Recent posts
#1
General Discussion / Re: Letter to Gabor Mate
Last post by dollyvee - Today at 12:01:10 PM(posting in two parts because of character limit on posts)
4. PROMOTING PSEUDOSCIENCE
Your scientific cherry-picking, misrepresentation of clinical data, and reliance on long-outdated and refuted theories is so extensive that a complete rebuttal goes far beyond the scope of this letter.
To name just a few areas where you promote disinformation:
You claim a causal relationship between trauma and various somatic diseases, including autoimmune illness and cancer - despite the absence of robust scientific consensus.
You assert a direct link between trauma and ADHD, which is not supported by current clinical evidence.
You frame all addiction as trauma-related, dismissing the complexity of biological, social, and psychological contributors.
You echo outdated ideas about personality traits contributing to cancer, which have been scientifically discredited for decades.
You promote a distorted understanding of how medical and psychological disciplines view somatic and mental health problems.
You misuse and conflate clinical terms demonstrating a lack of psychological and neurobiological understanding. For instance, during your talk at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, you described attentional difficulties as trauma-based dissociation, conflating entirely separate phenomena.
As stated, I will present detailed examples of this in my upcoming broadcast.
5. PROFESSIONAL FOUL PLAY
In doing all of the above, you show disregard for your professional peers - clinicians, researchers, and educators in both somatic and mental health fields. Worse still, you foster public mistrust in medical, psychological, and academic expertise. In a time when scientific knowledge is under increasing attack, such behavior is especially reckless.
Instead of encouraging collaboration across disciplines - which is now more necessary than ever - you polarize. You alienate. You undermine.
6. BETRAYING TRUST
Dr. Maté, as a medical doctor, you are fully aware of the foundational ethical principle: primum non nocere - first, do no harm. You served under the Hippocratic Oath for decades. There is no excuse for not understanding that promoting pseudotherapy to trauma survivors does harm. It delays, derails, or altogether blocks access to professional, safe, and evidence-based care.
You betray the trust of the very people you claim to advocate for - those healing from betrayal. You also betray the trust of mental health professionals who attend your lectures expecting qualified insight, not therapeutic overreach disguised as wisdom. And you betray the trust of the colleagues and institutions that host you, such as those last Friday in Warsaw. More on that below.
A WORD OF SOMBRE CONCLUSION
What you are doing, Dr. Maté, no longer looks like offering healing opportunities. It looks like manipulation and the abuse of power. It looks like creating ambiguity, where we should strive for clarity. It looks like putting lives at risk, where we should establish safety.
It looks like reproducing trauma.
I wish I could say otherwise after your first visit to Poland. I wish you had not cast this long shadow over your earlier accomplishments.
And I wish I could end this letter here.
But I cannot - because of your response to the protest letter from the Jewish community, which you publicly addressed last Wednesday in Łódź. While I will leave the political aspects to others more qualified, I want to focus on your reaction to the claim that you promote pseudoscience.
Here's what you said:
,,As for pseudoscience, I'd like them to explain why - if I promote pseudoscience - I am invited to speak at psychotherapeutic conferences and universities".
It is a clever line, Dr. Maté. I have been reflecting on it deeply. And unfortunately, I have come to some bleak conclusions.
7. BEING HOSTED BY REPUTABLE INSTITUTIONS WITHOUT TRANSPARENCY
There is no other public figure whose credentials are more widely misrepresented in Poland than yours. Your publisher Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca and media like Vogue Polska list you as a psychiatrist. Przekrój calls you a psychologist. Zwierciadło calls you a famed therapist. You have been referred to as a psychotherapist by Konteksty. Miejsce Psychoterapii and Bożena Haściło - a psychologist, psychotherapist, and Laboratorium Psychoedukacji supervisor. Even dr Natalia Zajączkowska, organizer of your Polish tour, routinely introduces you as "a retired doctor and therapist."
If this were an isolated confusion, I might puzzle over how so many professionals could get it wrong. But after outlining your broader strategy, a more troubling possibility arises: you allow - perhaps even encourage - these misimpressions to stand because they serve your goals.
You do not need to lie. You just do not correct the record.
Well, I will. Because in trauma-informed practice and in social justice, we are taught that when transparency is missing, someone is benefitting from it. In the context of trauma, that person is almost always the perpetrator - or the enabler of harm.
So, to answer your question - why does a pseudoscientist like you get invited to speak at universities and conferences?
First, because you cultivate a misleading public image of your expertise.
Second, because you tailor your message strategically. During your recent tour, you did not say a word about Compassionate Inquiry® or Suicide Attention - even though you just launched a Polish version of the Compassionate Inquiry® website and are clearly entering the Polish market. Why not speak about a modality that forms such a major part of your current work?
Because if you had, you would not have been hosted by any Faculty of Psychology. Your methods, and the way you certify others in them, stand in direct opposition to the Polish Psychologist's Code of Ethics.
Could it be that one of your two certified Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioners in Poland - Dagmara Ziniewicz, also your assistant and Compassionate Inquiry® mentor - advised you to avoid the subject for precisely this reason? I can only speculate.
What I do know is this: neither prof. Katarzyna Schier nor prof. Małgorzata Dragan had any idea about Compassionate Inquiry® or Suicide Attention. I spoke with prof. Schier personally after your Friday event. From what I know, they were both shocked and unsettled.
So yes, Dr. Maté - you already knew the answer to your own question.
You get invited because you mislead people.
You are charismatic. You have carefully cultivated an image: the imperfect, compassionate "uncle Gabor" who speaks truth to trauma. It disarms people. It builds a following. It makes them stop asking hard questions.
And of course, you could argue that your websites are public, and it is not your fault that others fail to investigate thoroughly. And in part, you would be right.
But here we reach the systemic factors that enable you:
First: A decline in critical thinking and fact-checking among Polish mental health professionals and academics. Compassionate Inquiry® is just one of many pseudotherapies that have quietly slipped past institutional gatekeepers in recent years. This is a problem we must confront head-on and I am prepared to do so.
Second: Role overload in the helping professions. With overwhelming clinical demands, unclear regulations, and a nonstop flow of new methods, it has become nearly impossible for individual professionals to track every emerging model or teacher.
This is why, today, interdisciplinary collaboration and science communication matter more than ever. No one person can hold all the knowledge. But together, across fields and perspectives, we can guard the boundaries of safety and trust.
We have an obligation to protect vulnerable people from charismatic figures selling false hope. If scholars and clinicians do not stand up to pseudoscience - who will?
This is my contribution to making this world more transparent, more accountable, and more just.
And as for you, Dr. Maté, I can only sigh once more, recalling so much of your wisdom:
"You can't separate politics from health and mental health". "Not why the addiction, but why the pain". "Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you". "Learn to read symptoms not only as problems to be overcome, but as messages to be heeded". "- Why can't parents see their children's pain?
I've had to ask myself the same thing. It's because we haven't seen our own".
And more recently: "Healing trauma needs to begin with the recognition of trauma" (Łódź University), as well as last Friday's reminder: "No one gets complex trauma on their own".
Such accurate and powerful words - yet I will not quote them any more, Dr. Maté. Not because I value them less - I do not. But because there is too much of your darkness running free for me to carry your light forward.
I believe we deserve more than ambiguities. And even more strongly, I believe we can do better.
It is time to reclaim integrity in the service of healing. When we choose clarity over charisma and ethics over influence, we begin again - with truth, and with hope.
With kind regards, Carolina Const
A POST SCRIPTUM CALL TO REFLECTION AND ACTION
for the organizers: Sieć nauczycieli akademickich i osób studenckich związanych z polskimi uniwersytetami Wydział Psychologii UW, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Uniwersytet Łódzki, Instytut Psychologii UŁ, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Łodzi, Fotofestiwal Lodz, Nowy Teatr, Teatr w Krakowie - im. Juliusza Słowackiego, Kino Nowe Horyzonty, Teatr Ósmego Dnia
for the partners and patrons: Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego, Akademickie Centrum Designu, Łódzkie Centrum Wydarzeń, PURO Hotels
for the media: OKO.press Duży Format Rut Kurkiewicz / tvp.info Justyna Kopinska / Vogue Polska Salam Lab Pawel Moscicki Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca Wydawnictwo Galaktyka
those who quote and share: Laboratorium Psychoedukacji, Ośrodek Pomocy i Edukacji Psychologicznej Intra, Fundacja Małgosi Braunek Bądź, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychoterapii Psychoanalitycznej, Instytut Poliwagalny
trauma therapists and researchers in Poland: Centrum Badań nad Traumą i Kryzysami Życiowymi, Centrum Badań nad Traumą i Dysocjacją, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychotraumatologii, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychologiczne, Uniwersytet SWPS, Małgorzata Dragan, Marcin Rzeszutek, Igor Pietkiewicz, Radosław Tomalski
4. PROMOTING PSEUDOSCIENCE
Your scientific cherry-picking, misrepresentation of clinical data, and reliance on long-outdated and refuted theories is so extensive that a complete rebuttal goes far beyond the scope of this letter.
To name just a few areas where you promote disinformation:
You claim a causal relationship between trauma and various somatic diseases, including autoimmune illness and cancer - despite the absence of robust scientific consensus.
You assert a direct link between trauma and ADHD, which is not supported by current clinical evidence.
You frame all addiction as trauma-related, dismissing the complexity of biological, social, and psychological contributors.
You echo outdated ideas about personality traits contributing to cancer, which have been scientifically discredited for decades.
You promote a distorted understanding of how medical and psychological disciplines view somatic and mental health problems.
You misuse and conflate clinical terms demonstrating a lack of psychological and neurobiological understanding. For instance, during your talk at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, you described attentional difficulties as trauma-based dissociation, conflating entirely separate phenomena.
As stated, I will present detailed examples of this in my upcoming broadcast.
5. PROFESSIONAL FOUL PLAY
In doing all of the above, you show disregard for your professional peers - clinicians, researchers, and educators in both somatic and mental health fields. Worse still, you foster public mistrust in medical, psychological, and academic expertise. In a time when scientific knowledge is under increasing attack, such behavior is especially reckless.
Instead of encouraging collaboration across disciplines - which is now more necessary than ever - you polarize. You alienate. You undermine.
6. BETRAYING TRUST
Dr. Maté, as a medical doctor, you are fully aware of the foundational ethical principle: primum non nocere - first, do no harm. You served under the Hippocratic Oath for decades. There is no excuse for not understanding that promoting pseudotherapy to trauma survivors does harm. It delays, derails, or altogether blocks access to professional, safe, and evidence-based care.
You betray the trust of the very people you claim to advocate for - those healing from betrayal. You also betray the trust of mental health professionals who attend your lectures expecting qualified insight, not therapeutic overreach disguised as wisdom. And you betray the trust of the colleagues and institutions that host you, such as those last Friday in Warsaw. More on that below.
A WORD OF SOMBRE CONCLUSION
What you are doing, Dr. Maté, no longer looks like offering healing opportunities. It looks like manipulation and the abuse of power. It looks like creating ambiguity, where we should strive for clarity. It looks like putting lives at risk, where we should establish safety.
It looks like reproducing trauma.
I wish I could say otherwise after your first visit to Poland. I wish you had not cast this long shadow over your earlier accomplishments.
And I wish I could end this letter here.
But I cannot - because of your response to the protest letter from the Jewish community, which you publicly addressed last Wednesday in Łódź. While I will leave the political aspects to others more qualified, I want to focus on your reaction to the claim that you promote pseudoscience.
Here's what you said:
,,As for pseudoscience, I'd like them to explain why - if I promote pseudoscience - I am invited to speak at psychotherapeutic conferences and universities".
It is a clever line, Dr. Maté. I have been reflecting on it deeply. And unfortunately, I have come to some bleak conclusions.
7. BEING HOSTED BY REPUTABLE INSTITUTIONS WITHOUT TRANSPARENCY
There is no other public figure whose credentials are more widely misrepresented in Poland than yours. Your publisher Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca and media like Vogue Polska list you as a psychiatrist. Przekrój calls you a psychologist. Zwierciadło calls you a famed therapist. You have been referred to as a psychotherapist by Konteksty. Miejsce Psychoterapii and Bożena Haściło - a psychologist, psychotherapist, and Laboratorium Psychoedukacji supervisor. Even dr Natalia Zajączkowska, organizer of your Polish tour, routinely introduces you as "a retired doctor and therapist."
If this were an isolated confusion, I might puzzle over how so many professionals could get it wrong. But after outlining your broader strategy, a more troubling possibility arises: you allow - perhaps even encourage - these misimpressions to stand because they serve your goals.
You do not need to lie. You just do not correct the record.
Well, I will. Because in trauma-informed practice and in social justice, we are taught that when transparency is missing, someone is benefitting from it. In the context of trauma, that person is almost always the perpetrator - or the enabler of harm.
So, to answer your question - why does a pseudoscientist like you get invited to speak at universities and conferences?
First, because you cultivate a misleading public image of your expertise.
Second, because you tailor your message strategically. During your recent tour, you did not say a word about Compassionate Inquiry® or Suicide Attention - even though you just launched a Polish version of the Compassionate Inquiry® website and are clearly entering the Polish market. Why not speak about a modality that forms such a major part of your current work?
Because if you had, you would not have been hosted by any Faculty of Psychology. Your methods, and the way you certify others in them, stand in direct opposition to the Polish Psychologist's Code of Ethics.
Could it be that one of your two certified Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioners in Poland - Dagmara Ziniewicz, also your assistant and Compassionate Inquiry® mentor - advised you to avoid the subject for precisely this reason? I can only speculate.
What I do know is this: neither prof. Katarzyna Schier nor prof. Małgorzata Dragan had any idea about Compassionate Inquiry® or Suicide Attention. I spoke with prof. Schier personally after your Friday event. From what I know, they were both shocked and unsettled.
So yes, Dr. Maté - you already knew the answer to your own question.
You get invited because you mislead people.
You are charismatic. You have carefully cultivated an image: the imperfect, compassionate "uncle Gabor" who speaks truth to trauma. It disarms people. It builds a following. It makes them stop asking hard questions.
And of course, you could argue that your websites are public, and it is not your fault that others fail to investigate thoroughly. And in part, you would be right.
But here we reach the systemic factors that enable you:
First: A decline in critical thinking and fact-checking among Polish mental health professionals and academics. Compassionate Inquiry® is just one of many pseudotherapies that have quietly slipped past institutional gatekeepers in recent years. This is a problem we must confront head-on and I am prepared to do so.
Second: Role overload in the helping professions. With overwhelming clinical demands, unclear regulations, and a nonstop flow of new methods, it has become nearly impossible for individual professionals to track every emerging model or teacher.
This is why, today, interdisciplinary collaboration and science communication matter more than ever. No one person can hold all the knowledge. But together, across fields and perspectives, we can guard the boundaries of safety and trust.
We have an obligation to protect vulnerable people from charismatic figures selling false hope. If scholars and clinicians do not stand up to pseudoscience - who will?
This is my contribution to making this world more transparent, more accountable, and more just.
And as for you, Dr. Maté, I can only sigh once more, recalling so much of your wisdom:
"You can't separate politics from health and mental health". "Not why the addiction, but why the pain". "Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you". "Learn to read symptoms not only as problems to be overcome, but as messages to be heeded". "- Why can't parents see their children's pain?
I've had to ask myself the same thing. It's because we haven't seen our own".
And more recently: "Healing trauma needs to begin with the recognition of trauma" (Łódź University), as well as last Friday's reminder: "No one gets complex trauma on their own".
Such accurate and powerful words - yet I will not quote them any more, Dr. Maté. Not because I value them less - I do not. But because there is too much of your darkness running free for me to carry your light forward.
I believe we deserve more than ambiguities. And even more strongly, I believe we can do better.
It is time to reclaim integrity in the service of healing. When we choose clarity over charisma and ethics over influence, we begin again - with truth, and with hope.
With kind regards, Carolina Const
A POST SCRIPTUM CALL TO REFLECTION AND ACTION
for the organizers: Sieć nauczycieli akademickich i osób studenckich związanych z polskimi uniwersytetami Wydział Psychologii UW, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Uniwersytet Łódzki, Instytut Psychologii UŁ, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Łodzi, Fotofestiwal Lodz, Nowy Teatr, Teatr w Krakowie - im. Juliusza Słowackiego, Kino Nowe Horyzonty, Teatr Ósmego Dnia
for the partners and patrons: Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego, Akademickie Centrum Designu, Łódzkie Centrum Wydarzeń, PURO Hotels
for the media: OKO.press Duży Format Rut Kurkiewicz / tvp.info Justyna Kopinska / Vogue Polska Salam Lab Pawel Moscicki Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca Wydawnictwo Galaktyka
those who quote and share: Laboratorium Psychoedukacji, Ośrodek Pomocy i Edukacji Psychologicznej Intra, Fundacja Małgosi Braunek Bądź, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychoterapii Psychoanalitycznej, Instytut Poliwagalny
trauma therapists and researchers in Poland: Centrum Badań nad Traumą i Kryzysami Życiowymi, Centrum Badań nad Traumą i Dysocjacją, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychotraumatologii, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychologiczne, Uniwersytet SWPS, Małgorzata Dragan, Marcin Rzeszutek, Igor Pietkiewicz, Radosław Tomalski
#2
General Discussion / Letter to Gabor Mate
Last post by dollyvee - Today at 12:00:33 PMSo, as I wrote in my journal, I came across this letter to Gabor Mate via a reddit post (after trying to find the original lecture behind a suspected deep fake Gabor Mate video). I found it thoughtful, provoking and insightful and wanted to leave it here. I think it's interesting for survivors of abuse to have to navigate safe people, and one of the fundamental concepts I grapple with is how to trust again?
I think I have learned as she says that when transparency is missing, someone is always benefitting, usually the perpetrator of harm.
"But after outlining your broader strategy, a more troubling possibility arises: you allow - perhaps even encourage - these misimpressions to stand because they serve your goals.
You do not need to lie. You just do not correct the record.
Well, I will. Because in trauma-informed practice and in social justice, we are taught that when transparency is missing, someone is benefitting from it. In the context of trauma, that person is almost always the perpetrator - or the enabler of harm."
Emphasis mine.
So, perhaps this is why I always have a need to search for the "objective truth" in matters and that peoples' subjective realities can be hard to reconcile with their "misuse" of power, where even the ones that want to help us might harm us.
Original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/therapists/comments/1lf7ot2/gabor_mat%C3%A9_an_open_letter/
Edit - some people seem to think I wrote this, I didn't. Carolina Const did.
I'm reposting here an open letter from a Polish psychologist in response to Gabor Maté's speaking tour of Poland. I think incredibly well written and nuanced, but wondering what y'all think. Reading this reinforces for me the importance of professional ethics. Gonna post the whole thing here, it's long:
AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. GABOR MATÉ LIST OTWARTY DO DRA GABORA MATÉ (Przewiń w dół dla wersji polskiej - pojawi się najpóźniej w południe 17 czerwca 2025)
Dear Dr. Gabor Maté,
I am writing this letter as a psychologist, as a professional working with trauma survivors using evidence-based, body- and mindfulness-based approaches, and as a complex trauma survivor.
I will remain forever grateful for the tremendous work you have done to destigmatize addiction and trauma. Those who have walked this path know what a difficult and painstaking course it is - to make trauma and suffering known, seen, and met with compassion. After all, as Leo Eitinger once said, "War and victims are something the community wants to forget; a veil of oblivion is drawn over everything painful and unpleasant".
And here you are, in my vastly traumatized home country. Touring Warszawa, Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, and Łódź with "Dr. Gabor Maté Poland Tour" over the past five days. Undeterred and devoted to making it more difficult for people to look away.
This makes me assume that you do realize how trauma is, at its core, an abuse of power - as prof. Judith Herman clearly proved over thirty years ago. Power may mean many things: a title, profession, popularity, authority, access to information, control over the narrative. And its nature is dynamic. During this very tour, you said yourself that when we do not heal trauma, we may unsettlingly easily shift from being trauma survivors to becoming trauma perpetrators. I could not agree more.
Last Friday evening, I sat down at the former University Library in Warsaw. The lecture hall was filled to the brim. Like so many others, I came to listen - to you. To what would come up in your dialogue with some of Poland's top trauma researchers: prof. Katarzyna Schier, a renowned psychologist and psychoanalyst, and prof. Małgorzata Dragan, head of the Polish Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Polskie Towarzystwo Badań nad Stresem Traumatycznym - both of whom work at the University of Warsaw's Trauma Lab. My heart jumped when I heard that prof. Maja Lis-Turlejska was present there too - a true legend and a pioneer to whom anyone providing or receiving trauma therapy in Poland owes a bow. What a gathering.
What a gathering! - I gasped. I came over to see it all with my own eyes because I still could not believe it. I hoped that some questions would be asked, or that at the very least I could ask them myself. Since I was not granted the opportunity during or after your lecture, here I am - writing a letter of concern that I would so much prefer were a deep-hearted "thank you" instead. But if I am to keep my conscience clear, I cannot thank you. I should not.
I must not.
Dr. Maté, you are a medical doctor by profession. You know that scope of practice is neither snobbery nor elitism. Scope of practice defines professional boundaries of skill and competence to provide quality, accountability, and - above all - safety, both for those we help and for ourselves. Here in Poland, we know this particularly well, because only two weeks ago, we finally passed a draft law regulating the profession of psychologist. We know that exceeding the limits of one's professional role and responsibilities - as defined by education, training, experience, and legal and ethical standards - brings about suffering. In the context of your tour, it all too often exacerbates hurt and trauma.
Yesterday, at the University of Warsaw, some of your first words were that no one gets complex trauma on their own. You are then well aware that trauma only thrives under certain conditions: ambiguity, non-accountability, ambivalence, manipulation, extreme loss of power and agency, defied boundaries, and denied access to informed choice.
Considering all the above, I struggle to justify your decisions and actions - just as I struggle with you being hosted by esteemed universities, scholars, and journalists. I also fail to believe that it was only by sheer accident that, throughout your tour, you kept on omitting some of your dealings with such diligence.
Before I get to the specifics, let me underscore that the aim of this letter is not to provide counterarguments (which I will readily present in a broadcast that I am currently preparing), but to signal some pressing issues. Below you will find a few that I consider the most relevant in the context of your recent tour.
AUTHORING AND SELLING PSEUDOTHERAPIES
Dr. Maté, you are a retired family physician who has created and marketed Compassionate Inquiry® - a "psychotherapeutic approach created by Dr. Gabor Maté over several decades while working with both patients and retreat participants. This approach gently uncovers and releases the layers of childhood trauma, constriction and suppressed emotion embedded in the body, that are at the root of mental and physical illness and addiction", as described on your website.
You have not tested it clinically. You do not know if it works (except for a handful of selective and anecdotal proofs that you gladly share). You do not know if it is safe. Despite lending Compassionate Inquiry® the credibility of a medical doctor, you do not care to put it to research or clinical verification.
Nor do you care to consult trauma-focused mental health professionals or scholars as contributors to your "psychotherapeutic" approach. To my mind, this should be a given, considering you have no background in the social sciences - like psychology, psychotherapy, or social work. Instead, you invite Sat Dharam Kaur, a naturopath and kundalini yoga teacher, as the co-creator.
Oh, I do not discard the therapeutic potential in yoga. I am, in fact, honored to work as a hatha yoga teacher. I am also a Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga facilitator and licensed trainer. And I worked as a licensed aromatherapist when I lived in Norway, where this occupation is regulated by the state. This is where I learned - I was obliged to learn and respect - both the possibilities and the limits of my professions. It saddens me that you do not seem to care for them at least as much.
What saddens me even more is that - somehow - you did care enough to register Compassionate Inquiry® as your trademark.
I am now pausing to let out a long sigh. Dr. Maté, you offer and capitalize on a "psychotherapeutic approach" that gives the impression of being medically backed, trauma-focused psychotherapy - without being one. I cannot call it anything other than an abuse of power and authority.
2. CERTIFYING TRAUMA THERAPISTS WITHOUT PROPER CREDENTIALS OR OVERSIGHT
To my great concern, your website states that Compassionate Inquiry® "can lead to certification" and that "anyone can take this course" - with no required educational or professional background in healthcare or mental health.
At the same time, you describe the Compassionate Inquiry® Professional Online Training as "targeted for professionals already working with clients, such as addiction counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists, medical doctors, naturopaths, life coaches, and other related fields, whose scope of practice includes counseling". In other words, you openly admit and train people who practice unregulated professions - such as homeopaths, yoga teachers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and life coaches - and you allow them to believe it is entirely acceptable to present themselves as "trauma therapists" after completing your $3,900 CAD program.
And they do.
On your website, "graduates" of this program are listed as CI Psychotherapists and CI Practitioners. I have checked this multiple times - these labels appear without exception. Moreover, you recommend some of them as trusted providers, despite many having no formal training or licensure in psychotherapy, psychology, social work, or medicine. Nonetheless, you certify and promote them to the general public - including vulnerable individuals coping with trauma, mental illness, and chronic disease.
This is not simply unethical. In some jurisdictions, it is illegal.
Let me emphasize: training others in trauma therapy - or issuing a certificate that may be misinterpreted as a clinical license or professional endorsement - while not being a licensed mental health professional yourself, is a serious breach of ethical and professional responsibility.
To illustrate the implications of this, I will share one concrete example. A popular Polish yoga teacher and influencer enrolled in your program and, after just one year of online training, could have become a Compassionate Inquiry® therapist. She later chose to withdraw, saying the training was "too much for her, emotionally" (personal communication, April 4, 2022). And that brings us to another issue.
3. CLAIMING TO TREAT TRAUMA WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY
What is particularly troubling is that that Compassionate Inquiry® promotes itself as a trauma-informed modality while bypassing the most basic standards of clinical safety, professional accountability, and ethical responsibility.
Your materials repeatedly blur the line between inspiration and treatment. There is a fundamental difference between sharing personal insights and offering therapeutic guidance. Yet you present yourself as an authority on trauma - without submitting your method to peer review, without clinical testing, and without any accountability framework for its application. In your lectures, books, and trainings, there is no distinction made between regulated professionals and those with no formal education in mental health. Your public does not seem to know or care. But we, as professionals, must care. We have an ethical duty to do so.
Trauma is not a soft, spiritual issue that can be "healed" through empathy, intuition, or borrowed techniques alone. Responsible trauma therapy demands rigorous knowledge of psychopathology, clinical ethics, and intervention safety. If a participant in a Compassionate Inquiry® session experiences dissociation, flashbacks, suicidal ideation, or retraumatization - what systems are in place to ensure their safety? What kind of emergency response protocol do your "practitioners" follow? Are they even trained to assess risk?
The consequences of poorly facilitated trauma work are not abstract. Untrained practitioners can cause retraumatization, confusion, emotional flooding, and a lasting mistrust in professional help. If these practitioners are not regulated or held to a professional code, survivors have nowhere to turn for recourse.
You do not address any of this in your public materials. And from what I witnessed personally, the situation is worse than omission - it is normalization.
In 2024, I attended a Compassionate Inquiry® demonstration session led by your co-director Sat Dharam Kaur. What I saw was not "gentle uncovering and releasing", but a fast track to retraumatization. The sessions typically followed this structure:
Ask a participant to recall a dark or painful life experience (someone with whom you have no therapeutic relationship and whose mental health history is unknown),
Evoke and amplify strong emotional reactions,
Then label the visible distress as "release".
Any trained trauma therapist knows how easy it is to trigger overwhelming emotions in survivors. And any practitioner familiar with the foundational three-phase model of trauma treatment knows that stabilization and establishing safety must come first. Skipping that phase is not just negligent - it is dangerous.
I am not alone in this concern. Participants in your courses have voiced similar doubts globally. But let me ask you this: Will a trauma survivor in distress be able to recognize such violations? Will they have the internal resources or support to take action if harmed? Or are they left, once again, to carry the consequences alone?
Unfortunately, it does not end there.
For some time now you offer a Compassionate Inquiry® Suicide Attention Training - a 25-hour online course described as a "comprehensive, experiential training for therapists, health professionals, and people working in education, medical, or personal development fields." You promise to equip participants to "hold space for clients in suicidal distress" and provide "effective therapeutic interventions that support the client's healing and growth."
What this actually appears to be is a skillfully marketed invitation to take clinical risks with people's lives - without oversight, regulation, or consequence.
Another thing that troubles me is your continued dismissal of suicidologists and licensed mental health professionals in favor of individuals who appear to lack adequate training. For example, this training is co-led by:
Camilla Monroe, an undergraduate in Arts, who now calls herself an "integrative psychotherapist" after completing your two-year Compassionate Inquiry® program and a year of Polyvagal (sic!) with Deb Dana.
Irina Ungureanu, an actress describing herself as a "trauma-informed therapist" with a background in transpersonal psychology and performative arts. She holds a PhD in interculturalism, yet her psychotherapeutic credentials are far more difficult to trace than her acting work.
This is not innovation. This is not advocacy. This is recklessness.
And as with your broader Compassionate Inquiry® approach, this model leaves vulnerable people exposed to significant harm - while those facilitating the harm remain legally and ethically unaccountable.
I think I have learned as she says that when transparency is missing, someone is always benefitting, usually the perpetrator of harm.
"But after outlining your broader strategy, a more troubling possibility arises: you allow - perhaps even encourage - these misimpressions to stand because they serve your goals.
You do not need to lie. You just do not correct the record.
Well, I will. Because in trauma-informed practice and in social justice, we are taught that when transparency is missing, someone is benefitting from it. In the context of trauma, that person is almost always the perpetrator - or the enabler of harm."
Emphasis mine.
So, perhaps this is why I always have a need to search for the "objective truth" in matters and that peoples' subjective realities can be hard to reconcile with their "misuse" of power, where even the ones that want to help us might harm us.
Original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/therapists/comments/1lf7ot2/gabor_mat%C3%A9_an_open_letter/
Edit - some people seem to think I wrote this, I didn't. Carolina Const did.
I'm reposting here an open letter from a Polish psychologist in response to Gabor Maté's speaking tour of Poland. I think incredibly well written and nuanced, but wondering what y'all think. Reading this reinforces for me the importance of professional ethics. Gonna post the whole thing here, it's long:
AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. GABOR MATÉ LIST OTWARTY DO DRA GABORA MATÉ (Przewiń w dół dla wersji polskiej - pojawi się najpóźniej w południe 17 czerwca 2025)
Dear Dr. Gabor Maté,
I am writing this letter as a psychologist, as a professional working with trauma survivors using evidence-based, body- and mindfulness-based approaches, and as a complex trauma survivor.
I will remain forever grateful for the tremendous work you have done to destigmatize addiction and trauma. Those who have walked this path know what a difficult and painstaking course it is - to make trauma and suffering known, seen, and met with compassion. After all, as Leo Eitinger once said, "War and victims are something the community wants to forget; a veil of oblivion is drawn over everything painful and unpleasant".
And here you are, in my vastly traumatized home country. Touring Warszawa, Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, and Łódź with "Dr. Gabor Maté Poland Tour" over the past five days. Undeterred and devoted to making it more difficult for people to look away.
This makes me assume that you do realize how trauma is, at its core, an abuse of power - as prof. Judith Herman clearly proved over thirty years ago. Power may mean many things: a title, profession, popularity, authority, access to information, control over the narrative. And its nature is dynamic. During this very tour, you said yourself that when we do not heal trauma, we may unsettlingly easily shift from being trauma survivors to becoming trauma perpetrators. I could not agree more.
Last Friday evening, I sat down at the former University Library in Warsaw. The lecture hall was filled to the brim. Like so many others, I came to listen - to you. To what would come up in your dialogue with some of Poland's top trauma researchers: prof. Katarzyna Schier, a renowned psychologist and psychoanalyst, and prof. Małgorzata Dragan, head of the Polish Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Polskie Towarzystwo Badań nad Stresem Traumatycznym - both of whom work at the University of Warsaw's Trauma Lab. My heart jumped when I heard that prof. Maja Lis-Turlejska was present there too - a true legend and a pioneer to whom anyone providing or receiving trauma therapy in Poland owes a bow. What a gathering.
What a gathering! - I gasped. I came over to see it all with my own eyes because I still could not believe it. I hoped that some questions would be asked, or that at the very least I could ask them myself. Since I was not granted the opportunity during or after your lecture, here I am - writing a letter of concern that I would so much prefer were a deep-hearted "thank you" instead. But if I am to keep my conscience clear, I cannot thank you. I should not.
I must not.
Dr. Maté, you are a medical doctor by profession. You know that scope of practice is neither snobbery nor elitism. Scope of practice defines professional boundaries of skill and competence to provide quality, accountability, and - above all - safety, both for those we help and for ourselves. Here in Poland, we know this particularly well, because only two weeks ago, we finally passed a draft law regulating the profession of psychologist. We know that exceeding the limits of one's professional role and responsibilities - as defined by education, training, experience, and legal and ethical standards - brings about suffering. In the context of your tour, it all too often exacerbates hurt and trauma.
Yesterday, at the University of Warsaw, some of your first words were that no one gets complex trauma on their own. You are then well aware that trauma only thrives under certain conditions: ambiguity, non-accountability, ambivalence, manipulation, extreme loss of power and agency, defied boundaries, and denied access to informed choice.
Considering all the above, I struggle to justify your decisions and actions - just as I struggle with you being hosted by esteemed universities, scholars, and journalists. I also fail to believe that it was only by sheer accident that, throughout your tour, you kept on omitting some of your dealings with such diligence.
Before I get to the specifics, let me underscore that the aim of this letter is not to provide counterarguments (which I will readily present in a broadcast that I am currently preparing), but to signal some pressing issues. Below you will find a few that I consider the most relevant in the context of your recent tour.
AUTHORING AND SELLING PSEUDOTHERAPIES
Dr. Maté, you are a retired family physician who has created and marketed Compassionate Inquiry® - a "psychotherapeutic approach created by Dr. Gabor Maté over several decades while working with both patients and retreat participants. This approach gently uncovers and releases the layers of childhood trauma, constriction and suppressed emotion embedded in the body, that are at the root of mental and physical illness and addiction", as described on your website.
You have not tested it clinically. You do not know if it works (except for a handful of selective and anecdotal proofs that you gladly share). You do not know if it is safe. Despite lending Compassionate Inquiry® the credibility of a medical doctor, you do not care to put it to research or clinical verification.
Nor do you care to consult trauma-focused mental health professionals or scholars as contributors to your "psychotherapeutic" approach. To my mind, this should be a given, considering you have no background in the social sciences - like psychology, psychotherapy, or social work. Instead, you invite Sat Dharam Kaur, a naturopath and kundalini yoga teacher, as the co-creator.
Oh, I do not discard the therapeutic potential in yoga. I am, in fact, honored to work as a hatha yoga teacher. I am also a Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga facilitator and licensed trainer. And I worked as a licensed aromatherapist when I lived in Norway, where this occupation is regulated by the state. This is where I learned - I was obliged to learn and respect - both the possibilities and the limits of my professions. It saddens me that you do not seem to care for them at least as much.
What saddens me even more is that - somehow - you did care enough to register Compassionate Inquiry® as your trademark.
I am now pausing to let out a long sigh. Dr. Maté, you offer and capitalize on a "psychotherapeutic approach" that gives the impression of being medically backed, trauma-focused psychotherapy - without being one. I cannot call it anything other than an abuse of power and authority.
2. CERTIFYING TRAUMA THERAPISTS WITHOUT PROPER CREDENTIALS OR OVERSIGHT
To my great concern, your website states that Compassionate Inquiry® "can lead to certification" and that "anyone can take this course" - with no required educational or professional background in healthcare or mental health.
At the same time, you describe the Compassionate Inquiry® Professional Online Training as "targeted for professionals already working with clients, such as addiction counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists, medical doctors, naturopaths, life coaches, and other related fields, whose scope of practice includes counseling". In other words, you openly admit and train people who practice unregulated professions - such as homeopaths, yoga teachers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and life coaches - and you allow them to believe it is entirely acceptable to present themselves as "trauma therapists" after completing your $3,900 CAD program.
And they do.
On your website, "graduates" of this program are listed as CI Psychotherapists and CI Practitioners. I have checked this multiple times - these labels appear without exception. Moreover, you recommend some of them as trusted providers, despite many having no formal training or licensure in psychotherapy, psychology, social work, or medicine. Nonetheless, you certify and promote them to the general public - including vulnerable individuals coping with trauma, mental illness, and chronic disease.
This is not simply unethical. In some jurisdictions, it is illegal.
Let me emphasize: training others in trauma therapy - or issuing a certificate that may be misinterpreted as a clinical license or professional endorsement - while not being a licensed mental health professional yourself, is a serious breach of ethical and professional responsibility.
To illustrate the implications of this, I will share one concrete example. A popular Polish yoga teacher and influencer enrolled in your program and, after just one year of online training, could have become a Compassionate Inquiry® therapist. She later chose to withdraw, saying the training was "too much for her, emotionally" (personal communication, April 4, 2022). And that brings us to another issue.
3. CLAIMING TO TREAT TRAUMA WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY
What is particularly troubling is that that Compassionate Inquiry® promotes itself as a trauma-informed modality while bypassing the most basic standards of clinical safety, professional accountability, and ethical responsibility.
Your materials repeatedly blur the line between inspiration and treatment. There is a fundamental difference between sharing personal insights and offering therapeutic guidance. Yet you present yourself as an authority on trauma - without submitting your method to peer review, without clinical testing, and without any accountability framework for its application. In your lectures, books, and trainings, there is no distinction made between regulated professionals and those with no formal education in mental health. Your public does not seem to know or care. But we, as professionals, must care. We have an ethical duty to do so.
Trauma is not a soft, spiritual issue that can be "healed" through empathy, intuition, or borrowed techniques alone. Responsible trauma therapy demands rigorous knowledge of psychopathology, clinical ethics, and intervention safety. If a participant in a Compassionate Inquiry® session experiences dissociation, flashbacks, suicidal ideation, or retraumatization - what systems are in place to ensure their safety? What kind of emergency response protocol do your "practitioners" follow? Are they even trained to assess risk?
The consequences of poorly facilitated trauma work are not abstract. Untrained practitioners can cause retraumatization, confusion, emotional flooding, and a lasting mistrust in professional help. If these practitioners are not regulated or held to a professional code, survivors have nowhere to turn for recourse.
You do not address any of this in your public materials. And from what I witnessed personally, the situation is worse than omission - it is normalization.
In 2024, I attended a Compassionate Inquiry® demonstration session led by your co-director Sat Dharam Kaur. What I saw was not "gentle uncovering and releasing", but a fast track to retraumatization. The sessions typically followed this structure:
Ask a participant to recall a dark or painful life experience (someone with whom you have no therapeutic relationship and whose mental health history is unknown),
Evoke and amplify strong emotional reactions,
Then label the visible distress as "release".
Any trained trauma therapist knows how easy it is to trigger overwhelming emotions in survivors. And any practitioner familiar with the foundational three-phase model of trauma treatment knows that stabilization and establishing safety must come first. Skipping that phase is not just negligent - it is dangerous.
I am not alone in this concern. Participants in your courses have voiced similar doubts globally. But let me ask you this: Will a trauma survivor in distress be able to recognize such violations? Will they have the internal resources or support to take action if harmed? Or are they left, once again, to carry the consequences alone?
Unfortunately, it does not end there.
For some time now you offer a Compassionate Inquiry® Suicide Attention Training - a 25-hour online course described as a "comprehensive, experiential training for therapists, health professionals, and people working in education, medical, or personal development fields." You promise to equip participants to "hold space for clients in suicidal distress" and provide "effective therapeutic interventions that support the client's healing and growth."
What this actually appears to be is a skillfully marketed invitation to take clinical risks with people's lives - without oversight, regulation, or consequence.
Another thing that troubles me is your continued dismissal of suicidologists and licensed mental health professionals in favor of individuals who appear to lack adequate training. For example, this training is co-led by:
Camilla Monroe, an undergraduate in Arts, who now calls herself an "integrative psychotherapist" after completing your two-year Compassionate Inquiry® program and a year of Polyvagal (sic!) with Deb Dana.
Irina Ungureanu, an actress describing herself as a "trauma-informed therapist" with a background in transpersonal psychology and performative arts. She holds a PhD in interculturalism, yet her psychotherapeutic credentials are far more difficult to trace than her acting work.
This is not innovation. This is not advocacy. This is recklessness.
And as with your broader Compassionate Inquiry® approach, this model leaves vulnerable people exposed to significant harm - while those facilitating the harm remain legally and ethically unaccountable.
#3
Successes, Progress? / Post-Traumatic Joy
Last post by SenseOrgan - Today at 10:20:13 AMIn the past two months or so, I had quite a few social experiences in which I felt much safer than I would have years ago. I was present, and not occupied with getting out of there asap. I was actually there, interacting. In these recent situations, I internally popped the champaign. Realizing and experiencing what's happening in those moments is a special kind of joyous. It's simultaneously extraordinary and completely normal. It's relating as I could not even imagine existing for most of my life. I hadn't had a taste of it. I didn't have a reference. I knew not what it was. I knew not what I was missing. And how much it was affecting me. These are, without a doubt, glimpses of what it's like to be out of the storm.
These glimpses started happening over seven years ago. I did mention this to friends, but nobody really groked how significant these were for me. And are. It's like having to explain what it's like to deal with CPTSD your whole life, and than having the shock of experiencing what it's like to be out of that groove. I can't convey that to people who haven't lived that themselves. Even though I was in awe of what was happening right away, I just realized I could never fully enjoy it. Because with that too, I was fundamentally alone. Even with these incredibly positive experiences, I felt alone on this planet. There's something sad about popping the champaign alone, isn't it? So even that was orbiting the black hole of CPTSD.
Not anymore! Interacting with you guys is the missing link I couldn't find anywhere for so long. Whenever I have these post-traumatic joy moments now, I don't feel alone with them anymore. I know everyone here appreciates their significance. I think it was Pete Walker who wrote that CPTSD can make people feel like they're aliens in a crowd, or something along those lines. CPTSD is like a gift that keeps on giving, since your trajectory starts to differ so much as a result of it, that it becomes hard to relate to people who don't deal with it. That feedback loop is awful. And extremely difficult to interrupt.
The reason I actually did bother to pop the champaign internally recently, is that I feel connected to you now. Us is part of me now. It couldn't have been just anyone else. The connection I feel with you is different from the connection I feel with non-survivors. My post-traumatic joy doesn't happen in a social vacuum, like all my internal experience have for most of my life. For me, that component is integral to this joy. The depth of it, is as deep as the suffering was. It's come full circle if it doesn't happen to that degree in isolation. I so much appreciate OOTS and you being here! Thank you Kizzie, thank you everybody!
These glimpses started happening over seven years ago. I did mention this to friends, but nobody really groked how significant these were for me. And are. It's like having to explain what it's like to deal with CPTSD your whole life, and than having the shock of experiencing what it's like to be out of that groove. I can't convey that to people who haven't lived that themselves. Even though I was in awe of what was happening right away, I just realized I could never fully enjoy it. Because with that too, I was fundamentally alone. Even with these incredibly positive experiences, I felt alone on this planet. There's something sad about popping the champaign alone, isn't it? So even that was orbiting the black hole of CPTSD.
Not anymore! Interacting with you guys is the missing link I couldn't find anywhere for so long. Whenever I have these post-traumatic joy moments now, I don't feel alone with them anymore. I know everyone here appreciates their significance. I think it was Pete Walker who wrote that CPTSD can make people feel like they're aliens in a crowd, or something along those lines. CPTSD is like a gift that keeps on giving, since your trajectory starts to differ so much as a result of it, that it becomes hard to relate to people who don't deal with it. That feedback loop is awful. And extremely difficult to interrupt.
The reason I actually did bother to pop the champaign internally recently, is that I feel connected to you now. Us is part of me now. It couldn't have been just anyone else. The connection I feel with you is different from the connection I feel with non-survivors. My post-traumatic joy doesn't happen in a social vacuum, like all my internal experience have for most of my life. For me, that component is integral to this joy. The depth of it, is as deep as the suffering was. It's come full circle if it doesn't happen to that degree in isolation. I so much appreciate OOTS and you being here! Thank you Kizzie, thank you everybody!
#4
Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me
Last post by HannahOne - Today at 06:48:47 AMNo sleep again.
I realize that my symptoms are a medication I just started. I just read the insert. Sweating, severe belly pain, stomach upset. No wonder I'm anxious and tossing around the bed, my stomach isn't just in an anxious knot---the medication can cause ulcers in the GI tract. The "knot" I feel is pain.
This happens often. I assume my symptoms are anxiety or EF. Then they turn out to be something physical. And because of the delay the physical problem is always worse by the time I realize what's going on.
Of course, as soon as I get any physical symptoms, the anxiety and emotional flashbacks start up. So, it's both at this point, both an EF and physical. But the initial cause is the medication. So that's good, I'll call the doctor in the morning and see what can be done, and I'll feel better.
Meanwhile tomorrow is going to be hard again because again, NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN. Dread. Day 3, or 4? Of no sleep.
I want to become more aware and able to navigate physical symptoms. It's not helpful that I don't feel pain until it's severe, that I can't figure out what I'm experiencing, that I assume it's emotional, I end up making myself worse that way. I wish I would've realized three days ago and asked to stop or change the medicine, instead I've caused more damage. But this is my automatic response to pain, I just don't notice it, and then experience it as anxiety, and then assume I'm hallucinating or having a flashback. And then I'm actually having a flashback....
My response to pain is itself a flashback.
Now that I know it's the medicine I can not take it in the morning, call the doctor, and in the meantime I can use my skills of dissociation to "dissociate better" as Joanne Twombley says. I'll try to put the pain in a magic container, and put up feeling proof walls in my mind so I have a place to chill until morning. I am certain I won't need the ER, so it's fine to do. I just have a bad stomach ache.
I already went to the ER last week for a similar ridiculous situation where my bandages were so tight I couldn't get a full breath, which cause my intercostals to be strained, and my O2 to drop too low.... but I didn't realize it was the bandages when I went in. I thought I must have pneumonia. I had no clue that the bandages were suffocating me and I'd been wearing them for OVER A WEEK like that. The instructions said "do not remove until you see the surgeon," and I was seeing the surgeon two weeks after surgery, so I religiously followed the instructions, left them as they were, and it didn't occur to me, I couldn't feel, that they were too tight. I only knew something was wrong after a week when my O2 was low. I felt so silly in the ER, although they didn't criticize me and thought the bandages were ridiculous, not me.
This all could be CPTSD. Not knowing what's going on with your own body, misreading signals, lack of awareness, confusion, doing things that don't really make sense, mindlessly following instructions. I hate the confusion, the slow dawning of reality, and the scary feeling of realizing your understanding of reality was so messed up. It's hard to trust oneself.
My plan for tonight is to keep the TV on, pet the dog, and wait for the sun. Tomorrow night will be better, I will be off this stupid drug and on something else.
I realize that my symptoms are a medication I just started. I just read the insert. Sweating, severe belly pain, stomach upset. No wonder I'm anxious and tossing around the bed, my stomach isn't just in an anxious knot---the medication can cause ulcers in the GI tract. The "knot" I feel is pain.
This happens often. I assume my symptoms are anxiety or EF. Then they turn out to be something physical. And because of the delay the physical problem is always worse by the time I realize what's going on.
Of course, as soon as I get any physical symptoms, the anxiety and emotional flashbacks start up. So, it's both at this point, both an EF and physical. But the initial cause is the medication. So that's good, I'll call the doctor in the morning and see what can be done, and I'll feel better.
Meanwhile tomorrow is going to be hard again because again, NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN. Dread. Day 3, or 4? Of no sleep.
I want to become more aware and able to navigate physical symptoms. It's not helpful that I don't feel pain until it's severe, that I can't figure out what I'm experiencing, that I assume it's emotional, I end up making myself worse that way. I wish I would've realized three days ago and asked to stop or change the medicine, instead I've caused more damage. But this is my automatic response to pain, I just don't notice it, and then experience it as anxiety, and then assume I'm hallucinating or having a flashback. And then I'm actually having a flashback....
My response to pain is itself a flashback.
Now that I know it's the medicine I can not take it in the morning, call the doctor, and in the meantime I can use my skills of dissociation to "dissociate better" as Joanne Twombley says. I'll try to put the pain in a magic container, and put up feeling proof walls in my mind so I have a place to chill until morning. I am certain I won't need the ER, so it's fine to do. I just have a bad stomach ache.
I already went to the ER last week for a similar ridiculous situation where my bandages were so tight I couldn't get a full breath, which cause my intercostals to be strained, and my O2 to drop too low.... but I didn't realize it was the bandages when I went in. I thought I must have pneumonia. I had no clue that the bandages were suffocating me and I'd been wearing them for OVER A WEEK like that. The instructions said "do not remove until you see the surgeon," and I was seeing the surgeon two weeks after surgery, so I religiously followed the instructions, left them as they were, and it didn't occur to me, I couldn't feel, that they were too tight. I only knew something was wrong after a week when my O2 was low. I felt so silly in the ER, although they didn't criticize me and thought the bandages were ridiculous, not me.
This all could be CPTSD. Not knowing what's going on with your own body, misreading signals, lack of awareness, confusion, doing things that don't really make sense, mindlessly following instructions. I hate the confusion, the slow dawning of reality, and the scary feeling of realizing your understanding of reality was so messed up. It's hard to trust oneself.
My plan for tonight is to keep the TV on, pet the dog, and wait for the sun. Tomorrow night will be better, I will be off this stupid drug and on something else.
#5
Other / Re: How Trauma Affects Memory
Last post by Blueberry - Today at 05:35:00 AMI'm with you on the horrible memory Chart, and it being a handicap in professional and financial life 
#6
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Shosh5678
Last post by Blueberry - Today at 05:27:34 AMWelcome to the forum shosh 
#7
Going Low/No Contact with Familial Abusers / Re-asserting VLC boundary
Last post by Blueberry - Today at 05:07:59 AMGot a request from B2 for a phone call to discuss certain aspects of FOO finances. Tho I am grateful that my brothers seem willing to even discuss with me rather than e.g. decide over my head, and I am also grateful that they seem to have come round to the idea of FOO money continuing to support me to some degree despite our parents both being in care, which is super expensive. Nonetheless it took me sleeping a night on the subject to realise that I do NOT have to reluctantly aquiesce to B2's request!! It's a request not an order and I AM ALLOWED TO SAY "NO". Even it were an order, that would not be okay coming from B2 or anybody else in FOO, and so even more reason to say "No" to something that is going to be harmful to me. I mean that's the REASON for this particular boundary. FOO doesn't understand because beyond their comprehension apparently, but that's even more reason for me to stand my ground and stick to my boundary.
#8
Conferences/Courses / Re: FREE, Decode your trauma, ...
Last post by Blueberry - Today at 04:33:48 AMRegister anyway! There are often replays.
#9
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Shosh5678
Last post by shosh5678 - Today at 04:08:43 AMThank you very much - and thank you for asking! Virtual hug is ok. Physical - not without asking 
#10
Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me
Last post by Armee - Today at 03:56:23 AMOh yeah definitely relate to that! My husband still remembers in high school when he had a crush on me and I drove away with my car door, driver's side, wide-open. He thought it indicated I was equally smitten with him. 
It's nice to have the right explanation and to know it can get better as the underlying traumas get processed and the underlying parts do better at integrating or at least sharing consciousness.
Good luck in your journey! I'll try to stop by here and there. I mostly hang in the private journals section these days or where I've already responded to a thread as those pop up first.
It's nice to have the right explanation and to know it can get better as the underlying traumas get processed and the underlying parts do better at integrating or at least sharing consciousness.
Good luck in your journey! I'll try to stop by here and there. I mostly hang in the private journals section these days or where I've already responded to a thread as those pop up first.