Paul Conti, MD, is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed his psychiatry training at Stanford and at Harvard, where he was appointed chief resident. He then served on the medical faculty at Harvard before moving to Portland, Oregon, and founding a clinic. Dr. Conti serves patients and clients throughout the United States and internationally, including the executive leadership of large corporations. He is the author of Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic: How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It (Sounds True, October 5, 2021) and lives in Portland, OR with his wife and two children. For more, see pacificpremiergroup.com.
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Intro music: “Brightside of the Sun,” by Basin and Range; “Suffer,” by Seydu; “Suffer Well,” by Simon van Gend Band.
Interesting conversation. I do wonder if one of the reasons trauma became so pervasive in our lives is because, despite the rampant secularization of society, we are still living in a majorly Christian civilization; and instead of focusing on the worthwhile teachings of Christ –“love your neighbor as you love yourself”– our society and institutions embraced the concept that there is grace in suffering.
And that idea got co-opted in so many different and twisted ways, from “no pain, no gain” to “pull yourself up by your boostraps.” To the point that trauma and pain is not only something one should learn to cope with, *but actually seek* because that’s what separates winners from losers.
I still remember how when I was still searching for a job that 90% of the ads in my field (Design) would include the sentence “must know how to work under pressure,” which is of course code word for saying “you must LOVE to work under pressure” (imagine an airline pilot who is actively seeking to fly with a fire in the cockpit!
Like in one of the last regular jobs I had, which was so awfully mismanaged that EVERY project was considered urgent, and all the employees were showing visible physical symptoms of stress, but almost no one dared to complain: one day for example the chief of the carpenters showed up with a swollen eye like Popeye, and another day one of my underlings asked me to go home early because she felt dizzy and was vomiting non stop; when I told the plant manager her illness was probably stress-related, he LAUGHED (on account the girl had been with them for several years) and told me, “don’t be silly, Miguel. If that were the case *SHE WOULD BE DEAD BY NOW.*”
Suffering trauma silently as a badge of honor was the norm in that god-awful place, until their people suffered burn out (like me) and they would simply dispose of them like worn shoes. But hey, that’s what it is like to live in this “Veil of Tears,” right?