The Myth of Normal 29

her actual father was. “I was intensely downcast,” she chronicled in an autobiographical piece for New York magazine, “with a chronic depression that began when I was about 10, but instead of killing my will, it motivated me: I thought if I could be good enough at whatever task, great or small, that was before me, I might have a few minutes of happiness.”[14] That conviction of one’s inadequacy has fueled a great many glittering careers and instigated many instances of illness, often both in the same individual. Trauma Distorts Our View of the World “Everything has mind in the lead, has mind in the forefront, is made by the mind.” Thus opens the Dhammapada, the Buddha’s timeless collection of sayings. [15] Put another way, the world we believe in becomes the world we live in. If I see the world as a hostile place where only winners thrive, I may well become aggressive, selfish, and grandiose to survive in such a milieu. Later in life I will gravitate to competitive environments and endeavors that can only confirm that view and reinforce its validity. Our beliefs are not only self-fulfilling; they are world-building. Here’s what the Buddha left out, if I may be so bold: before the mind can create the world, the world creates our minds. Trauma, especially severe trauma, imposes a worldview tinged with pain, fear, and suspicion: a lens that both distorts and determines our view of how things are. Or it may, through the sheer force of denial, engender a naively rosy perspective that blinds us to real and present dangers—a veneer concealing fears we dare not acknowledge. One may also come to dismiss painful realities by habitually lying to oneself and others. Trauma Alienates Us from the Present I once shared a meal in an Oslo restaurant with the German psychologist Franz Ruppert. The noise was overwhelming: loud pop music pumping through several speakers and multiple TV channels blaring from bright screens mounted high on the walls. I have to think that when the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen used to hold court in that same establishment a little over a century before, the ambience was much more