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Given the number of people currently living whose recent ancestors experienced the trauma of war and oppression, I wonder if it could explain part of the growing incidence of these illnesses that we keep hearing is burdening the health systems of Western countries these days.

Trauma and war have been part of the human condition since inception. What do you think was different for our "recent ancestors"?

Of course war's been part of the human condition since inception, but it hasn't been evenly distributed, has it?

I think about this every time I'm at a zoo or monkey temple watching primates interact - fighting, sure, but not torturing or persecuting or enslaving or committing genocide - and wonder at what point in evolution did we start being so brutal and cruel to one another as to cause the kind of trauma that now seems so common.

I don't claim to be any kind of expert on history, so I don't know how far back we've had the scale and brutality of the wars of the last 100-or-so years. But I have an easy time believing that the more recent wars have done more to traumatise people who were in them, as well as those who weren't due to the widespread media coverage that's also happened relatively recently.

At the same time, I agree with your point; trauma is not new and we certainly see it in other animals (maltreated dogs for example).

And I certainly believe the phenomenon I'm talking about could go back well beyond the past 100-ish years; that would make sense in my case, as none of my parents or grandparents were directly involved in the wars.

But I just wonder if the scale and brutality of the more recent wars, along with the media exposure, have made the problem more intense and widespread.

The Gombe Chimpanzee War was pretty brutal. One side annihilated the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

While violence has always been a part of the human condition, the scale of destruction wrought by modern war is novel. Violence in pre-Neolithic (pre-agricultural times, which characterizes the vast majority of our time as a species on this earth) was much more interpersonal. Think, two guys fighting over one girl, kind of personal. Organized group on group violence was a rarity. It's only with the creation of complex societies that we see the kinds of wars where whole ethnicities are targeted and uprooted. It's entirely possible that people experience more 'trauma' due to the differing nature of violence these days.

Here's a link to a good article by an anthropologist explaining it better than I do: http://aeon.co/magazine/society/human-beings-do-not-have-an-...

I feel in a very similar situation. Throughout my life, I've always had abdominal pain under stressing situations, and in specific scenarios of high stress, there's a specific spot that hurts. The funny thing is that one of my grandma, one of my aunts and a cousin suffer from pain in the exact same spot (just below the belly button).

After an accident in which I broke my cheekbone, the pain increased to become chronic, and it's been 8 years since. I haven't found a solution yet, and western medicine has been of no help.

I've read a few psychology books (Code to Joy, The Divided Mind) and it makes sense to me that traumas can actually cause pain. But neither of them could actually explain similar pain throughout families. Actually, Code to Joy (that helps you clear out the effects of traumas through a body-mind algorithm) has helped me reduce pain in many situations, but the overall pain is still there.

I haven't found anyone either doing research in this topic, unfortunately.

Do you mind pointing to any resources that can help in understanding pursuing trauma-release treatments. Thanks in advance.

I would recommend reading Code to Joy, by George Pratt and Peter Lambrou. It is an excellent book, that lets you understand how the mind works (basically, the relationship between conscious and unconscious mind), and how traumas affect our daily life. It also describes how to clear them out, and it has worked for me.

The book has references on how that theory began with Roger Callahan at the end of the 1980's. Tapping the healer within is one of these books, which I would recommend if you're interested in the subject, but not as a guide to clear away your fears of your unconscious mind.

The basis for the approach I've pursued came from a book called The Biology of Belief [1], by former Stanford stem-cell researcher Bruce Lipton. The book is about epigenetics, and the way environmental factors - particularly the influence of subconscious beliefs on the perception of your environment, can influence physiological health. I found it compelling and I seem to have benefited by pursuing the ideas, but it's not for everyone; despite his scientific background his primary audience these days is the New Age market, and I know his way of articulating his ideas is too woo-woo for many. But he is entertaining.

The method I've used for trauma clearing is called NET [2] which came out of the chiropractic world, but I've since learned how to do it myself so I no longer need to spend money on chiropractors, most of whom I now regard as quacks.

The closest version of the technique I now use is a method called Self Clearing, demonstrated in this video [3] by an Australian guy called Dane Thomas.

I'm well aware that all this stuff will seem like quackery to many; as a former devotee of Dawkins and Hitchens, it sure did to me, but my ongoing health struggles necessitated a willingness to try anything, and of the many things I tried, this has been the one that's delivered results.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Biology-Belief-Unleashing-Consciou...

[2] https://www.netmindbody.com/more-information/an-introduction...

[3] http://clearyourshit.com/self-clearing-foundations-1/

Why a former devotee? Why is this orthogonal to their spiels?

I still find value in much of what they espouse(d). But there's also a lot of dogma and belligerence in their words, which I used to enjoy but I now find a turnoff.

Skepticism is important (especially to religious believers), but it doesn't give you a clue about the right path in life. Anger, the strongest asset of Dawkins et al., will not help you or me in any way. Ever.

Yep, I found that their anti-religion was a religion of its own, and one that seemed to license its followers to be far more angry and mean than most of the followers of the religions they criticized.

There's a bunch of illnesses that are physically debillitating but that don't seem to have physical explanations. They often respond well to psychological talking therapy treatments.

So the problem is letting people know that they may well cure their health condition with a talking therapy without making it sound like you're dismissing them as malingerers. And there's also a need to stop them stigmatising mental health problems ("no! My illness is real! It's not in my head")

So, thanks for talking about what helped you.

Heh, I remember years ago reading about a medical researcher whose research suggested the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome was primarily emotional. This so enraged CFS sufferers that some of them issued death threats against her - which is a excellent way to prove you have no emotional issues :)

But I understand the feeling and have had that kind of frustration and anger myself (without the death threats of course!) before I found the technique that turned out to be effective.

There's a vast difference between "it's all in your mind, pull yourself together and get on with it", and "good news, it's all in your mind, and if you follow this very specific program to clear your mind, you can achieve perfect health".

But few know what that program is yet, or even know that it exists, but that's something I'd like to do what I can to change.

Remember that placebo is a well known phenomena, so far without any reasonable explanation. It is there and obviously, hope, no matter its source, helps.

Actually The Biology of Belief proposes a very sound hypothesis for the placebo effect.