Hoping to discuss allegations against Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Author of The Body Keeps the Score

I relate to this strongly. I'm a big fan of Alan Watts (my username is a pun on the title of one of his books), but it's widely known that he was a womanizer who basically drank himself to death. Some of his last words were to his son, who urged him to stop drinking. He responded with "Oh, what's the point." The irony is his life's work was dedicated to "the point." People often sublimate a desire to fix or help themselves into a desire to help others with the same problem. It's considered healthy as long as you remember to eventually get back to you, but not everyone does. Some people get so wrapped up in helping others that they neglect themselves, and their own demons reach up and start pulling strings.

Feeling like your trust has been breached makes a lot of sense to me. I think most people would feel that way. I get through this by remembering that people -- all people -- are grey, weird, wiggly, tangled messes that produce both good and bad things. Some really do begin to look like paragons, but many fall short. Producing 80% good and 20% bad is a lot of good. So I wind up finding the good and smoothing the rough edges as I bring it inside of me and fit it into the rest of my worldview.

For Watts, that means adding more hope about an individual's agency. For someone like van der Kolk, it might mean tolerating less collateral damage. I can easily see someone saying to themselves "I've helped thousands and thousands of people; in the grand scheme, what harm is one mean comment?" and then years later discovering they've made tens of thousands of mean comments to dozens of people. I'm speculating, of course, but my point is we can take someone's great idea and improve upon it, rather than discard it for its imperfect source. I hope that's something that can work here for you.