The trauma is not what happens to you; the trauma is what happens inside you….The loss of self is the essence of trauma. The real purpose of addiction treatment, mental health treatment, any kind of healing, is reconnection (with one’s authentic self). ~ Gabor Maté, “How Childhood Trauma Leads to Addiction.” YouTube video: link Both […]
A good friend of mine recently posed this question to me in an email: Sometimes you can be around people and continue to feel alone, like nobody understands. So hopefully that doesn’t happen to you. If it does, what does that mean? Mis-perception? I ask this question honestly because trauma can do weirdness to perception. […]
In recovery, I am ambivalent, perhaps indifferent, to the matter of whether or not God exists. If the gift of recovery is available only to believers, and therefore unattainable to non-believers, does this not make for a punishing and cruel God? More importantly, does it not also place limits on God, since God’s grace is […]
Suffering. We all experience it as a fact of human existence. But what happens to us when we begin to define ourselves by our suffering? Some say that suffering is a choice. For those who actually suffer from mental health challenges, it does not appear to be or feel like any sort of choice. It […]
I believe that addicts who hit bottom and reach out for help have one thing in common: the way they are living runs against their most cherished values. Choices and actions run in opposite directions to what matters most to them. How often do we hear in recovery the story of how an addict has […]
The Peace of Wild Things 