The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series features 33+ guests in conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté including Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Jewel, Jamie Lee Curtis, Richard Schwartz, Ashley Judd, and many more.
“Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically and then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you’re acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you’re acting out of fear.
“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. Trauma is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling and more defended.” – Gabor Maté MD
Learn more about the movie and Talks on Trauma video interview series with multiple guests :
The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series.
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Video with comments by some of the guest speakers:
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Part of the Talks on Trauma series:
Women, Trauma & the Patriarchy
w/ Dr. Gabor Maté, Jamie Lee Curtis, Elisa Hallerman PhD, JD, Ashley Judd, Mona Haydar
This talk will explore:
- How patriarchy perpetuates trauma and presents unique challenges for women
- Trauma as soul loss
- We can all recover: pathways to healing
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Here is part of a related interview with musician Mona Haydar :
Misogyny and patriarchy are global problems, but we like to pretend, especially as people of color, that they’re not really going on or they aren’t real issues.
That culture of silence is so damaging because it allows those cycles of abuse to continue and we have to break them.
Whether people like [my song “Dog”] or not, I just hope people start talking about sexual violence and predators in our communities.
I grew up in Flint, Michigan and the idea that hip-hop is only a product of blackness doesn’t tell the whole story.
It’s a product of the culture of oppression, and in the Bronx, when it was born, it was a direct response to that culture of oppression.
Similar to how a diamond needs pressure for creation, a culture of oppression creates beauty despite trauma.
I used the lyrics “teleporting through trauma” in “Hijabi.”
Sometimes, it’s trauma that allows us to be great.
Hip-hop can be used as a global tool for liberation and the refinement of our selves and egos. I believe that’s the truth of hip-hop.
Image and text from article “Mona Haydar speaks out on her newest hit “Dog,” smashing the patriarchy, and hip-hop” By Saffiyya Mohammed July 27, 2017.
The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series.
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From an interview with Jamie Lee Curtis about playing Laurie Strode in Halloween, 2018 :
In this movie, 40 years later, we find really what happens when someone suffers a trauma when they’re 17 years old and doesn’t get any help.
You know, Laurie Strode, she left school on the 31st of October a dreamer, an intellectual, someone who would have gone on to Brown and changed the world.
And instead, on November 1, she went back to school a freak.
And that’s what happens with trauma. It brands you.
People point and go, oh, my gosh, there’s Laurie Strode. She’s the one who survived. And it took away her innocence.
Everybody’s trying to tell her to get over it.
I think that’s been the sort of refrain in her ear since she was 17 years old.
And in a weird way, you know, that is all of our ways of trying to distance ourself from that person’s trauma. Nobody wants to really get into it. And it’s much easier to give somebody a painkiller and say, “get over it.”
Quotes are from audio:
Image, audio and text from article “This ‘Halloween,’ Jamie Lee Curtis Reckons With 40 Years Of Trauma” on All Things Considered, NPR, October 19, 2018.
Learn more about The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series.
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Musician Jewel is one of the guests in Part 2 of the Talks on Trauma series October 4-10. Here is a related interview with her:
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An upgrade package includes recordings of selected guests from Part 1 – which included:
Alanis Morissette on trauma and inner emotional rupture
In her conversation for the series (titled “Self-expression and Mindfulness in Healing”), Alanis Morissette says:
“There have been so many messages sent to me over the years of shame in a way.
“And I’ve certainly been broken up with and shamed in the press and made fun of for my understanding of when our developmental journey as young creatures is thwarted or ruptured in any way – this rupture between, you know, the capital ‘s’ Self as I call it, or god or light – the rupture in relationships and most of all, the rupture within one’s own self.”
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Sia on dealing with trauma
Singer, songwriter, voice actress and director Sia (Sia Furler) has talked about having complex PTSD from a number of childhood, developmental and adult traumas.
In a 2020 magazine interview, she commented:
“I got married, got a divorce almost as quickly. That was super devastating. It brought up a lot of developmental trauma…
“I had a lot of suicidal ideation over the last three and a half years. I couldn’t get out of bed.
“I thought I’d been living with bipolar two, and then I was actually correctly diagnosed as having complex PTSD from a number of childhood and developmental things, and then a bunch of adult trauma as well.”
Sia adds,
“I also think that getting famous should fall under a traumatic category, and I think that’s why a lot of our celebrities are in rehab and killing themselves.”
She mentions one form of therapy that has helped:
“I have an attachment injury, or I had an attachment injury. And what I needed to do was three years of extreme attachment repair work, which is the newest kind of psychology.”
(From article on allvipp.com: “Sia Opens Up About Dealing With Suicidal Thoughts And PTSD”.)
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The video above is from her conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté for the Trauma Talks series of The Wisdom of Trauma event.
Sia’s conversation is titled “Sensitivity, Creativity and Pain in a Traumatizing Culture.”
Here are some excerpts:
Sia: I’m a trauma baby, as is, I think, pretty much everyone in Hollywood.
Gabor Maté: We find out over and over again, [movies are] created by really traumatized people.
Sia: Yeah
Gabor Maté: So I’m wondering what connection you’ve made between trauma and Hollywood and creativity?
Sia: Well, I can tell you that I’m grateful that I had the childhood I had – which is something I could never have said two or three years ago. I was still upset and angry and resentful.
Now I’m grateful because I know that it informs my work and it allows me to attune to other people who are in pain.
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Related book: Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain by Daniel J. Siegel M.D., Marion Solomon Ph.D.
See many more resource books, articles, videos, programs on the page Healing Trauma Resources – How To Understand And Recover.
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“Trauma is an inability to inhabit one’s body without being possessed by its defenses and the emotional numbing that shuts down all experience, including pleasure and satisfaction.“ — Bessel van der Kolk
“Trauma can be anything that happens too much, too fast, too soon, too long coupled with not enough of what should have happened that was resourcing.“ — Resmaa Menakem
- Learn more about the movie and video interview series:
The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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