Loved this! Thank you for inspiring us through this podcast. Check out Curt Thompson as a potential guest sometime. I would personally love to hear him talk about trauma and it’s relationship to religion. :)
The mushy criteria that make up the diagnosis in the DSM are then made even mushier when professional public speakers at therapy conferences claim that "modern life is inherently traumatic." Now everybody is sick and diseased because of the supposed trauma of living in the wealthiest, most peaceful countries in the world during the world's wealthiest and most peaceful point in history. Hate to say it, but there are some shady gurus out there pedaling quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo. We now have a class of people who make their living off the idea of trauma.
I think another factor that has kept the focus on trauma and dysfunction is the ACES study. It is a retrospective study that is heralded as definitive proof that traumatic events cause physical illness later in life. As far as I know no replications of the study have been conducted.
The ACE study was never “heralded as definitive proof” but has been presented as evidence that certain accumulated events occurring before age 18 increase mortality rate by sheer probability alone. They are accumulated risk factors over time that end in death. It’s pretty straight forward and not as muddy as you make it sound.
