{"id":25265,"date":"2023-03-05T10:48:26","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T08:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=25265"},"modified":"2023-03-05T10:48:26","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T08:48:26","slug":"finding-home-finding-normal-and-the-myth-of-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/finding-home-finding-normal-and-the-myth-of-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Home, Finding Normal and The Myth of Normal<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding or recognizing home when you see it may be a life-long pursuit \u2014 but one could argue that the search for self, in physical and mental health, is first and foremost. The Myth of Normal<\/em> suggests that many of us may face tough challenges ahead when it comes to establishing a lasting sense of normalcy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture<\/i>, by Gabor Mat\u00e9, with Daniel Mat\u00e9
\nPenguin\u00a0Random House<\/a> 2022
\nISBN\u00a09780593083888<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sheana Ochoa<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Myth of Normal<\/em> is available from Penguin<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 21st<\/sup> century is a trauma-literate era, most evident in the colloquial use of the word \u201ctrauma\u201d \u2014 whereas earlier, we used \u201chardship.\u201d Our lives are now filtered through the \u201ctraumas\u201d we have endured. Trauma is not viewed as one event that occurred in the past, but as an ongoing wound (the original meaning of the word in Greek) that we try best not to activate or, to use another modern term, trigger. There are content warnings on social media and streaming videos. It is now accepted that people other than sexual assault survivors and war veterans can have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).<\/p>\n

In the short span of this still-young century, we have lived through the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter, witnessed the direct results of climate crisis, and are now entering the fourth year of a global pandemic the result of which is that, in the United States alone, thousands of people are dying weekly from Covid (over 267,000 people died of Covid-19 in 2022, according to preliminary data from Johns Hopkins University). Trauma can be seen everywhere, including the decades-long conflict in Palestine and, more recently, the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In his newest book, The Myth of Normal<\/em>, physician and trauma expert Gabor Mat\u00e9 focuses on North America and particularly the United States, where he sees both gun violence and the opioid epidemic \u2014 with avoidable loss of life and large-scale addiction, respectively \u2014 having trauma at their core and leaving it in their wake. Mat\u00e9 not only believes that trauma lies at the root of our social maladies, but that it is the norm, the rule rather than the exception. Most of us, he proposes, are traumatized to some degree or other. Our society is like the proverbial frog in a pot atop a low flame. We\u2019re in the soup, and we cannot tell it is heating up. Mat\u00e9 argues that we have become so accustomed to a toxic culture that we believe it to be normal. This comes from our inability, Mat\u00e9 maintains, to be true to ourselves in a trauma-ridden world where our traumas go unseen, and are consequently ignored by us and others. The result? Our most basic needs for belonging and connection are unmet. Mat\u00e9 writes:<\/p>\n

We humans have a genius for getting used to things, especially when the changes are incremental. The fangled verb \u2018to normalize\u2019 refers to the mechanism by which something previously aberrant becomes normal enough that it passes beneath our radar. On a societal level, then, \u2018normal\u2019 often means \u2018nothing to be seen here [\u2026] no further inquiry needed.\u2019<\/p>\n

Though 21st<\/sup> century society uses the language of trauma, it does its best not to address it.<\/p>\n

Mat\u00e9\u2019s working definition of trauma is an \u201cinner injury, a lasting rupture or split within the self due to difficult or hurtful events.\u201d He stresses that the injury is not caused by the event itself, but by \u201cwhat happens within someone as a result of the hurtful events.\u201d By this definition, \u201c[t]rauma pervades our culture, from personal functioning through social relationships, parenting, education, popular culture, economics and politics. In fact, someone without the marks of trauma would be an outlier in our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over four decades of clinical experience, Mat\u00e9 has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of \u201cnormal\u201d as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today\u2019s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Having presented his worldview of what is \u201cnormal,\u201d Mat\u00e9 examines what most ails the world, delving into his beliefs about people who are chronically ill, those with addictions, and those who are mentally ill. He postulates that these societal maladies are a result of unresolved, deep-seated trauma. In other words, Mat\u00e9 identifies trauma as the root of why one in two American adults have a chronic health condition, why so many of us struggle with addictions from workaholism to gambling, and why depression is on the rise.<\/p>\n

In the case of mental illness, he proposes it not be diagnosed \u2014 and uses the fact that there are no biomarkers for mental illnesses to support his stance. (There aren\u2019t biomarkers for many illnesses, including asthma and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS.) Rather than being diagnosed, Mat\u00e9 prescribes that mentally ill people need to heal the wounded part of themselves that got separated by trauma. Mat\u00e9\u2019s take on schizophrenia: \u201cThe science is clear and, again, belies popular prejudice. No \u2018schizophrenic gene\u2019 has ever been found\u2014or, more accurately, claims of its discovery have had to be serially retracted [\u2026] No fixed genetic destiny here, but a survival need composed of constitutional vulnerability and overwhelming life experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mat\u00e9\u2019s trauma theory also trumps the disease model of addiction. He does not believe addictions are passed down by genes or that someone is predisposed. Rather, addicts have learned behaviors to cope with \u201cinjuries,\u201d or traumas in their life. Mat\u00e9 writes, \u201cAddictions of any kind are not abnormal ailments, wilfully self-inflicted maladies, brain disorders, or genetic short straws. Properly understood, they are not even that puzzling. As with other ostensibly mysterious conditions named in this book, they are rooted in coping mechanisms [that are] an attempt to soothe the pain of injuries incurred in childhood and stresses sustained in adulthood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a viewpoint flies in the face of twelve step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous where you have a drunk who has everything to gain by staying sober \u2014 his life, family, career and health \u2014 and, not for lack of doing the inner work, returns to the drink. Keep in mind, most people come to AA after undergoing intensive therapy. In AA, members must make a \u201cthorough and fearless moral inventory,\u201d that aligns with the inner work Mat\u00e9 says an addict must face. Even with self-inquiry, even after making amends to the people the addict has harmed, including himself, recidivism is high in AA. And yet, after facing such \u201cinjuries,\u201d the success rate of AA is only between 5% and 10%. A mechanism beyond a defragmented, traumatized self \u2014 a disease mechanism \u2014 is unquestionably in play.<\/p>\n

Mat\u00e9\u2019s neat theory of everything as seen through the lens of trauma is a tempting pill to swallow, but it is only helpful in recognizing what might make someone susceptible to illness, or what might exacerbate illness. While it\u2019s well- documented that the stress of trauma causes inflammation and weakens the immune system, we know the biological culprits of many diseases. In fact, it is only the diseases science has not figured out yet that are depicted as psychological, and often psychosomatic. This was the case with multiple sclerosis (MS) in the 1970s until magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was invented. One can see the danger in Mat\u00e9\u2019s reluctance to diagnose in some areas and replace the disease with trauma-informed psychotherapy. Without diagnoses we can\u2019t name and, more importantly, treat diseases.<\/p>\n

Mat\u00e9 does not go so far as to say diagnoses such as cancer and diabetes should not be made, but he reveals his true convictions in his example of the late Robin Williams, who committed suicide at the age of 63. Mat\u00e9 attributes both Williams\u2019 mental illness and his Lewy body disease to trauma:<\/p>\n

Long before [Williams] developed a degenerative disorder, he suffered from what he called \u2018please-love-me-syndrome,\u2019 a self-diagnosis far more penetrating than anything a DSM-toting psychiatrist could come up with. I find myself wishing someone had guided him to connect the dots, to see that \u2018syndrome\u2019 as the emotional endoskeleton of his manic-depressive<\/em> swings, addictions, and suicidality, and very likely his terminal brain condition as well.<\/p>\n

I italicized \u201cmanic-depressive\u201d above to show how useful the diagnoses of conditions are, so much so that even Mat\u00e9 employs them to articulate his opinion on the matter, which wildly attributes even Williams\u2019 Parkinsonian symptoms to the trauma of his \u201cplease-love-me-syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s slippery territory, \u00e0 la<\/em> the New Age Movement of the last century (more on this below), when one ignores biology and blames something solely in one\u2019s biography for his or her physical or mental illness.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Houda Terjuman (b. 1970, Tangier), “No Foreign Land I, II and III,” oil and acrylic on canvas, each 46×35 cm, 2021 (courtesy Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This leads us to the last act of the book, where Mat\u00e9 tackles healing and elaborates on his trauma-based work. He begins by stating that healing is not a cure, but a process of becoming whole mentally, physically, and spiritually. Yet he follows this up with a series of anecdotes about people who have gone into remission or have otherwise physically overcome their disabilities. Such examples are biased and Mat\u00e9 should know better. He writes:<\/p>\n

The Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, who has explored many cases of \u2018miraculous\u2019 recovery from terminal malignancy and other fatal diseases, told me that a transformation of identity [\u2026] seemed to him to be the key. \u2018It\u2019s a nebulous concept,\u2019 he conceded, \u2018but ultimately that\u2019s where the healing is to be found. These people who get better really change their beliefs about themselves or their beliefs about the universe.\u2019<\/p>\n

Tell that to beloved self-help author and speaker Wayne Dyer, who died of cancer in 2015, or Ram Dass, the psychologist and spiritual teacher who helped popularize Eastern spirituality in the West, and suffered a stroke that severely limited his ability to spread his teachings, as he had to use a wheelchair for over two decades and lost some of his speech.<\/p>\n

Mat\u00e9\u2019s approach no doubt comes from a noble desire to encourage people to heal and grow (the remaining chapters of the book spell out his instructions for becoming whole again after trauma), but it is ableist and dangerous to tell people with a chronic mental and\/or physical illness that they can heal themselves. Louise Hay, New Age self-help author, notoriously preached self-love as the answer to health conditions. This gave hope at the height of the AIDS epidemic to many gay men who were dying at alarming rates with no medical treatment in sight. Self-love, it turned out, could not save them.<\/p>\n

People with untreatable illnesses often turn to alternative medicine and self-help gurus because, until medicine catches up, it is the only place they find answers. The alternative is to give up, and human beings, if anything, are wired to try to survive. The problem is that when offered a solution such as \u201cthinking positively,\u201d meditation, or healing your separated self, the patient is led to believe he is in charge of the course of his illness. When he does not recover or \u201cget better,\u201d he is blamed, and may even blame himself, for not having mastered \u201cpositive thinking,\u201d or for not meditating \u201cright,\u201d or for not reckoning with his trauma correctly. Blaming someone for his or her illness is a damaging practice.<\/p>\n

By highlighting miraculous recoveries, Mat\u00e9 promotes this dangerous philosophy. Besides, such testimony doesn\u2019t leave room for other people\u2019s stories. More specifically, it doesn\u2019t leave room for those who have done the inner work, have reckoned with their past, but still haven\u2019t healed physically. There is also a newer story, one that defies the militant story of battling illness, beating it, and going back to the way things were. What if instead of sentencing a patient to the battlefield to fight against her own body indefinitely, we are accepting of a space for illness and befriend the body, even if it means the patient remains ill? That story will rub most people the wrong way. We\u2019re conditioned for recovery stories, cringe at what is perceived as a \u201cfailure,\u201d and often discard those patients\u2019 stories that don\u2019t center on a \u201cvictor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Never one to throw away the baby with the bathwater, I believe Mat\u00e9 is on point about our toxic culture. There\u2019s no doubt that trauma contributes to our anxieties and disorders; it just isn\u2019t their sole cause. Health, or lack thereof, is a result of biomes, biology, genetics, and biography, not just this last factor. What we\u2019ve been learning about trauma, PTSD, and Complex PTSD from scientists, philosophers, and doctors is indispensable to medicine, but there is no panacea for trauma. Rather, it needs to be added as a mind-body corollary to other healing modalities, both old and new.<\/p>\n

En fin<\/em>, Mat\u00e9\u2019s trauma model is no different from our medical model. Its end game is to fix the person, to make things go back to \u201cnormal,\u201d but as we know, there is no normal. Rather than fix, we can acknowledge people\u2019s struggles, illnesses, grief, and troubles, realizing that, like everything else, there\u2019s a process we go through that doesn\u2019t always end in physical or mental recovery. Recognizing that fact may be the most compassionate way of dealing with our collective and personal challenges.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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