The Human Condition and How To Heal It: Childhood Trauma, 'Identity Fracture' & Roles Part II
- olivierbranford
- 6 hours ago
- 24 min read
"You Are That"
Kristin Neff Our successes and failures come and go—they neither define us nor do they determine our worthiness.
Roles are the 'Having' in the 'Sacred Sequence' outlined below. The healing of all suffering is the BEing.
You can have things: Just don’t let things have you. You are you. Let nothing define you other than your Self. This is BEing.
Freedom from suffering is possible. This is how you achieve lasting bliss, liberation, peace, and joy.
The philosophical tradition of Advaita Vedanta summaries the human condition and how to heal it very simply:
“You are that.”
That is the point of life.
You are a limitless BEing.
This is the key to liberation from your suffering.
Liberation from suffering is not just an idea by an ancient philosophical tradition. Every philosophical tradition that followed came to the same conclusion about Enlightenment and liberation from the suffering of the human condition. It is even encapsulated in the philosophy of whole nations.
The American 'Declaration of Independence' famously proclaimed foundational rights—"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"—serving as a foundational charter of freedom. The document asserts that "All men are created equal" and endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The 'Statue of Liberty', gifted from France, made by Eiffel radiates Enlightenment through her torch, held high for all to see and remember the Truth of who they are. The torch guiding those seeking a better life or "Lighting the way" to freedom. Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the statue is viewed as a "masterpiece of the human spirit." The statue’s feet are surrounded by broken shackles, representing the liberation from our self imposed prison.
We are all on a spiritual journey: That makes us all "Wounded Healers", described by Carl Jung. We heal, then we turn around, and light the way home for the next Soul.
The French 'Liberté' stands for liberty, acting as the first component of the French national motto 'Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité' (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). It represents the fundamental right to life: The freedom to BE...
'Guess Who?'
In the boardgame ‘Guess Who? there are little faces, which all differ, attached to a plastic support. This plastic background connects all the characters. This is a perfect metaphor for how the world works: Beautiful in its simplicity. The little bits of paper with the faces on are the masks that we wear. The characters cannot see that they are just bits of paper as they cannot see what is behind them and what they are attached to. The blue plastic is the human condition - it is the very structure that underpins every life - but like all plastic it is manufactured - it is artificial.
BEing, or ‘real reality’, involves seeing this, like Pinnochio seeing that he is only a puppet, until he chooses not to be, until he chooses to BE, with the ‘Blue Fairy’ reminding him that it is his choice. The Blue Fairy would sit at the beginning of the bridge in my meta-theory. The blue plastic of 'Guess Who' is the whole 'right hand path'. The 'Field of BEing' is akin to Pinocchio having made the 'one choice' and become the 'real boy': The field is the Universe, pure consciousness, Self-realisation, Self-actualisation, and transcendence, behind the plastic board in 'Guess Who' and hinted at by psychologists.
Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, key figures in humanistic psychology, both explored the idea of moving beyond the self, though they used different terminology. Maslow explicitly placed self-transcendence above Self-actualisation as the highest level of human consciousness - as experiencing 'BEing', while Rogers focused on the 'transcendental core' of the person.
Maslow believed fully developed individuals are motivated by values that transcend the self (the ego) such as compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love, no longer driven by fear-based values. He distinguished 'transcenders' from merely healthy people, having gone beyond that state into unconditional well-being, noting that peak and plateau experiences are central to transcenders' lives and validate their existence. Transcenders are described as "bodhisattvas" who are healthy but also deeply concerned with the welfare of others. Maslow emphasised finding the 'sacred' within ourselves. He stated that:
"Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to Nature, and to the cosmos".
Further, he stated that:
"Self-actualisation seems to be a 'transitional goal, a rite of passage, a step along the path to the transcendence of identity. This is like saying its function is to erase itself'".
"For the transcenders, peak experiences and plateau experiences become the most important things in their lives, the high spots, the validators of life, the most precious aspect of life".
So, what are we waiting for? It is only the ego that holds us back from taking the journey.
Rogers, who wrote the book 'A way of BEing', described a 'transcendental core' that emerges when one lets go of the ego to embrace the all-encompassing and fluid nature of existence, entering a"Fully functional" state. He noted that accessing this core can lead to far higher level intuitive behaviours in in life and in relationships, where one's inner spirit or divine Self connects with another's, Soul to Soul, making the relationship something way larger than the individuals.
Rogers suggested that truly hearing someone involves temporarily setting aside one's own ego to enter their world without judgement, with compassion, essentially "Laying aside your self". This deep listening reveals a "Universal" quality beyond the immediate message. Rogers viewed a person as a "Fluid process," a continually changing "Flowing river of change." The proposition in my thesis is that this is only made possible once one reaches the bridge and take the spiritual path.
Rogers wrote that:
"Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of? It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens".
This beautiful quote suggests that the 'fully functional' being can see the right hand path, the blue plastic, in others: Interpersonal conflict dissolves and humanity is restored.
This may all sound bizarre. This series of articles, 'The Human Condition and How To Heal From It' is the meta-metaphor for the human condition, which is an illusion, and the Truth behind it all. All will become clear.
Like 'Guess Who?', our lives play out as a grid of curated faces: Doctor, lawyer, CEO, singer—roles that look separate, but share one unseen support. The blue plastic is the ‘right-hand path’: The manufactured architecture of conditioning that trains us to identify, categorise, and seek love by appearance. When the masks begin to fall, metaphorically tumbling in the board game, the mechanism becomes visible—and the journey begins. Beneath (and beyond) the board lies the vaster Field of BEing: green, sunlit, alive—consciousness, Truth, and Reality itself—waiting not to be achieved, but recognised - remembered.
As the philosopher and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says:
"The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist."
He continues:
"The ego is a false self-identity based on memories of the past and projections of the future. Awareness (or presence) is the silent, observing consciousness that exists behind the thought patterns."
The association 'Fédération Addiction' used the game 'Guess Who?' in a 2025 campaign to challenge stereotypes surrounding addiction. In this adaptation, players flip down characters, but the final answer reveals that all characters are affected by addiction - the human condition that causes us to seek the 'Temple of Emotional Anaesthesia' in my meta-theory. 'Fédération Addiction' used the 'Guess Who?' metaphor for transforming the public perception of addicts—moving from judging them based on outward appearance to understanding their shared humanity (the blue plastic). Being rewarded for who we appear to be activates the reward system in our brians. And the reward system activates addiction.
Other commentators have used the game as a metaphor for how society forces individuals to identify, classify, and filter people based on façades, as a 'Critique of Social Construction': The 'game' of conditioning that society plays in addition to our parents, reinforcing it.
Childhood Trauma and Adult Mental Illness: The Biological and Psychological Architecture
For what follows, I need to be clear about one thing from the outset. What follows in this article is written for lawyers, not against them. It is an act of affection and compassion, not a prosecution. Some of what follows is sharp. will say, in plain language, that adversarial law functions like an emotional anaesthetic; that many lawyers are, neurally speaking, junkies for the dopamine hit of winning; that black-and-white thinking — the profession’s proudest habit — looks, from a clinical standpoint, suspiciously like a symptom. I say these things not to shame, but because I do not know of any other honest way to speak about what is actually happening.
If a beloved family member were slowly destroying themselves with work, alcohol or painkillers, ‘respecting their choices’ would not be love. Love would be telling the truth as gently and precisely as you could, staying with them in their discomfort, and offering a path out that does not rely on more of the same anaesthetic. That is the stance I am taking with the legal profession. This is tough love, but it is love. I have great compassion for you, and I identify and resonate with your struggles.
The good news is that nothing in this map says that lawyers are uniquely broken. On the contrary: what law reveals is what is happening, more quietly, everywhere. The adversarial courtroom is just a particularly well-lit theatre in which the human condition plays out in amplified form. The same trauma sequences, the same addictions, the same ego strategies that run barristers into the ground also run CEOs, doctors, academics and, in truth, all of us. The difference is that when a lawyer’s unhealed wound is in charge, it can reshape another person’s life.
If there is a single thread running through what follows, it is this: You cannot litigate your way out of a wound. Not as a client. Not as a lawyer. Not as a system.
What you can do is learn to see the wound clearly, to understand the mechanisms that keep it in charge — neurologically, psychologically, spiritually — and to discover that there is a way of being that is not organised around fear. The models and metaphors in these pages — including the Temple of ‘Adversarial Law’, the ‘Bridge of Awakening’, the ‘Unified Field of the Human Condition’ — are not abstractions for their own sake. They are maps made out of pain: my pain, my patients’ pain, my clients’ pain, and the pain that lawyers have shared with me in quieter moments.
If you are a lawyer, a judge, a law student, or simply someone who has been bruised and battered, even crucified, by the system and still cares enough to read this far: This series is for you. It is written from the conviction that you are not uniquely monstrous or uniquely broken. You are human, all of you, in a traumatised culture, doing your best with the tools and stories you were handed. When I say ‘you’ I mean judges, lawyers, their clients, and the legal system itself.
There are better tools. There are truer stories. And there is, I believe, a better way.
The legal profession continues to treat mental illness as an incidental hazard of stressful work, as though depression or anxiety arise merely from difficult cases and long hours. But the science is unequivocal: Adult mental illness is not random, nor evenly distributed, nor primarily a product of contemporary pressures. Its deepest roots lie in childhood adversity — and the pathways from early injury to adult suffering have now been mapped with an empirical precision that the legal profession cannot reasonably deny.
The landmark study that transformed public health “The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study” (Felitti et al., 1998, The Permanente Journal) demonstrated a clear, graded, dose–response relationship between the number of childhood adversities and the likelihood of nearly every major adult mental-health condition. Depression, anxiety, suicidality, addiction, PTSD, personality disorders, chronic shame, dissociation, hypervigilance — all rise systematically with increasing ACEs exposure. The correlations are not subtle. They are biological footprints. They reflect alterations in stress physiology, emotional regulation, threat perception, memory integration, and neural connectivity across the limbic system, prefrontal cortex, and HPA (hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal) axis.
A major meta-analysis “The effect of multiple adverse childhood experiences on health: a systematic review and meta-analysis” (Hughes et al., 2017, The Lancet Public Health) confirmed, with data from thousands of participants, that ACEs dramatically increase the risk of depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance misuse, self-harm, and suicidality. The authors described the findings not as correlations, but as a “Population-level causal mechanism” shaping adult health.
Four years later, another systematic review “Adverse childhood experiences and related outcomes: updated systematic review evidence” (Liu et al., 2021, The Lancet), reinforced that ACEs-related mental illness persists across cultures, demographics, and continents. Emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and household dysfunction — the adversities most common among high-achieving professionals — were especially potent predictors of lifelong psychological cost. The psychiatric mechanisms of this relationship are now well understood. Trauma-based hyperactivation of the amygdala leads to heightened fear responses, catastrophising, and emotional volatility. Reductions in hippocampal volume disrupt memory consolidation and increase susceptibility to flashbacks and intrusive thoughts. Diminished prefrontal regulation undermines impulse control, empathy, and the capacity to tolerate ambiguity or complexity — the very qualities the legal profession depends upon to reach proportionate, reasoned, and humane decisions based on truth. These findings have been elegantly synthesised in “The influence of adverse childhood experiences on emotion regulation and adult psychopathology”(Ko et al., 2024), which shows that ACEs impair emotional regulation more powerfully than any other known factor.
These neuropsychological distortions also manifest in diagnostic categories. A meta-analysis of childhood trauma and depression “Childhood adversity and risk for major depressive disorder” (Li et al., 2016) found that individuals exposed to emotional neglect or emotional abuse had dramatically higher rates of recurrent, treatment-resistant depression.
Another review “Childhood trauma and anxiety disorders: a systematic review” (Etgen et al., 2020) demonstrated that childhood adversity is the strongest known predictor of lifelong anxiety syndromes, including generalised anxiety, panic disorder, and social anxiety — conditions disproportionately reported in legal professionals.
Further still, trauma alters personality architecture. “Adverse childhood experiences and personality pathology” (Porter et al., 2020) established that ACEs significantly increase the risk of borderline, avoidant, and narcissistic personality disorders. These conditions are often unrecognised — especially in high-functioning, high-performing adults — yet they shape interpersonal dynamics in courtrooms, chambers, negotiations, and judicial decision-making every day.
External Validation is the Master Addiction
In other words, the first thing the child becomes addicted to is not a substance, but a signal: “You are good. You are acceptable. You are safe.” When that signal is conditional and inconsistent, the nervous system clings to it all the harder. Put simply: ACEs and conditional love push the child onto the 'Path of Attachment'; which crystallises into addiction to external validation; and every other addiction — to substances, work, winning, status, control — is a desperate attempt either to secure that validation or to numb the despair of living without it.
Dr Maté’s definition is brutally clarifying:
"Addiction is any pattern of craving, pleasure and relief in the short term, [with] negative consequences in the long-term, and the inability or refusal to desist.”
It is not the object that matters — cocaine, litigation, shopping, or winning — but this structure: Relief now, harm later, and still you keep going. In classic Twelve Step and addiction-medicine lore, the first symptom of addiction is denial: the capacity to insist “I’m fine” while everyone else can see the wreckage. Neurobiologically, this denial is fed by tolerance: With repeated exposure, the nervous system adapts, and you need more of the same stimulus to achieve the same effect, driving escalation over time and sharply increasing the risk of collapse or even death. Whether the 'drug' is heroin or the dopamine hit of a high-stakes win, the pattern is identical: Insatiability by design. The barrister is therefore not just a professional who 'likes to win'; he is a human being whose nervous system is being trained to chase a diminishing high in the face of mounting negative consequences — to his body, his mind, his relationships, his ethics. In that light, the swaggering hubris of the 'Adversarial Barrister Archetype', born in childhood adversity, is not confidence at all, but the brittle grandiosity of someone standing on an ever-narrowing ledge, compelled to keep climbing even as the view makes him dizzy and his footing crumbles beneath him.
Addiction, in this thesis, is not a moral stain and it is not a mere 'coping strategy' in the thin, managerial sense. It is the nervous system’s attempted salvation when reality feels unhandleable; it is what happens when unresolved childhood pain meets preference, and preference hardens into resistance. The 'Temple of Adversarial Law' or 'Emotional Anaesthesia' is therefore not simply a courthouse: It is a culturally sanctified dispensary of resistance — an institution that trains both client and lawyer to worship the gap between “what happened” and “what should have happened,” and to call that worship “rights,” “justice,” and “Truth.” The tragedy is that this is precisely the internal mechanism that generates suffering.
In the classic spiritual equation, suffering is pain multiplied by resistance; pain will visit any human life, but resistance turns pain into a private 'hell', and then sells the person a ritual for coping with that hell. Litigation becomes the most respectable drug of all because it flatters the ego’s deepest addiction: The conviction that discomfort is caused by something external, and that relief will come when the external world is forced to comply. That is why vendetta style litigation is so intoxicating; it offers a rush of meaning, righteousness, identity, and control, while leaving the core wound untouched. It is also why “vicarious” or “secondary” trauma is so often a misname: What is repeatedly reactivated in adversarial immersion is not simply the sorrow of the case one is handling, but the lawyer’s own unintegrated fear, shame, and dysregulated alarm — ACEs echoing and bellowing beneath robes and procedure.
And so the system becomes a double addiction: The client cannot handle what has happened (reality) and hires a professional to collude with that inability; the lawyer cannot bear the raw helplessness of being human and converts it into technique, status, and combat, anaesthetised by busyness and the high of “winning.” In Twelve Step language, surrender is the beginning of sanity: Admitting powerlessness over the ego’s compulsive need to control reality, and turning towards a Higher Power (call it God, love, Truth, the Tao, awareness, whatever) rather than enthroning the mind as judge and executioner. Yet the professional ritual of adversarial law quietly teaches the opposite: “Do not surrender; prosecute. Do not accept; resist. Do not soften; sharpen. Do not ask what you can handle; prove what you cannot.” That is why the Serenity Prayer sits like dynamite beneath this whole edifice. It is not merely a pious line; it is a diagnostic instrument. It divides the healing path from the anaesthetic path, and it exposes that the courtroom, as presently constituted, often functions less as a forum for wisdom than as a socially endorsed way to keep resistance — and therefore suffering — alive.
Compassion, Judgement, and Projection: Why This Matters Beyond Parenting
The ‘p‑word’ is not just a family issue. It is a cultural addiction. Entire institutions run on conditional regard: Schools, corporations, professions, even spiritual communities that offer God like a bonus scheme.
When a parent says “I’m proud of you”, they are often not praising the child; they are soothing their own fear. They are saying: “My world makes sense. My efforts were not wasted. I am not a failure as a parent.” That is not evil. It is human. But it is also projection.
When you begin to see projection, judgement softens. You stop needing to vilify the people who installed your scripts. You can simply uninstall them.
The ‘Sacred Series’- BEing Is Not Monkhood: It Is The Operating System
You don’t have to stop working hard for the Ferrari, or the penthouse in Knightsbridge. But only when it comes from BEing. Otherwise you won’t actually ever get it, or if you do, you won’t have it for long. Many people hear the language of ‘BEing’ and immediately imagine withdrawal: A monk’s life, a cloistered spirituality, a kind of moral ascent away from the ordinary world. In that misunderstanding, BEing becomes a place you go to, and the proof that you have arrived is that you no longer want money, ambition, organisation, systems, That’s a seductive picture — partly because it flatters the ego while it avoids the arena where the ego is most threatened. But in the logic of this thesis, BEing is not a location, and it is not an aesthetic. It is an operating system. It is the difference between a life organised around fear-organised identity and a life organised around love, Truth, service, and the deeper intention of the Soul.
This matters because it reframes what most people call procrastination, self-sabotage. In the mechanism view, these are rarely moral failures. They are almost always misalignment plus threat perception. The ego avoids what feels like exposure: rejection, failure, being seen, being judged, ad not being enough. If “business generation,” “selling,” or “making money” is unconsciously coded as the arena in which one might be exposed as unworthy, the nervous system will resist — sometimes with astonishing ingenuity — while the mind produces respectable reasons: “I’m spiritual,” “I’m not interested in money,” “I’m not like those people,” “It shouldn’t be about wealth. ”Underneath, it is still the armour’s ancient job: prevent the petrified inner child from feeling the terror of not being loved.
Here the thesis makes its first practical incision: The same action can feel like poison under the ego and like light under BEing, not because the action has changed, but because the centre of gravity has changed. When the motive is fear-organised identity — prove worth, secure approval, outrun shame — ordinary tasks become heavy, avoidable, and endlessly postponed, because each task is secretly a referendum on the ‘Self’. But when the motive is authentic service — love, responsibility, Truth — the motivational geometry re-codes. The nervous system relaxes because the action is no longer a theatre of worth. It becomes an expression of values. An expression of authenticity: Our BEing — An expression of love. The armour loosens.
This is why the ‘money’ question is then not a deviation from spirituality but one of its most revealing tests. In this framework, money is neither idolised nor demonised; it is understood as impact. It can be recruited as status (ego) or as service (BEing). When money is unconsciously worshipped as proof of self-worth, it drives the ‘right-hand path’ into the ‘Temple of Emotional Behaviour becomes love-in-action rather than fear-in-disguise. The task stops being contaminating. It becomes coherent. What felt loathsome can become almost addictive in the healthiest sense, because the energy source has changed: It is no longer ego fuel; it is meaning. And that fuel is veritably nuclear.
The ‘Sacred Series’ that I name in my first article in this series is:
BEing → Doing → Having
In that order.
IMAGE!!!@!@!
The 'Sacred Series' versus the reverse series of 'Identity Fracture.'
The ‘Ego-Driven Reverse Sequence’ or 'Identity Fracture' of Having → Doing → BEing says: Get the outcome (have the ‘stuff’, get the accolade, or qualify for the role), prove yourself by doing what you need to do to get it, and then finally that will define who you are by what you own or what role you are in. But who are you without any of that? Is there a you? Do you even know?
Starting with ‘having’ is an endless road. Having is insatiable, nothing will ever be enough: You will never be enough – to yourself or others, and it is quietly violent if not loudlky. By contrast, the Sacred sequence does not forbid having; it subordinates having to BEing. It says: “Act from what is true especially what is true to you – your authentic Self – your True Self – your very BEing – your Soul; let action be an embodiment of the values that are aligned with who you are and what you love: Doing thenflows effortlessly from the BEing, rather than having to spend a life feeling like you are swimming upstream in a torrent, in a direction that you don’t even want to go in; allowing outcomes and abundance to follow as a by-product rather than as a substitute for self-worth. They will follow as sure as day follows night. The astonishing result is that the inner work to heal from the ‘gift’ of having the human condition that your parents unbeknowingly, inadvertently, or deliberately gave you, what I call ‘psychospirituality’, means that the sacred sequence is not an escape from life – it is the art of living it without fear, pretence, a mask, armour and with abundance, joy, peace, and love. You cannot give what you do not have unless you wake up and give it to your Self.
BEing Does Not Mean BEing a Monk
And this is why this thesis insists that ‘BEing’ cannot remain a lofty concept reserved for meditation cushions or cold, far-away sage’s caves. If it does, it becomes yet another strategy of avoidance. BEing must govern the things we least want to do: The uncomfortable conversation, the invoice, the marketing email, the boundary, the disciplined routine, the delayed gratification, the repeated attempt. The test is simple: Does the action arise from fear-organised identity or from love? If it arises from fear, it will tend to drain and distort. If it arises from love, it will tend to energise and clarify, even when it is difficult. You will feel joy when it comes from a higher place.
So the thesis’s promise here is not merely relief from suffering. It is the restoration of right relationship to reality: To work, money, responsibility, family, impact, ambition. They are real first. Then they build. Then they have.
A Final Irreverent Blessing
If you are a parent reading this and feeling defensive: Good. That means you care. Now take the next step: Let the defensiveness melt into curiosity. Ask, very gently, what you were trained to believe about love.
If you are an adult reading this and feeling grief: Also good. That means your true Self is still awake enough to notice what was missing. Grief is not a pathology; it is an intelligence.
And if you are the child at the piano—still, secretly, in the back of your psyche—hear this in language that has no contracts attached: You were never meant to be an achievement. You were meant to be.
Love that has to be earned is not love; it is employment. Fire your inner employer. Return to BEing.
BEing doesn’t mean becoming a monk. It means doing the same life from a different place inside. When the motive shifts from proving worth (ego) to serving love (Higher Self), the resistance drops, the procrastination ceases, the self-sabotage disappears, the energy returns, and the work that once felt impossible becomes straightforward — because it is no longer a fight with reality. It is reality, lived awake.
You are worthy because you are you. You are your worth. You don't need to change, buy, do, or achieve anything to be worthy. As Dr Wayne Dyer wrote:
"Accept that you are enough. You don't need to be anything that you are not".
Very few people love their children enough to nurture their authenticity. That would be true unconditional love: Celebrating the Truth of who they are, not who they might be. Those would be the ingredients and the recipe for well-being and true success.
The seventeenth-century French philosopher Montaigne once said
"My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened."
Namaste.
Olly
Email me:
Disclaimer:
The information presented in this article explores the role of psychospirituality in mental well-being and recovery. It is for informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or psychiatric advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should always seek the advice of your own qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding your specific condition or any medical concerns. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read here. Integrating spiritual practices can be a valuable part of a holistic approach to mental health, but it should complement, not replace, care from licensed medical and mental health professionals.
References
All accessed 20th February 2026.
Videos
Video by Iain Smith, a Scottish Criminal Defence Lawyer, voted Lawyer of the year 2019 has spoken about the role of ACEs in the legal setting, being a massive advocate of understanding and compassion rather than judgement. Watch the recording here.
Articles
ACEs for Law Students Advocates for ACEs — University of Edinburgh. (n.d.).
Adverse childhood experiences and associated health outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Petruccelli, K., Davis, J., Berman, T., Child Abuse & Neglect. 2019; 97(0):104127.
Adverse childhood experiences and borderline personality disorder: a meta-analysis. Porter, C., Palmier-Claus, J., Branitsky, A., Mansell, W., Warwick, H., Varese, F., Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 2020; 141(1):6–20.
Adverse childhood experiences and related outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Liu, M. et al., The Lancet. 2021; 6(11): E836-E847.
Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease. Danese, A., McEwen, B.S., Physiology & Behaviour. 2012; 106(1):29–39.
Association between adverse childhood experiences and personality, emotions and affect: Does number and type of experiences matter? Grusnick, J.M., Kinsel, A., Wasil, A., Shaffer, J.A., Journal of Research in Personality. 2020; 85(0):103908.
Associations of childhood adversity with emotional well-being and educational achievement: A review and meta-analysis. Yeo, G.H., Lansford, J.E., Hirshberg, M.J., Tong, E.M.W., Journal of Affective Disorders. 2024; 347(0):387–398.
Burden and consequences of child maltreatment in high-income countries. Gilbert, R., Widom, C.S., Browne, K., Fergusson, D., Webb, E., Janson, S., The Lancet. 2009; 373(9657):68–81.
Childhood maltreatment and mental health problems in adulthood: birth cohort study. Kisely, S., Abajobir, A.A., Mills, R., Strathearn, L., Clavarino, A., Najman, J.M., The British Journal of Psychiatry. 2018; 213(6):698–703.
Childhood maltreatment, latent vulnerability and the shift to preventative psychiatry - the contribution of functional brain imaging. McCrory, E.J., Viding, E., Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 2017; 58(4):338–357.
Enduring neurobiological effects of childhood abuse and neglect. Teicher, M.H., & Samson, J.A., Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 2016; 57(3):241–266.
Hiding in Plain Sight, Bench + Bar. Netzel, N. Minnesota State Bar Association. 2022.
In the realm of hungry ghosts: Close encounters with addiction. Maté, G., Knopf Canada (2008).
Improving lawyers' health by addressing the impact of adverse childhood experiences. Oehme, K., Stern, S., University of Richmond Law Review (2019).
‘It is Okay to Not Be Okay. The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being. University of Jaffe, B.,. Louisville Law Review / SSRN. 2022.
Kindness in court: Who cares? Smith, I. Law Society of Scotland Journal. 2019; 64(2) Issue 2.
The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys. Krill, Johnson, Albert. Journal of Addiction Medicine. 2016.
Mindset: the new psychology of success. Dweck, C.S. Ballantine Books (2006).
Nauru declaration on addiction and related matters. Addiction, Wiley (2024).
Parental conditional regard: a meta-analysis. Haines, J.E., Schutte, N.S., Journal of Adolescence. 2023; 95(2):195–223.
Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Mueller, C.M., Dweck, C.S., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1998; 75(1):33–52.
Psychology and Religion: West and East. Jung, C.G., Princeton University Press (1969).
Qui est le drogué ? : la Fédération Addiction et Orès France jouent avec les préjugés. Fédération Addiction, federationaddiction.fr (2025).
Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study. Felitti, V.J., Anda, R.F., Nordenberg, D., et al., American Journal of Preventive Medicine.1998; 14(4):245–258.
Self-compassion: an alternative conceptualisation of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Neff, K.D., Self and Identity.2003; 2(2):85–101.
Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. Ryan, R.M., Deci, E.L., American Psychologist. 2000; 55(1):68–78.
Suffering in silence: the survey of law student well-being and the looming crisis in the legal profession. Organ, J., Jaffe, D., Bender, K., Yale Law School (2016).
The ACEs Controversy. Walker, L. Trauma Informed Law: A Primer for Practicing Lawyers H. Maki, J.K. Wright, et al, Eds., American Bar Association. 2023.
The effect of multiple adverse childhood experiences on health: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Hughes, K., Bellis, M.A., Hardcastle, K.A., et al., The Lancet Public Health. 2017; 2(8):e356–e366.
The emotional and academic consequences of parental conditional regard: Comparing conditional positive regard, conditional negative regard, and autonomy support as parenting practices. Roth, G., Assor, A., Kanat-Maymon, Y., Kaplan, H., Developmental Psychology. 2009; 45(4):1119–1142.
The emotional costs of parents' conditional regard: a self-determination theory analysis. Assor, A., Roth, G., Deci, E.L., Journal of Personality. 2004; 72(1):47–88.
The impact of childhood maltreatment: a review of neurobiological and genetic factors. McCrory, E., De Brito, A., Viding, E.). Front Psychiatry. 2011; 28:(2):48.
The Legal Burnout Solution: How Childhood Trauma Impacts Lawyers and Their Clients. Howlett, R., Sharp., The American Bar Association. (n.d.). 2022.
The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Shonkoff, J.P., Garner, A.S., et al., Pediatrics. 2012; 129(1):e232–e246.
The myth of normal: Trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture. Maté, G., & Maté, D., Penguin Random House (2022).
The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Rogers, C.R., Journal of Consulting Psychology.1957; 21(2):95–103.
The path to lawyer well-being: practical recommendations for positive change. National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, American Bar Association (2017).
The prevalence of substance use and other mental health concerns among American attorneys. Krill, P.R., Johnson, R., Albert, L., Journal of Addiction Medicine. 2016; 10(1):46–52.
The relationship between ACE score and type of personality traits in a sample of university students: a person-centred approach. Patrício, A., Pimenta, F., Nunes, F., Alves, A., Personality and Individual Differences. 2020; 152(0):109936.
The role of environmental factors in the course of borderline personality disorder. Winsper, C., Marwaha, S., Lereya, S.T., Thompson, A., Eyden, J., Singh, S.P., Journal of Affective Disorders. 2020; 269(0):465–477.
The structure and stability of self-esteem: a meta-analytic review. Trzesniewski, K.H., Donnellan, M.B., Robins, R.W., Psychological Bulletin. 2006; 132(1):1–21.
Towards a context-specific approach to understanding moral injury in law. Soon et al. Frontiers in Psychology. 2023.
Trauma-Informed Family Attorney. Stephens, E. Marital & Family Law. 2022.
Trauma-informed judicial practice from the judges’ perspective. McKinsey, E., Zottola, S.A., Mitchell, A., Ellmaker, L., Heinen, M., Judicature. 2022.
Trauma, Mental Health and the Lawyer. Coreno, L. New York State Bar Association. (n.d.). 2022.
When four ACEs is a bad hand. Zeedyk, S. Smith, I. Law Society of Scotland Journal. 2018. 63 (6).
Why the Legal System Needs To Prioritise Attorney Well-Being. Goldman, R. Psychology Today. 2022.
Comments