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pachyderm said:
To me, this site is arranged by diagnosis or symptoms, a way which is probably familiar to mental health professionals, but which disregards the connections between areas that, as a consequence, get classified as separate. In fact (I think) these areas are connected by being the outcomes of various kinds of "deficiencies" of parenting. I think the details of symptoms should probably matter to professionals, but concentrating on them obscures the common thread which underlies them all. This does not help in the task of healing.

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I want to amend this. I feel that all of what we normally think of as "mental illnesses" are the consequences of childhood trauma, particularly prolonged trauma, that is severe enough to damage the person's personality or ego structure in a way that does not get subsequently healed. I think the "trauma" can have a number of origins; probably in a large number of cases it is due to what is usually called "abuse."

I wish I could understand in more detail what I mean by "personality structure" as I feel that it is possible to be more detailed about what internal or brain systems are involved. I do feel shortchanged in a major way by the inattention or unwillingness to investigate this understanding of mental illness by most of the profession. Of course, that itself is probably due to related emotional damage that is present within what is called "normal" people which makes them reluctant to contemplate more extreme forms of damage and suffering.