The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

with her clients, she says, “three lacks” are typical—lack of control, identity, and self-worth—along with a need to numb pain. “In a relational world . . . the human psyche devises a brilliant means to emotionally survive,”

Church attendance and other vectors of socially minded participation are on the wane. “Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century,” Harvard professor of public policy Robert D. Putnam wrote in 2000.[26]

Women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were found to have twice the risk of ovarian cancer as women with no known trauma exposure.[10]