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The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture
Gabor Maté
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you”
“Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.”
“The history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor . . . The poor win a few battles . . . but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years. —Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger”
“The same goes for us: no emotional vulnerability, no growth.”
“In many other spheres, including social media, we too often present an artificial, “Botoxed” version of ourselves: an image not of who we are but of how we would like to be perceived by others. “What we have with the internet is sort of a Botox for the masses,” Peter said. “We have just lost this capacity to be real, which is fundamentally what makes us human, and what makes us feel connected to each other.”
“Certainly, all traumatic events are stressful, but not all stressful events are traumatic.”[10”
“The late David Foster Wallace, master wordsmith, author, and essayist, once opened a commencement speech with a droll parable that well illustrates the trouble with normality. The story concerns two fish crossing aquatic paths with an elder of their species, who greets them jovially: “‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”
“Addiction is a complex psychological, emotional, physiological, neurobiological, social, and spiritual process. It manifests through any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but that in the long term causes them or others negative consequences, and yet the person refuses or is unable to give it up. Accordingly, the three main hallmarks of addiction are short-term relief or pleasure and therefore craving; long-term suffering for oneself or others; and an inability to stop.”
“Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.”6”
“The great traumatologist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk has noted that “our culture teaches us to focus on our personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms.”
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