people jeopardize their lives for the sake of making the moment livable. Nothing sways them from the habit — not illness, not the sacrifice of love a… - Gabor Maté

All of the diagnoses that you deal with - depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar illness, post traumatic stress disorder, even psychosis, are significantly rooted in trauma. They are manifestations of trauma. Therefore the diagnoses don't explain anything. The problem in the medical world is that we diagnose somebody and we think that is the explanation. He's behaving that way because he is psychotic. She's behaving that way because she has ADHD. Nobody has ADHD, nobody has psychosis - these are processes within the individual. It's not a thing that you have. This is a process that expresses your life experience. It has meaning in every single case.

I think we live in an insane culture. By insane, I mean a culture that does not meet real human needs. It meets our physical and economic needs, for the most part, for many people — at least in the privileged West. But at the same time, it alienates people. It cuts people off from themselves, from their gut feelings, from nature [and] from other people. It sets people against each other. We're destroying the earth. It's a very unhealthy system that we're living in right now. So where's hope in that? Hope in that is people realizing that we live in troubled times, to look for solutions within themselves and within their communities and ... recognizing our spiritual nature, that we have needs beyond the physical ones. We have to look at the other needs we have that this way of life just does not satisfy.

Sensitive children come to be called “difficult” because adults have trouble understanding their temperament and because parenting methods that work with other children are frustratingly inadequate with this group.