I read this book for you. Paul Conti, a doctor wrote the book. It’s a long damn title. It’s called Trauma the Invisible Epidemic How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It.
The main point is that trauma is viewed as an epidemic that requires medical intervention because our responses to the horrors of life are according to the doctor a medical condition. Traumatic events and the way we are changed by them are seen as pathological and require a specialist.
The way you can integrate ideas from this book in your life is to resist them. Horrific suffering requires the unwavering support of friends, family, and our communities to get through. Turning suffering into a disease requiring specialized professionals to get through breeds the ugly disassociation of people caring for the suffering of others. Believing suffering and responses to it are a disease in need of treatment is emotional rigor mortis. Yeah, that’s right rigor mortis. It’s the same thing that happens in the body at death, stiffening, total inflexibility, and lifelessness. Once life events that are dark, painful, and uncontrollable happen it is a marathon of life that will take everything you’ve got to get through. And you won’t be the same on the other side.
If we see responses to the experience of suffering as a disease the powerful growth of suffering becomes emotional rigor mortis. Life is full of trauma or the deep, dark, painful dimensions of life that bring you to your knees. Yes, to your knees. You can no longer stand with the weight of suffering and pain filling your body, and upon your knees just like the prayer position we meet reverence for life. Reverence can only be discovered in the deepest despair. And if you accept the idea that suffering is a disease you will never experience the emotional flexibility to embrace reverence in life.
And the reason it is so important to resist the idea that trauma is a medical condition is to help yourself and others in moments of horrific situations of life that you have no control over. The more everyone accepts the horrors of life as part of the magic of it all, the more compassionate we will become and reverent for all that we meet.
Now aren’t you glad I read that for you.
And about that dress I’m wearing. It is an authentic wrap dress with a crazy pattern that is impossible to make sense of. Diane Von Furstenberg designed the wrap dress. And wrap dresses have a beautiful flow from the fabric wrapped around the torso. They feel so chic and risky. With the wrong tie of your wrap all will be exposed. The fake wrap dress is the epitome of a bad copy. Resist the fake wrap dress with the same force as those misguided ideas about trauma and suffering Dr Conti writes about.