Doctors are themselves very traumatized people.
Medical training is very traumatizing.
I have spoken to many doctors who have mentioned
the destruction of their sensitivity by the medical faculties.
We are therefore dealing with a traumatized population
who tries to treat a larger traumatized population
without being aware of the trauma.
All of our sufferings,
whether it is an addiction,
a chronic physical illness,
a dysfunction,
all these things are linked to an injury experienced in childhood.
These are not distinct biological events
that occur in discrete individuals.
But they are representative of a process
within each of us
that manifests itself from our relations to our environment.
It is above all about our early education environment,
but also about the culture in which we live.
To give you an obvious example,
if you look at the number of children
diagnosed with what is called a TDAH,
the numbers do not stop increasing.
So it can not be an individual phenomenon.
It is rather a question of culture,
of context.
If you look at the increasing appearance of autoimmune diseases,
the increasing appearance of addictions,
of mental illnesses.
If you look at the fact that, for example,
black women in America,
the more they are confronted with racism,
the more they risk suffering from asthma.
This shows us
that it is not just a question of individual biology,
but above all,
of life within a culture.
Yes, and on this idea of culture,
you use the example to illustrate this point
of the petri dish,
which I found very strong,
because I had never really thought about it that way.
Can you explain that?
Of course.
So,
when we study microorganisms in the laboratory,
we grow them in a broth.
We put them in a broth to feed them.
This is what we call a culture.
A culture environment.
Now, if the organisms present in this culture environment,
in this broth,
die in the vast majority,
do not develop or become ill,
this is what we call a toxic culture.
I say that because,
when in a society like ours,
more and more people get sick,
become dependent,
suffer from mental disorders,
mutate,
that more and more people die of overdose,
this is also
the sign
of a toxic culture.
This culture
is not favorable
to a healthy human growth.
When you talk about toxic culture,
we should mention what it means,
because maybe everyone doesn't understand it in the right way.
Maybe they think about environmental pollutants
and other things like that,
and it certainly contributes to a lot of problems, but
you're talking about what's going on at the level,
at the societal and cultural level.
Yes.
That's also true.
Obviously there is a link with physical events.
The other day,
an article reported that half of Americans
were exposed to unhealthy levels of lead
when they were children.
You know,
it's toxic.
It's true.
But you're right.
You got it.
It's not about this toxicity I'm talking about.
I'm talking about nature,
about the culture itself.
About its values.
About the way we raise children.
About the expectations we place on human beings.
All of this is toxic
for the good development of people.
We have literally
tens of thousands of scientific studies
that show how much emotions and environments
affect people's biology,
our immune system,
our hormonal system,
our nervous system,
our intestines,
our heart, etc.
Social conditions,
inequalities,
stress,
sexism,
racism,
these things also have physiological repercussions.
It's not speculation.
What I blame the medical profession for is that
we keep talking about practices based on evidence,
but we don't take into account
the many evidences that are already published.
Including in the main medical journals.
And I'm not talking about perspicacity,
or ideology,
or spirituality on one side,
or science on the other.
I'm talking about science,
which has proven interconnections.
So the problem is not scientific order.
The problem is that we don't put science into practice.
The average medical student doesn't understand.
For example,
I talk about traumas in this book.
And traumas have many implications.
Traumas have a direct link with autoimmune diseases,
cancers, addictions,
and all possible mental health conditions.
But the average medical student
doesn't receive a single course on traumas.
Which is quite incredible.
But it's the truth.
I'm talking in general.
There can be some exceptions,
but in general, it's not the case.
Secondly,
doctors are themselves very traumatized people.
Medical training is very traumatizing.
I talked to many doctors who mentioned
the destruction of their sensitivity
by medical schools.
From a biological point of view,
medical students age faster
than other people their age.
Because of the stress they suffer.
So we have a traumatized population
who tries to treat a larger traumatized population,
without being aware of the trauma.
For the average person,
when they think of the word trauma,
they think of horrible events like
war,
hum,
like
extreme abuse,
physical, sexual, emotional.
They think of disasters,
people who die, etc.
You know, these events are very traumatizing.
But,
Trauma is not the event itself.
Trauma is an injury we suffer.
And we can be injured
without the presence of catastrophic events.
So it's
these traumas,
the great terrible events we notice
and that happen to us,
we can call them traumas
with a capital T.
But you can also hurt a person,
not only by hurting them concretely,
but also at the same scale,
by forgetting to meet their needs.
And in our current society,
children grow up without their essential human needs
being satisfied.
This is what I call
small traumas.
It's when people don't necessarily hurt you,
but it's when the good things that should happen
don't happen.
So we can hurt people by hitting them,
but we can also hurt people
by forgetting to give them water.
In other words, by forgetting to meet their needs.
In this sense,
we have certain emotional needs
as human beings,
as civilized human beings,
that this society not only does not meet,
but that it deliberately
and in a very chronic way.
Thus, many children are traumatized,
not only because it happens to them,
but also because it doesn't happen to them
and that it should have happened to them.
The healing of a trauma
consists in learning to recognize
and face what hurt us.