Your Struggles May Not Be Rooted In Trauma

These days, trauma informed approaches to healing and health (mental and physical) are commonplace. Trauma-informed care seeks to recognize and understand the impact trauma has on mental and physical health. Typically, trauma-informed care requires a diagnosis, disorder label, and therapeutic intervention. This approach can be beneficial for the 1 in 5 people Harvard Health reports have a history of trauma.

So, what about the other 4 of 5 people who feel blocked in moving forward and achieving their goals? Many struggles and challenges people face may not necessarily rooted in trauma or clinical disorders, but rather in their perceptions. The tendency on the health system to over pathologize normal mental and emotional challenges is rampant.

The Problem

For most adults, over 75%, their struggles and block are not trauma related. In fact, the majority of struggles are the result of ineffective solutions to a range of common, non-clinical, mental, and emotional challenges. Most Americans have been conditioned to believe that typical mental and emotional challenges are clinical disorders, creating an overreliance on the health care system and prescription.

Most people’s blocks and struggles (80%+) do not fall into the ‘clinical disorder’ category. Normal mental and emotional struggles are over-diagnosed and mislabeled, leading people to believe they require clinical intervention.

As a Doctor of Psychology, in the 40+ years I’ve been treating clients, less than half have a history of trauma nor do they have a clinical/medical mental health issue.  They have simply been misinformed, mistreated, or misdiagnosed. In other words, there is a tendency to over pathologize normal reactions to struggles. Additionally, the US mental health system is designed to identify and treat clinical disorders – practitioners trained in the conventional medical system are neither educated nor equipped to identify typical, everyday nonclinical struggles along with the effective strategies for resolution.

Sadly, the shortcomings of the mental health system are evidenced by the fact that despite the explosion of online mental health services like BetterHelp and TalkSpace along with an almost 50% increase in coaches since 2015, the demand for mental health services is higher than ever with an average 20% increase in psychiatric prescriptions, with suicide and substance abuse rates reaching an all-time high.

People are struggling and the expanding services and interventions are not stemming the tide.

The Discovery

My personal frustrations as a practitioner serving clients (personal healing/growth and leadership development) as well as a client seeking support, compelled me to return to school over 20 years ago, seeking a PhD in psychological research and human development. Since then my learnings, research, and expertise led me to profound discoveries about innate human potential along with the inherent ability to adapt and evolve at depths previously unidentified by conventional psychology and medical science.

Contrary to conventional scientific theory, such as Darwin’s genetic determinism which posits it’s your DNA that directs your growth and evolution over a lifetime, new age science has proven it’s not your genes or clinical disposition that determines your biology and life trajectory. Cellular growth and adaptation are not solely directed by your DNA as originally believed. In fact, it’s your thoughts and beliefs, informed by your perceptions, which continually influence your cells, transforming them in response.

Esteemed scientist, Dr Bruce Lipton, reinforces, “While conventional medicine and classical physicists focus on the material realm in understanding disease, quantum physics emphasizes the role of mind, an energy field, in shaping our biology. This conclusion is supported by the new science of epigenetics, which emphasizes how environment and consciousness shape genetics and behavior. Add to this fact, that current biology recognizes that only 1% of disease is connected to genes, while over 90% of disease is due to stress, a consequence of mental activity.”

This and similar discoveries have altered everything we understand about healing, health, growth, change, and potential.  Primarily that change is an inside-out, personalized process directly linked to perception and thought. This includes trauma and non-trauma related struggles. Who you are and who you chose to become (mentally, emotionally, physically) is your choice and remarkably nonclinical in nature.

The key is not so much in understanding or believing the concepts, it’s in the strategies employed to better knowing who you are at your core. Your potential and the ability to move past blocks and struggles are hidden in plain sight.

The Solution

Conventional Psychology, including cognitive and behavioral approaches, positive thinking, and psychotherapy, along with the recently popular coaching industry have been mainstays in mental and emotional growth as well as leadership development. However, positive thinking alone won’t generate a long-term positive change or outcome. Positive thoughts have a profound effect on our lives but only when they are in line with our subconscious beliefs.

Fields such as mindfulness, energy medicine, and performance psychology have been making quiet yet profound gains over the last 40 years resulting in the ability to make personal changes being returned directly to the individual, informed by frontier methods such as the aforementioned. It’s no longer an issue of clinical medical health for most people – it’s a matter of strategy and mindset designed to reveal your untapped evolutionary potential hidden in plain sight.

As a translational researcher, thought leader, and executive coach the solutions and strategies I offer are grounded in frontier sciences such as Behavioral Epigenetics, Neuropsychology, and Quantum Physics. Long-term therapy, prescriptions, and clinical health professionals are no longer required solutions for most people’s struggles. Chances are that your challenges fall within the normal range of non-trauma related struggles.

Your genes are not your destiny. Your environment, what you believe, and how you process those things are your new destiny. Within you is the ability to adapt and transform and you do both subconsciously and consciously.

Your beliefs are the engines that drive your life experience - psychologically and biologically. “You are not in fact beholden to your genes, and gene expression is changeable – once you begin to think, act, and feel differently. (Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza)

The most direct way to do this is by transforming your [subconscious] core beliefs – the hidden inner blueprints that have become outdated. The process does not require years of therapy and dependence on an expert. You have the ability to clarify and shift your inner blueprint in a matter of months. In fact, you already possess the wisdom and intelligence it takes to identify and remove blocks, clearing the path to transforming your future.