Paul Conti, MD

“The part of the trauma story we too often ignore involves changes to our brain biology and psychology, and the reason we ignore these effects is because trauma itself prevents us from seeing these changes and how their consequences play out in our lives. Trauma eats away at our dreams and colors our decisions without us even knowing it. In this way, trauma is like an internal villain or enemy that sets up house inside of us. This enemy makes us feel conflicted about who we are, what we are capable of achieving, and what we deserve. It messes with our relationship to the scale itself—adding extra weight to the negative side of life, cheating us out of our birthright of safety and joy, and doing so all the while without us having any idea that this is happening. Trauma changes our emotions and memories, and changed emotions and memories alter our decisions and the courses of our lives.”

“On a trip to the Andes once, I watched a master weaver create a vibrant tapestry. She drew together thick threads of seemingly infinite colors that appeared to spring out of one another and then lose themselves in the whole of what she was weaving on the loom, finding themselves again in the emergence of surprising new patterns. We’re like that tapestry—interwoven in more ways than we can understand—and unlike it, too. We’re different in that we’re both the woven thing and the weaver, who’s responsible for whatever emerges from the loom. Together, we’re the artists who create the world we live in.”

“One thing scientists tell us about the trauma virus is that it is harmful enough to affect the children of the future—children who aren’t even imagined yet, let alone born. Trauma can define how genetic characteristics are passed on, meaning that the consequences of trauma are being written into our future genetic record today. So trauma isn’t a pandemic that ends with death. We’re looking at a virus that infiltrates the survival chain of our very species, allowing its harm to amplify across generations.”