Trauma is not what happens to you; it's what happens inside you. That's a good thing, by the way. Because if trauma, in terms of what happened to me as a Jewish infant under the Nazis, if that was the trauma, I'll never be. I'm pretty sure if I wasn't a Jewish infant under the Nazis and during that period of genocide, if trauma is the fact that you were abused as a child, you will never be a person who wasn't abused as a child. Trauma can also be inflicted not by what happens to you but what doesn't happen that should happen. So that when your needs aren't met, that can wound as well. Even though you weren't overtly hurt, you're still wounded by not having your essential human needs met. But if that was the trauma of what happened to you, guess what? It'll never unhappen. But if trauma is what happened inside you,

the wound that you sustained, the meaning you made of it, the way you then came to believe certain things about yourself or the world or other people, and if trauma was that disconnection from your authentic self, well guess what? Good news. That can be restored at any moment. So that's why Sharon, when you talk about the new view of trauma, when we see it as that wound, as long as we see it that way, it's a sound that can be healed. If we see it as a bunch of things that happened, that'll never unhappen. But we don't have the biggest lesson for me and one I continue to learn is that we don't have to allow it to define our lives, how we see ourselves, how we see the world, how we relate to other people, how we relate to possibility, how we relate to even spiritual transformation.

Gabor Mate - Trauma Is Not What Happens to You, It Is What Happens Inside You

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