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

by Gabor Maté

living people cannot be dissected into separate organs and systems, not even into “minds” and “bodies.”

“Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you”

parent-blaming is inappropriate, inaccurate, and unscientific. This man’s impulse to protect his mother was not a defense against anything I had said or implied but against his own unacknowledged anger. Stored away in deep-freeze and finding no healthy outlet, the emotion had turned against him in the form of self-hatred.

The negative view of self may not always penetrate conscious awareness and may even masquerade as its opposite: high self-regard. Some people encase themselves in an armored coat of grandiosity and denial of any shortcomings so as not to feel that enervating shame.