Peter Attia· MD
so um again my experience comes from individuals typically who are from the far other end of that what would you say to a person who's listening to us who's trying to even understand if they've experienced trauma which sounds like a dumb thing to say but let me let me give an example right so you have a person who's listening M who's either introspective enough to realize that there's some some of some of those things we described as the four branches of the traumat Tre whether it be codependency attachment disorders some sort of maladaptive Behavior Etc addiction maybe they're like okay I mean if I'm being brutally honest I'm not flying on you know a perfect level right like yeah and my you know my my spouse has complained about X Y and Z and uh there does seem to be a little bit of you know interpersonal uh discontent in in this nature in this relationship Etc okay fine and then they if they're again in a particularly charitable mood they look at the kind of five roots of the tree and they're like well okay yeah I mean these sort of things happened but they can't make the leap to say but does any of that stuff actually rise to the level of of quote unquote trauma even little tea trauma like is the answer just that I need to get my ACT to together and drink a little less and you know just try to be more present with my kids or you know whatever whatever it doesn't matter what the what the fix is but but they're just not sure that going back and stirring the pot of what happened to them during the first 10 years of their life is going to be an exercise worth engaging in how would you help that person decide that you know you're right it's probably not worth stirring that up let's just work on some behavioral tools right now to you know address the behavior versus actually I don't think you're ever going to truly fix these things until you go back to the root I think that's a perfect way to approach it so let's try that you just in your example like maybe I should just do this less and do this more all these behaviors let's try that let's put together a plan goal setting okay um this is you know I'm coaching you we're not doing an intervention here therapeutic intervention and then we and and and if it happens it happens right but folks who realize or already know that they have trauma or have been wounded significantly sometimes I think the word just trips Folks up and they just can't get over the word right wounded right survivors whatever we want to call these folks they have a really hard time putting knowing into action right like I spent many years as a very well-informed