Daniel Maté

Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you

Raw wound or scar, unresolved trauma is a constriction of the self, both physical and psychological. It constrains our inborn capacities and generates an enduring distortion of our view of the world and of other people. Trauma, until we work it through, keeps us stuck in the past, robbing us of the present moment’s riches, limiting who we can be. By impelling us to suppress hurt and unwanted parts of the psyche, it fragments the self.

fracturing of the self and of one’s relationship to the world. That fracturing is the essence of trauma.