Mental illness, addiction & most chronic illness is linked to childhood loss & trauma

I’m reblogging my own post because I want to share it even more widely. This post has been going viral lately. It’s not a new post. It’s a post from December. But it’s been getting hundreds of hits daily. This is very exciting since it’s a sort of critical and fundamental way to understand the ills of not only the individual but of society too. Please continue passing it on. The fact that this sort of information is getting more and more accessible and that people are sharing it broadly warms my heart. Thanks to all of you who help pass on these critical insights and understandings.

Here Gabor Mate tells us the medical profession are the most difficult to speak to about what he’s learned in his work because they don’t recognize that so-called mental illness and most physical chronic illness is the result of childhood loss and trauma.

We don’t need anymore research he says. We know the cause of these issues. SEE: More: Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (trauma in childhood associated with many later problems, including that which gets labeled mental illness)

He points out that the barrier to the health professionals is that they’ve not cared for their own trauma. This is clearly true. Many professionals are afraid of their own darkness. This makes it impossible for them to correctly recognize issues in their patients and clients.

I love Gabor Mate. If you’re not familiar with his work please view this video. He’s brilliant, inspired and right on.

Turns out this video isn’t available to be viewed here on this blog, but it’s truly worth watching if you’re not familiar with Gabor’s work, so I’m sharing it anyway. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW

UPDATE: in various social media people pointed out that trauma is not the only aspect we’re dealing with here. This is of course true and this blog, again and again, underscores the fact that we are holistic beings.

so, no…it’s not the whole story, nor the only dynamic in place…

But remember too, trauma can be invisible and it’s also not always familial…we live in an atrociously violent and abusive society which incurs trauma in numerous ways…additionally as holistic beings EVERYTHING matters…our environments, what we eat, how we’re treated, whether we exercise, what we think… etc etc…the unique combination of things come together…differently in different people.

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction — a book by Gabor Mate