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

by Gabor Maté

To sum up, then, capital-T trauma occurs when things happen to vulnerable people that should not have happened, as, for example, a child being abused, or violence in the family, or a rancorous divorce, or the loss of a parent. All these are among the criteria for childhood affliction in the well-known adverse childhood experiences (ACE) studies. Once again, the traumatic events themselves are not identical to the trauma—the injury to self—that occurs in their immediate wake within the person. There is another form of trauma—and this is the kind I am calling nearly universal in our culture—that has sometimes been termed “small-t trauma.” I have often witnessed what long-lasting marks seemingly ordinary events—what a seminal researcher poignantly called the “less memorable but hurtful and far more prevalent misfortunes of childhood”—can leave on the psyches of children.[7] These might include bullying by peers, the casual but repeated harsh comments of a well-meaning parent, or even just a lack of sufficient emotional connection with the nurturing adults.