A few years ago I was driving by an agency in our community that assists families in crisis and I saw what appeared to be a child who was upset about being transferred from one caregiver to another. For whatever reason, in that moment, my thought was--we were not designed to tolerate so much emotional pain as humans.
I remember thinking that there's no wonder our bodies find a way to numb this heartache; no wonder we develop attachment disorders. We are too sensitive to deal with the crushing blows that life can deliver, so to protect ourselves, we wall off.
Dr. Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician with a special interest in childhood development and trauma, asserts that we disconnect because it's "too painful to be ourselves," and he reminds us that trauma is not the bad things that happen to us, but what happens inside us as a result of what happens to us.
I was watching a trailer for the 2022 Documentary titled, "The Wisdom of Trauma" and a quote from Dr. Maté made the above scene rush back into my mind. He asked, "Can we be human beings in the midst of civilization? Because what we call civilization demands the denial of human needs."
Wow. That's a crazy thought; even a little extreme, and yet it makes sense that the social issues we face (lack of affordable childcare, housing, healthcare) and the generational pain we endure, coupled with the isolation many of us experience really makes it hard to get our emotional needs met.
At WYN, we see this every day-- It's hard for a child to trust us; hard for them to pay attention; hard for them to get along with others; an adolescent blows up over a situation that seemed small to us; a teen shares that they have a plan to complete suicide. Our young people have had to create ways to wall themselves off and escape from the pain in their lives.
And yet, Dr. Maté reminds us that "every human being is a true, genuine, authentic self. The trauma is the disconnection from [the self] and the healing is the reconnection with it."
I am honored to say that WYN was the major catalyst for bringing the awareness of trauma and resilience to our community in 2016 and it has been a joy to watch the way our team and communities have applied this knowledge since then. We are promoting the healing relationships and environments that allow our children to feel safe and to explore their world rather than sheltering themselves from it.
We are empowering them to reconnect to themselves.
