Anyone with a passing acquaintance of history knows that pretty much every family, from anywhere, will have a long history of trauma starting not very many generations ago.

Looking around my office at people whose stories I know, I see sexually abused people, war refugees, children of war refugees, people who grew up under communism, someone who is coping with a degenerative illness (multiple sclerosis), and on and on and on. Yet these are all functional people, holding down professional jobs.

The interesting part isn't that you can trace your problems back to trauma, but rather how you might some day manage to not have to. Because the more that people successfully do that, the better the world we can build for our mutual future.