The Myth of Normal 32

blaming herself, its gravitational center planted permanently in the past, would only divert her from showing up for her loved one in the here and now. Blame becomes a meaningless concept the moment one understands how suffering in a family system or even in a community extends back through the generations. “Recognition of this quickly dispels any disposition to see the parent as villain,” wrote John Bowlby, the British psychiatrist who showed the decisive importance of adult-child relationships in shaping the psyche. No matter how far back we look in the chain of consequence—great- grandparents, pre-modern ancestors, Adam and Eve, the first single-celled amoeba—the accusing finger can find no fixed target. That should come as a relief. The news gets better: seeing trauma as an internal dynamic grants us much-needed agency. If we treat trauma as an external event, something that happens to or around us, then it becomes a piece of history we can never dislodge. If, on the other hand, trauma is what took place inside us as a result of what happened, in the sense of wounding or disconnection, then healing and reconnection become tangible possibilities. Trying to keep awareness of trauma at bay hobbles our capacity to know ourselves. Conversely, fashioning from it a rock-hard identity—whether the attitude is defiance, cynicism, or self-pity—is to miss both the point and the opportunity of healing, since by definition trauma represents a distortion and limitation of who we were born to be. Facing it directly without either denial or overidentification becomes a doorway to health and balance. “It’s those adversities that open up your mind and your curiosity to see if there are new ways of doing things,” Bessel van der Kolk told me. He then cited Socrates: “An unexamined life is not worth living. As long as one doesn’t examine oneself, one is completely subject to whatever one is wired to do, but once you become aware that you have choices, you can exercise those choices.” Notice that he didn’t say “once you spend decades in therapy.” As I will present later, we can access liberation via even modest self-examination: a willingness to question “many of the truths we cling to” and the “certain point of view” that makes them seem so real—as a famous