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

by Gabor Maté

Addictions represent, in their onset, the defenses of an organism against suffering it does not know how to endure.

Unquiet Mind.

Touched with Fire,

Alexander is the author of the essential volume The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit

with Edith Eger again in 2019, she was just completing The Gift,

From the Ashes,”

Question #1: In my life’s important areas, what am I not saying no to?

Question #2: How does my inability to say no impact my

Question #3: What bodily signals have I been overlooking? What symptoms have I been ignoring that could be warning signs, were I to pay conscious attention?

Question #4: What is the hidden story behind my inability to say no?

Question #5: Where did I learn these stories?

Where have I ignored or denied the “yes” that wanted to be said?

But we are not our worst behavior.

Teacher training would recognize signs and signals of children’s “acting out” as pleas for help or markers of emotional pain, rather than viewing them as bad behaviors to be suppressed or as cause for punishment or exclusion.

chapter 26 that promote healing—authenticity, agency, anger, and acceptance—and add two more that are required for the pursuit of broad transformational change: activism and advocacy.