Inside the mind of a psychiatrist – Page 128 – Inside The Mind of a Psychiatrist

Childhood trauma is rampant. 5% of all American children are hospitalized for acute or chronic illness, injuries or disability. This doesn’t include all the millions of children who suffer trauma secondary to poor parenting.

Adults who seek psychiatric help have conduits to their past that are often hidden from their conscious minds. Whether they were ill, injured, abused, abandoned, ignored, devalued or suffered from a major psychiatric illness like Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder, they suffered when they were kids and they’re suffering now as adults.

According to statistics from the CDC (Center for Disease Control), victims of childhood trauma live 19 years less than non-victims. That’s an astounding number! If you think about the increase in alcohol abuse, drug abuse, poor decision making and years of chronic stress, it makes sense.

Medication alone can help decrease symptoms, but it certainly doesn’t deal with the hurt, low self-esteem and agony that adults carry forward from their past. To not deal with the bottled-up stress can lead to an autoimmune system that has been overwhelmed for years and at some point can no longer protect against illness and cancer.

Our lives are a continuum and we need to be in touch with how that continuum affects us now. If we don’t deal with our past in a timely fashion, our bodies may deal with us in a very unkindly manner.

For those of you who experienced childhood trauma, I’d be interested in how you dealt with it. What helped? What didn’t? What was it like being alone and misunderstood? Any experiences with childhood hospitalizations? Any ideas from professionals?

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Stephen Hawking, a well-known, brilliant physicist, was interviewed by New Scientist magazine. When they asked the wheelchair bound, 70 year-old scientist what he thinks about most, he answered —

Women. They are a complete mystery.

Here’s a guy who writes books about how the universe began, and he’s stumped by a mere woman. Well Stephen, join the group. Most men are in the same quandary. So why are women so perplexing?

We’re usually physically stronger. We usually have more political power. Bias has kept women weaker in the marketplace. We can score touchdowns and they’re relegated to jumping around in skimpy outfits on the sidelines cheering for Brawny Bill, who just scored on an off-center, power-right play. They don’t even know what an off-center, power-right play means, nor do they care. So why do most of us with the little y gene lust to have one of them a part of our lives?

Guys, we can’t fight Mother Nature (note Mother not Father). They gave birth to us and we’re programmed to desperately desire to explore where we came from. Stephen, I hope you’re not insulted that I’m being so familiar, but the answer to the universe is lying right next to us in bed. Without that answer being so close, most men would spend an inordinate about of time and money looking for a replacement, often a younger and more compliant edition. Then after we have procured her, 50% of us get disappointed, divorced, and start the search all over again.

As my muse once said during a stressful time, How ’bout a piece of gingerbread cake? Maybe that’s the answer to the universe? Wait, isn’t gingerbread cake just a replacement for mother’s milk? Maybe we just need our mothers, but someone so disguised in Spandex and all the right curves that we can’t recognize her?

Maybe the universe works just fine keeping women a mystery…

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