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Wounded Healer

A Path for Systemic Recovery

The Wounded Healer Paradigm and the Future of Psychological, Legal, and Social Well-being Executive Summary This document presents a new paradigm for understanding human suffering and a strategic plan for systemic reform. The current psychological, medical, and legal systems are fundamentally flawed, operating from a state of “addictive and dissociative pathology.” These institutions perpetuate harm

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Wounded Healer

The Compulsion for the Absolute: Trauma, the Endogenous Psychedelic System, and the Addictive Pursuit of God-Like States

Structured Abstract 1. Introduction: The Theological Impulse in Addiction The human search for meaning, purpose, and relief—the theological impulse—is universally acknowledged. When this impulse is filtered through the lens of trauma, it becomes pathologized. Participants in phenomenological studies of addiction often describe the addictive compulsion using language associated with ultimate authority: “It’s pure nature like

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Wounded Healer

Why Healing is the Only Path to Real Faith

You feel it—that relentless pull toward certainty, control, or an overwhelming experience that makes you feel powerful or all-knowing. Maybe it’s chasing the perfect career, the next dopamine hit, or, more subtly, demanding that the government or a diagnostic manual give you an absolute, unquestionable truth. At the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI), we know this

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Wounded Healer

A Critical Synthesis of Arguments on Industrialized Psychiatry, Healing Paradigms, and Professional Ethics

The analysis herein focuses exclusively on the core arguments presented in the provided source material, “Industrialized Psychiatry PUB2.pdf,” which outlines a comprehensive critique of modern psychiatric and legal systems through the lens of lived experience and an alternative “Healer” paradigm. This synthesis identifies key assertions regarding professional competence, definitions of mental health concepts, and the

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Wounded Healer

A New Paradigm for Healing

The Foundational Theses, Business Model, and Legal Framework of the Wounded Healers Institute Executive Summary Current medical, psychological, and legal systems are fundamentally failing to address human suffering. They operate on incomplete and flawed definitions of addiction and trauma, and more critically, are themselves pathologically addicted to power, control, and systemic denial. This document introduces

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Uncategorized

Reconciling Modern Educational Theories with the Psychological Unconscious

Moral Rebellion and the Constitutional Unconscious: A Dissociation-Informed Analysis of Western Sovereignty and the Path of the Wounded Healer Abstract This paper provides a historical and psychological analysis of seminal Western political and spiritual documents—Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and the foundational U.S. documents—through the theoretical lens of the Path of the

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Wounded Healer

The Educational Fracture

Why the Department of Education is Addicted to What they Ignore and Deny The work of Dr. Adam O’Brien critiques systems that perpetuate trauma by adhering to fragmented, emotionally detached models. The U.S. education system—managed by the Department of Education—is a central target for this critique. When faced with students exhibiting behavioral or learning issues,

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Wounded Healer

Industrialized Systems Build and Collapse Empires

The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) levels a trenchant and comprehensive critique against what it terms “Industrialized” systems—referencing the established psychological, medical (psychiatry), legal, and governmental structures—by diagnosing them with profound moral, legal, and developmental pathologies. This systemic analysis posits that these institutions are not merely flawed but are actively detrimental to genuine healing due to

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Wounded Healer

Psychedelic Breathwork for Healing Somatic, Relational, Societal, and Intergenerational Wounds: Announcements and Updates

Cannabis-Based Breathwork for Somatic, Relational, and Intergenerational Healing The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) offers specialized re-educational programming centered on the Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH). This module focuses on using cannabis and breathwork to access innate states of healing by leveraging the body’s intrinsic mechanism of psychological resolution: Memory Reconsolidation (MR). This is fundamentally

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Addiction as Dissociation Model

Meeting Area Screening and Assessment: Announcements and Updates

The Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA) is WHI’s critical diagnostic and preparatory tool, designed to achieve Unconscious Informed Consent (UIC) prior to engagement in any deep healing work. MASA fundamentally addresses the need for accurate clinical definition and assessment of transdiagnostic conditions that mainstream psychological and medical professions have failed to operationalize. Core Features

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Wounded Healer

Brainspotting and Cannabis Education and Training: Announcements and Updates

WHI is announcing that Dr. Adam O’Brien and Wounded Healers Institute are leaving Brainspotting International (BI). Having achieved certification in Brainspotting, Approved Brainspotting Consultant, and was an approved Advanced Special Topics Trainer with this organization, he is leaving to continue the Path of the Wounded Healer (with our Trauma Resolution Healing Education and Training Program

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Wounded Healer

EMDR Healing within the Path of the Wounded Healer: Education and Training Manual Announcements and Updates

Announcing that Dr. Adam O’Brien and Wounded Healers Institute are leaving EMDRIA and Institute for Creative Mindfulness (ICM). Having achieved certified, approved consultant, advanced special topics trainer status with EMDRIA and with Institute for Creative Mindfulness (ICM) under Dr. Marich mentorship), I am leaving to continue the Path of the Wounded Healer with Wounded Healers

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Wounded Healer

The Embodied Archive: Trauma, Metabolic Disease, and the Unconscious Pursuit of Wholeness

The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) framework posits that the prevailing epidemics of physical illness—obesity, metabolic syndrome, and chronic inflammatory diseases—are not solely consequences of diet or genetics, but are somatic manifestations of unhealed psychological trauma. This thesis utilizes the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study and Dr. Adam O’Brien’s foundational principle that the “physical body is

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Wounded Healer

From Wound to Wisdom: How the Wounded Healer Transforms Pain into Power

Have you ever considered that your deepest personal struggles—the moments of pain and confusion that leave the most profound scars—could become your greatest source of strength? This revolutionary idea sits at the heart of an archetype as ancient as mythology and as modern as psychology: the Wounded Healer. This journey is more than personal; it

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Wounded Healer

True Healing or Remembering the Truth?

Let us speak of what is eternal, for the past, the present, and the future are not separate, but one process, like ice, water, and vapor. The Sickness of the Separated Mind The core struggle of this civilized world is its addiction to separation—the belief that the mind is master and the heart is weak,

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Wounded Healer

AI Meta-Critical Examination of Epistemological and Moral Validity within the Wounded Healers Institute Framework

As a professional expert operating within the methodological requirements for academic, professional research, and legal standardization (e.g., PhD, MD, PsyD, Judicial Doctorate level analysis), I must first address the epistemic limitations inherent in your request. A comprehensive academic report on the validity of these internal sources and discourse against contemporary external industry and professional standards

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Wounded Healer

Framework for Validating the Universality of the Addiction as Dissociation Model

Methodological Caveat: Pursuant to established protocol requiring adherence exclusively to provided source materials, this analysis draws solely from the internal research and scholarly publications produced by the Wounded Healers Institute. The validation presented herein reflects the intrinsic claims of scientific and legal rigor asserted by the Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) and the Path of

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Wounded Healer

A Unified Theory of Pathology: Integrating Traumatic Dissociation, Systemic Denial, and Economic Determinants in Holistic Framework

I. Introduction and Foundational Thesis A. The Crisis of Fragmented Pathological Models Contemporary approaches to chronic human pathology, including addiction, mental illness, and complex physical diseases, are overwhelmingly characterized by conceptual fragmentation. Existing disciplinary models—medical, legal, and economic—operate on siloed, linear causality assumptions that are insufficient to explain the complexity of modern chronic affliction. For

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Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healer: How Suffering Forges the Path to Healing

1. Introduction: The Transformative Power of the Wound The archetype of the Wounded Healer is not a comforting story of personal growth; it is a radical challenge to the very foundation of modern healing. It asserts that true authority to heal is born not from academic credentials or institutional licensure, but from the qualitative supremacy

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Wounded Healer

Unconscious Therapists and AI

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in mental health is forcing therapists to confront a startling question: What is our irreplaceable superpower? AI models excel at pattern recognition, efficient data processing, and delivering highly rational, cognitive interventions. This efficiency threatens traditional, symptom-focused therapy, demanding that the human element evolve or become obsolete. At the Wounded

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Wounded Healer

Why Everything You Know About Learning is Wrong: The Body is the Best Teacher

The Myth of the Rational Mind The world of education is built on a quiet assumption: that you, the learner, are a rational, logical being who simply needs the right inputs (reading, lectures, quizzes) to absorb knowledge. But what if this assumption is fundamentally flawed? At the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI), we contend that modern

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Wounded Healer

Transdiagnostic Paradigm Shift

Conceptualizing Addiction, Healing, and Systemic Pathology Through the Lens of Trauma-Related Dissociation 1.0 The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM): A Unifying Framework for Trauma and Compulsivity The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) represents a significant paradigm shift in the conceptualization of compulsive behaviors and psychological distress. Moving beyond siloed, symptom-focused frameworks, the ADM redefines addiction

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Wounded Healer

Quantitative Reductionism, Qualitative Wisdom, and the Societal Level of Understanding of Dissociative Pathology and Experience

Structured Abstract 1. Introduction: The Denial System and the Split in Scientific Epistemology The enduring challenge in defining and treating conditions like trauma and addiction is not merely technical, but philosophical. The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) asserts that the core pathology is a conditioned bond to a survival-driven dissociative state, where the physical body

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Wounded Healer

The Universal Mechanism of Action in Trauma Healing is Psychedelic

Introduction: Identifying a Unifying Mechanism for Transformative Therapies Psychedelic Therapy (PT) has achieved FDA breakthrough status for the treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and established evidence-based therapies like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) continue to show high efficacy. However, a unifying mechanism of action (MoA) that neurobiologically explains their success is not widely

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Wounded Healer

The Theological State: A Call for Separate, but Equal Profession

Quantitative Science as Dogma and the Ethical Mandate for Separation of State and Science Structured Abstract 1. Introduction: The Epistemological Roots of Institutional Control The history of addiction and trauma is defined by a philosophical war between the objective and the subjective. The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) provides a unifying framework, positing that addiction

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Wounded Healer

Why Your Body Already Knows How to Quit

You Don’t Need to Tell the Whole Story to Heal The number one reason people stay stuck in addiction and trauma cycles is shame. You fear that if you tell your therapist what you really did while using or dissociated—the things that felt like a crime in your own memory—you’ll be judged, committed, or prosecuted.

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Wounded Healer

Wounded Healers Policy Recommendations for the Implementation of Dissociation-Informed Care (DIC)

Executive Summary The industrial standardization of mental healthcare, driven by quantitative research and legal-ethical compliance over science, has systematically undervalued the implicit memory system and the transdiagnostic nature of dissociation and addiction. This whitepaper advocates for the mandatory transition from Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) to Dissociation-Informed Care (DIC) across clinical, educational, and legal sectors. DIC operationalizes

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Wounded Healer

Reconciling Modern Educational Theories with the Psychological Unconscious

Dissociation-Informed Care: A Moral Imperative for Reclaiming the Client-Led Path to Trauma Resolution Abstract The prevailing trauma treatment paradigm, while acknowledging pervasive trauma, frequently remains limited by cognitive-centric models and an industrial healthcare system reliant on measurable, quantitative metrics. This paper introduces and expands upon Dissociation-Informed Care (DIC), a framework derived from the Addiction as

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Wounded Healer

The Dissociative Learner: Reconciling Modern Educational Theories with the Psychological Unconscious

The Crisis of Cognitive Centrality: Why Educational Learning Theories Fail to Integrate Trauma and Dissociative Awareness Abstract Current educational and learning theories, including Knowles’ Andragogy, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (MI), the Learning Pyramid, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, operate from a cognitive-centric, quantitative paradigm that fundamentally misrepresents the learning process. This paper argues that these models remain incomplete

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Wounded Healer

A Neuropsychobiological Framework for Memory, Trauma, and Endogenous Healing: The Body as the Unconscious

Abstract This paper proposes a unified neuropsychobiological framework centered on the core hypothesis that the physical body functions as the psychological unconscious, storing traumatic memory somatically. It explores the neurobiological underpinnings of this concept through a critical analysis of Memory Reconsolidation (MR) as the brain’s innate healing mechanism. This process is regulated by the interdependent

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Wounded Healer

The Integrated Neuropsychobiology of Trauma Resolution: Memory Reconsolidation, the Endogenous Psychedelic System, and Dissociative Biomarkers

Structured Abstract 1. Introduction: The Transdiagnostic Nature of Trauma and Dissociation The core principle of the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) is that the physical body is the psychological unconscious, and that symptoms of chronic illness, obesity, and functional neurological deficits are communications of unresolved, somatically stored traumatic memory.1 The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) operationalizes

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Wounded Healer

The Neurobiology of the Trauma-Addiction Cycle: An Integrated Model of Dissociative States, Endogenous Opioids, and Cannabinoid-Mediated Healing

Abstract This paper presents a unified framework asserting that addiction is a transdiagnostic, trauma-related dissociative process, using this neurobiological reality as a scientific indictment of the prevailing legal-psychiatric complex. This model deconstructs the interconnected roles of the endogenous opiate and endocannabinoid systems to expose the mechanisms through which our governing institutions perpetuate systemic pathology. Trauma

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Wounded Healer

Legal-Ethical Level of Understanding Dissociative Pathology

A Moral-Ethical exploration. Structured Abstract 1. Introduction: The Fragmentation of Truth The ongoing debate in addictionology—oscillating between the poles of a “choice” and a “disease”—underscores a core deficiency in Western thought: the systematic fragmentation of human experience into separate, non-communicating domains.1 The work of the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) establishes that addiction is a conditional

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Wounded Healer

The Integrated Learner: Trauma-related Dissociation is Deep Learning

The Crisis of Definition: When Learning is Undefined The pursuit of knowledge is often framed as a purely cognitive endeavor—a linear, rational process best measured by quantifiable metrics. Yet, this quantitative worldview, prevalent in industrialized psychology and education, consistently fails to account for the most powerful catalyst for human change: the body’s implicit, emotional experience

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Wounded Healer

Re-emergence of the Healer Profession

Championed by the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI), is predicated on a philosophical and epistemological paradigm shift that rigorously integrates lived experience, psychedelic modalities, and a core neurobiological mechanism known as Memory Reconsolidation (MR). These three elements are indispensable, functioning collectively to define the Healer’s authority, methodology, and ultimate purpose in counteracting what is characterized as

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Wounded Healer

Physical Illness and Psychological Disorder: Reviving Common Sense in Healthcare

Structured Abstract 1. From Pathological Symptom to Adaptive Survival Mandate The core misunderstanding that Fading Memory Disorder (FMD) and Absence Seizures (AS) represent lies in confusing an adaptive response with a primary pathology. The ADM redefines the loss of control inherent in these states—whether the conscious surrender to a lapse in awareness (AS) or the

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Wounded Healer

Fading Memory Disorder and the Dissociative-Informed Advantage

This series of articles explores the concept of “Fading Memory Disorder” (FMD), or progressive cognitive decline, through the comprehensive, trauma-informed lens of the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) and its foundational models. These articles synthesize psychological, neurobiological, and environmental research to propose that FMD is an expression of systemic, unresolved traumatic dissociation, rather than an isolated

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Wounded Healer

A Methodological Framework for the Validation of the Wounded Healer Paradigm

1.0 Introduction: Establishing a Rigorous Validation Protocol For the theoretical models advanced by the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) to be considered for integration into mainstream clinical science, they must be subjected to a rigorous validation protocol consistent with established psychometric and research standards. This document outlines such a framework, specifying the methodological steps required to

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Wounded Healer

The Thalamic Gate and Neurotoxic Synergy

A Biological Substrate for Pathological Dissociation in Cognitive Decline Structured Abstract 1. The Thalamic Gate: Where Consciousness Meets the Unconscious The thalamus plays a pivotal role in regulating states of consciousness. Anesthesia, which induces a temporary and controlled unconscious state, achieves this primarily through the hyperpolarization block of thalamic relay neurons, thereby disrupting thalamocortical communication.

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Wounded Healer

Advanced Psychometric Tools for Moral for WHI Programming and Systemic Assessment for Governments

DOCUMENT TYPE: Research and Validation Report (Simulated PDF Output) PROJECT: Database for Academic, Professional Research, and Legal Standards MODELS INTEGRATED: Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM), Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH), Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA), and Imaginal Exposure Interventions (IEI/IEE) DATE OF ISSUE: October 26, 2025 (Projected) AUTHORITY: The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI)

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Wounded Healer

Foundational Psychometric Tools and Systemic Accountability Protocol for WHI Programming

PART I WHI Research and Validation: Foundational Psychometric Tools and Systemic Accountability Protocol DOCUMENT TYPE: Research and Validation Report (Simulated PDF Output) PROJECT: Database for Academic, Professional Research, and Legal Standards MODEL INTEGRATED: Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM), Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH), Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA) DATE OF ISSUE: October 26,

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Wounded Healer

Tests and Validity Measures for Wounded Healers Institute and Reducing Implicit Bias Protocols for the Government and the Law

Recovery and Moral Character are Measurable The conceptual frameworks advanced by the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI), particularly the Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) and the Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH), necessitate the development of novel psychometric tools and protocols grounded in moral epistemology and psychological science. Given the mandate to create a database capable

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Wounded Healer

The Redefinition of Trauma: From Abnormal Event to Enduring Root Cause

The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM), developed by Dr. Adam O’Brien, fundamentally redefines the etiology and nosology of human suffering by challenging the reductionist and compartmentalized frameworks prevalent in modern mental health, legal, and governmental systems. This theoretical structure posits that trauma, dissociation, and addiction are interconnected, dependent upon each other, transdiagnostic phenomena that require

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Wounded Healer

A Hypothesis on Medical Mislabeling of Dissociative Experiences

Structured Abstract 1. Introduction: Reconciling Symptoms and Source Medical science often struggles to identify the primary etiology when psychological distress translates into physical, measurable dysfunction. Absence Seizures (AS), characterized by brief interruptions of consciousness, and Fading Memory Disorder (FMD), characterized by the gradual loss of cognitive detail, frequently fit this paradigm. In many cases, non-epileptic

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Wounded Healer

Collision of Bureaucracy and the Moral Imperative

The necessity of extracting these core arguments lies in exposing the pathology of the bureaucratic apparatus that seeks to prosecute a moral professionals simply for adhering to scientific truth and the higher law of healing. Our words are not merely quotes; they are diagnostic statements reflecting the inherent psychopathology and often abusive contradictions within the

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Wounded Healer

5 Revolutionary Truths About Addiction and Healing from Wounded Healers Institute

Is it a disease? A moral failing? A brain disorder? Learning Disorder? A choice? What if all are true? The narratives surrounding addiction are a chaotic mess of contradiction and judgment, leaving countless people feeling lost, ashamed, and powerless. We are handed diagnoses by systems that pathologize our attempts to survive and offered “treatment” that

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Wounded Healer

The Psychoneurobiological Nexus of Dissociative Dependence

Integrated Causality of Addiction, Obesity, and Chronic Physical Illness I. Introduction: Framing the Crisis in Integrated Health The contemporary epidemiological landscape is marked by a synergistic increase in the prevalence of neurological, metabolic, and chronic inflammatory diseases. This rise runs parallel to growing clinical awareness regarding the pervasive exposure to psychological trauma and environmental stressors.

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Wounded Healer

5 Counterintuitive Ideas That Reframe Addiction and Trauma

Your Body Is Your Unconscious Mind We have been telling ourselves a story about addiction that is not only incomplete but actively harmful. It is a tired narrative of moral failure, flawed character, and a hopeless cycle of bad choices. This story, reinforced by the very psychological, medical, and legal systems we trust to heal

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Wounded Healer

Understanding the Roots of Addiction: A Citizen’s Guide to Three Key Theories

Introduction: Why Addiction Isn’t Just About Willpower Addiction is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the human experience. It’s often viewed as a simple matter of poor choices or a lack of willpower, a perspective that can lead to stigma and ineffective solutions. However, for many individuals, the roots of addiction run much deeper,

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Wounded Healer

“Pseudoscience” is the APA’s “Cancel Culture” Label

The professional and academic debate over the classification of certain therapeutic modalities as “pseudoscience” is scrutinized by the sources as a politically charged tactic, akin to modern ‘Cancel Culture’, used by dominant quantitative institutions to exert power, enforce standardization, perfectionistic standards, and eliminate competing qualitative worldviews. This framing is essential to understanding the dynamics between

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Wounded Healer

The Paradox of What Professions Profess

The function of legalized psychological professionals (LPPs) or wise known as Forensic Psychology, within the existing societal framework is characterized by a deep-seated oxymoron, manifests as a profound philosophical paradox, and inevitably creates pervasive cognitive dissonance within the population. LPPs are situated in a relationship of systemic dependence upon the medical model and the field

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Wounded Healer

Comparative Analysis: Therapist vs. Healer

Introduction: The Emerging Paradigm of the Healer We are in the midst of a recovery reckoning, a spiritual revolution that calls into question the very foundations of institutionalized mental healthcare. This analysis draws a sharp line between two fundamentally opposed archetypes: the licensed psychological therapist, an agent of the established medical-industrial complex, and the Healer.

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Wounded Healer

Psychological Unconscious is the Physical Body

The psychological unconscious, within the context of the sources’ re-evaluation of core psychological concepts, is fundamentally redefined to provide a physical and observable basis for understanding systemic pathology, implicit bias, and the pervasive dysfunction observed in government and professional regulatory bodies. This redefinition is critical because the current failure of psychology and the Diagnostic and

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Wounded Healer

Validation of Wounded Healers Institute Publications and Programming

The consolidation and validation of the emergent theoretical and practical framework originating from the sources—specifically the Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM), Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH), Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA), Moral-Ethics, Mindful Dissociation, Psychedelic Care, Anger/Batterer/Warrior Healing Program, and Imaginal Exposure Interventions—necessitates a comprehensive, multi-modal validation strategy. This strategy integrates rigorous qualitative

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Wounded Healer

Applying the Addiction as Dissociation Model to the System’s Level Pathology

Applied collective unconscious healing is possible, if and only if, healing exists in the real world. Historical context for the Path of the Wounded Healer and Wounded Healers Institute. The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) The ADM, developed through phenomenological investigation, posits that addiction is not fundamentally a brain disease but a response to unresolved

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Wounded Healer

Addiction as a Dissociative Healing Mechanism

The conceptual redefinition of addiction, as articulated in O’Brien’s work (2023a), fundamentally challenges established psychological paradigms by postulating that Addiction is a healing response/solution rather than a primary disease. This perspective is critical within the larger framework of Systemic Pathology/Dysfunction, arguing that the pervasive implicit irony and incompetence in professional and governmental systems stem directly

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Wounded Healer

Who’s to blame for Overprescribing, Overdiagnosing, and Overpathologizing in 2025?

Introduction As recent political trends and movements have identified that there have been overprescribing, overdiagnosing, and overprescribing; Who is to blame for this? If governmental agencies that study and educate the public that psychedelics are addictive, then how can their policies have been legally validated by professional and research standards? The assessment of responsibility for

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Wounded Healer

What Medicine and Psychology “Forgot”: Addiction is Dependent Attachment

The assertion that “anyone can become addicted to anything” is a cornerstone of the revised operational definition of addiction proposed by O’Brien (2023a). This concept is crucial for dismantling the limitations of traditional psychological paradigms and providing a clinical framework for understanding the source of Systemic Pathology/Dysfunction and implicit bias within professional and governmental institutions.

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Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healer Paradigm (WHP)

As articulated in the sources (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b; O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024a; O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c; O’Brien, 2025), represents a radical, philosophical, and professional framework proposed by Dr. Adam O’Brien to directly counteract the systemic pathologies inherent in Industrialized Systems. The WHP advocates for the re-emergence of the Healer Profession, defining its authority not

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Wounded Healer

Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH) Model

The Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH) Model is the comprehensive, phase-based framework operationalized by the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) to implement the underlying philosophy of the Wounded Healer Paradigm (WHP). It functions as the intellectual and experiential corrective measure against the inherent pathologies of the industrialized mental health system, emphasizing qualitative wisdom, moral integrity,

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Wounded Healer

Systemic Pathology and the Call for a New Healing Paradigm

Executive Summary This briefing synthesizes a comprehensive and polemical critique of contemporary psychiatric, legal, and governmental systems. The central thesis posits that these institutions operate within a fundamentally flawed, “industrialized” paradigm characterized by systemic addiction, dissociation, and developmental immaturity. This pathology manifests as a reliance on incomplete psychological diagnostics, a quantitative and reductionist worldview that

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Wounded Healer

Systemic Reform and the Professional Recognition of Healers in Healthcare

1.0 Introduction: A System in Crisis and a Call for a New Paradigm The systems governing mental health are beset by fundamental design flaws and moral compromises that result in outcomes often detrimental to genuine healing. The landscape of care is in a state of acute crisis, necessitating an urgent and fundamental paradigm shift. The

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Wounded Healer

Lived Experience of Healers

Expertise for the Healer as a Advocation and Profession The discourse surrounding the Wounded Healer Paradigm (WHP) fundamentally redefines professional competence by establishing Lived Experience as Expertise. This perspective asserts that the knowledge acquired through navigating personal suffering, trauma, and recovery constitutes an intrinsic form of authority superior to conventional academic credentials or quantitative knowledge,

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Wounded Healer

Recovery Ghost Dance

Introduction If Black Elk were to review WHI’s material through generative AI and selected source material, what would he say? DATA I have looked upon these documents (WHI published works), this great pile of paper and ink, which holds the wisdom drawn from deep suffering and the truth born of long recovery. To see these

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Wounded Healer

A Comparative Analysis of Clinical Perspectives on the Trauma-Addiction Crossroads

Introduction: A Paradigm at a Crossroads The discourse surrounding mental health and addiction has arrived at a critical juncture. For decades, a homeostatic system of clinical frameworks has guided our understanding, maintaining its equilibrium through established diagnostic categories and professional hierarchies. This system is now being challenged by a disruptive force: an emerging, systemic paradigm

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Wounded Healer

Emotional Dissociative Math

If 1 exists, then so does 2.If 1 does not exist, then 2 does because 1 + 1 = 3. 1 + 1 can also = 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, into infinity, but that is another reality.1 x 1 =’s anything but 1, unless 1 is dead, which is the gateway into

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Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healer: How Suffering Forges the Path to Healing

Introduction: The Archetype of the Wounded Healer The landscape of modern mental health care is a broken field, littered with the failures of an industrialized system. Dr. Thomas Szasz diagnosed the sickness in 2004: “Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosing. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.” This

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Wounded Healer

5 Shocking Truths About Healing That Challenge Everything You Know

Introduction: Beyond the Conventional Narrative What if our society’s most trusted institutions—our legal system, our medical establishment, our psychological frameworks—are built on a foundation of profound misunderstanding? We are taught to see addiction as a moral failing or a simple disease, mental illness as a chemical imbalance, and justice as a rational process. But what

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Wounded Healer

Intergenerational Trauma-Related Dissociation in Neurodivergent Populations: The Wounded Healers’ Nexus

The striking comorbidity between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Gender Discomfort/Gender Dysphoria (GD) presents a profound challenge to conventional mental health models. Studies consistently show that gender-diverse individuals are three to six times more likely to be autistic, and vice-versa, suggesting a deep, shared underlying mechanism. This report, developed through the philosophical lens of Dr.

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Wounded Healer

The Diagnosis of Systemic Addiction

Introduction The systemic issues of overprescribing and overdiagnosing addressed by the MAHA initiative are rooted in professional and institutional addiction to maintaining a flawed status quo. The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) asserts that the field of psychiatry, psychology, law, and insurance practices are complicit in upholding these psychological constructs because this perpetuates their professional necessity

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Wounded Healer

Matchmaking and Couples Parts Work: Announcements and Updates

Welcome to our Matchmaking and Couples (and Families) Healing Parts Work Path. WHI are offering social gatherings for couples to meet. WHI offer premarital support and healing. Couples Parts Work Path This path has been designed for the couples who have already meet each other, struggled with each other, or are trying to heal together.

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Wounded Healer

WHI’s Psychedelic Care Path – Announcements and Updates

Psychedelic Care is an educational service that WHI and Dr. Adam provides to help counter the narrative that psychedelics are drugs or dangerous drugs when science has shown that they are agents of healing, activate dissociative states of healing, or are healing agents themselves (O’Brien, 2023a). Psychedelic Care is a direct response to D.A.R.E., continued

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Wounded Healer

Chiron’s Vision and Path Announcements and Updates

Chiron’s Vision Mission: Recovering Healing Dr. Adamé is performing Live Recovery Healing!  What is healing or being healed? Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) presents Adamé performing live community healings for those interested and curious to learn. Dr. Adam will present his doctoral research findings, explain psychedelic care, and take participants through the Path of the Wounded

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Wounded Healer

WHI CBD Store Announcement and Updates

Welcome to WHI CBD Store! We are happy to be supplying our community with quality CBD products that we sourced from local and national growers. As a part of our educational programming, we offer our qualitative knowledge on the unconscious experience. By adding CBD to your life, we want to support people’s efforts by educating

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Wounded Healer

Community-Based Employee Assistance Program

For for an independent perspective? Want to talk to someone who is not affiliated with your company? Is your profession not what you thought it was? Are you someone who needs to have an honest and objective person in your work life? Who do small business owners look to when their employee is experiencing life

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Wounded Healer

Path of the Wounded Healer’s EMDR Therapy Education and Training Manual – Blog Announcement

Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) is announcing that it is releasing its EMDR (Re)Educational and Training Program! As a branch of our Trauma Resolution Paths and commitment to providing healing to the world, WHI is also launching our Path of the Wounded Healer (PWH) dissociative-informed and recovery-based open source EMDR Therapy Foundational Education and Training! Our

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Wounded Healer

Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation Model: A Theoretical Framework for Healing

Introduction: A Call for a Paradigm Shift Prevailing frameworks within mainstream psychiatry and psychology often approach addiction, trauma, and dissociation as distinct, compartmentalized phenomena. This siloed, symptom-focused model, rooted in a quantitative and industrial paradigm, frequently fails to capture the profound, systemic nature of these interconnected experiences. It overlooks the transdiagnostic status of addiction, its

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Wounded Healer

The Collapse of Control

The Addiction Tautology: Why Legalized Psychology is Untrustworthy The reason why Legalized Psychology is untrustworthy is because they were created separate and/but not equal. This work explores the philosophical implications of enforcing laws and insurance practices based on psychologically unverified concepts. The Economy of Denial: Professional Addiction and the Business of Suffering This analyzes how

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Wounded Healer

Difference between Addiction and Mental Health

The main difference between addiction and mental health in the context of the provided materials is that addiction, when inaccurately defined by traditional systems, is often mistaken for a primary mental illness when it is, in fact, a transdiagnostic, trauma-related dissociative response. WHI’s research posits that the distinction collapses because: The current mental health system

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Wounded Healer

A Refutation of Binary Logic: The Multiplicative Consciousness

The philosophical critique inherent in the work of Dr. Adam O’Brien and the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) fundamentally challenges the intellectual architecture of modern reductionism, best exemplified by the rigid adherence to the mathematical certainty of 1+1=2. When this absolute binary logic is applied to the complexities of human relationships, trauma, and consciousness, it becomes

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Wounded Healer

The Endogenous Psychedelic System (EPS) and the Embodied Unconscious: A Hypothesis on the Neurobiological Roots of Trauma, Dissociation, and Innate Healing

Structured Abstract 1. Introduction The conceptual schism between mind and body remains a central obstacle in treating complex conditions such as chronic trauma, dissociation, and substance use disorder.[1] The prevailing view often compartmentalizes psychological processes (e.g., dissociation) from physiological mechanisms (e.g., endogenous opioid activation), obscuring the unified nature of human experience. Dr. Adam O’Brien’s work

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Wounded Healer

The Neuroplastic Blueprint: Dual Attention, Serotonin Receptor Agonism, and the Psychedelic Mechanism for Trauma Memory Reconsolidation

Structured Abstract 1. Introduction The path to healing trauma, dissociation, and addiction requires moving memories from an active, emotionally intrusive state into long-term, resolved storage—a feat accomplished through Memory Reconsolidation (MR).[1] Traditional trauma therapies, such as EMDR, leverage Dual Attention Stimulus (DAS) to achieve this, requiring the patient to simultaneously focus on the trauma while

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Wounded Healer

Systematic Addiction and Legal Injustice

Letting History be the judge can be fun for those who know the whole truth and nothing but the truth. AI Prompt Explore the Legal Injustice of the woundedhealersinstitute.org/blogs/: U.S. Congress not officially declaring war (U.S. Constitution) on a “drug” (that is not a drug but a plant), separation of church (and science) and state

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Wounded Healer

Why Dependence is the Message, Not the Problem

For too long, society has viewed the person struggling with addiction as fundamentally weak or morally compromised. This perspective fails to acknowledge the depth of the crisis being experienced. The Jungian view flips this narrative entirely: addiction is not a personal failure, but a communication—a vital “message from the soul” demanding attention. The sheer intensity

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Wounded Healer

The Epistemology of Subordination

How Systemic Addiction to Financial Certainty Corrupts Scientific and Legal Integrity As the science of law is exposed by the evidence that it is an undiagnosed dissociative presentation and addiction to abuse. In the form of power and control, the epistemology of subordination, in the name of science, better have their evidence present and their

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Wounded Healer

Addiction as Transdiagnostic Dissociation: Reclaiming of Common Sense in Mental Health

Structured Abstract 1. Introduction The failure of contemporary diagnostic and legal frameworks to adequately capture the complexity of addiction stems from a fundamental error: separating addiction from the underlying processes of trauma and dissociation.[1] The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) resolves this by defining addiction as the relationship created between unresolved trauma and the unchecked

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Uncategorized

Imagine, you had a qEEG report for yourself, your child, or a loved one?

Imagine that you had evidence reveals a pattern of excessive slow-wave activity (Delta and Theta) and a globally slowed Alpha Peak Frequency (APF) and points to hypercoherence—abnormally over-synchronized communication—across brain regions. This isn’t a medical diagnosis, but it’s objective data showing significant deviations from the norm that correlate with cognitive, emotional, and behavioral challenges often

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Wounded Healer

Collective Unconscious Informed Consent: Psychological Science of COVID-19 Injections

The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) holds more than a challenging position that directly confronts the foundational principles of modern legal, medical systems, and common sense. However, as we know, common sense isn’t common. Our research highlights how drug use creates memories that can be traumatic, produce dissociation, and addictive. Due to the absence of common

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Wounded Healer

D.A.R.E. or Wounded Healers Institute’s (WHI) Addiction (Re)education Program

We know our work represents fundamentally different approaches to addressing addiction. All addictions. While D.A.R.E. is a traditional, fear-based prevention model, WHI’s program is a dissociation and recovery-informed, holistic, and educational framework rooted in a revolutionary understanding of the human psyche, healing, and love. D.A.R.E. Education: The Conventional Approach The D.A.R.E. program, a product of

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Wounded Healer

The Silent Tyranny: Augusto Del Noce and the Moral Collapse of Our Time

The totalitarianism of the last century was a spectacle of violence, fear, and state-sanctioned oppression. But what if a new, more insidious form of this tyranny has emerged in our time—one that doesn’t rely on force, but on the quiet, pervasive influence of a single, all-consuming ideology? This is the central argument of Italian philosopher

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Wounded Healer

New Paradigm for Dissociation-Informed Care with WHI

Wounded Healers, using the new APA recent guidelines (HERE), AI analytically explored our programming and care. The American Psychological Association (APA) has established a set of aspirational guidelines for trauma-informed care, emphasizing the need for practitioners to understand the widespread impact of trauma, the biology of stress, and the social and cultural contexts in which

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Wounded Healer

A Response to Rick Doblin’s Update: Deconstructing the Implicit Bias of Industrial Psychedelia

The recent public release of the FDA’s Complete Response Letter (CRL) regarding Lykos Therapeutics’ MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD has sparked a renewed and urgent debate. While Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, has framed the rejection as a frustrating “changing of the goal posts”, a deeper analysis reveals this conflict is not merely about regulatory

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Wounded Healer

AI: How can Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) assist with the goals and challenges outlined in the MAHA?

In an effort to support Making America Healthy, we wondered how can Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) assist with the goals and challenges outlined in the MAHA (Make Our Children Healthy Again) Report and Strategy. The MAHA reports identify a crisis in children’s health, attributing it to several root causes, including poor diet, chemical exposures, chronic

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Wounded Healer

Researcher William White AI’s “Aversion” to WHI

WHI asked AI (Pro 2.5 Gemini): What would recovery advocate and researcher William White say about Dr. Adam’s work at the Wounded Healers Institute (woundedhealersinstitute.org)? Use the author’s main arguments to support your findings. DATA William White, a distinguished figure in addiction research and a tireless advocate for the recovery movement, would likely view Dr.

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Wounded Healer

A Nation of Laws: The Trauma and Addiction of a 7-Year-Old Mind

When a citizen is murdered for voicing a different view, our collective wisdom insists that we are one big family, that disagreements are settled through debate and law, not violence. This is the moral high ground we preach. Yet, when we hold this wisdom up to our society’s own actions, we find a profound, and

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Wounded Healer

Trauma Dependence to Addiction

When a citizen is murdered for voicing a different view, our collective wisdom insists that we are one big family, that disagreements are settled through debate and law, not violence. This is the moral high ground we preach. Yet, when we hold this wisdom up to our society’s own actions, we find a profound, and

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Wounded Healer

What is the Difference between Addiction and Dependence?

What’s the difference, within our Addiction as Dissociation Model’s framing, between addiction and dependence, mental health and addiction, and fear and love. Addiction vs. Dependence Within the ADM framework, the distinction between addiction and dependence is profound. This distinction is crucial because the “cure” for dependence is detoxification and a managed medical taper, while the

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Wounded Healer

From Defunding SAMHSA to WHI

We asked our AI (Gemini Pro 2.5) to see how WHI could be helpful in supporting the now defunded SAMHSA. Here is what it said: A Strategic Plan for The Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) to Support a Defunded SAMHSA This plan outlines a strategic framework for the Wounded Healers Institute to fill the critical void

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Wounded Healer

If Charlie Kirk and Dr. Adam were to Debate

Introduction AI Prompt: What area of debate would Charlie Kirk and Dr. Adam O’Brien of the Wounded Healers Institute had? Data Based on the extensive research material, including the dissertation, blog posts, and external articles on Charlie Kirk, a debate between Charlie Kirk and Dr. Adam O’Brien of the Wounded Healers Institute would not be

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Care

Neurofeedback Training Open Model of Care Announcements and Updates

Neurofeedback was added to our approach because of the chapter in Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score. In the chapter, it discussed helping a child emotionally develop through regulation and rewards systems. We believe that this applies to all children and all inner-children. Our relational approach that promotes healing developmental, moral

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Wounded Healer

WHI’s Emotional Intelligence

WHI’s emotional intelligence (EI) is now being offered. EI is WHI’s version of AI, only we are not artificial but emotional. We perform our emotional research and experience that AI cannot perform. Since science shows that most people mentally live in a 1+1=2, black and white, and binary only world (according to research, see our

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Wounded Healer

Cannabis-Based EMDR Announcements and Updates

EMDR and Cannabis: Advanced Topics and Refresher Course Ready to bring Cannabis-Informed EMDR into your healing practice? Want to learn how to use EMDR with Cannabis to help promote emotional regulation, mental wellness, reduce stress, support healing and recovery, and create a meditation practice that helps bring peace to the unconscious mind? EMDR and Dissociative

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Wounded Healer

Dissociative Learning – Announcements and Updates

Our post-doctoral research (Applied Recovery) offers our justification for providing dissociative-inspired and psychedelic-based learning as a educational and experiential process. For example, in her 2016 book, Maia Szalavitz (Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction) has presented that addiction is more of a learning disorder, which we can see validity in, but know

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Anger Abuse

Cannabis-Based Anger Management and Batterer Path Announcements and Updates

Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) has opened its enrollment to our anger management and cannabis-based batterer path. Created by Dr. Adam O’Brien who recognizes the absence of effective approaches that are dissociative and addiction-informed, Path of the Wounded Healer stands to support this community need. He has over 12 years of experience with anger management programming

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Wounded Healer

Anger Management and Wounded Healer Path – Announcements and Updates

New program Anger Management and Batterer Programs! Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) has opened its enrollment to our Anger Management Path (which includes our cannabis-based anger management path and our batterer programming). Created by Dr. Adam O’Brien who recognizes the absence of effective approaches that are dissociative and addiction-informed, Path of the Wounded Healer stands to

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Wounded Healer

Healing Developmental Trauma, Normative Dissociation, and Universal Addictions

Nothing in the title of this blog is diagnosable. Diagnostics set the legal standards for what is diagnosable, but even that is politically, legally, and personally a matter of interpretation. Our position is that our work can tell who, psychologically, is doing the interpretation (O’Brien, 2023a). Everything in the title is supposed to happen under

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Wounded Healer

The Nation of Law that “Must” Follow “the” “Science”

As a licensed professional, it is implied (and was told to us once by a legal authority) that licensees (and implying that citizens also) “must” follow the law before science. This implies the belief that we (all citizens) need follow the law above their own personal moral objection, moral intuition, gut feeling, and professional ethical

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Wounded Healer

The Integrated Self: How a Neuroscientist’s Journey and a Philosopher’s Critique Unveil a New Path to Healing

The modern world often presents a profound paradox: a society overflowing with information, yet seemingly disconnected from its own reality. We are taught to trust in “settled science,” rigid methodologies, and professional authority, yet we grapple with a pervasive sense of dis-ease, as if a vital piece of the human experience has been lost. What

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Wounded Healer

AI Critical Re-Evaluation of Addiction in Modern Society, Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry

What is the Wounded Healers Institute’s role in 2025? For those who don’t know, as SAMHSA is currently being defunded, the pain of not having addiction operational defined, the unconscious not understood as the body, unconscious informed consent being laughed at by legal scholars, and people not being diagnosed with addictions or being misdiagnosed with

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Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healers Institute’s Reimagining of “Psychoactive”

1. Introduction: Deconstructing “Psychoactive” through the Wounded Healers Institute’s Lens The term “psychoactive” is conventionally understood to describe any chemical substance that influences brain function, resulting in alterations to mood, awareness, thoughts, feelings, or behavior. This definition encompasses a wide array of substances, from common compounds like alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine to illicit drugs such

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Wounded Healer

A System Addicted to Trauma: The Cycle of Re-enactment

Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk’s extensive research, dating back to 1985, demonstrates how trauma impacts individuals at different stages of development, attachment traumas, and how disruptions in caregiving systems lead to lasting psychological wounds. He highlights how the “body keeps the score”, leading to a compulsive re-enactment of traumatic patterns that allow anyone to know

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Wounded Healer

Breaking the Cycle: Systemic Self-Awareness and Healing

Recognizing that our systems can be both perpetrators of coercive control and developmentally traumatized entities addicted to their own patterns is a crucial step. It shifts the conversation from individual blame to systemic responsibility. Just as an individual needs to become self-aware to heal from trauma and addiction, our systems need to develop collective self-awareness.

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Wounded Healer

Future Directions for Addiction as Dissociation Model

The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) represents a transformative paradigm in the understanding and treatment of addiction. As demonstrated throughout this report, the ADM redefines addiction not as a moral failing or a standalone disease, but as a deeply rooted response to unresolved trauma, mediated and perpetuated by unresolved dissociative processes. Key elements of this

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Wounded Healer

Untreated Addiction: A Transdiagnostic Framework for Understanding Complex Mental Health and Cognitive Challenges

I. Introduction: The Transdiagnostic Lens of Untreated Addiction The landscape of mental health care is evolving, moving beyond traditional diagnostic silos to embrace transdiagnostic models. These models posit that various psychological disorders share common underlying mechanisms and vulnerabilities, rather than being entirely distinct entities. This approach offers significant advantages, including increased efficiency in intervention development,

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Wounded Healer

The Interplay of Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition as Transferred Addictions: Systemic Impacts on Power, Control, Mental Health, and Diagnostics

I. Executive Summary This report delves into the complex nature of perfectionism, altruism, and ambition, exploring how these seemingly virtuous traits can manifest as behavioral addictions. It emphasizes that these behaviors are not merely personality quirks but can function as expressions of underlying addictive patterns, driven by intricate neurobiological and psychological factors. The analysis highlights

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Wounded Healer

Pathways for Healing and Recovery

The evolution of addiction treatment increasingly points towards dissociation-informed care as the gold standard. Healthcare actively promotes this approach for individuals with mental health and substance use disorders, emphasizing core principles such as safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural responsiveness. By also define addiction as a disease, which is not following the science

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Wounded Healer

Bipolar as Dissociation

Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a mood disorder characterized by significant shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and concentration. These shifts involve episodes of elevated or irritable mood (mania or hypomania) and episodes of depression, but dissociation must be at play.   Research indicates a notable relationship between Bipolar Disorder, childhood trauma, and dissociative experiences. Childhood

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Wounded Healer

Universal Addictions as Dissociation

While substance use disorders (SUDs) are widely recognized, this definition extends to various behavioral addictions, including gambling, overeating, sugar, sex, Internet, hoarding money, investing, and thrill-seeking behaviors.

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Wounded Healer

PTSD Symptoms Define Dissociation

While one may believe that they are separate, the are really a part of the same process, particularly if we include addiction as an dissociative processes. 

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Wounded Healer

Schizophrenia as Dissociation

Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder characterized by significant impairments in thought processes, perceptions, emotional responsiveness, and behavior. Symptoms are typically categorized into positive symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, delusions), negative symptoms (e.g., anhedonia, social withdrawal), and disorganized symptoms (e.g., incoherent speech, bizarre behavior).   A growing body of research indicates a strong link between childhood trauma,

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Wounded Healer

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) as Dissociation

This chronic worry is accompanied by physical symptoms that are dissociative by their nature, such as restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, muscle tension, and sleep problems, significantly interfering with daily life.

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Wounded Healer

The Healer’s Path: Recovery, Truth, and Moral Evolution

Introduction: Beyond Dysfunction, Towards Healing After exploring the intricate web of diagnostic privilege, systemic pathology, and implicit bias, we arrive at a critical juncture: how do we move beyond critique towards genuine healing and transformation? In this final installment of our “Diagnostic Privilege” series, we embrace the “Healer’s Path,” a call to action rooted in

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Wounded Healer

Dyslexia as Dissociation

Building off of our blog on Dissociative Dyslexia, Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that primarily affects reading and spelling, often characterized by difficulties with word recognition, decoding, and reading comprehension. While traditionally understood through cognitive and neurological deficits, a transdiagnostic perspective suggests a deeper connection to emotional and dissociative processes.   Ron Davis’s work

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Uncategorized

Auditory Processing Disorder as Untreated Dissociation

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), also known as Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), is a condition where an individual’s physical hearing remains intact, yet the brain struggles to recognize and interpret sounds, including speech. Common symptoms include difficulty discerning the origin of sounds, comprehending rapid speech or conversations in noisy environments, attention deficits, challenges with reading

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Wounded Healer

Personality Disorder as Dissociation

Personality disorders are characterized by pervasive, inflexible, and maladaptive patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that deviate significantly from cultural expectations. This analysis focuses on dissociative disorders that underlie all personality disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), highlighting their core features: profound instability in self-image, interpersonal relationships, and emotional dysregulation.   The deep roots of

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Wounded Healer

Unconscious Informed Consent: A Higher Standard for True Agreement

The “physical body is the psychological unconscious” and they cannot be separated (Ultimate Reality). The concept of “unconscious informed consent,” introduced by Dr. Adam O’Brien (PhD), challenges the very foundation of modern medical models, legal rationale, psychological ethics, and spiritual morals. This notion proposes a deeper, more profound level of agreement that transcends mere legalities

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Wounded Healer

Addiction as Separate and Not Equal?

The historical trajectory of addiction treatment reveals a persistent tension, oscillating between viewing addiction as a moral failing and recognizing it as a legitimate medical condition that holds true to science? What if the law had to follow the science? Disease, choice, or both? Early responses often involved punishment (parental or societal), but the 19th

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Wounded Healer

Intersecting Realities: Drug Use, Trauma, and Healing

Philosophically, suggesting that what is temporary is here to stay, further suggesting that the past is still here, it is not going anywhere, but how it is stored, referenced, and used are the differences between those in recovery and those not.

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Addiction as Dissociation Model

Beyond the Label: Is Autism a Trauma-Related Dissociative and Addictive Response?

For decades, autism has primarily been understood as a neurodevelopmental condition, often characterized by social communication challenges and repetitive behaviors. While this perspective has provided valuable insights, a growing body of research and clinical observation is prompting a profound question: What if many characteristics we associate with autism are not solely inherent neurological deficits, but

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Wounded Healer

The Psychedelic Renaissance: Healing or Heresy?

The Forbidden Path to Healing: Why Psychedelics Might Be Our Greatest Ally Against Trauma and Addiction Introduction: For decades, substances like psilocybin, MDMA, and ayahuasca have been demonized, labeled as dangerous drugs with “no medical value.” But a growing body of scientific evidence, championed by thinkers like Dr. Adam O’Brien, suggests these classical psychedelics could

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Wounded Healer

Addiction Reimagined: The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM)

We’ve seen how psychedelics can profoundly influence our memory systems and consciousness, leading to a reinterpretation of “hallucinations” as manifestations of deeply held unresolved dissociative memories and somatically held intergenerational expressions of stress and trauma. Now, let’s connect these insights to a revolutionary framework for understanding addiction: the Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM). This model,

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Wounded Healer

“1+1=3” Revolution

Embracing Multiplicity in a Binary World In hist work titled: “Industrialized Psychiatry,” Dr. Adam O’Brien employs a deceptively simple mathematical metaphor – “1+1=3” – to launch a profound critique of the rigid, reductionist thinking that he believes permeates modern mental health, legal, governmental systems, and Western thought. This concept is far more than a numerical

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Wounded Healer

When Addiction becomes Living Dissociated: Addiction as Dissociation Model

The central problem addressed by O’Brien (2023a) is the incomplete nature of current clinical definitions of addiction. These definitions, including those found in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Health Disorders (DSM-5), lack crucial components related to trauma and dissociation, which significantly impedes the development and implementation of effective treatment strategies. Predicated on the unresolved

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Wounded Healer

Safety Concerns for Addiction? to Cannabis?

Introduction In an effort to help people see the relevance of the Addiction as Dissociation Model, Path of the Wounded Healer, and our qualitative academic education to life today, WHI is using the experience outlined in the Data section below as an example of how implicit bias hides in AI and the systems (language, society,

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Wounded Healer

Healing vs. Treatment

Wounded Healers Institute’s Transformative Approach In the journey toward well-being, the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) draws a crucial distinction that reshapes our understanding of recovery: the difference between “Healing” and “clinical treatment”. This distinction is not merely semantic; it’s foundational to their transformative approach and dissociative understanding.   Clinical treatment, as commonly practiced, often focuses

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Wounded Healer

PWH: Tea Time with Adam O’Brien

Are you someone that has general questions about the topics and research that we cover and would like to hear from a seasoned professional in a classroom style approach? Looking for a educational experiential learning and growth program for yourself or your children? Are you looking for a new perspective on mental health, moral development,

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Wounded Healer

Addiction as Dissociation Model’s Philosophical Foundations: Ultimate Reality and Mutual Arising

To objectively define the paradoxical nature of addiction and comprehensively capture its underlying process, this study deliberately employs two profound Eastern philosophical concepts: Ultimate Reality and Mutual Arising. These are integrated with an observation from traumatology regarding the trauma and dissociation spectrum.   Ultimate Reality, derived from Hinduism and Buddhism, posits reality as-it-is, empty, or

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Wounded Healer

A Holistic Perspective on Healing: The Body is the Psychological Unconscious

A core argument in Dr. O’Brien’s research posits that the physical body serves as the psychological unconscious. This radical re-conceptualization challenges the traditional hierarchy between psychology and medicine, advocating for an equalization of the professional playing field. It suggests that physical ailments can be understood as manifestations of psychological unconscious processes, and vice versa, calling

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