Psychospirituality - "You are Bothering Yourself About the Moment in Front of You": The Malign Legacy of Childhood Trauma

The great contemporary spiritual master Michael Singer wrote that “One of the most amazing things you will ever realise is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. It's not personal - you are making it personal.” Read that again, and don’t ever forget it. That is the malign legacy of childhood Trauma on mental illness in your adult life.

Have you or anyone that you know experienced childhood Trauma? Do you or they even know? How common is it? What is at the core of all childhood Trauma? What are its roots? What is the lasting effect of childhood Trauma into your adult life? How does it manifest? How does it trigger you? What is the role of unconditional love in all of this? How does childhood Trauma relate to adult mental illness? How does it relate to addiction? Does it relate to people or situations in your adult life? Why is adult 'stress' not Trauma and why do psychiatrists and therapists get confused about this? How does it affect your relationships as an adult? How does it affect how you view and interact with the world? What is your role in all of ths and could you instead choose to heal? Are you choosing to remain a victim, which is blocking any growth? For it is a choice that we can all decide not to make. Why are you holding yourself back? How do you recover from childhood Trauma? Do all psychiatrists and therapists help you with the sequelae of childhood Trauma? What else could you also do that would help you to heal? Can you make a full recovery? Are there any positive sequelae from childhood Trauma? What has spirituality got to do with all this? What is spirituality anyway? In this rather lengthy article (sorry - but it has to be long) we will attempt to answer all these questions.

Do not let your past make you bitter. Let it make you better.

The good news is that healing from childhood Trauma can have a transformative effect on your psyche.

Childhood Trauma is almost universal: It's about you, it's about me, it's about everyone. Dr Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist and Buddhist meditation teacher who said that “It is hard to imagine the scope of an individual life without envisioning some kind of childhood Trauma.” Dr Peter Levine, one of the world's foremost expert psychologists in healing from Trauma, having worked in the field for over four decades, including working for NASA, wrote that "Trauma has become so commonplace that most people don't even recognise its presence. Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence."

These concepts are far from new. The great Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who was born to slavery, said 2,000 years ago that "People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

When you can't control what's happening as an adult, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what's happening, rather than reacting to it. That is where your power is: Relax, breathe, and then respond; if you need to - and in your own time.

Singer believes that the human condition is the following: Fundamentally we all feel as adults that we are not okay. This represents our fears and our beliefs that we cannot handle life. The spiritual path involves working out why we are not okay. In other words why we don’t believe that we are worthy, loved, and lovable and that we are therefore okay: Why do we have these fears? This must be addressed during the treatment of childhood Trauma.

Psychology states that you are the sum of your learned experiences: But you are not your thoughts, emotions, or experiences - you are the conscious awareness behind them. Identifying with these inner phenomena creates a disturbed inner world that you mistakenly try to fix with the outside world. This is the basis of mental illness and all addictions.

Spiritual growth involves changing your relationship with your mind and emotions by releasing their past, stored blockages, and rediscovering the stillness, clarity, and joy of your true nature. So, the spiritual path involves identifying the causes for our negative beliefs, and not believing them or that we are not okay and then seeking external validation or coping with mechanisms such as addictions because of that belief.

We may come to realise that the reason we didn’t receive unconditional love had nothing to do with us. So, our childhood Trauma had nothing to do with us. We can then choose to step into the light of spiritual bliss. As it says in Revelation 3:8 "I know thy works. Behold, I have set before thee an open door, which no one can shut. For you have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name."

You are lovable, you are worthy: You are the greatest Being who ever walked the face of the Earth. It's true. But what, you may ask, has spirituality got to do with healing from childhood Trauma? Well, everything. But, don't just take my word for it. Let's hear from all the thought leaders on childhood Trauma, from the spiritual masters, and from contemporary creatives who deal with spirituality. Do read on...

Modern medicine, according to Dr Gabor Maté, a world leader on childhood Trauma, and a self-acknowledged 'wounded healer' who has walked the path, fails to incorporate healing approaches that make us whole. He states that these approaches, historically speaking, the search for the true Self under the always false egocentric limiting beliefs, layers of ego mind, and conditioned behaviour, long predate modern society. The recovery of one's essence, making us whole, is essential to healing from adult mental illness.

I have found that many psychiatrists and therapists were totally ignorant of these approaches, and even 'pooh-poohed' them, warning me off them during my own recovery as 'religious mumbo jumbo'. They are totally mistaken in all of this. These concepts relate to spirituality, not religion. I found that many of these professionals were unaware of the scientific data on childhood Trauma or that adult mental health presentations are actually the legacy of triggered childhood Trauma, and not present 'stresses'. They were ignorant of the Truth behind Singer's statement that "The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you."

We will explore why so many in the legal profession, including barristers and judges are so judgemental and project their own faults on others, which I will do a deep dive into in my next article.

John Milton wrote in 'Paradise Lost' that "The mind is its own place and, in itself, can make a 'Heaven' of 'Hell', and a 'Hell' of 'Heaven'." The mind is the dwelling place of the ego. The heart is the home of the Soul.

I have found that my coaching clients, and indeed myself, only began to heal from childhood Trauma when spiritual approaches were incorporated alongside modern positive psychological approaches: A holistic approach called psychospirituality. I saved myself, and this was fuelled by spiritual coaching and taking the spiritual path: The 'Hero's Journey'.

Psychiatrists talks about 'resilience', yet healing is nothing to do with resilience, it is actually all about vulnerability. Many psychiatrists don't even know what resilience really is. Dr Maté wrote that “The same goes for us: No emotional vulnerability, no growth." Dr Maté emphasises the importance of a spiritual approach to healing from childhood Trauma, saying that “Spiritual work and psychological work are both necessary to reclaim our true nature. Without psychological strength, spiritual practice can easily become another addictive distraction from reality. Conversely, shorn of a spiritual perspective, we are prone to stay stuck in the limited realm of the grasping ego, even if it’s a healthier and more balanced ego.” Dr Levine wrote in his bestselling book 'Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma' that “The body has been designed to renew itself through continuous self-correction. These same principles also apply to the healing of psyche, spirit, and Soul. Physicians and mental health workers today don't speak of retrieving Souls, but they are faced with a similar task - restoring wholeness to an organism that has been fragmented by Trauma. Shamanistic concepts and procedures treat Trauma by uniting lost Soul and body in the presence of community (and reconnection with others). Connection is vital to healing. This approach is alien to the technological mind. However, these procedures do seem to succeed where conventional Western approaches fail.”

The Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote that "Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare - something we call Truth or God, or reality, a timeless state - something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption."

If only psychiatrists could learn one aphorism, instead of volumes about pharmacology, they would truly become healers. That aphorism is that "If it's hysterical, it's historical." In other words, it is not the 'stresses' that are presented to us in adult life that trigger us, hurt us, and result in emotional pain or mental illness, it is our unrecognised, untreated, invalidated, and therefore unresolved childhood Trauma that is the determinant of why we bother ourselves about the people or the moment in front of us.

Dr Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist and cofounder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, wrote about emotions being buried alive for decades. They are like footballs being held under water: They always resurface. He said that “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”

Many doctors, and even more so those who have craved accolades such as PhDs or professorships, and I speak from personal experience, have been driven to the dizzy heights of their profession by a deep sense of inadequacy and a subconscious fear of low self-worth as a result of their parents showing them only conditional love: That is, that if they succeed in the plans that their parents have for them in life, meeting their expectations, then their parents will be proud of them and that they will love them. In other words, those doctors too, like most of us, including psychiatrists, have experienced childhood Trauma, even when they are unaware of it. But, thankfully this does not apply to all members of the profession. Alice Miller, the Polish-Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher, who was highly influential for her work and seminal books on childhood Trauma, describes this clearly in her book 'The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self.'

Professor Bruce D. Perry, a leader in the psychiatric community on childhood Trauma, with vast clinical experience of its sequelae, who works in the Child Trauma Academy in Texas, wrote in 'What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing' "When children don’t feel respected by the decisions of their parents, their beliefs about how they are valued are crushed." The Truth is that everyone is unique, and that is their value. Professor Perry writes “Being here, alive, makes you worthy.”

Jack Kornfield, the clinical psychologist, Buddhist monk, and spiritual teacher, wrote that “We are often loyal to our suffering, our regrets, our losses, focusing on the Trauma of 'What happened to me?’ But is that what defines you?” Ebonee Davis echoed “People are afraid to heal because their entire identity is centred around the Trauma they’ve experienced. They have no idea of who they are outside of Trauma and that unknown is terrifying.” So, people choose not to do the inner work required to heal and instead decide to remain trapped as victims.

Dr Peter Levine wrote that “In virtually every spiritual tradition, suffering is seen as a doorway to awakening. In the West, this connection can be seen in the 'Dark Night of The Soul'. The transformative power of suffering finds its clearest expression in the 'Four Noble Truths' espoused by the Buddha. Though suffering and Trauma are not identical, the Buddha’s insight into the nature of suffering can provide a powerful mirror for examining the effects of Trauma in your life.”

Dr Maté begins his new book 'The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture', which is in my 'Suggested Reading' list, with the sentence "In the most health-obsessed society ever, all is not well." Mahatma Gandhi said that “The problem with the world is that humanity is not in its right mind.” Professor Perry wrote “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” He continues in regard to adult stress versus childhood Trauma that "So often we use the word snapped when we don’t know where a burst of anger is coming from or why someone is having a violent reaction. Well, now we know: Something has happened in the moment that triggers one of the brain’s childhood Trauma memories. And because the lower, non-rational parts of the (survival) brain are its first responders, they immediately set off stress responses that then shut off the reasonable part of the brain. Dr Maté says that “There is very little grown up Gabor in the mix. Most of me is in the grips of the distant past near the beginnings of my life. This kind of physioemotional time warp, preventing me from inhabiting the present moment: This is one of the imprints of childhood Trauma. It shapes much of our adult behaviour. It can even determine whether we are capable at all in matters of the greatest importance in our lives.”

Your problems are precisely as bad as you think. Stop fighting the world. That is your problem: You can, instead, choose to heal. Kornfield wrote “Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly, slowly, and deeply, and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting. You hold in your hand an invitation: To remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible. When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.”

Fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is a proverb from the medieval Levant which is "What we fear, we create." Dan Brown wrote "What we don't understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control, we attack." This underlines that most conflict is due to ignorance. Kornfield wrote “The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War’s roots are in ignorance." Jane Leavy said that "Trauma fractures comprehension as a pebble shatters a windshield. The wound at the site of impact spreads across the field of vision, obscuring reality and challenging belief."

William Shakespeare, the most recognised and celebrated author who ever lived, who was a spiritual master, echoed in Antony and Cleopatra "In time we hate that which we often fear." Dr Maté wrote that “Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: Very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of Self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum.”

The words of the Buddha offer this Truth: "Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed.” Jack Kornfield wrote “The root of the problem is that everyone has to first discover the root of anger and hatred inside themselves before they can understand how it operates in the outside world.”

Forgiving others for what we perceive as their wrongdoings is the only path to personal freedom. The prison guard forgets that they also reside in the prison and that only they hold the key to their own liberty. Olga Tokarczuk wrote “The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don't know how to live without it.” Singer wrote “Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.” Only you can fix yourself. Alice Little wrote "As traumatised children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults." Dr Carl Jung wrote that "No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life."

Singer continued “Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It's the commotion the ego mind makes about life that really causes the problems.” Your ego mind is formed during childhood as a result of our negative, Traumatic experiences. Dr Levine calls this effect of childhood Trauma "The tyranny of the past: Spoiling appreciation of the present moment." He continues, writing "The effects of unresolved Trauma can be devastating. It can affect our habits and outlook on life, leading to addictions and poor decision-making. It can take a toll on our family life and interpersonal relationships. It can trigger real physical pain, symptoms, and disease. And it can lead to a range of self-destructive behaviours."

However, Trauma can be a catalyst for deeply understanding the human experience. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote "That which does not kill us makes us stronger". Tragically, and ironically, Dr Carl Jung believed that Nietzsche died from psychosis as he deeply believed that we should fortify our false self, the ego, rather than connect with our true Higher Self. Our ego wants to kill us.

My own experience of childhood Trauma, as I set out in my article 'My Truth' has given me insights into the human experience, the importance of supplementing medical care with spirituality as 'psychospirituality' if we want to heal fully and transcend our emotional disturbances, and of the need to be a 'wounded healer' and an 'Enlightened Witness': In other words a 'way-shower.' Sharon Salzberg wrote that "Someone who has experienced Trauma also has gifts to offer all of us - in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion." It is only when we go through the 'Hero's Journey' and 'The Dark Night of the Soul' for ourselves that we find Truth. As Bill Wilson, the author of the 'Big Book', said "Suffering is the touchstone of spiritual progress". We only come to consciousness through suffering.

As a doctor I was given endless lectures and books on scientific knowledge to imbibe during my training, but I was never taught any wisdom, and I was never taught about childhood Trauma. Dr Maté confirms my experience, writing that "The average medical student to THIS DAY still doesn't get a single lecture on Trauma in four years of medical school. They should have a whole course on it, because I can tell you that Trauma is related to addiction and all kinds of mental illness. There is a whole lot of science behind that, but they don't study that science. Illness in this society, physical or mental, they are not abnormalities. They are normal responses to an abnormal culture. This culture is abnormal when it comes to real human needs.”

It is your ego mind that is causing your negative, false beliefs and your consequent negative, false thoughts about other people or situations. Mind is what you are drowning in and you are grabbing onto the mind to not drown. Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don’t let what’s happening around you as an adult get inside you and weigh you down.

Turn your wounds into wisdom.

For my second article in this five part series about childhood Trauma, its malign legacy, and the role of psychospirituality and creativity in healing, click here: 'Psychospirituality and Childhood Trauma: Mental Health, Psychology, Philosophy, Spirituality, and Healing - The Return to Wholeness'

Stop bothering yourself with everything

Introduction

People who have their ego as a guide and who choose not to heal are doing themselves and the world a great disservice: By choosing the ego to be your guide throughout your life, you are asleep and not your higher fully awakened Self: And it is a choice. Carl Jung wrote "The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it". I love Carl Jung (which you might have guessed from reading my articles, although I would qualify his statement by adding that it is daily choice as to who you are BEing. It is your journey inward. I am a survivor of childhood Trauma: Like you and like everyone else. Through Transformative Life Coaching (TLC), I make that choice as to who I am Being, every day, when I wake up. I do my prayers and meditate. It is like a shower for my Soul. Choose to be your Higher Self, which is your inner purpose. This should align with your outer purpose.

It is painful at first as you have you have always suppressed the hidden parts of your psyche until now, and they will keep coming up, until you process them and surrender them. But then you will come to realise that it is the greatest journey and the meaning of your life. The only sin is to ignore the calling to find your true Self that the Universe requests of you. Being your Higher Self is who you are. More than that, it is the best decision you will ever make. It's your purpose here on Earth. It's the way to peace, with other people and with the world. This is why over 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. This is why Donald Trump is a malignant wanker. This is the cause of war. By choosing to live from your ego, you are really a total @sshole and you are a blight to the world, regardless of what has happened to you. The only sin is to ignore the calling to find your true Self that the Universe has in store for you. It's why you were born. Don't you think that it's time break the chain of inheritance? It's the greatest gift that you can give to your children, and their children, and so on, ad infinitum, and also to everyone around you. Living from your ego means that you are a blight to the world: You will soil and spoil everything that you do, and you will hurt others too, by recreating the conditions of your childhood, attempting to destroy everyone and everything around you. This includes your friends, family, loved ones, and colleages. Do you think that they really deserve it? Of course not! The ego lures you down a path saying "This is way to be saved!" But it is a lie and therein lies certain death. After reading and digesting this article and the implications of it; by being a resentful @sshole - if a person chooses not to look inwards, and everyone can make that choice rather than blaming everyone else, they will be resentful, lying, and disingenuous; in other words, by their own volition, stuck in their ego.

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor, wrote the seminal book ''Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust'. In a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress, readers voted 'Man’s Search for Meaning 'as one of the top 10 most influential books in their lives. By 1997 the book had sold more than 10 million copies. Frankl founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy and philosophy, that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories. Existentialist literally means pertaining to existence or reality, a view that emphasises that meaning is created individually through subjective choices (to be your ego or your Higher Self) and then actions within a world that, in itself, lacks inherent meaning or purpose. Existentialism was a movement in philosophy that dealt with questions of authenticity and meaning in lived experience. Existentialism is an investigation of the meaning of Being. Frankl advised patients to get in touch with their spiritual unconscious: This is the domain of the Soul, also called the True Self (or Inner Wisdom, Essence, Authentic Self, Inner Being, Transcendental Self, Enlightened potential, Christ-Nature, Buddha-Nature, Tao, Atman, Awareness, Universal Consciousness), created, during volitional healing, by the union of the fractured parts of our psyche, namely our Higher Self (Higher Power, God, Divine Entity, Divine Self, Spirit, Nature), our awokened and transformed ‘shadow’, and our inner child (which is the ego reborn without conditioning).

The ego is conscious but asleep. The Higher Self is unconscious and may be awakened.

What follows is my series of five articles on psychospirituality This is sufficient evidence for the facts therein contained.

Singer's quote “One of the most amazing things you will ever realise is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. It's not personal - you are making it personal.” highlights the fact that our suffering as adults comes from our own internal resistance and reactions to what is happening right now, rather than from other people in our adult lives or from the situation itself. Most people, including the psychiatric profession, are largely ignorant of this. The quote, frequently found in Singer's book, ’The Untethered Soul’, which is in my ‘Suggested Reading list’, emphasises the power of letting go of personal judgement of people and negative interpretations of events in healing from childhood Trauma. The book states that by observing our thoughts, feelings, people, and situations without judgement, we can find peace, joy, compassion, and freedom. The alternative is to wrongly blame other people for our unhappiness, leading to anger, irritability, discontent, resentment, and conflict, when it is always you who is bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. I'm sorry, but it's true. And I speak from personal experience of being on the receiving end!

At the root of all childhood Trauma, regardless of its cause, is that something was missing from your childhood. What was missing was a lack of unconditional love. But what is unconditional love? What is love anyway? Click here for my article all about love.

Kornfield wrote that “When we are lost in delusion, it's hard to see even the most obvious truths.” Unhealthy, aggressive anger stems from your preferences, desires, and fears, all of which result from your childhood Trauma, not from the person or situation in front of you now. Dr Levine wrote that “When people have been traumatised, they are stuck in paralysis - the immobility reaction or abrupt explosions of rage. Because of this, they lack the healthy assertive anger that they need to carry out their lives effectively.” And for that, you must be totally forgiven, as your childhood Trauma was nothing to do with you.

Professor Bessel van der Kolk, the Dutch psychiatry professor who works at Boston University School of Medicine - (lucky students!) who is the doyen of Trauma, who wrote the book (a New York Times bestseller), which is considered to be the 'Bible' of Trauma, entitled 'The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in The Healing of Trauma', which is in my 'Suggested Reading' list, wrote about childhood Trauma that it "Comes back as a reaction, not a memory." Professor van der Kolk served as president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and is a former co-director of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. He is president of the Trauma Research Foundation in Brookline, Massachusetts. So, he knows a thing or two about all of this.

Fear, unhappiness, resentment, and anger

Unhappiness comes from the Greek words for melancholy, despair, and pain. It is a close neighbour of anhedonia, the inability to enjoy life, which is a core symptom of depression and is often used to diagnose the condition. A history of childhood Trauma may trigger these symptoms when presented with adult stress. This may be manifested as resentment and anger. All of these are rooted in fear. These are the fears resulting from a person's childhood Trauma.

There is no present need to feel afraid. Childhood Trauma causes a person to see an 'Invisible Lion' in every situation. There is no lion. There is no reason for fear. It is the person's distorted perception that invokes.a survival reaction when there is no need for one. This was described in the book 'The Invisible Lion: How to Tame Your Nervous System and Heal Your Trauma' by Benjamin Fry, which is in my 'Suggested Reading' List.

Singer wrote “If you want to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you that wants to create melodrama. This is the part that thinks there’s a reason not to be happy. You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your Being. In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do. Go ahead, take a look at reality. You’re floating in empty space in a Universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience. Things are going to happen anyway. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.”

The Dalai Lama has said that transforming thought is one of his favourite practices. He instructs us to “Let yourself visualise the effects of unskillful thought patterns such as annoyance, anger, and judgement. Inwardly see how such thoughts affect you: The tension, the raising of your pulse rate, the discomfort. Outwardly see how such thoughts affect others who hold them, making them upset, rigid, even ugly. Then make the compassionate determination, ‘I will never allow such states to make me lose my peace of mind.'”

Victoria Secunda wrote that “When we recognise that we are not responsible for our childhood deprivations, and that we are entitled to feel assertive anger (but not aggressive anger - awareness is not a license to try to harm others), then we are able to let go of that anger and not be controlled by it.”

Harold Schechter, Professor Emeritus, wrote that “If a person is severely mistreated from his earliest years, subjected to constant psychological abuse resulting in childhood Trauma, he or she will grow up with a malignant view of life. To such a person, the world is a hateful place where all human relationships are based, not on love and respect, but on power, suffering, and humiliation.”

Professor Perry wrote “What I’ve learned from talking to so many victims of childhood Traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.” As adults, the violence typically takes the form of resentment, hatred, judgement, and criticism of others. Malachy McCourt once said, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

In the fourth step of the 12 steps of recovery from addiction, a common adult manifestation of childhood Trauma, fellows are asked to take a full inventory of all their historic resentments against others. Then they are asked to list their fears behind them. Every resentment is rooted in our fears. Every fear that we have comes from our childhood Trauma.

So, you see, it is not current 'stress', or the people and situations that we find ourselves in that are responsible for how we feel: It is us. This is what Singer means by his quote “One of the most amazing things you will ever realise is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. It's not personal - you are making it personal.” This forms the basis for judgement.

Those who judge live in spiritual bankruptcy and experience a Soul death. Perry continues “We elicit from the world what we project into the world; but what you project is based upon what happened to you as a child.” Professor van der Kolk wrote that “After childhood Trauma the world becomes sharply divided between those who know and those who don’t. People who have not shared the Traumatic experience cannot be trusted, because they can’t understand it.”

Kornfield wrote “Anger shows us precisely where we are stuck, where our limits are, where we cling to beliefs and fears.”

Dr Maté emphasises spiritual techniques for dealing with this malign legacy of childhood Trauma, which may cause unwarranted hatred, fear, aggression, violence, conflict, judgement, and resentment in present life situations.

Among the simplest and most skilful of the meditative techniques taught in many spiritual traditions is the disciplined practice of what Buddhists call ‘bare attention’. The philosopher Professor Friedrich Nietzsche called Buddha ‘that profound physiologist’ and his teachings less a religion than a ‘kind of hygiene’. Kornfield wrote that “Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind.”

Many of our automatic brain processes have to do with either wanting something or not wanting something else – very much the way a small child’s mental life functions. We are forever desiring or longing, or judging and rejecting. Mental hygiene consists of noticing the ebb and flow of all those automatic grasping or rejecting impulses without being hooked by then. Bare attention is directed not only toward what’s happening on the outside, but also to what’s taking place on the inside. Kornfield continued "Be at least interested in your reactions as in the person or situation that triggers them." In a mindful state one can choose to be aware of the ebb and flow of emotions and thought patterns instead of brooding on their content. Not ‘he did this to me therefore I’m suffering’ but ‘I notice that feelings of resentment and a desire for vengeance keep flooding my mind.’ Bare attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception,’ ‘It is called ‘bare’ because it attends just to the bare facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind without reacting to them.”

You will never understand yourself by attempting to harm others. You understand your Self only by destroying yourself (your ego) as the caterpillar does to become a butterfly. For it is only in the subsequent process of fixing your Self (note the capital S to mean the Soul) that you will know who you truly are. William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet about Being - in other words choosing to live from your Soul rather than in the ego mind, which is deadly "To be, or not to be - that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer.”

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke extensively about the need to overcome fear and hate, and to find courage in the face of suffering.

Childhood Trauma and persecutors

You, like me, like all of us, have persecutors, masquerading as victims, who are hurt people who want to hurt people, as though it will somehow heal their subconscious childhood Trauma, instead of facing their own demons. The psychotherapist Shannon Alder wrote that “When you can identify the insecurities inside the person that is hurting you then you can begin to heal. It isn't about you. It is about their past.”

Healing is painful at first, and one must be prepared to face the pain. It is encouraged by their iatrogenic psychiatrists who are ignorant about how childhood Trauma is the untreated and unidentified cause of their adult stress, not their present situation.

The great thing about recovery is that you start feeling. The difficult thing about recovery is that you start feeling. Healing takes courage.

In the book entitled ‘Surrounded by Idiots’ by Thomas Erikson the chapter ‘Stress Factors and Energy Thieves’ commences with “Anger is one thing. Stress is another. Sometimes one is a consequence of the other. Some people become angry because of (adult) stress; others become stressed because of anger.” Both are hangovers of childhood Trauma. The chapter continues “Expectations create stress”: The main cause of childhood Trauma is expectation (which represents a lack of unconditional love). It continues “Different people can experience the same event in different ways. The things you have been through in the past have an effect how you act and react.” This is a fantastic definition of the effect of childhood Trauma on adult stresses.” It states in the same chapter that idiots can be triggered to having severe stress reactions (where other people wouldn’t even feel stressed out) “And that those around them should be on their guard. They’ll look for scapegoats. Idiots believe that they have a better understanding of the big picture.” This is all particularly relevant to the doctor-patient relationship. The book continues “The idiots need for control can be considerable. They want to control people. Idiots blame everyone else when they are stressed. Be aware! They are more demanding than other people. Remember that their anger is lurking just beneath the surface, so be careful about what you do in their presence.” This has definitely been the case for me in the last five years, being exposed repeatedly by angry idiots acting as victims when they are really persecutors, some of them Narcissists (see my article on ‘Psychospirituality: A Fool’s Guide For Toxic and Narcissistic People On How To Get Well: And How To Deal With Them If They Don’t’ and also my article on ‘The Drama Triangle’ who seem blind to the fact that they are childhood Trauma survivors, and that all their behaviour is driven by this, and not current trivial adult stress that they can’t handle that they instantly react to without empathy or self-awareness. The book continues “Another way to deal with idiots is to send them home, so that they expend their energy (from their egocentric resentments) on winning something at that will be of no importance.” My advice is to leave them to their nefarious (vile and morally bad) activities. They have been my greatest teachers, redirecting my life to my sacred purpose. "Marianne Williamson, the American spiritual teacher and presidential candidate, wrote in her book 'A Return to Love', which is in my 'Suggested Reading' list that "The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours."

However, on a positive note Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote that "There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without judgement; for loving unconditionally. There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us. But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn't try. If we have people to love, now is the time."

Marianne Williamson, the American spiritual teacher and presidential candidate, wrote in her book 'A Return to Love', which is in my 'Suggested Reading' list that" The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love". This concept emphasises that everyone is on a spiritual path, whether they realise it or not, and the purpose of this path is to overcome fear and embrace love." She wrote "The idea that everyone is on a spiritual journey suggests that life itself is a spiritual path, and it's not limited to those who explicitly label themselves as spiritual. This part of the quote points to the process of recognising and letting go of fears, which are often seen as obstacles to inner peace and spiritual growth. The other side of the journey is to actively embrace love, which is presented as the core essence of the universe and a powerful force that can overcome fear. The most profound spiritual work involves changing one's internal state from one of fear to one of love." This, is healing.

The aspirin metaphor 

When you meet someone who bothering themselves about the moment in front of them, and they are unconscious of the fact that that is why they are blaming you, when in fact it is the result of untreated childhood Trauma, you may experience what I call the 'headache metaphor.' If you make the mistake of trying to temporarily ease the emotional pain that they carry from their unresolved childhood Trauma by soothing their adult stresses only, then they will blame you for all of their emotional pain that is entirely the result of their childhood Trauma. They will hate you all the more when you withdraw that salve or analgesic effect even even though you are not responsible for their childhood Trauma or the fears that resulted from it. It is as though you gave aspirin to someone with a headache and then when the aspirin wears off, they will blame you for the headache that had nothing to do with you, that was there before they met you. Your only mistake was trying to help them with their adult stresses. No one can heal anyone else. That is inner work that they must do themselves.

Judgement

Childhood Trauma causes everyone to be stuck in ego until they wake up to awareness via spiritual experiences. It is the teaching of the prophets. It is the wisdom of the 'Bhagavad Gita'. It is the very nature of Buddhism. It is central to Zen. It is the way of the Tao. It is the basis of Jesus' philosophy: He said in Matthew 6:3 "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." It is central to Jungian psychology. It is the treasure in Joseph Campbell's 'Heros Journey'. It is the core and the power of the 12 step programme. It is the basis for 'A Course in Miracles.' It is the realm of psychology where it intersects with philosophy, timeless Truth, and spirituality. This, is psychospirituality. Judgement is not a part of any psychological, philosophical, or spiritual path.

It is the arrogance and ignorance of the human ego mind that feels that it may judge another person. The ego lies. The ego is born of childhood Trauma. Trauma is a liarOnly God is the true judge. And God, or Nature, or the Universe, or love, whatever you want to call it, is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and has infinite compassion, love, forgiveness, and wisdom: Such a God does not and would not judge. Singer wrote “Contemplate this and let go of the idea of a judgemental God. You have a loving God. In truth, you have love itself for a God. And love cannot do other than love. Your God is in ecstasy and there’s nothing you can do about it. And if God is in ecstasy, I wonder what He sees when He looks at you?”

Wilson Kanadi wrote about individuals and institutions that "Those who judge will never understand, and those who understand will never judge." Those who judge and condemn others are ego-based and live in spiritual ignorance, spiritual bankruptcy, and hypocrisy, without any wisdom or awareness of timeless Truth. They attack. They have no true Personal Power. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote that “The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.” They should be mindful of the many skeletons in their closets, and indeed they try to project them onto others, as explained by Dr Jung. Dr Maté said that “When I am sharply judgemental of any other person, it's because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don't want to acknowledge.” That, is projection. When faced with recurring conflicts, spiritual teachers suggest looking inward and self-reflection to understand your own triggers and how you can grow beyond them. It is never them or the situation, it is you. Singer's philosophy suggests that if you're experiencing a problem, the cause isn't the external situation or person, but rather something inside you that is being disturbed or that has an expectation or resistance. His advice is to shift your focus from trying to change the external circumstances to observing and letting go of the part of you that is reacting, leading to a state of inner peace and freedom from perceived problems. You can’t fight the Universe and you can’t influence what has already happened, which is simply called reality! Acceptance and surrender are the whole spiritual journey. Anthony de Mello, the philosopher, writer, and spiritual teachwer, wrote that “To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the Earth.'”

In tennis, as in most other sports, there is always a winner and a loser. It is adversarial. In the legal system, 50 percent of people and their lawyers lose. In tennis, both players want to win. There cannot be a draw. One player’s gain is the others player’s loss; Even if the two players are respectful of each other and even if they are friends. Tennis is not judgemental or aggressive. In the legal system, it is always about the win: It is typically adversarial. Do read my article on childhood Trauma, lawyers, and psychospirituality. But life is not sport: One person’s gain, in reality, is everyone’s gain. As Marianne Williamson, whose philosophy and wisdom suggests that all life is inherently spiritual, says that “Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don't know it."

Only 10 percent of us are self-aware. In a spiritual life, we do not seek conflict. The ego is the source of every single problem in your life: All blame, arguments, lies, manipulation, projection, hatred, drama, lovelessness, and war. Jiddu Krishnamurti, the 20th-century philosopher, author, and spiritual teacher, who explored very deep topics like fear, Truth, and freedom, with his teachings focusing on observing oneself and others without judgement, wrote that all "War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday life." It is caused by our internal conflicts (our fractured psyches where our ego is in a battle to the death with our shadow self), resulting in aggression, judgement, and divisions (our lack of connectedness to ourselves, and each other).

The ego is a malevolent and sacriligious illusion, born and cultivated as a malignant result of childhood Trauma, which profanely seeks battle, to fight, to judge, to attack, and even wants, like a Kamikaze pilot, others to die, even if it means certain death for itself. Egos lie. Trauma lies. In spirituality as we are one, all connected, everyone human's win is everyone’s win. In spiritual terms, it is known that, as the ego wants to attack and judge, hatred of another is turned inwards, and ultimately poisons the hater. Conversely, in a spiritual approach to life, the desired outcome is always a draw as we are all one and our highest aim is unity consciousness. This is associated with humility, wisdom, and finding a deeper, creative, and higher Truth with a capital 'T'. In an adversarial situation, which is the basis of the legal system, where the defendant and tyheir lawyer in order to realise this absolute and fundamental Truth, which we may access through dialectic thinking, as a result of spiritual maturity, growth, evolution, and transcendence, manifests balance, with no losers. Egocentric thinking tried to control the outside by manipulation iin order to handle life. This is because it struggles with people, things, and events and tries to use and change the outside world in orderto feel ok. Spirituality seeks equanimity, a state of psychological stability, mental balance, and composure which is undisturbed by the experience of adult stress. Equanimity is when adult stress no longer triggers buried emotions resulting from the unrecognised and unhealed wounds of childhood Trauma. Do you know all of this already?: Then you are in a very, very small minority.

Individuals and institutions, both of which can be stuck in ego (and I have had the objective experience of both), who do not express compassion instead of judgement, will stumble, tumble, and fall away, and only unity consciousness and absolute Truth will remain. The more rigid and outdated they are, the sooner they will topple, like old oaks 'fracturing' in a storm. Be like a young reed in the wind – flexible to the inevitable challenges and stresses that we meet in life, and bouncing back quickly: This is the real meaning of resiliance. Challenges are sent to you by the part of you that loves you the most, in order to redirect your life to meaning and its divine, planned purpose. The Lord’s prayer, as revealed in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, a model prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, contains the lines: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”. 

Krishnamurti wrote that "The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence": This is not taught at law school. Shakespeare wrote in 'Henry VI, Part 2' "Let's kiill all the lawyers." Perhaps he did not mean this literally. He was possibly being ironic. He may have been saying this tongue-in-cheek: Yet, many a true word said in jest. Lawyers see themselves, certainly at law school, as preserving democracy and a fair and just legal system, and also being our first defence against tyranny and totalitarian states. Some lawyers, ironically, even use Shakespeare's phrase above as their rallying call, posting it on their websites. The legal system, as it currently stands, is tragically based on judgement, reflecting its deep insecurities and limmaturity. It does so as the adversarial system is based on fear. Krishnamurti wrote that "We know how fear distorts and makes the (ego) mind small and also poisons the system". Lawyers however, like everyone else, deserve our forgiveness and compassion. See here for my article on the 'great' professions, lawyers, the legal system, and psychospirituality.

However, there is good news: Originally, law and spirituality were one, then law became distant from spirituality, through the methods that it used, where one barrister would become an adversary to the other, with each barrister using their own version of their 'truth' to fight, seek conflict, and argument, to 'win' the case, where there is consequently a ‘good' or 'bad'person or institution. This is duality. We are not ‘bad’ people trying to become ‘good’, we are psychospiritually sick people trying to become well; and that includes lawyers and everyone else. Rumi said that "Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." Most spiritual traditions, like those emphasising meditation, suggest that a silent mind, free from thought and ego, eliminates the very foundation of argument and conflict. Meher Baba, the great spiritual teacher and leader, said the phrase "Man minus mind equals God" This suggests when the limitations of the mind and ego are removed, one can realise our true divine nature. It suggests that the 'mind', in its everyday functioning, with its ego, preferences, and desires, creates the illusion of separation, and that the still mind reveals the underlying, eternal, and divine "I" or God. In Exodus 3:14, the phrase from the burning bush, in which God says to Moses is "I am who I am." This is a divine declaration of God's nature, signifying that He is eternal, unchanging, always present, and the source of all BEing: And very great BEings, not egos, is who we truly are. So, why do we act so small? Great BEings do not judge: Our illusory egos do. The spiritual journey, therefore, involves quieting the mind to the point where it stops, allowing the ego to be effaced and the "Real I" to be revealed. This state is what Meher Baba equates with God. 

In law, as it stands at present, there has to be a 'winner' and a 'loser’. This is determined by a judge, who of course judges, as as the name suggests. But lawyers, even if they know that their defendant is guilty of murder, will argue that they didn't do it: This, sadly, reflects the lawyer's ego, which, as is the case for all egos, not just lawyers‘, inauthentic, wears what they believe to be a ‘socially acceptable’ mask, is lacking in openness and honesty, has an aversion to expressing emotion and vulnerability, has a terror of not being loved or of not being loveable or of being worthy, exists in a deep sense of lack instead of abundance and is petrified, having an overwhelming fear of failure and/or of being abandoned, and has the most powerful addictions of all, namely an addiction to external validation, an addiction to somehow being unconditionally loved, and an addiction to thinking, none of which are ever satisfied, leading to behavioural, alcohol, and substance addictions in order to numb their emotional pain, all of which are major features of the malignant legacy of childhood Trauma. The ability of certain barristers to ‘win’ regardless of the evidence in the case is how the legal system gets further and further from absolute Truth. So, lies become written in stone. The concept of being a winner or loser; or good or bad, is called duality: Whereas spirituality is non-duality based and focuses on absolute Truth and oneness. I will explain where this comes from in another article and how it relates to childhood Trauma in lawyers, most of whom are unaware of it, and how this affects them, their clients, defendants, and the legal system. I pray that article becomes essential reading for those at law school, lawyers, and the institutions that govern them. Therer is nothing out childhood Trauma in lawyers. Of course, as with everyone else, it is not the fault of the lawyers that they experienced childhood Trauma. The article that I will write will do a deep dive into all of this. The legal system does not recognise or understand childhood Trauma, so why should lawyers?. This is not surrpising as most doctors are not taught about trauma, let alone childhood Trauma, and this includes many psychiatrists. I have come across psychiatrists who don't have the faintest ides about childhood Trauma, positive psychology, or personal transformation. Tragically. I have also met only a very few (representing a reallly tiny minority), who were more than worth their weight in gold, integrating positive psychology, spiritualiy, and wholeness, who inspired, along with my own coach, my deep dive into psychospirituality, which I totally credit for saving my life on a number of occasions. Therapy unravelled me. Psychospirituality 'ravelled me back up

In the legal system, the outcome becomes case law, and so a lack of understanding and lies about being 'good' or bad' are compounded. There is therefore duality, The world simply doesn't exist as duality. Duality compounds the arbitrary and 'victim' status of individuals, keeping them in spiritual immarity and blcking their growth, evolution, and transformation. Spirituality says that nothing is either 'good' or ' bad,'.is non-duality based and focuses on connection, oneness, compassion, and absolute Truth . So, barristers may present an argument that they know not to be true. Spirituality is able to hold the opposing truths at the same time, through dialectic methods, in order to reconcile them to find a higher Truth, with a capital 'T', where there is an absence of an adversarial system, and there is no winner or loser: Everyone is a winner and takes a vast leap forward in personal transformation; with the end result of wisdom, intuition, Truth, and clarity of absolute reality. The great Greek philosopher Plato used dialectic methods to explore ideas, often with Socrates engaging in a dialogue with an interlocutor to arrive at definitions of concepts and the True nature of reality. Mahatma Gandhi, the lawyer who was a prophet of non-violence,'non-conflict' and peace (how many other lawyers can you describe as that), inspiring many truly great figureas in history such as Martin Luther King Jr.) wrote that “Every fight is, on some level, a fight between differing angles of vision illuminating the same Truth.” Wayne Dyer wrote that “Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is rather than as you think it should be.” Truth and reality is what has already happened. Kornfield describes forgiveness as letting go of the hope for a better past.“ Albert Einstein wrote that “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” No spiritual tradition supports duality or conflict. India Gandhi said that “You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.”

It does seem that even in Shakespeare’s time, as there remains today, there was a fair degree of skepticism about lawyers. While Shakespeare mentions the legal profession more than any other,, Shakespeare makes a joke at their expense. In 'Romeo and Juliet', Mercutio, for example, talks about lawyers grasping for money, while the Fool in ‘King Lear’ makes a pointed statement about lawyers not saying or doing anything unless you pay them first. Shakespeare was not trying to incite violence against lawyers, but he certainly wasn’t suggesting that they are the protectors or upholders of society, either. Dick’s statement is clearly satire, expressing cynicism about lawyers in ways that people understood even then. Shakespeare was a major protagonist of psychospirituality, as were all the spiritual teachers in this article, and there are many more, although the term has only been in the literature since 1996, appearing for the first time in the peer-reviewed journal 'The Humanistic Psychologist' in the paper entitled 'Research Methodsa in Clinical Psychospirituality.' I invite you to read my article 'Psychospirituality and William Shakespeare.'

I have met some unrelenting, rabid dog-like lawyers who are not interested in Truth, who are solely interested in their extortionate fees and in satisfying their egos by winning cases, doing their very best in discrediting witnersses, who have no insight or understanding of how childhood Trauma affects both sides of the divide (and their own behaviouir), the widespread negative consequences of what they do to the individuals concerned and their families. In the brilliant book and international bestseller 'Human Kind: A Hopeful History'by Rutger Bregman, it states that over seventy percent of American inmates had severe childhood Trauma. It is hardly surprising that they have such high re-offending rates as their childhood Trauma has not been identified by medical or legal professionals, remaining unrecognised and untreated. No-one is inherently evil, for evil does not truly exist: We are all a function of our childhood Trauma: Lawyers and judges are certainly no exception to this. In fact, they are the embodiment of this, and it is particularly relevant to my article about lawyers, childhood Trauma, and psychospirituality'. Judges are our 'outer critic' made real. Marianne Williamson, the ‘student’ of ‘A Course In Miracles’ spiritual teacher, and Presidential candidate, wrote “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" In other words, do you want a grievance or a miracle?: For you cannot have cannot have both!

In the Bible in Proverbs 20:3 it says “Avoiding a fight is a mark of honour; only fools insist on arguing.” Anthony de Mello, the contemporary philosopher and spiritual master, wrote that “Every time you find yourself irritated or angry with someone, the one to look at is not that person but yourself. The question to ask is not, 'What’s wrong with this person?' but 'What does this irritation tell me about myself'" This is akin to Singer’s writing, that “The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. It's not personal - you are making it personal.”

Judges are not the ultimate authority; this is delusional: They may pass judgement in fields where they have no wisdom or training, (akin to many psychiatric and psychotherapeutic professionals as described below), and may lack totally in compassion: They rarely take mental health into consideration when they fabricate judgement. Paradoxically, they may take into account the prosecution's mental illness, whilst totally dismissing that of the defendant. What arrogance to believe that judges can play God, doling out judgement by what seems like a toss of the coin, in areas that they know nothing of. Alice Miller, the world-famous psychologist, psychoanalyst and philosopher, noted for her books on parental child abuse, wrote a book entitled ‘The Curse of the Gifted child that’ “This is the one that grows up to judge another, just like their parents, who were unable to show compassion or unconditional love to their children.” They grow up as their ‘outer critic’, emulating the voice of their parents, and what better definition of one of the consequences of a significant member of the legal profession. I have experienced the inhumane, uncompassionate nature of institutions that should know way better as described in my article Mentral Illness is the Next Pandemic: And it's Already Upon Us.' Deep down, people and institutions who judge and blame are full of toxic shame. Those institutions will sink like the Titanic. It doesn’t matter how rich our untouchable they think they are: Those drinking champagne on the Titanic, sitting at the captain’s table, died just like the people in third class in the steerage section of the ship. They they were separated by gates from the second- and third-class areas. But the gates were down when the ship sank. Only death could unite them

It is no wonder, then, that so many lawyers and judges are addicts, and have mental health disorders in proportions that are significantly greater than the general population - the most common sequelae of childhood Trauma. Mental illness is a sympton of unrecognised, untreated childhood Trauma. There is no point in giving antidepressants without treating the underlying cause - namely childhood Trauma. It is akin to a doctor giving someone aspirin for a malgnancy that needs to be surgically removed. Like a malignancy, it spreads., but it is more potent than a malignancy, even having an effect on all those around you. Almost 40 percent of law students suffer from anxiety disorders, with 20 percent suffering from depression, and over 11 percent having suicidal ideation. Studies have found that a significant portion of judges, lawyers, and legal professionals struggle with problematic drinking, with some research indicating that around 30% of lawyers exhibit '"Problematic drinking" habits and are at risk of alcoholism. That’s one in three! Based on a 2016 study of 13,000 working lawyers by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, lawyers experience significantly higher rates of mental illness, with one in three having a major depressive disorder, 40 percent having anxiety, one in five having severe anxiety, and substance use disorders also being far higher than the general population. The study on lawyer well-being revealed serious concerns for the legal profession. This is astonishing and yet not surprising, considering their adversarial approach, and apparently heartless attacks and judgements of those who are likely to have suffered from childhood Trauma . The lawyers are stuck in ego-mode, due to their own childhood Trauma, which may be unconscious, and yet is driving all their behaviour, even in the courtroom,and this is hurting them and everyone artound them. Lawyers and doctors have the highest incidence of divorce amongst any group, both vying for the number one spot at the top of the 'divorcxe' league table. The above study put the issue of lawyer well-being front and centre for the profession. They suffer in silence, for fear of stigma, and yet fail completely to acknowledge the impact of mental illness in people that they are attacking: This is projection. The study authors stated that "You need to be well to be a competent attorney. Between 40 percent and 70 percent of disciplinary proceedings and malpractice claims against attorneys involve substance abuse or depression or both." Jesus said in Luke 6:37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Without taking this spiritual quest, we are living in a world where Traumatised people spend their lives consciously or unconsciously Traumatising other Traumatised people. Hurt people, hurt people. It does take two to tango! François de La Rochefoucauld wrote that “Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.” As Bob Marley sang, "Judge not, before you judge yourself. Judge not, if you're not ready for judgement". The sentiment originates from his song, 'Judge Not,' which encourages introspection before criticising others, recognising that everyone is imperfect and faces their own challenges on life's 'rocky road'. In essence, the quote is a call for humility and self-awareness, reminding people to be careful about criticising others when they themselves are flawed and imperfect, as we all are, as it is the human condition. Fortunately, there is a call in the legal profession by some for law to become more psychological, spiritual, and compassionate. This may be the result of the staggeringly massive incidence of mental illness amongst lawyers and almost total oblivion about childhood Trauma. We shall see if this has any influence on the profession. We will do a deep dive below the iceberg of the legal system, finding compassion and understanding about how their behaviour and actions are influenced, even dictated by, their childhood Trauma, and how overcoming this will be a light for the legal institutions and the whole profession could become more compassionate in a way that pulls up the roots.

In Luke 9:46-47 it is written that Jesus said about conflict that “Later the close followers of Jesus began to argue. Jesus saw what was going on -not just the argument, but the deeper heart issue.” Who would not 'argue' assertively courageously, and vulnerably with an open heart, wisdom, and higher Truth? Tony Merida wrote that “In short, troubled people trouble people. Their internal unrest comes out on others, and creates unrest in their relationships. In the end, their relationships are usually in turmoil because they are in turmoil.” An enormous proportion of lawyers are a mess inside, far higher than the general populatiors, but needn’t be. Watch this space!

Kenneth Cloke wrote that "Every conflict we face in life is rich with positive and negative potential. It can be a source of inspiration, Enlightenment, learning, transformation, and growth-or rage, fear, shame, entrapment, and resistance. The choice is not up to our opponents, but to us, and our willingness to face and work through them."

The Buddha said, “People with opinions just go around bothering one another.” Dr Carl Gustav Jung, recognised as the greatest psychiatrist of all time, an analytical psychotherapist, the father of psychoanalysis, who was also a great philosopher and spiritual master, wrote that "The healthy man does not torture others - generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers." By many in the psychiatric community Dr Carl Jung was considered to be a prophet: Dr Jung knew God. He described the process of 'individuation' which is the journey from the ego to the Higher Self.

Your ego mind actually attacks you and wants you dead. And in the process it wants to hurt others. Dr Maté wrote that “Judgement or blaming is not the point. Understanding is.”

We are all human beings: We all suffer from the human condition. We all make mistakes. Both sides of an argument can be right. Shakespeare also wrote in Macbeth “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” It depends on perspective, story telling, and not ‘Truth’. Duality is the domain of the ego: A country that many lawyers inhabit. Well, I hope that they sleep well!

Professor Perry wrote “Forgive yourself, forgive them. Step out of your history and into the path of your future.” Professor Perry wrote that as adults "The more stressed we are, the less access we have to the smart part of our brain, the cortex."

Oprah Winfrey, who co-authored the book 'What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing' with Professor Perry, wrote that “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, but we cannot move forward if we're still holding onto the pain of that past and wishing it was something else. All of us who have been broken and scarred by Trauma have the chance to turn those experiences into what Dr Perry and I have been talking about: Post Traumatic Wisdom." She continued “Your brain is doing exactly what you would expect it to do considering what you lived through.”

Love deeply and forgive quickly, for the liberation from your own prison depends on it. Life is too short to be miserable, and it only you who maintains your misery, as Singer wrote "You are a` mess inside, because you hold onto garbage, which psychology calls "The sum of your learned experiences. You are a great BEing, the greatest BEing who ever lived, as is everyone else." You are in reality the consciousness behind the sum of your learned experiences, and therefore it is in yopur power gto let them go. This the realm of positive psychology and spiritual path:: Psychospirituality. Psychology can only take you so far. It needs to pass on the baton to those with a psychospiritual approach if it wants you to cross the finish line of your wellbeing.

Kornfield wrote “When we feel anger toward someone, we can consider that he or she is a being just like us, who has faced much suffering in life. But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.”

Reaction and triggering

Reaction and triggering are key features of the adult response to the inevitable stresses of adult life in those who had childhood Trauma. Professor van der Kolk wrote that "Trauma comes back as a reaction, not a memory.

Eckhart Tolle advises “Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the person or situation that triggers them.” Dr Maté also believes that our emotional reactions to present adult stresses are based on our childhood Trauma, not the current situations themselves, saying that "Emotions are responses to present stimuli as filtered through the memory of past experience, and they anticipate the future based on our perception of the past.” The unawakened and toxic person drifts, being unaware of their fears (from their childhood Trauma) and how they have habitual impulses when facing adult stress. They try to impose their will on others through manipulation in a vain attempt to control their emotional pain, which is a result of the lack of understanding of their fears.

In most cases, Dr Maté writes, childhood Trauma is multigenerational: “We pass on to our offspring what we haven’t resolved in ourselves.” Left unhealed, childhood Trauma “Has an impact on your life, about how you feel about yourself, how you see the world, how you get triggered (by adult stress), what you believe about yourself, the kind of relationships you get into. And it shows up in the form of chronic illness.”

Dr Richard Schwartz, an American systemic family therapist who was the creator of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy model, which aims to help individuals identify and heal the wounded parts within themselves, wrote that "The passive side of mental life, which is generated solely and completely by brain mechanisms, dominates the tone of our day-to-day experience. The brain does indeed operate very much as a machine does. Decisions that we may believe to be freely made can arise from unconscious emotional drives or subliminal beliefs. They can be dictated by events of which we have no recollection. The stronger a person’s automatic brain mechanisms and the weaker the parts of the brain that can impose conscious control, the less true freedom that person will be able to exercise in her life. In Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and in many other conditions, no matter how intelligent and well-meaning the individual, the malfunctioning brain circuitry may override rational judgement and intention. Almost any human being when overwhelmed by stress or powerful emotions, will react not from intention but from mechanisms that are set off deep in the brain, rather than being generated in the conscious and volitional segments of the cortex. When acting from a triggered state, we are not free.”

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote "As my sufferings mounted I soon realised that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation - either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course."

Much ado about nothing

Childhood Trauma causes those subjected to it to react to illusory stress as adults. William Shakespeare hid timeless Truths in his writing for the sake of the prevailing beliefs and anxieties of his time. He also wrote in a way that diverged from the interpretations favoured by those in ‘power’. He taught us in ‘Hamlet’ "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement." In ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Shakespeare wrote "You speak an infinite deal of nothing." This quote is part of a witty exchange between Benedick and Beatrice. They were known for their insults and this line in the play highlights their back-and-forth banter, where they essentially accuse each other of talking without substance. This is very much the nature of interpersonal conflict, also summed up in one of Shakespeare’s most perceptive quotes in Macbeth:

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more.

It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Singer wrote “Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes problems.” Meher Baba, the great spiritual master, wrote "Man minus mind equals God." Caroline Myss wrote that “The Soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.”

Conditional love as the root of childhood Trauma

Professor Perry wrote “You can’t give what you don’t get. If no one ever spoke to you, you can’t speak; if you have never been loved, you can’t be loving.” The vast majority of people seek imitation conditional love rather than real unconditional love as they never received unconditional love as children either from their parents or from society. This is their curse, giving rise to the human condition, and is the source of all their childhood Trauma. In his book 'Real Love' Dr Greg Baer wrote that "If you have real love, you don't need anything else. If you have imitation love, nothing is ever enough." Imitation love makes people mentally ill and prone to every type of behavioural addiction (money, sex, cosmetic surgery, social media, food, shopping, work) and substance addictions, including alcoholism, in an attempt to numb and soothe their emotional pain. The most addictive behaviours are to external validation and to negative thinking: The very basis of the personal ego mind. People are afraid that what they want to happen might not happen, or that what they don’t want to happen might happen. Such people live in duality as adults, which is a crucible for misery. This is the basis of all resentment and conflict, which are always recipes for disaster. Conditional love is when people try to change everything in their lives including their relationships and other people as they don’t think that they can handle life as it presents itself. They are manipulative and devious in their doomed attempts to control. What has already happened to us, and our present situation, are impossible to change: It’s simply reality. You can try to fight reality, but as Byron Katie wrote "When you argue with reality, you lose, but only one hundred percent of the time." As Professor van der Kolk wrote “Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in Trauma is reality. The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.” Kornfield wrote “The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.”

The psychologist Dr Lauren Fogel Mersy wrote “Being able to be your true Self is one of the strongest components of good mental health.” Most parents love their children. Childhood Trauma is when parents don’t allow their children to be their true Selves. In other words their love is conditional on their expectations for their children. Dr. Gabor Maté wrote “No child should ever have to choose between being authentic and being loved.” Darius Cikanavicius, a certified mental health coach, wrote in his book ‘Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults’ that “Meanwhile, infants and small children (before they are conditioned by their parents and society) are exceptionally authentic beings because their emotional reactions and their thoughts are raw and honest. If they are happy, they smile in pure joy, and feel excited, curious, and creative. They don’t hide behind an inauthentic ego-based mask. Only when a child’s authenticity is threatened do they develop unhealthy behaviours, distorted reality perceptions, and emotional difficulties. When you force a child to do what they don’t want to do, feel what they don’t feel, and think what they don’t think, their authentic Self becomes damaged.” Dr János (Hans) Sely wrote that "Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not." Alice Miller wrote "We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people." Paulo Coelho, the author and philosopher, wrote “All stress, anxiety, depression, is caused when we ignore who we are, and start living to please others.” Dr Maté writes "Parents’ primary task, beyond providing for the child’s survival requirements, is to emanate a simple message to the child, that he or she is precisely the person they love. The child doesn’t have to do anything, or be any different, to win that love - in fact, cannot do anything, because this abiding embrace cannot be earned, nor can it be revoked. It doesn’t depend on the child’s behaviour or personality; it is just there, whether the child is showing up as 'good' or 'bad,'" Dr Jung wrote that "The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents". This highlights how children can inherit their parents' unfulfilled dreams and ambitions, leading to a significant emotional burden. If your parents wanted to be a doctor and failed, then their love for you will be conditional on you being a doctor.

When something ‘positive’ happens, including gaining material wealth, studies have shown that people are happy on average for seven minutes only. This is because happiness depends on external events. Joy, however, is internal and eternal, not being based on anything that is external to us. Those people who rely on external events to be happy don’t recognise that they are their own worst enemy: When you are stuck in ego, you are behind enemy lines. With regards to other people, they try desperately to get them to love them, they try to manipulate them in order to have them in their lives again, and if they can’t then they may seek conflict with them in order that at least they can see them again. They begin to hate the other person, to seek revenge, and even resort to extortion. Beneath this hatred is unrequited love. Use any wisdom that resides in your Soul is to help someone else. Because we are all one.

Professor van der Kolk said, regarding the 'missing' aspect of Trauma (unconditional love), that "Trauma almost invariably involves not being seen, and not being taken into account". Dr Maté wrote that "Children don’t get traumatised because they are hurt. They get traumatised because they’re alone with the hurt."

Ryan North wrote that "Our brains are wired for connection, but Trauma rewires them for protection. That’s why healthy relationships are difficult for wounded people."

Billy Joel said famously “You’re only human, you’re supposed to make mistakes.” Singer notes “If you truly love someone, your love sees past their humanness.” Anything else is conditional imitation love.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote "I believe that unarmed Truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

With regard to our fear of being unworthy, Ram Dass said that “You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don’t have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success – none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.” He said about how mental illness relates to our fears that “Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.” He said about the spiritual journey of healing that “This is the pathless path. Where the journey leads is to the deepest truth in you. It is really just returning to where you were initially before you got lost.” Here he equates being lost to conditioning by our parents (even before we are born) and society, which is the basis of our childhood Trauma. Ram Dass said that “Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story (our Soul), instead of the actor (our ego) in it.” He suggests that even suffering can be a catalyst for transformation, saying that “Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it!” As Hippocrates believed, Ram Dass said that “Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast and calm ocean. When you want to become free, your righteousness, judgement, and anger are much less interesting than they used to be”, keeping you incarcerated.  He said the thinking ego mind keeps us isolated, saying that the “Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart (our Soul) is the doorway to our unity.” Ram Dass said about our real Personal Power that “The most exquisite paradox is that as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can’t have it. The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible.”

Society also conditions us to mental illness

Maté wrote about how society also conditions and predisposes us to mental illness “Is it possible that our consumer culture does make good on its promises, or could do so? Might these lead to a more satisfying life? When I put the question to renowned psychologist Tim Krasser, professor emeritus of psychology at Knox College, his response was unequivocal. "Research consistently shows that the more people value materialistic aspirations as goals, the lower their happiness and life satisfaction and the fewer pleasant emotions they experience. Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse also tend to be higher among people who value the aims encouraged by consumer society." He points to four central principles of what he calls ACC - American Corporate Capitalism: it "Fosters and encourages a set of values based on self-interest, a strong desire for financial success and interpersonal styles based on competition." There is a seesaw oscillation between materialistic concerns and prosocial values like empathy and cooperation: The more the former are elevated, the lower the latter descend. For example, when people strongly endorse money, image, and status as prime concerns, they are less likely to engage in beneficial activities and the emptier and more insecure they will experience themselves to be. They will have also lower-quality interpersonal relationships. In turn, the more insecure people feel, the more they focus on material things. As materialism promises satisfaction but, instead, yields hollow dissatisfaction, it creates more craving. This massive and self-perpetuating addictive spiral is one of the mechanisms by which consumer society preserves itself by exploiting the very insecurities it generates. Disconnection in all its guises - alienation, loneliness, loss of meaning, and dislocation - is becoming our culture's most plentiful product. No wonder we are more addicted (to imitation love), chronically ill, and mentally disordered than ever before, enfeebled as we are by such malnourishment of mind, body, and Soul.”

Dr Maté wrote that "If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal circumstances, (our childhoods and experience of our toxic society) it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health -elated."

The ego mind

The ego mind is fearful and bitter. The Higher Self is courageous and loving. Dr Maté wrote “Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood.” Eckhart Tolle, the contemporary spiritual teacher, emphasises the importance of transcending the ego mind and the limiting self-image that many people identify with. He encourages individuals to let go of their attachment to a fixed sense of self, which is a major source of suffering. This process involves recognising that the ego is not who you truly are and that true freedom comes from realising your essential nature, in other words your Soul, which is not defined by people, events, things, thoughts, emotions, or institutions. 

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that "There is no recovery without taking the first leap of Faith.” When fear knocks on the door, if you allow Faith to open it, there will be no one there. Fear and Faith cannot live in the same house. Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you," according to the paediatrician Professor Rachel Naomi Remen. By this she means the ego mind. So that what if left is your real Self, your Soul. Trauma Recovery Specialist Michele Rosenthal, who is a qualified coach specialising in childhood Trauma, said that “Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing is about creating the change you do choose.”

Dr Maté wrote “Not the world, not what’s outside of us, but what we hold inside traps us. We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.”

The phrase “The ego is the masquerading self" is a concept found in deep spiritual, positive psychological and philosophical discussions, notably attributed to Paramahansa Yogananda and also echoed by Michael Singer in his book ‘The Untethered Soul’. Singer’s book gives the quote of the first half of the title of this article. It suggests that the ego is a false or constructed identity, a ‘social mask’ or facade that hides one's true, deeper nature, which is often obscured by fears, anxiety, negative beliefs, thoughts, negative emotions such as anger, preferences, and desires. The ego is a ‘masquerade’ because it presents a false front, a persona that we adopt to navigate the world, try to control our lives and others. Beneath this ‘mask’ is the ‘true Self,’ a deeper, more essential consciousness that is pure awareness, free from the limitations and judgements of the ego mind. The spiritual goal, in this context, is to see through the ego's disguise, to recognise it as a temporary construct rather than one's actual Being, and to ultimately transcend it in order to experience true self-realisation. Realising this is the basis of psychospirituality, which is the basis of healing and becoming whole again, free from duality and conditioning. The true Self, the Soul, is responsible for creativity. Ram Das said that when you are stuck in ego, “You are merely a player in the game of life.” This is the whole basis of psychospirituality. Singer said that “There are two ways to live your life. I am not okay so what do I need to do to be okay?’ This is the small ego mind. This results from blockages, which are the sum of your learned experiences, which lead to your limiting beliefs. This is the basis of psychology. It deals only with the ego mind. Do you need to be like that? The answer is of course not. You have free will and choice. You are not okay because you have made yourself not be okay. This is not the results of your perceived stress and your current situation or what other people are doing. You need to do the inner work, and that is your choice. You are capable of being a liberated being who’s consciousness is not fixated on the garbage of the experiences that you have stored inside. It is you who has decided that you can’t handle the event in front of you. This event is simply a lesson of where you need to do the inner work, and has nothing to do with anyone else. Psychospirituality is asking ‘Why am I not okay?” in other words, what are my underlying fears and resultant limiting beliefs that are stopping me from feeling okay?” This is the way to recover. Jesus said in John 3:3 You must die to be reborn, as “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This is how you become closer to your divinity. This refers to the metaphorical death of the ego, to give birth to your higher Self. 

Similarly, Marianne Williamson, the American presidential candidate who had a spiritual mandate, wrote that “My ego mind - my own self-hatred masquerading as self-love, would point me always in the direction of fear, luring me toward the blaming thought, the attack or defence, the perception of guilt in myself or others.”

The ego is the petrified inner child running riot

All negative beliefs are caused by our ego, which is our petrified inner child running around unsupervised, causing chaos, as a result of a lack of unconditional love. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and polymath, knew this, saying almost 2,500 years ago "Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man." The quote suggests that the first years of a child's life are crucial in shaping their personality. It highlights the idea that early experiences and influences have a lasting impact on an individual's development. It is bizarre that much of the medical community still hasn't caught on to this.

Wilhelm Wundt, a German physiologist, philosopher, professor, and one of the fathers of modern psychology, who was the first person to call himself a psychologist, the father of experimental psychology, wrote in 1904 that "From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large." A survey published in 'American Psychologist' in 1991 ranked Wundt's reputation as first for 'all-time eminence', based on ratings provided by 29 American historians of psychology. William James and Sigmund Freud were ranked a distant second and third. In 1879, at the University of Leipzig, Wundt opened the first laboratory ever to be exclusively devoted to psychological studies, and this event marked the official birth of psychology as an independent field of study. He wrote that “As a discipline, psychology traverses the arts and sciences. Our behaviours, emotions, and cognitions are inextricably linked to everything we experience in our lives. The discipline of psychology emerged from a wealth of philosophical questions. Wundt’s student, Edward Titchener, argued that introspection was a tool to examine the component of consciousness. With Sigmund Freud at the helm of psychoanalysis, alongside Carl Jung, emphasis partially shifted from the study of conscious awareness to the argument that powerful unconscious motives determined our actions. John B. Watson’s work, notably in 1913, was a powerful demonstration of the influence of frightening early life experiences on learning and behaviour, and the maintenance of behavioural responses to childhood Traumatic events into the longer term. Our understanding of aspects of human response to Trauma today - particularly the concept of 'triggers' in adult stress to Traumatic memories and associated physiological arousal - are based upon these theories. And yet many psychiatrists are unaware of this work, which was done well over a century ago. 

It has been demonstrated that childhood Trauma begins in the womb, as Darius Cikanavicius wrote that “The foetus is biochemically connected to the mother, and her external, internal, and mental health affect the overall development of the foetus. Stress and depression during pregnancy have been proven to have long-term effects on the offspring. Such effects include a vulnerability to chronic anxiety, elevated fear, propensity to addictions, and poor impulse control.” Both our childhood Trauma and our resulting ego are fear-driven. Everything they say to us is wrong.

We create our own lions, monsters, and alligators. In reality, there are no lions, monsters, or alligators. If I am 'Up to my butt in alligators' I raised every one of them from a baby until they were big enough to bite. We make mountains out of molehills and snakes out of ropes. Marianne Williamson wrote that "As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Childhood Trauma versus adult 'stress'

According to psychology, your perceptions are the sum of your past experiences. Negative experiences happen in our childhoods if we don’t receive unconditional love. Very few people do. This is Trauma with a capital T. Anything that happens to us as adults that makes us unhappy or frightened is simply stress (with a small s), not Trauma. Professor Perry wrote that those who have experienced childhood Trauma have "Less buffering capacity when they do experience stress. They become more 'sensitised' to anything that feels potentially threatening. 'What happened to you?' is so important in understanding what’s going on with you now.” This, is why you get triggered as an adult. Professor van der Kolk wrote “Being traumatised means continuing to organise your life as if the Trauma were still going on as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.” Robert Green wrote that "There could be things in your life, things that are making you angry or depressed. And there could be something very much rooted in the first three or four years of your life that you have no idea about that is actually motivating your behaviour in the present." Dr Maté echoes these concepts, saying that “Emotional competence requires the capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress; the ability to express our emotions effectively and thereby to assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries; the facility to distinguish between psychological reactions that are pertinent to the present situation and those that represent residue from the past. What we want and demand from the world needs to conform to our present needs, not to unconscious, unsatisfied needs from childhood. If distinctions between past and present blur, we will perceive loss where none exists; and the awareness of those genuine needs that do require satisfaction, rather than their repression for the sake of gaining the acceptance or approval of others. Stress occurs in the absence of these criteria, and it leads to the disruption of homeostasis. Chronic disruption results in ill health. What seems like a reaction to some present circumstance is a reliving of past emotional experience. This subtle but pervasive process in the nervous system has been called implicit memory, as compared to the explicit memory apparatus that recalls events, facts, and circumstances. According to the psychologist and memory researcher Daniel Schacter, implicit memory is active “When people are influenced by past experience without any awareness that they are remembering. If we are unaware that something is influencing our behaviour, there is little we can do to understand or counteract it. The subtle, virtually undetectable nature of implicit memory is one reason it can have powerful effects on our mental lives.” Whenever a person 'overreacts' - that is, reacts in a way that seems inappropriately exaggerated to the situation at hand - we can be sure that implicit memory is at work. The reaction is not to the irritant in the present but to some buried hurt in the past. Many of us look back puzzled on some emotional explosion and ask ourselves, 'What the heck was that about? It was about implicit memory; we just didn’t realise it at the time." Those who have experienced childhood Trauma experience toxic shame. Dr Maté writes that “Shame is the deepest of the 'negative emotions,' a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.”

Dr Jung said about the impact of childhood Trauma on adulthood "Just tell me how you judge your childhood and youth, and I will tell you who you are". Professor van der Kolk wrote that “Being traumatised means continuing to organise your life as if the Trauma were still going on - unchanged and immutable - as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past. We have learned that Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on the mind and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganisation of the way mind manages perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think. Trauma interferes with the proper functioning of brain areas that manage and interpret experience. The essence of Trauma is that it is overwhelming and unbearable. Each patient demands that we suspend our sense of what is normal and accept that we are dealing with a dual reality: The reality of a relatively secure and predictable present that lives side by side with an ever-present past.”

People who have not healed from their childhood Trauma spend their time ‘catastrophising’ and ‘awfulising’ as they do not live in the present. Living in the past causes depression. Living in the future causes anxiety. Jesus taught us much about anxiety in his Sermon on the Mount. He taught us to focus on the present. He said in Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own". He said about anxiety in Matthew 6:27 “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” In Matthew 6:27 Jesus said “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Saint Augustine of Hippo was a great philosopher and scholar who deeply influenced the development of Western philosophy. He wrote that “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this Faith is to see what you believe.” He believed that to heal from the human condition and attaining freedom it was indispensable to believe in the Grace of Christ. He saw the human being as a perfect unity of the Soul and body, with the Soul being superior to the body.

Stress as an adult can always be traced back to our early life experiences. If we had not had them, and if they had been treated, we could easily deal with all of the ever-present stresses in our adult lives. But we don't, and that is why we are not helped by psychiatrists and therapists who do not understand the effects of childhood Trauma. Professor van der Kolk wrote that “Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behaviour. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signalling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.” Only wisdom can.

One of the problems is that 'stress' management in adults is not considered by the medical profession, including psychiatrists, as an important element of mainstream medicine, with them considering it too 'woo-woo', despite its significant repercussions. In an article in this month's (August 2025) British Medical Journal (the BMJ), entitled 'Lifestyle Care Shouldn't be Considered a Separate Branch of Medicine', the authors state that the pillars of preventative medicine and self-care (elements that have been advocated by the government as being important to patient care and wellbeing, and also being a cost-effective health policy) should include 'stress' management. This means that people are not being treated for adult stress until they are triggered into relapses of the consequences of childhood Trauma by that stress, (such as major depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), psychosis, and others) and then may fall belatedly into the domain of mainstream psychiatry, which fails to identify adult stress for what it is, let alone its origins in untreated childhood Trauma, and how to prevent it using the healing principles outlined in this article. The BMJ article states that "True prevention takes place outside hospitals and GP surgeries: We in healthcare can only tinker at the edges. Lifestyle medicine' is kept is kept outside the parameters of normal medicine, including finding (purpose) and meaning in work."

Childhood Trauma, psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy

Even if only 60 percent of adults have experienced childhood Trauma of some sort, which is likely to be an underestimate, that means that there are almost 5 billion people worldwide who have experienced it. And yet it is rarely recognised or treated by psychiatrists and therapists, and even more rarely recognised as having spiritual principles underlying it, meaning that psychospiritual approaches are very rarely used in healing from childhood Trauma.

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) on childhood Trauma, conducted in 1995 and 1997, in over 17,000 participants, illustrates how and why a higher ACE Score is associated with a greater likelihood of developing mental and physical health conditions in adulthood. Although other psychotherapists and sociologists had published on the consequences of childhood Trauma, there was, at the time, limited empirical data addressing the relevance of these adversities to medical outcomes in adulthood. The results from the study drew much-needed attention to this major public health issue. Due to stigma and shame, people do not often divulge Traumas suffered in their youth. Thus, the widespread nature of ACEs came as a surprise to the researchers. Over 60% of respondents reported at least one ACE, and over 30% had two or more. More than 12% had experienced four or greater adversities. According to Dr Nadine Burke Harris, compared to a person with zero ACEs, someone with four or more is four times more likely to develop depression and 12 times more likely to be suicidal. With increased exposure to ACEs, the Traumatised child is more likely to become an adult who engages in risky behaviours, such as drinking alcohol excessively and having unsafe sex with multiple partners. According to the Centers for Disease Control, those with higher scores are more at risk for depression, anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and suicide, unsafe sex, and alcohol abuse. Why is this the case? The ACE Study researchers hypothesised that partaking in potentially damaging behaviours helps survivors regulate their nervous systems. Engaging in drinking, smoking, recreational drug use, excessive eating, and risky sexual behaviour could have “Immediate pharmacological or psychological benefit as coping devices in the face of the stress of abuse, domestic violence,” or other household dysfunction witnessed as a child. In her TED talk, Dr Harris said this is not “Just the bad behaviour” of adults. Rather, exposure to early adversity can impact children’s developing minds and nervous systems. It has been shown to affect brain regions such as the nucleus accumbens (associated with reward dependence), prefrontal cortex (related to impulse control), and amygdala (involved in fear processing). Additionally, the fight-or-flight response is often over-activated in those raised in Trauma-inducing homes. Thus, Traumatised children often become adults with neurological reasons for engaging in high-risk behaviours to regulate and soothe their nervous systems. Due to its global pervasiveness and detrimental effects on the developing body’s neurobiological systems, childhood Trauma has been deemed a 'hidden epidemic' and a 'public health crisis.' Therefore, childhood Trauma is a medical, psychosocial, and public policy issue that causes immense consequences for both victims and society. According to the latest data, over 12 million children suffered two or more adverse experiences in the US between 2020-2021. Half of American children had experienced at least one type of childhood Trauma. This translates to nearly 35 million children. According to a 2018 study, there is a significant correlation between childhood Trauma and major psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Emotional neglect and emotional abuse were present in 50 percent and 60 percent of patients with mental health disorders respectively. Sarah Baracz, an Associate Lecturer at Macquarie University, researches how early life stressors can significantly impact our mental health by disrupting oxytocin systems. Oxytocin is the 'love hormone', found in the brain’s hypothalamus and amygdala, two regions responsible for emotional regulation. When a child experiences Trauma, these oxytocin levels are disrupted – and so are its stress- and anxiety-reducing effects when creating bonds, trust, and social connections. It can no longer regulate emotional responses effectively. Over time, this has profound consequences on social behaviour, stress management, and emotional well-being. These may manifest as symptoms of various mental health disorders. Understanding these neurobiological mechanisms is the first step toward providing potential treatments. Professor van der Kolk wrote that “As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.” Dr Levine wrote that “Trauma is the great masquerader and participant in many maladies and 'dis-eases' that afflict sufferers. It can be conjectured that unresolved childhood Trauma is responsible for a majority of the illnesses of modern mankind.” Dr Robert Block, former President of the American Academy of Paediatrics, wrote that “Adverse childhood experiences are the single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today.”

Dr Maté wrote that “All of the diagnoses that you deal with - depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar illness, PTSD, and even psychosis, are significantly rooted in childhood Trauma. They are manifestations of childhood Trauma. Therefore the diagnoses don't explain anything. The problem in the medical world is that we diagnose somebody and we think that is the explanation."

Therefore, their patients’ childhood Trauma remains untreated and unresolved unless the psychiatrists use therapies such as Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and somatic techniques such as yoga, as Trauma is stored in the body, which been scientifically proven to be effective. Professor van der Kolk recommends these treatments as primary therapeutic regimens for childhood Trauma. In the name of his most comprehensive and expert book on childhood Trauma, Professor van der Kolk wrote “The body keeps the score: If Trauma is encoded in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people move out of fight-or-flight states, reorganise their perception of danger, and manage relationships. However, traumatised people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become experts at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” Dr Levine wrote that “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

Dr Maté takes umbrage with the way medical teaching about childhood Trauma is provided, saying that “Physicians are trained in this narrow biological view, despite the vast body of literature that has demonstrated the links between emotional dynamics and physical pathology”. Maté is passionate about the connection between mind and body. “To say that the mind is connected to the body is incorrect,” he says. “To say that the nervous system is connected to the immune system, and the immune system is connected to the emotional apparatus, all of which is connected to the hormone system, is incorrect. They are not connected; they are the same system.” In addition, psychiatrists who are largely ignorant of the concepts around childhood Trauma are subject to biases as they may also have very limited experience of presenting patients and so their opinions may be uninformed. Doctors can be susceptible to biases, which may affect their clinical decision-making. These biases can stem from various factors, including cognitive limitations, personal experiences, and societal influences. Understanding these biases is crucial for improving Trauma care. These so called 'experts' may have overconfidence bias where they overestimate their own knowledge and wisdom as in the Dunning-Kruger effect (which I will explain further on in this article). They may have confirmation bias, which involves selectively gathering and interpretation evidence to conform with one’s beliefs, as well as neglecting evidence that contradicts them. An example is refusing to consider alternative diagnoses once an initial diagnosis has been established, even though clinical data might contradict it. This bias leads physicians to see what they want to see: Emotional stress instead of the true cause - the legacy of childhood Trauma. Since it occurs early in the treatment pathway, confirmation bias can lead to mistaken diagnoses being passed onto and accepted by other clinicians and legal 'authorities' without their validity being questioned, a process referred to as diagnostic momentum. This is frequent in ‘senior clinicians’, and professors are not immune to any of these biases, especially when they have very limited experience in regard to certain cases and fields outside of their expertise. For example making judgements when they have only seen one such previous case and their recommendations in that were also biased and limited. They may suffer from anchoring bias, which is much like confirmation bias, and refers to the practice of prioritising information and data that support one’s initial impressions of evidence, even when those impressions are incorrect. Imagine a professor seeing stress symptoms and being unaware that these are all attributable to triggered childhood Trauma, not other people or their present situation. They may suffer from affect heuristic bias, which describes when a physician’s actions are swayed by emotional reactions instead of rational deliberation. It is context or patient specific and can manifest when a physician experiences positive or negative feelings toward a patient based on prior experiences. Educating healthcare professionals about different types of bias and their potential impact is vital.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists would be well advised to read Dr Jung's writings, and educate themselves about the 'Fourth Force' of positive psychologists such as Abraham Maslow (who described the 'Hierarchy of Needs', which describes human needs as a five-tiered pyramid, starting with physiological needs (food, water, shelter), followed by safety needs (security, stability), then love and belonging needs (friendship, intimacy), esteem needs (recognition, self-worth), and finally self-actualisation (achieving one's full potential) and transcendence), Carl Rogers (the American psychologist, co-founder of humanistic psychology, known especially for his person-centred psychotherapy, who was considered the most influential psychotherapist in history, ahead of Sigmund Freud), along with Anthony Sutich and others, who were also pioneers of the humanistic movement, who had begun to realise that something was still missing from the humanistic expanded approach to psychology, recognised that the highest needs of humans are not psychological, but are spiritual, involving exploring Self-actualisation and the highest level being transcendance, reaching our highest human potential. Transpersonal psychology was established in 1967 in California. Since transpersonal psychology evolved through an effort to integrate and understand the Self-transcendent states of non-ordinary consciousness often linked to extreme states and Eastern spiritual practices, it is often referred to as 'Spiritual Psychology', or the 'Psychology of Spirituality', which I call 'Psychospirituality', and the works of other established experts in the field of childhood Trauma, many of whom I name in the present article, that they are dipping their toe into.

Dr Levine wrote that “All Trauma is preverbal.” These preverbal experiences can significantly impact a person's well-being, even if they don't have a clear, verbalisable memory of the Trauma. Dr Gabor Maté, another world expert on Trauma, has a mantra that “The question is not why the mental health problem, but why the pain? The source of pain is always and invariably to be found in a person's lived experience, beginning with childhood.” The psychiatric community largely fails to understand that anything 'negative' that happens to us as adults is not Trauma: It is stress. It is caused by the following sequence:

1. No unconditional love is felt as a young child

2. This Traumatises us as children

3. This creates all of our fears such as our fears of being unloved, unlovable, unworthy, that we be abandoned, and that therefore we will die

4. These fears determine our limiting beliefs throughout life

5. Which lead to negative thoughts

6. Which lead to emotional pain, mental illness, and spiritual dis-ease

7. Which lead to our resentments

8. Which lead to our behaviour and reactivity (instead of our responses)

9. Which lead to our adverse reaction to stress as adults

Osho wrote that treating childhood Trauma patients involves “Bringing their childhood back to them. They will relive it in imagination and whatsoever has remained incomplete will have to be completed in imagination. Then those problems will disappear. It is sometimes very hard to go back to the old wounds and to let them again overpower you; to again suffer those things which you have been thinking had completely disappeared. That wound is still there. You have forgotten it but it continues to function inside your unconscious, and it has to be healed.”

This is the tragedy of psychiatrists who are not trained in the field of childhood Trauma, even eminent ones in other fields within their profession believing mistakenly that adult stress, which they confuse with Trauma, is the cause of psychiatric disorders or addictions: They are caused by childhood Trauma, not adult stress. This is why such patients never recover until they meet the right psychiatrists. The incorrect diagnoses given by these iatrogenic psychiatrists damage not only the patients, but also all those that they interact with, the credibility of their own profession, as well as society at large.

As above, it is not adult stress that causes mental illness. It is childhood Trauma. Judith Lewis Herman is an American psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has focused on the understanding and treatment of childhood Trauma, said that “The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged, repeated childhood Trauma. This is true even though most people who have had childhood Trauma never come to psychiatric attention. To the extent that these people recover, they do so on their own. While only a small minority of survivors, usually those with the most severe abuse histories, eventually become psychiatric patients, many or even most psychiatric patients are survivors of childhood Trauma. The data on this point are beyond contention. On careful questioning, 50-60 percent of psychiatric inpatients and 40-60 percent of outpatients report childhood histories of Trauma. In one study of psychiatric emergency room patients, 70 percent had childhood Trauma histories. Thus Trauma in childhood appears a main factor that leads a person to seek psychiatric treatment as an adult.”

Treating the symptoms of adult stress from emotional triggers and not treating the underlying Trauma is like treating someone with pneumonia with cough linctus, when the patient needs antibiotics. Mental illness is a symptom of Trauma, not the other way round. Professor Perry wrote in his experience of the wisdom of Eastern cultures versus the 'science' of Western cultures, that “The elders were very patient with my curiosity, and gently amused at my Western medical-model formulations of 'disease' when I asked how they handled depression, sleep problems, drug abuse, and childhood Trauma. They kept trying to help me understand that these problems were all basically the 'same thing.' The problems were all interconnected. In Western psychiatry we like to separate them, but that misses the true essence of the problem. We are chasing symptoms, not healing people.” He continues “Very often, 'what happened' takes years to reveal itself. It takes courage to confront our actions, peel back the layers of childhood Trauma in our lives, and expose the raw truth of our past. But this is where healing begins.” Dr Maté says “There arises the possibility of returning to what Nature has always intended for us: Once we resolve to see clearly how things are, the process of healing - a word that, at its root, means ‘returning to wholeness’ - can begin.”

Many clinicians lack specific training in Trauma-informed care and may not feel equipped to handle disclosures of historical Traumatic events. There's a tendency to focus on immediate symptoms resulting from adult stress, rather than exploring potential underlying childhood Trauma, which is responsible for their patients' reactions to perceived adult stress. Some clinicians may avoid screening for childhood Trauma due to their fear of retraumatising patients. Clinicians may underestimate the long-term effects of childhood Trauma on mental health, leading to incorrect or inadequate treatment plans. This may be severely damaging to their patients.

Alice Miller wrote that “Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: The emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the Truth in the individual and unique history of their childhood.”

Professor Brené Brown wrote that “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” The danger of psychiatrists not understanding Trauma is summed up by Danielle Burdock “Childhood Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue to be internally heard only by the one held captive." Alice Miller said that “An unacknowledged Trauma is like a wound that never heals over and may start to bleed again at any time.”

Psychiatrists face significant systemic and clinical challenges in treating childhood Trauma. This leads to misdiagnosis, ineffective treatments, and a gap in specialised care for victims of childhood Trauma. There is a critical shortage of clinicians with specialised training in Trauma-focused interventions and child psychiatry. A historical and ongoing lack of investment in services for childhood Trauma contributes to the inadequate provision of specialised care. A historical and ongoing lack of investment in services for childhood Trauma contributes to the inadequate provision of specialised care. The complex nature of childhood Trauma can lead to misdiagnosis or underdiagnosis, resulting in ineffective treatment. 

The mental health system's traditional focus on symptoms (results) being diagnosed as illnesses can lead to responses from psychiatrists that are unhelpful or even damaging for those who have experienced childhood Trauma. Psychiatrists need to focus more on causes (childhood Trauma) of mental illnesses (such as Generalised Anxiety Disorder) rather than symptoms (results). Unless you pull up the roots, the weeds will always grow back. Some of the existing evidence base for Trauma treatment guidelines is based on short-term, standardised interventions, like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as that is what they are familiar with, that may be inappropriate and insufficient for the needs of childhood Trauma survivors. This was my initial experience, and I was very confused as to why I didn’t feel any better, until I had EMDR to address my fears resulting from childhood Trauma, started practising yoga to calm my dysregulated nervous system, spending time in Nature, and other spiritual practices, supplemented it with Transformative Life Coaching (TLC), which incorporates positive psychology, philosophy, and spirituality. This is why psychiatrists need to broaden their knowledge and experience of modalities that have actually been scientifically proven to work. They are studying and using old hats. 

In an article in in ‘Psychology Today’ entitled ‘Selling Bad Therapy to Trauma Victims’ it states that existing psychiatric studies “Can answer certain questions ('Is a medication more effective than a placebo sugar pill?') and not others ('What causes the disease? What treatment modalities other than what they are familiar with are effective in treating childhood Trauma?'). In the absence of careful scientific reasoning this can lead to foolish conclusions.” Wrong questions, wrong answers. They are effectively asking if a wrench or a screwdriver is better to bang a nail in, in other words, tools that psychiatrists are familiar with, and which are the only tools in their toolboxes, both of which are ineffective, rather than using a hammer (such as a psychospiritual approach, which is actually effective in banging in a nail. The authors continue “Other research strategies would almost certainly lead to different conclusions (for example, studying patients who actually get well and what helped them). More than a century of scientific research and clinical experience points to other therapy approaches as being more helpful, that build a relationship of trust between therapist and patient, and focus on what is emotionally meaningful to individual patients (versus standardised interventions from instruction manuals). The guidelines are by psychiatric researchers for researchers. The needs of patients and therapists are secondary. The guidelines comprise 675 pages of densely complex minutia about research methodology and statistical analysis, including 537 pages of tables and forms. The needs of patients and therapists are secondary. Therapies are designated ‘highly recommended’ based on the research methods used to study them, not because patients actually get well. But since this knowledge does not come from RCTs, it was ignored.”

The authors continue “Let’s fact-check this by seeing how it aligns with the findings of the largest and arguably best RCT behind the guidelines. The RCT was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defence and published in the 'Journal of the American Medical Association', studying Trauma:

Patients received CBT or a placebo treatment.

Here is what the study found:

• Nearly 40 percent of patients who started CBT dropped out. They voted with their feet about its value.

• Sixty percent of patients still had PTSD after completing treatment. Not surprising as the treatment does not address childhood Trauma adequately.

• One hundred percent of patients were still clinically depressed after completing treatment.

• At a six-month follow-up, patients who received CBT were no better than those in the control group.

• Nineteen serious 'adverse events' (suicide attempts and psychiatric hospitalisations) occurred during the study.

• The authors noted that patients “May need more treatment than the relatively small number of sessions typically provided in a clinical trial.”

This is in conflict with the need for doctors to, as Hippocrates said, ‘First, do no harm.’ It’s bad enough that most patients don’t have access to, or can’t afford, adequate mental health care without also being gaslighted and told that an inadequate therapy is the ‘best’ therapy.”

In a scientific review in a peer-reviewed psychology journal an article entitled ‘Neglect of The Complex: Why Psychotherapy for Post-Traumatic Clinical Presentations is Often Ineffective’ states that “Such evidence as there is suggests that the simple extension of treatments for uncomplicated disorders (to childhood Trauma) is seriously inadequate. This has significant implications for health services responsible for the provision of the most efficacious treatments to those whose disorders arise from severe childhood Trauma, often very early in their life. Psychotherapy for post-traumatic clinical presentations is often restricted by the lack of evidence in support of approaches other than those validated for non-complex conditions, such as cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT).”

The article refers to how childhood Trauma can lead to any mental illness, and often a combination of these, with a wide array of symptoms, means that inexact use of terminology bedevils this clinical and research area. It states “Complex presentations are often excluded from studies because they do not fit neatly into the simple nosological categorisations required for research power. This means that the most severe disorders are not studied adequately and patients most affected by early Trauma are often not recognised by services. Both historically and currently, at the individual as well as the societal level, dissociation from the acknowledgement of the severe impact of childhood Trauma on the developing brain leads to inadequate provision of services. At present there is little regard for the subcortical generators of distress and an overemphasis on the cognitive (therapeutic) strategies needed to manage the resulting emotions. Many of those who present clinically with a history of complex PTSD resulting from childhood Trauma have been attempting to ‘self-medicate’ in order to manage their distress through coping strategies, for instance self-harm, alcohol/drug misuse, eating disorders, or other behaviours designed to limit their sudden shifts out of the ‘window of tolerance’ to current stresses. Patients were more likely to stay in present-centred therapy than traditional therapies like CBT, in which the therapists were required to be genuine, empathic and non-judgemental.” In other words, positive psychology and psychospiritual approaches. The research paper continued that “There is a striking discrepancy between recommended best evidence-based practice for complex PTSD (from childhood Trauma) and actual clinical practice.”There may also be an avoidance by therapists to be exposed to the realms of horror and terror, intense isolation and abandonment, excruciating pain and despair of the complex Trauma survivor. If the therapist has unresolved residues of Traumatic experience himself, the ability to convey the psychotherapy may be even more challenging.”

Psychiatrists don't diagnose "childhood Trauma as a singular condition because the effects are complex and not always distinct enough for a formal diagnosis, but rather manifest as symptoms of other conditions like depression, anxiety, or ADHD. The diagnostic criteria in manuals like the DSM-5 are still evolving, and the field needs more specific research into Trauma-related psychopathology in children. There is no widely accepted diagnostic category for childhood Trauma in the DSM-5, although there have been proposals for one. Symptoms of trauma can be mistaken for other conditions like depression, anxiety, or ADHD, leading to incorrect diagnoses and treatment plans, and therefore poor outcomes” or the mistaken beliefs of some psychiatrists that their patient has a more severe form of those incorrect diagnoses. 

Conversely to the Dunning-Kruger effect described above, some clinicians may lack the confidence or perceived competence to deliver childhood Trauma-focused interventions, which can prevent them from diagnosing childhood Trauma even if they do recognise it and from offering appropriate care. This may be particularly true for highly esteemed psychiatrists who are not trained in the treatment of childhood Trauma. 

Psychiatrists may rush to make diagnoses for financial gain with regards to billing patients. This is clearly unethical. For generalists, making a diagnosis without specialised knowledge in a specific area can lead to inaccurate or incomplete assessments, as seen with childhood Trauma or addiction psychiatry. 

The emotional toll of working with what are seen as vulnerable patients can lead to high emotional exhaustion in psychiatrists, making it harder to sustain compassionate responses to others outside of a professional context. 

As mentioned above, psychotherapeutic interventions are like using a single tool from a toolbox. But what if you need the whole toolbox? And what if the therapist metaphorically hits your thumb with a hammer? For example, psychodynamic therapy, whilst being great for discovering one's deepest fears, can be extremely triggering. I speak from personal experience. We often don't get warning of these 'side effects' of therapy and are not given protection against them. So, the question arises else do you make someone whole again? Fortunately there is an answer - psychospirituality: For my second article in this two-part series about childhood Trauma, its malign legacy, and psychospirituality in healing, click here: 'You are Bothering Yourself About the Moment in Front of You: Part 2 - Childhood Trauma and Psychospirituality'.

Spirituality is considered a vital, if sometimes challenging, aspect of human experience that mental health professionals should support. Spirituality provides a way for individuals to interpret their life experiences, even difficult ones, and find meaning in suffering or childhood Trauma. Spiritual practices like prayer, meditation, creativity, and connecting with a ‘power greater than ourselves’ (which releases us form the grips of the ego-mind) can serve as structured ways to manage adult stress and negative emotions. Spiritual practices can help regulate emotions and promote inner peace, contributing to a calmer and more positive inner life. Spirituality supports the concept of healing the ‘whole person,’ rather than just removing symptoms (which is the focus of psychiatry), which is crucial for overall well-being.

Childhood Trauma and  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Astonishingly and tellingly, while not all Vietnam veterans who experienced PTSD had also experienced childhood Trauma, scientific studies have shown a significant correlation between childhood Trauma and the development of PTSD among Vietnam veterans. This was also found to be true in studies on 120 Gulf War and 1,300 Iraq, and Afghanistan veterans. This suggests and supports the theory that childhood Trauma can be a pre-existing factor that increases vulnerability to the stress of combat exposure. It is childhood Trauma, and not the adult stress of war, that is most significantly associated with PTSD symptoms.

I have found this to be very true in patients who attended group psychodynamic therapy, which is a modern form of psychoanalysis. Colin Ross, the Canadian psychiatrist and former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, wrote that “For sociological reasons originating outside the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and PTSD that manifested after it were present when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realisation that childhood Trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by the adult stress of war. The conclusion was that childhood Trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood.”

Most psychiatrists and therapists do not understand this. This is because they are not trained in how to deal with Trauma and its effect on mental health. This can be explained by cognitive bias in so-called 'experts' in psychiatry, who suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological idea that explains why some people tend to think they are better at something than they genuinely are. In simpler terms, it’s when confidence doesn’t match competence. When 'experts' pass judgement on fields outside their field of expertise, in other words, when they begin something new, like learning about childhood Trauma and how it manifests in later life, they might have loads of confidence, especially if they are highly esteemed in another field within their profession, but have little competence in childhood Trauma. They don’t know what they don’t know! After some initial learning in the new field, their confidence often soars even higher, but their competence might still be modest, and yet they feel qualified to give opinions, which may have very damaging effects on patients or those who have interacted with them. This is where the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks in - they believe that they are an expert in the new field even though they are not, and are lacking in wisdom, and are therefore unqualified to make judgements in this new field. The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs for several reasons. Ego: Our ego is like a ‘King baby’, who believes that he is the best the world has to offer, whilst coming from a place of low self-worth. It is a form of over-compensation. The ego lives on 'Mount Stupid'. Lack of self-awareness: When you’re not good at something, it’s tough to recognise your own weaknesses. It’s like trying to see your own blind spots. Selective hearing: People often look for information that backs up their beliefs. If you think you’re amazing, you’ll focus on any praise and ignore criticism. Many doctors crave praise, as Alice Miller described - helping others meets the craving for external validation as they then feel needed and respected. Holding on to initial impressions: Your early experiences can strongly influence your self-assessment. If you started with misplaced confidence, it can be hard to let go.

Christine A. Courtois, a psychologist who specialises in the treatment of childhood Trauma, particularly for adults experiencing the effects of it. She has worked with these issues for 30 years and has developed treatment approaches for complex PTSD, for which she has received international recognition. She wrote in her book ‘Treatment of Complex Trauma’ “Herman (1992b) cogently noted over three decades ago that personality disorders can be iatrogenic (caused by doctors), causing harm to individuals as the result of the belief among psychiatric professionals that those with personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder[BPD]) cannot be treated successfully, cannot recover, and are a headache to psychiatric practitioners. For example, the BPD diagnosis continues to be applied predominantly to women often, but not always, in a negative way, usually signifying that they are irrational and beyond help. Describing post-Traumatic symptoms as a personality disorder not only can be demoralising for the client due to its connotation that something is defective with his or her core self (i.e., persona or personality) but also may misdirect a therapist by implying that the patient's core personality should be the focus of treatment rather than childhood Trauma-related adaptations that affect but are distinct from the core Self. In this way, therapists may overlook personality strengths and capacities that are healthy and sources of resilience that can be a basis for building on and enhancing (rather than "fixing" or remaking) the patient's core Self.”

Spirituality as part of a psychotherapeutic approach to healing

A peer-reviewed article entitled 'Psychology and Spirituality: Reviewing Developments in History, Method and Practice' gives much insight into this. This paper begins with an overview of the governing principles of psychology as a discipline, and outlines the key paradigm shifts that potentially aligned with concepts of spirituality from the early twentieth century to contemporary theory. As a discipline, psychology traverses the arts and sciences. Our behaviours, emotions, and cognitions are inextricably linked to everything we experience in our lives, from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Internal, 'unseen' workings of one’s inner world is a core component of the human experience. Although developments in psychology such as behaviourism promoted experimentation, objectivity, and further legitimised psychology as a science, there was little room for considering introspection and the subjective experience of what it was to be human. One of the most well-known proponents of this counter-reaction was Abraham Maslow, who described the 'Hierarchy of Needs' in 1943 (see my article 'Life' for a full description of this). Maslow proposed that all human beings have an inherent motivation to develop and grow towards better existence. Influenced by the atrocities of the Second World War, Maslow argued that before psychological or spiritual growth can occur, a person must have the basic requirements of daily life - shelter and food. The hierarchy of needs detailed specific human needs in a model of overlapping stages, including basic needs, safety needs, social needs, self-esteem and ultimately concluding at a stage he termed, 'Self-actualisation'- becoming the most that one can be. Even though the 'Hierarchy of Needs' was more of a concept than a working model that could be operationalised and measured, the idea of such an inherent drive to seek a better-self continues to be cited across clinical, professional, and educational psychology domains today, also cementing a firm place in popular psychology. All this was well and good, but it was only when psychology was fused with spirituality, as psychospirituality, that specific recommendations as to how one may achieve awareness and Self-actualisation. When examining the role of spirituality in psychology, Maslow’s theories could be considered as the early contemporary return to considering the spiritual mind within the human experience. The concept of Self-actualisation and what this may encompass for different individuals has been extensively debated in scientific literature including for post-Traumatic stress (Lonn & Dantzler, 2017), and addiction (Best et al., 2008). Maslow expanded upon his proposed hierarchy by adding the stage of Transcendence. Transcendence was conceptualised as the stage beyond being the best version of oneself that a person can be, to something beyond the self, for the benefit of others or the community or world - that is, spirituality. The desire to reach this level of development, that one’s existence and meaning involves a level of spirituality is proposed to be the highest level of human consciousness (Koltko-Rivera, 2006). Maslow’s work formed the early stages of a new psychological approach, known as Humanism, which was pioneered by Carl Rogers (Rogers, 1951, 1959). When appraising the progression of conceptual issues in psychology, this movement was by far the closest connection to aspects of spirituality - simply by acknowledging the variations in individual needs to Self-actualise, the door was open for spiritual needs to be embedded within the tiered stages of Maslow’s 'Hierarchy of Needs' and clearly aligned to the later addition of Transcendence to that hierarchy. In practice, the Rogerian therapeutic relationship created a safe space of unconditional positive regard, within which personal insights could be realised and psychological/emotional growth could occur. The concept of unconditional positive regard could be argued to be akin to aspects of a spiritual perspective or approach to relationships with others - that is, the conscious decision to set aside any biases, emotions, attitudes, or beliefs in order to generate and offer positive regard to another person without any conditions or expectations attached. The oscillations of psychology between philosophical and scientific inquiry veered closely towards the spiritual, particularly during the 1960s when the Humanism movement was at its strongest. The fundamental question was whether human behaviour was passive and controlled (and therefore determined) by the environment within which a person existed, or whether internal experiences (emotions, beliefs, intentions, values, etc.) should be considered to best understand how we experience, and interpret, reality. However, as the twentieth century progressed, psychological theories that were most amenable to scientific examination provided an evidence base for interventions such as CBT and as a result this area of thought and work flourished. This left limited space for the consideration of spiritualism and religiosity, and a clear division between behaviour, thought, emotion, and the Soul. Although the Positive Psychology movement of the 1990s, spearheaded by Martin Seligman (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), essentially brought about a contemporary wave of Humanism, and argued for a focus on psychological well-being rather than psychopathology, support for it remained generally in popular psychology because of the same challenges with measurement and observation that had plagued this area of enquiry in the 1950s. As spirituality has become more widely recognised as a component of healthcare, healing, and wellbeing worthy of attention, there is growing evidence attesting to the merits of measuring spirituality and documenting its relevance to clinical settings. measures were developed to examine the role of spiritual coping in general areas and in response to specific events, including traumatic events. Understanding human response to Trauma is important to psychologists, not only psychopathology. Posttraumatic growth and personal and spiritual development have also been observed to be a response to Trauma for some people, which resonates with the aforementioned tenets championed by Maslow, Rogers, and Seligman. Everyday experiences can generate feelings of well-being and spiritual connectedness. Research indicates that distinctly productive activities and situations can generate a feeling of spiritual well-being, with the sense that everything runs smoothly and without complication. Many people may describe an intense period of productivity or concentration as being 'In the zone'. The concept of “Flow” was popularised by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990), largely though his seminal work on human optimal experience. Within this work, he described Flow as a meaningful state that made life worth living, stating that 'You know what up need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears (being fully present in the moment). You forget yourself. You feel part of something bigger” Earlier in this paper a definition of spirituality observed a search for the 'Sacred', a clear indication of something possibly intangible and certainly greater that oneself, characterised by a loss of self-consciousness and the ego-mind, implying that the perception that one’s actions and performance are driven by greater influences, and thereby potentially aligning these influences within a spiritual as well as a psychological domain. Positive psychology has brought us closest to the exploration of one’s spiritual Self as part of work towards establishing psychological well-being within a meaningful life. As referenced earlier, the emergence of positive psychology in the 1990s was somewhat of a return to some of the humanistic theories of the 1960s. Within the positive psychology field, spirituality is considered as an aspect of the human experience, and often as a tool to face adversity, and as a compass for navigation of a fulfilled life. Positive psychology has allowed public, non-academic access to the psychology discipline in a greater capacity than before. The rise of positive psychology focusing on mindfulness, meditation, acceptance, and other strategies (adopted from Buddhism and other belief systems) is now scattered throughout the psychological literature. Seligman’s work on the enhancement of the human experience rather than a focus on dysfunction captured a wider popular audience of the potential contribution of psychology to the daily lives that people lead. Empirical studies have also shown how positive psychology interventions have successfully alleviated depression and mood disorders, and have progressed from correlation studies to evidencing this association through meta-analytic approaches (Santos et al., 2013; Varghese et al., 2021). The evidence, therefore, of positive psychology and associated spiritual domains adding value to the discipline on a theoretical basis and assisting individuals though psychological intervention is considerable. Yet, these associations are not widely broadcasted or explicitly advocated in competency frameworks or standards within educational accreditation bodies and practice regulators. Despite more recent meta-analytic work that has addressed patients’ perspectives on religion and spiritualist in psychotherapeutic practice (Captari et al., 2018). a positive direction in bringing spirituality more overtly into psychotherapeutic practice, with empirical studies also reporting that clients are increasingly open to discussing spiritual influences on their well-being (Terepka & Hatfield, 2020).

Other health disciplines have started to explore the role of spirituality in health and well-being, and also in regard to psychological dysfunction and disorder, astonishingly psychology has to some degree, remained an observer. It is only in the last two decades or so that spirituality has been more carefully considered. Psychology and spirituality are evidently aligned at a therapeutic level, yet it is surprising how spiritual constructs are not overtly acknowledged in training contexts or therapeutic practice. The associations identified between psychology and spirituality can inform how spiritual enquiry can assist us in promoting psychological well-being, by acknowledging the history of psychology through to current paradigms. The inclusion of spirituality alongside psychology in the search for explanatory models of who we are, and what we can achieve, could surely be deemed a positive addition. Human search for meaning is integral to this.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, integrated spiritual concepts into her work, believing spirituality is an inherent human capacity for a deeper understanding of life and she explored Traumatic experiences, the Soul's journey, and universal symbols like the butterfly, which is a metaphor for the dying (of the ego) and resurrection, representing transformation, beauty, and hope in the face of suffering. She felt that spirituality was a universal human quality: She defined spirituality not in religious terms but as an intuitive, universal capacity to recognise one's connection to a greater loving, compassionate universal force. This has led to a shift in our understanding, with her work helping others to transform the cultural conversation around suffering, moving it from silence and taboo towards open dialogue, empathy, compassion, and a holistic view of life and healing from suffering. Kübler-Ross famously used the image of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon to describe the shedding of the physical body in favour of a new form of existence. This perspective reframed our lives, not living in fear of consciousness.

She wrote that "The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen," and "It is very important that you only do what you love to do." She highlighted that "We are solely responsible for our choices, - to not do the inner work (ego and fear) or to do the inner work (Higher Self and love) and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime."

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's views on spirituality evolved significantly over her career, moving from a secular-psychological framework in her early work to an openly metaphysical spiritual one in her later life. Her spiritual beliefs, which included Soul guides, profoundly influenced her approach to negative, fearful emotions based on false beliefs and loss but also led to scandal and diminished her reputation within the mainstream medical community: This was an ignorant and unjustified fact as spirituality's effects on well-being, mental illness, suffering, longevity, and core values, have heavily influenced the psychological community. Kübler-Ross developed a holistic model of human development, which was based on four 'quadrants': emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual. In her view, the spiritual quadrant is a universal and intuitive part of all human beings, especially those who want clarity in their purpose and meaning, searching representing a 'peace of God' and an inner wisdom that is far 'greater than intellectual knowledge. She also described the 'five stages of grief, which is still used to this day, even in the non-medical community. Her pioneering work on the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) was revolutionary for its time but was initially based on psychological observations. Over time, her work incorporated more spiritual elements. Acceptance and surrender are integral to psychospiritual healing.

Her pioneering work on the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) was revolutionary for its time but was initially based on psychological observations. Over time, her work incorporated more spiritual elements. Kübler-Ross famously used the image of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon to describe the shedding of the physical body in favour of a new form of existence. This perspective reframed our lives, not living in fear of consciousness. Life review: Drawing from her research Kübler-Ross wrote about a life review. This review, in the presence of unconditional love, was described as a compassionate process for learning and growth, not a judgemental one. This was also the teaching of Jesus: See my next article on his teaching about suffering an negativity Kübler-Ross wrote as it says in 'The Course in Miracles', a book all about healing from childhood Trauma, "There are only two emotions: Love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear." She wrote about life's purpose: She taught that the purpose of life is to grow and learn, and that hardship, though painful, is a gift that facilitates that growth. The ultimate lesson is unconditional love.

She wrote "Our concern must be to live while we're alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death and that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions and expectations of who and what we are". 

She continued "Whether you know it or not, one of the most important relationships in your life is with your Soul. Will you be kind and loving to your Soul, or will you be harsh and difficult? Many of us unknowingly damage our Souls with our negative attitudes and actions or by simple neglect. By making the relationship with your Soul an important part of your life, however, by honouring it in your daily routine, you give your life greater meaning and substance. Use your experiences - all of them as opportunities to nourish your Soul!"

Namaste.

Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.

Olly

Dr Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD.

Fully qualified and certified transformative life coach

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Disclaimer: The information presented in this article explores the role of spirituality 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 medical and mental health professionals.