The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté MD

the hypothalamus is the hub of the body’s and brain’s stress apparatus, a key modulator of immune activity, and the apex of the autonomic nervous system. It is the transducer into physiological data of our emotional functioning and, therefore, of our interpersonal relationships and of our relationship to ourselves. It translates fear, loss, grief, and stress into responses in our bloodstream, organs, cells, nerves, lymph nodes, messenger chemicals, and molecules throughout the entire organism.

later. In the Berkeley study, participants were shown films normally expected to elicit disgust, such as burn patients being treated or an arm being surgically amputated. Some participants were specifically instructed not to reveal emotions when watching, while the control group was free to express emotion by means of facial or body movements. On a number of physiological measurements, the suppression group showed heightened activation of their sympathetic, or fight-or-flight, nervous system: in other words, a stress response.[9] There may be certain situations where a person, for perfectly valid reasons, deliberately chooses not to express how he feels; if one does it habitually or under compulsion, the impact is more than likely to be

A recurring theme—maybe the core theme—in every talk or workshop I give is the inescapable tension, and for most of us an eventual clash, between two essential needs: attachment and authenticity. This clash is ground zero for the most widespread form of trauma in our society: namely, the “small-t” trauma expressed in a disconnection from the self even in the absence of abuse or overwhelming threat. Attachment, as defined by my colleague and previous co-author, the psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld, is the drive for closeness—proximity to others, in not only the physical but the emotional sense as well. Its primary purpose is to facilitate either caretaking or being taken care of. For mammals and even birds, it is indispensable for life. For the human infant especially—at birth among the most immature, dependent, and helpless animals, and remaining that way for by far the longest period of time—the need for attachment is mandatory. Without reliable adults moved to take care of us, and without our impulse to be close to these caregivers, we simply could not survive—not for a day. As we’ll see in the next chapter, we each arrive

More than any other factor, it is the environment—the conditions under which development takes place, which either do or don’t meet our multiple needs—that determines which potentials will or will not manifest.