, then the two images match and I can be an alcoholic with a positive self-esteem.

On the other hand, if I am an alcoholic, but I don’t admit it to myself, but everyone thinks this about me, then there is a contradiction between the two images. I deceive myself and since

I live a constant lie, my self-image cannot be positive either.

If I think I am smart, and others confirm this, there is no contradiction. If I am not smart, I just think I am, but others also believe this about me, then again there is no contradiction.

Here the expression reference point immediately comes to mind, i.e. it doesn’t matter whose opinion builds my self-esteem. How many talent show disasters have we seen where the contestant sang badly, and then, when the jury scored him, he defended himself by saying that his teacher and his mother said he sang wonderfully.

Accordingly, I will modify point one to this: I think it is very important for positive self-esteem that the image I see of myself matches what others, called an acceptable reference point, see of me.

2) The other thought that came to mind here is authenticity.

I am usually honest with my friends (also). This way, I have the opportunity for them to be honest with me. By honestly telling my thoughts, I become credible.

On the other hand, if I were not honest and successfully deceive those around me, their feedback would be in line with the illusion I had created about myself. In other words, there would be another contradiction between the two parties, and this certainly cannot be sustained in the long run.

From this, however, I can draw the conclusion that I need to learn that if I detect tension in someone around me, I should examine that person’s credibility, in order to protect myself.

Depression as a serious success

In another conversation, Gábor Máté says that depression was a serious success, not a failure. By the time his conversation partner understands that the pain provided a deeper insight into himself and showed that he had let himself down.

I think I once lived with the symptoms of the disease called depression. After recovering from it, I embarked on the path of self-knowledge. In other words, I have to agree with Gábor Máté, depression is really a serious success. If you survive it and can build on it.

About marriage

In this part, Gábor Máté’s wife speaks. She has a very interesting sentence: “I believe that the purpose of marriage is to return to the original trauma that comes from the family.”

These sentences touched me deeply. Maybe the reason I didn’t become a second married man is because I lacked the courage to return…

Fear

It’s interesting that two days after writing my post about my fears, I hear these lines: “Until you give space to fear, you’re always going to work to get rid of it. That’s what everything you do, all the work you do, is about. Then you keep working to be accepting, kind, dutiful, and all that. Or you could say, okay, the fear is here, I’ll let it be here. I’m big enough. I have enough space inside me to be my part. – That seems too easy. – Yes, it has to be more complicated than that…”

I can’t really add anything else to this right now. I’ll have to continue writing about my fears with a second part…

Tim Ferriss

Towards the end of the film, Gábor Máté talks to the well-known Tim Ferriss. In this conversation, Tim names his feelings and defines what they mean. He finds the reason. Gábor Máté draws his attention to the fact that these reasons may not be true.

And here comes the very serious part. Gábor Máté says that we are all such that we do not react to what happened, but to how we perceive what is happening. As Buddha said, we create the world with our minds. Second, we choose the worst of all possible interpretations. Third, what I said is not true, because you did not even think through all the possibilities.

Our brains automatically draw conclusions. We do this regularly. These conclusions are based on childhood. This is trauma! We do not react to the present moment, but to the past.

So, who is the one who commits the action called the reason? I am the one… I am reading this two weeks after writing my piece Forgive Yourself Soma…

That is the lesson. And the beauty of healing is that when you feel things and see the source within yourself, it is suddenly liberating. Because, you know, if you feel that way about what he did or didn’t do, it makes you a victim. But when you see that you are the source, then you have the power…

You can watch the film here. I also paid a donation!