10/02/2024
It’s been nearly a week since Hurricane Helene ravaged over a thousand miles of waterways, stretching from Florida’s western shores to the mountain rivers and streams of Georgia and the Carolinas.To put it in perspective, for those on the west coast, that’s the equivalent of the entire coastline of California submerged. Now, I find myself standing amidst the wreckage, dazed and disoriented by the sheer scale of the destruction. People ask me, “How did you fare during the storm?” But what they’re really asking is, “Did you lose your home? Did it flood?” No, it didn’t.
Yet the reality is far more complex. This catastrophe has reawakened a lifetime’s worth of trauma buried deep within my psyche. My history is filled with pain and suffering that’s almost impossible to comprehend: numerous instances of sexual trauma, parental narcissistic abuse, religious cult abuse, systemic misogyny and homophobia from both family and religion, scapegoating, emotional neglect, and abandonment—all before I turned 18. Then came the chaos of the dot-com boom and bust, Y2K, 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, 2012’s apocalyptic fears, the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, Helene. And looming on the horizon, there’s talk of a potential civil war in the U.S. and even World War III.
My entire life has felt like a constant response to both personal and collective trauma. It’s no surprise, then, that my life’s work has become helping others navigate their own traumatic experiences.
Like many others, I initially sought help through Western medicine and psychiatry. But instead of healing, I encountered more trauma—narcissistic abuse and patient scapegoating. The level of ignorance and incompetence I faced within these systems is as staggering as the wreckage and devastation that now surrounds me.
I am deeply grateful for Carl Jung’s life, his teachings, and for all those who have chosen to pursue depth psychology (including my therapist) despite its marginalization by the mainstream medical community, where Jung is still seen as an outlier—dismissed as a mystic or even a madman.
