Doctor Gabor Mate: The Shocking Link Between Kindness & Illness!

1. 0:00 – 3:45

   Intro

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:00

      70% of the adult population is at least on one medication. A quarter of women are on antidepressants. The rate of childhood s- is going up. Worldwide, there's this epidemic of distress.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:11

      What can we do about that?

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:12

      So, the first step would be to- Dr. Gabor Maté.

   4. NANarrator0:16

      Legendary thinker.

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:17

      Celebrated speaker and best-selling author.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:19

      Highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and distress.

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:24

      People-pleasers, these are the people that tend to develop diseases. When people don't know how to say no, the body will say no for them. That niceness is a repression of healthy anger, and that repression of healthy anger has huge implications for your health, and when you repress your immune system, you're more likely to have that immune system turn against you. People who are emotionally repressed are more likely to get cancer. And emotional repression is one of the impacts of childhood traumas.

   8. NANarrator0:48

      We interrupt this film to tell you we are getting reports that- The People's Princess is dead.

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:53

      Harry was a traumatized child. How he's told about his mother's death is that it was an accident, "Your mother didn't make it." His father touches Harry on the knee and says, "But it'll be okay," and leaves the room. This 12-year-old, nobody held him, and children can be traumatized not just by terrible things happening to them, but just by not having their needs met, by not being seen, not being heard, not being held. Those are wounding for a child. But my interview with Prince Harry, I had a gut feeling all along that I shouldn't have agreed to do the interview. It really got to me. I lost myself.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:26

       What happened? Gabor, there's a question we often ask each other in flippant conversations which we usually kind of brush away because it's the convenient thing to do.

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:46

       Yeah.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:46

       That question is the question I wanted to start by asking you, which is, how are you?

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:51

       Yeah. Um, so that question is, uh, for me, it brings up, you know, two dimensions. One is how am I at this present moment, which is, you know, how am I at this moment, you know, which is all there is. I'm well. Uh, um, I, um, I feel rather peaceful inside. Um, I'm very happy to be here with you. If you'd asked me two days ago, I wouldn't have said that. I would've said I was feeling somewhat anxious and, uh, and kind of troubled, you know? So, um, as a in-the-moment answer, I'm well, and I also know how to keep well as long as I stick with what I know, and when I forget what I know, then I can be very not well, and so the last year since we've met has been in many ways a tough year for me. Um, also one of deep learning. So if the question is how have I been, I'd say I've been up and down and I've had real challenges that I've had to learn from. How am I right now? I'm really well, thank you.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett2:56

       Two days ago, if I'd asked you that question, your answer would've been anxious and troubled.

   15. GMDr. Gabor Maté2:59

       Yeah.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett3:00

       Why?

   17. GMDr. Gabor Maté3:01

       I gave a talk on Monday night to 2100 people, and, uh, I just didn't think I did my best. Here in London. And I thought, "Oh, boy, I could've done better. I let people down." Um, I, I allowed my self-judgments and self-doubts to really, um, dominate my, my thinking, and, um, you know, as much as I think I'm i- immune to that kind of self-doubt, evidently I'm not. Um, so that's what happened.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett3:29

       When you say, um, you let it cloud your thinking, what are the s- what were the symptoms of that? So you, you gave a talk two days ago to 2100 people.

   19. GMDr. Gabor Maté3:36

       Yeah.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett3:37

       And you didn't feel you did your best. You went home that night. What was going on in your head? What are the symptoms of that feeling?

   21. GMDr. Gabor Maté3:43

       Um, constant,

2. 3:45 – 8:03

   🤝 How Vocalising Stress Enhances Emotional Control and Understanding

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté3:45

      um, mm, cyclical self-criticism of, "Oh, I could've been more present, I could've been more grounded, more attuned with the audience," perhaps, but you know, just all these self-criticisms w- which then are accompanied by certain feelings in the body, like kind of a, m- a roiling in my belly and so on. And, uh, th- that's what I went through.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett4:13

      And what was the remedy for that? 'Cause we can all relate.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté4:18

      Yeah. Earlier this year, um, also feeling in a state of discombobulation, uh, just a few months ago, I did something radical. I did a two-week total sabbatical from the internet. No cell phone, no emails, no, no checking on Amazon how my bo- books are doing, you know? (laughs) All this self-referential, uh, uh, ego enhancement stuff, and it just really made a difference. Uh, by the end of two weeks, I was a different person. And so, I'm keeping it up, and one of the things you learn is you start noticing these body states that you're in and the mental, mm, hoops that you jump through, but you don't identify with them. So what's the worst-case scenario? I didn't do the best possible job. Okay, what's the headline in the newspaper? "Human being fails to do his best on a particular occasion." What's the big deal? You know? So i- it's a matter of observing this all, uh, all this stuff and not identifying with it, not letting it take you over, as it tends to.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett5:27

      I was reading something that said when we vocalize or share our stress, it moves it from the emotional center of our brain to the much more rational center-

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté5:38

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett5:38

      ... of our brain, where we can kind of step outside of the video game and hold the controller, per se.

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté5:42

      Exactly. Yeah, it's the, um, um, mid-frontal cortex of our brain, um, that has insight and, um, um, social connection and, uh, uh, awareness, you know, which so often goes offline as soon as some emotion takes over, some anxiety or-... anger or resentment takes over, uh, the, the mid frontal cortex tends to go offline. And, uh, the more trauma you experience as a child, the more likely that is to happen, so that your insightful capacities, the executive functions get taken over by some deeper emotional dynamics. And so, um, one of the, uh, benefits to me of meditation is, is it restores that, uh, executive function, so that I'm not taken over or too long taken over by emotional dynamics that just sweep me away.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett6:45

      For two weeks this year, you said you went offline.

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté6:47

      Yeah.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett6:48

       Why?

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté6:49

       Sometimes people say to me, uh, I, I've written this book that I know that you have on your desk, When the Body Says No, and, and my contention is when people don't know how to say no, the body will say it in the form of illness. And, uh, I, I can tell you hundreds of times people have said to me, "Your book has saved my life." And my response has always been, "Maybe I should read it myself," because the fact is I'm quite capable of giving advice and dispensing wisdom that I don't follow myself. And that was the case. So I became quite stressed, and my relationship with my wife, Ray, became very fraught. And she said, "Enough. Enough of this gap between who you are out there in public and how you are in private." So, that was a big incentive for me 'cause, uh, (laughs) we're coming up to our 54th anniversary, and on the whole, I'd rather stay married than not.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett7:41

       (laughs)

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté7:41

       Everything else being considered. But also for myself, I don't wanna be that guy, I don't wanna be that guy anymore who, who can speak the truth, that a lot of people consider to be the truth, so articulately, but not follow it myself. So, I just don't wanna be that person, and that takes practice. And that's why I began, that's why I take the, took a break

3. 8:03 – 13:26

   📵 Importance of Disconnecting: Mental Health and Taking Sabbaticals from the Internet

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté8:03

      from the internet. And what was interesting is, I had my cellphone on airplane mode so nobody could get through to me. Couple of days, couple of times a day, I'd still pick up the cellphone and I'd say, "What are you doing? There's nothing on it 'cause you, it's on internet..." But, the, the compulsion to try and get something from the outside to fill some ex- uh, some gap within, I just kept noticing it. By the end of two weeks, it wasn't so strong anymore. Um, so I did it because I needed to for the sake of my own mental health.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett8:41

      An up and down year for you, you said.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté8:43

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett8:46

      Is that, is that the, the down you were talking about?

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté8:50

      Well, I remember our conversation, my conversation with you. And I, and I, and I think I remember you telling me that you had this goal of becoming a millionaire.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett9:00

      When I was younger, yeah.

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:00

      When you were younger.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett9:01

      Yeah.

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:01

      And then it's when you achieved that goal that you realized that that ain't all there is, that you still left very much with your internal demons. And that's a very common lesson. I mean, there's two ways to, to wake up. One is failure, where you keep asking yourself, you know... But, but, but success is even more, because you think that once you get something, then you'll be happy and, you know... So I thought, "Okay, well, geez, I could..." You know? "So this book, The Myth of Normal, you know, bestseller internationally and published in 35 languages, I should be happy." No. The more I got involved with it and the more I toured with it and the more engaged with the outside it became, the more miserably, miserable I became inside. So the very success of the book, and it all just seep- swe- it swept me away, and I lost myself, you know? So that was one thing, and I did this very long exhausting tour. I wasn't taking care of myself. And then there was the... uh, my interview with Prince Harry and all the, um, uh, froo-froo around it, before it and after it, and I allowed that, I allowed that to take me over as well.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett10:11

       Really?

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté10:12

       Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, in retrospect, I can see what happened, but at the time, I was too caught up in it to notice. You know? So, what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter what I know. If I don't pay attention, rigorous attention, to what's going on inside, and if I keep looking to the outside to give me meaning and give me, um, validation, then I can lose myself. And that's what happened.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett10:44

       Your interview with Prince Harry, how did that cause you to lose yourself?

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté10:51

       Well, in two ways. One is, um, I had a gut feeling all along that I shouldn't agree to doing it the way they set it up. Because the way it was set up is in order to watch it, people have to buy a copy of Harry's book. And I thought, "This is not fair. 4 million people have already bought the book. Why can't I watch this interview? Do they have to buy another copy?" In other words, I believed that this should be a free public service on a part of two people who can have a very interesting conversation. But out of sheer opportunism, I agreed to it. So I didn't follow my gut feeling, so I lost myself even in agreeing to the format. And afterwards, Harry and I both wanted it released to the public for free, but the lawyers said, "You can't do that," because this was advertised as a one-time-only event, and you could, there could be a class action suit. So, um, the result was that I agreed to something that I didn't really like. Not that I didn't like the idea of talking with him, I didn't like the idea of putting this behind a paywall. So I lost myself just in agreeing to it, number one. Number two, then there was the incredible social media and British media reaction to it that was, for the most part, so negative and so demeaning and so dismissive and so distorted that I barely even know how to talk about it. I thought by this age I would know better.... but you know what? It really got to me. It really got to me. I mean, uh, I can give you examples, but, um, eventually what happened was that I was really in a negative state of mind, and have you read the book The, um, The Fox, the Mole, the Horse, and, The Boy and the, and the Horse?

   14. NANarrator12:31

       I bought it last week. It's upstairs in my bag.

   15. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:33

       Wonderful. So, great, it's a great little book, uh, great big book, although very few words in it, mostly just these wonderful drawings. Charlie Mackesy, um, he's really channeling wisdom in that book, and the horse is the most grounded of the four characters, or the four friends. And he's asked, "What's the most courageous things you've ever said?" And the horse says, "Help." So, it's so difficult to ask for help, but I did, you know, in the middle of all this frou-fra and my upset, and I called a, a friend of mine, a psychiatrist, um... and I said, "I'm just in a bad state." And he said, "What's going on for you?" And I said, "Well, there's all this bad press and all the social media distortion of who I am and my motives." He said, "What is it about that, that bothers you so much?" And I said, "Not being seen."

4. 13:26 – 23:17

   🔄 Healing Childhood Wounds: Acknowledging Unmet Needs and Self-Discovery

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté13:27

      Not being seen is one of the needs of the child. But he said to me, "Okay, look, Gabor. When you were an infant, your not being seen for who you are as a human being almost cost you your life." Which it did. As soon as he said that, I said, "Yeah, this isn't about the present." This is an old unresolved, not yet fully resolved wound. Age 79, I'm still upset at not being seen. I don't care if people agree with me, um, or they refute my ideas, but I want them to see me and what I'm actually saying, not some distorted version created by their own minds. And, and when he said that, that not being seen really threatened your life, I said, "Yeah, that's what's going on." And then, I could relax. Oh, this, so what what somebody else says? I don't live in the British press, I don't live in somebody else's mind. Here I am, you know? Let them think and say what they say, but it took somebody to wake me up to that. So, that's what happened.

   2. NANarrator14:30

      You said you could share examples of how it got to you.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté14:33

      Of... Yeah. Wow, oh boy. Um, they called me a stern, overbearing merchant of pain, you know? (laughs) Uh, (laughs) at some point in the interview, you know, when Harry was, um... And the other thing was, see, Harry really was a traumatized child, um, and you can, when you read his book, you, you can see why. You know, he... And people couldn't understand, how this is possible, how could somebody so privileged at the very apex of society in gilded palaces be traumatized? Total misunderstanding of trauma. Um, it's true, uh, people have it much tougher in many ways, but as an infant, as a sensitive infant, to be born into, um, a loveless marriage where the father's having an affair even before he's born, where the mother's a troubled, very sensitive, very creative, warm-hearted, but, hmm, very imbalanced young woman. So, Harry describes in his book, Spare, that he's 12 years old when his mother's killed. How he's told about his mother's death is that his father, then Prince Charles, comes into his room early in the morning, and says, "Something terrible happened, there was an accident. Your mother didn't make it." Then there's a few moments of awkward silence and finally, Charles touches Harry on the knee and says, "But it'll be okay," and leaves the room. And this is how this 12-year-old was told. Nobody held him. Um, Charles himself was only doing what happened to him when, when Queen Elizabeth went on a international four or five-month royal tour, leaving the five-year-old kid behind. When she returned to England, she greeted him by shaking his hand. And now, what I said to Harry was that even animals hold and touch their kids, their infants. Mammals, that's what they do. Because mother rats, when the baby is born, they lick their babies, and the way the mother ra- uh, rat licks the baby, this has been shown in laboratory, influences the brain development of the child. And those babies that get the right kind of licking, it's called grooming, they have better brains as adults. Premature infants used to be put in incubators and nobody used to touch them. Then it was found out that if by, just by stroking their backs 10 minutes a day, that promotes healthy brain development. And the great British-American, uh, anthropologist Ashley Montagu wrote a book called Skin: The Human Significance of Touch, so I was saying that touch is important. You not being held and not being touched was a deprivation. And I said mammals, monkeys... You know what happens when a baby elephant is born? This is fascinating. The mother eleph- I read this in a book called The Evolved Nest, for which I wrote the preface, by a wonderful psychologist called Darcey L. Narvaez. When a- when an infant element, elephant is born, and the mother goes into labor, all the other mother elephants stand around in a circle. When the infant plops on the ground, they all stroke them with their trunks. So touch and being held is so important for mammals. And I was saying animals do that. This journalist, who I don't know what she was listening to, said I said the royal family treats their kids like animals. I said, "No, I wish they'd had."... so, I mean, the distortion is just laughable if it wasn't- if I hadn't taken it so personally for the reasons I already explained.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett18:29

      For you to take it so personally, which led you to call a psychiatrist-

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté18:36

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett18:37

      A- a man like you with the knowledge you have that writes books about the mind and stress-

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté18:41

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett18:41

      ... and the body and all these things, y- you must have been in a pretty dark place.

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté18:46

      I was in a dark place, and I wasn't... But look, I'm a human being like the rest-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett18:51

       Mm.

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté18:52

       And what Charlie MacKesy says in, in that book is that the most courageous thing you can do is ask for help.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett18:59

       Mm.

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté18:59

       It's true. You know? There's that ph- I don't know if you remember The Beatles song, Help, I Need Somebody?

   14. SBSteven Bartlett19:04

       Mm-hmm.

   15. GMDr. Gabor Maté19:04

       And, and John Lennon sings, "When I was younger, so much younger than today, I didn't need anybody's help in any way. But now, those days are gone, I'm much less self-assured." He's actually saying that when he was younger, he believed he didn't need help, but the reason he believed he didn't need help, that he has to make it on his own, 'cause he was so traumatized as a child. His, uh, father left him when he was born., um, his mother left, he was brought up by an aunt, and Lennon grows up feeling abandoned, that, "I can do this on my own. I don't need anybody." You know? And, uh, later on, he realizes, "I need help." But actually, we're all born needing help. We're all born, uh, needing to be understood, to be attuned with, to be seen, to have our emotions received and validated. That's one of the essential needs of children, as I make the point in The Myth of Normal, and children can be traumatized not just by terrible things happening to them, but just by not having their needs met, by not being seen, not being heard, not being held. Those are wounding for a child, which is what the meaning of the word trauma means, so you don't need terrible things to happen. It's so difficult for people to understand that. You know, they, they, they think for trauma, you need horrific events. Well, horrific events can be very traumatic, but you can wound people, sensitive people... The sensitive child or any child can be hurt just because the parents are too stressed and unavailable emotionally to really see them for who they are.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett20:42

       I've struggled with that in my life, especially being, um, a CEO, I think. I've struggled to ask for help when I need it, because you kinda see yourself as the helper, and also, I've struggled with the idea, maybe... I don't know where I got this story from that people like me, maybe because I'm a man, maybe because I'm, um, the head of businesses, we have to figure it out on our own. And the cost of repress- repressing how I feel has become more and more evident over time.

   17. GMDr. Gabor Maté21:20

       Yeah. How so?

   18. SBSteven Bartlett21:21

       Just, like, I think, I- I... When I was younger, I never experienced anxiety before.

   19. GMDr. Gabor Maté21:26

       Mm.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett21:26

       And then as I had more difficult moments in business where I tried to solve the problem in my mind-

   21. GMDr. Gabor Maté21:31

       Yeah.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett21:31

       ... for the first times at, like, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 that I experienced, like, fully fledged what I'd call anxiety-

   23. GMDr. Gabor Maté21:39

       Yeah.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett21:39

       ... where I just couldn't get a thought out of my head and I felt it in my body, my breath was short, this constant state of, like, angst.

   25. GMDr. Gabor Maté21:47

       Yeah.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett21:48

       Um, and, and yeah, I just thought I could deal with it myself. I thought I could think my way through it.

   27. GMDr. Gabor Maté21:55

       Yeah.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett21:56

       Um, was that the hardest- the, the hardest moment in terms of your own psychology in your adult life in recent times?

   29. GMDr. Gabor Maté22:04

       Let me answer that question in a moment-

   30. SBSteven Bartlett22:05

       Sure.
5. 23:17 – 24:36

   💡 Reconnecting with Childhood Intuition: Gut Feelings and Emotional Clarity

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté23:17

      from our gut feelings very early in life. Like, in a- in this room of 2,100 at the Troxy on Monday night, um, I think I asked this question, I always do it, uh, "Have you had the experience of having a strong gut feeling about something and not paying attention to it, ignoring it, and being sorry afterwards?" Almost everybody puts their hand up. That's a chil- sign of childhood wounding, because we're born connected to our gut feelings. No baby is disconnected from their gut feelings. Something happens to make us disconnect.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett23:47

      What is a gut feeling? I- it... From a physiological perspective, because gut feeling is used as a word to describe f- you know, an intuition or, you know.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté23:56

      Mm-hmm. Well, real gut feelings really happen in the gut. Uh, th-the... In the Western way of looking at it, we tend to live upon the intellect and, and, and the intellectual brain as the only brain that we have, but actually our b- our brain is a far more complicated, um, structure and our heart has a nervous system which is connected to the brain up here, and there's a kind of knowing in the heart. Sometimes people say, "I knew in my heart," and they did-... if they're connected. Gut feelings are what all animals possess. It warns them of danger or when it's safe and when it isn't safe.

   4. NANarrator24:32

      Not in the brain?

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté24:34

      Um, the gut is connected to the brain.

6. 24:36 – 27:50

   🧠 Gut-Brain Connection: Childhood Trauma and Grounding Techniques

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté24:36

   2. NANarrator24:36

      Right.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté24:36

      The, the gut sends more connections to the brain than the brain sends to the gut. And the gut has more of the neurotransmitter serotonin in it than the brain does. So that the gut things are here to tell us about what is safe and what isn't. And when the brain and the gut, and the brain and the heart, and the brain and up here in this... in the head are connected, then we're grounded and present, and very alert, and very aware of what's going on. But when childhood trauma interferes with those connections, which it does, then we start to just work from up here, and we could th- think we can figure things just from up here. But actually, when you think about human beings, where did we evolve? We evolved for millions of years out in nature. How long does any creature in nature survive if they don't pay attention to their gut feelings?

   4. NANarrator25:28

      Hmm.

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté25:30

      So, to go back to your question about me, I used to believe, I really used to believe into my 40s that I... everybody else could be stressed, but I couldn't be. And it's like you and your anxiety. Um... I think the reason you... I didn't feel the stress 'cause I had coping mechanisms, like working hard, and, um, getting people's attention, or using my smarts, and, and, uh, having status, and all those kind of stuff, you know? Then that broke down. I realized I, I could be stressed like everybody else-

   6. NANarrator26:09

      (laughs)

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté26:09

      ... but literally, I had to... I, I had this belief, I mean, it's almost unbelievable to me now that I used to believe that I couldn't... everybody else could be stressed, but I couldn't be.

   8. NANarrator26:19

      That's what I thought. (laughs)

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté26:21

      (laughs) Yeah.

   10. NANarrator26:24

       Your wife, when you went through that-

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté26:26

       Yeah.

   12. NANarrator26:27

       ... dark moment, if I was her, what would I have observed?

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté26:32

       Well, first of all, and I talk about this in The Myth of Normal, and Ray, my wife, came on stage at The Troxy on Monday night and talked about this. I asked her to. Women have 80% of autoimmune disease in this society. So, that, um, diseases where the immune system attacks the body happens to, to women much more than to men. Things like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, um, inflammatory diseases of the gut, um, and, and so on. Why? So, um, those diseases tend to happen to people, not just according to my own observation, although it's very much my own observation when I was working in family practice and palliative care. Before I did addiction medicine, I noticed that who got sick and who didn't wasn't accidental. Um, that's the subject of my book When the Body Says No. And then, again, in The Myth of Normal, people tended to be compulsively concerned with the emotional needs of others rather than their own, identified with duty, role, and responsibility, so their, their work in the world rather than their own, um, true selves.

7. 27:50 – 30:57

   🤝 Autoimmune Diseases and Emotional Patterns: Breaking the Cycle

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté27:50

      They tended to suppress healthy anger, so they tend to be very, very nice and peacemakers, and they tended to believe that they're responsible if other people feel, and that they must never dis- disappoint anybody, two fatal beliefs. So, these are the people that, according to my observation, but according to a whole lot of research as well that I didn't even know about, but have since found, elegant research, these are the people that tend to develop autoimmune disease. Now, in this society, which gender is more acculturated, programmed to suppress their healthy anger, to be the peacemakers, to be the caregivers? Women. This is a function of a reality that a lot of people deny, but it's a patriarchal society, which we can talk about, but it's not a conspiracy. It's just how it works. So, me in my marriage expect my wife to absorb my stresses, and if I'm unhappy, guess who I blame and who do I take it out on? So, she would experience somebody who's... um, can be hostile for no reason, and blaming, and she has to walk on eggshells. Now, um, thank God, she's not the type to do that for too long, and at some point, she'll call my bluff. And then I either wake up, or she says, (laughs) "Thank you very much, but enough of this." You know? And so she would experience somebody who was irritable, and, um, unreasonably blaming, and not taking care of their own needs, and then expecting her to take care of them for me. And, um, we both had to grow up. Uh, she was programmed that way as a child. Her parents had a lot of problems, and she became the peacemaker and the caregiver emotionally, and then she carries that role into her marriage with me. And here's where the bad news is, uh, for people. We always marry somebody at the same level of emotional development or trauma resolution as we are. So, when we met, we were two traumatized people not even realizing it, and then we played out our traumas, and I played it out in a typical male way, which is to be aggressive and demanding and resentful if she wasn't around to mother me, and, um, that's what she would have seen. And this dynamic can still arise, except when it does, she puts a stop to it right away, and I have the grace and the wisdom by now to understand, yeah, I'm doing it again. In fact, I haven't done it since then because I just don't wanna be that guy, you know? But that's what she would have seen.

   2. NANarrator30:25

      And what was going on inside your head? Were you anxious? Were you depressed?

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté30:30

      I was anxious, and, um, then I want her, her soothing, I want her... uh, how should I say this? Um, there's an interesting sexual dynamic between men and women that men very often expect, unconsciously expect their women to mother them, to give them the mothering that they didn't fully receive as kids. And the women take on that role,

8. 30:57 – 37:34

   💑 Emotional Intimacy in Relationships: Avoiding Mothering Dynamics

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté30:57

      because they're acculturated in this society to do that. But then what happens sexually? No healthy guy wants to sleep with his mother, and no healthy woman wants to sleep (laughs) with her son. So that, the, the ardor and the, you know, the, the, the passion kind of drains out because of this unconscious dynamic of women mothering men, and, and men, men demanding that they do. So, then I become frustrated. And then who do I blame for that? I blame her, rather than looking at, how did I contribute to... How did I help create this situation? So, um, all that stuff played out in our marriage, and we've had to learn a lot from what didn't work.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett31:41

      In my relationship, when I was most anxious, it's also when my relationship nearly ended-

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté31:49

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett31:50

      ... um, with my partner because, like you said, I inadvertently took it out on her-

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté31:55

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett31:55

      ... because I felt that she should understand how I'm feeling and basically adapt to me.

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:00

      Exactly.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett32:01

      And she didn't. And so, there was conflict because I felt like I... she was misunderstanding me-

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:07

      Yeah.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett32:08

       ... and wasn't s- like, acting in the right way to meet the needs that I had, like she couldn't underst- You know? And, and so that... I think I wore her down, and then there was kind of like, as you say, that ul- ultimatum-

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:21

       Yeah.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett32:21

       ... moment where she's basically saying, "Listen, shall I just go?"

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:24

       Yeah. And what you probably didn't do, and what I didn't do for a long time, is just to go to her and say, "You know what? I'm feeling anxious."

   14. SBSteven Bartlett32:31

       Yeah, that was the... That's what happened after.

   15. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:33

       You know, you know?

   16. SBSteven Bartlett32:34

       Yeah.

   17. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:34

       A- and I'm feeling unsettled.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett32:36

       Hm.

   19. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:36

       And I realize that I have resentful feelings towards you. You know? Instead of owning it, we act it out.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett32:43

       Yeah.

   21. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:43

       And then we, "Why don't they understand us?"

   22. SBSteven Bartlett32:45

       Yeah.

   23. GMDr. Gabor Maté32:45

       You know? And actually, so what we're actually demanding is that we can be children emotionally, and they be the mothers who, without any effort on our part, will understand and see us, you know? And this is a strong dynamic, um, in male-female relationships, and what tends to happen is, is that men then... Women at some point get to the... if they're healthy enough. Now, if they're not he- if they're not strong enough to assert themselves, you know what happens? They get sick.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett33:17

       Mm-hmm.

   25. GMDr. Gabor Maté33:17

       And, uh, I know this is a mouthful, but a lot of women's cancers and autoimmune diseases are precisely because of this self-repression. And I could talk about that at great length, the physiology of it, but either the, the body will somehow say no for them... That's why women are much more likely to be on antidepressants, 'cause they're taking a medication for both of them (laughs) , you know? And so, either the woman gets ill somehow or she asserts herself and says, "I'm not doing this anymore." At which point, the guy will go seeking a younger mother who's not yet mature enough to assert herself, and this happens all the time in relationships.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett33:58

       The cost of self-repression-

   27. GMDr. Gabor Maté33:59

       Yeah.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett33:59

       ... the cost of sort of emotional repression. I think everybody is guilty at some point in their life of repressing their emotions. I think men-

   29. GMDr. Gabor Maté34:06

       Yeah.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett34:06

       ... do it a lot as well. I mean, if you look at the sui- suicidality-
9. 37:34 – 43:43

   🤝 Suppressing Healthy Anger and its Impact on Immunity

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:35

      to proliferate. There was a British surgeon in the 1960s who operated on... Am I talking too much?

   2. NANarrator37:42

      No, you're not. (laughs) There's no such thing on this podcast.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:44

      (laughs)

   4. NANarrator37:44

      (laughs)

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:44

      Okay. Because I just get so passionate-

   6. NANarrator37:48

      Mm-hmm.

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:48

      ... about this stuff. Uh, and the reason I get so passionate about it is 'cause it's so important in healing, and we as physicians could do so much more for people if we understood these scientific facts, but we don't as a profession. Anyway, there was a Da- there was a British, um, thoracic surgeon called David Kissen in the 1960s who noticed what I noticed in my practice, that, um, people emotionally repressed are more likely to get lung cancer. Now, it's true that most people who get lung cancers are smokers, but out of 100 smokers, only about 10 or 15 gets lung cancer. Which doesn't mean that lung... smoking isn't the major contributor to lung cancer. It is, but he found that it was those of his patients that were emotionally repressed that were likely to get the lung cancer as a result of the smoking. And the more repressed they were, the less smoking they had to do in order to get lung cancer.

   8. NANarrator38:48

      (laughs)

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté38:48

      This is... This guy noticed this in the 1960s. So emotional repression has huge implications physiologically, and emotional repression is one of the, uh, impacts of childhood trauma.

   10. NANarrator39:01

       Why?

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté39:02

       The child is born with some fundamental needs. One of them, as I've articulated earlier, is for attachment, for closeness, proximity, unconditioned loving acceptance by, um, caring adults. Not just a human child, all mammalian children have that need. Without that, they don't survive. So that's called attachment, the seeking of closeness and proximity for the purpose of being taken care of or to take care of the other. And our brains are wired for attachment. We have circuits in our brain dedicated to the attachment relationships, and that's so important all through our lives, but especially when we're infants and young children. Now... But we have another need. We've already talked about it, I just haven't named it. The other need is for authenticity. We just, to be ourselves, connected to our bodies and our gut feelings, because again, without access to our gut feelings, we don't survive, uh, out there in nature where we evolved and where we lived until 15,000 years ago. You know, and so that authenticity is very important, to be connected to yourself, so that you know when you're safe and when you're not, uh, you know what you want and what you don't want, you know how to say no when you don't want something, you know how to say yes when you do. That's authenticity, auto the self, being ourselves. And to go back to Harry, his challenge all his life was that he wasn't allowed to be authentic. He had to play a certain role and fit into a certain set of expectations of how to be and who to be, and he could never figure out, "Who am I really?" You know, in that context. But that's so general. So many of us face that challenge of, who are we really, who are we authentically? As opposed to what's expected of us. Now, so we have these two needs, attachment on the one hand, authenticity on the other. Ideally, the two are not in conflict. Ideally, you can be in a relationship or I can be in a relationship where we can be ourselves and be accepted and connected with, and that's ideal all our lives. But what happens to a young child where if they're authentic, they're not accepted? So for example, um, certain psychologists recommend that angry children should be, uh, punished for their anger rather than their anger being understood as to what it's all about and the child being taught different ways to express it. They just to be punished for it and by different ways. By the way, if you're a parent of a two-year-old and if you don't frustrate your child, you're probably not doing a good job 'cause your two-year-old may want a cookie before dinner, and you say, "No cookie before dinner." "Wah, wah, wah, cookie." You know, uh, in a minute they're throwing a tantrum 'cause what do even adults do when they're frustrated? They throw tantrums. Children, that's just what they do. They have no self-regulation yet. So the two-year-old gets upset. Now you punish them. You give them the message, "You're not acceptable to me when you're anger, when you're angry. You have to be a certain way for me to accept you." Or, "You mustn't be sad. Cheer up. What's, you know, what's wrong with you?" You know? So, when children are given this message of conditionality, that, "You're acceptable to me only if you behave in ways that I approve of, otherwise the attachment relationship is threatened."... then the child is faced with this choice, which is not a choice at all. Do I stay attached to my parents? If my pa- if my father's an alcoholic, and uh, the only way I can find acceptance is by repressing my emotions and not showing my sadness and my fear, then do I show my sadness and my fear or my anger, or do I threaten the relationship? Well, there's no choice at all. The child will choose the attachment, and therefore, they give up connection to themselves, which is the essence of trauma. That disconnection from ourselves, not in my own words, in the words of other trauma theorists, um, who I agree with. The worst aspect of trauma is the disconnection from ourselves. And we do that for the sake of making, maintaining attachments, which means for the rest of our lives, we'll be afraid to be ourselves. Is this what they call people pleasers and- People,

10. 43:43 – 48:41

    🙅‍♂️ Trauma and Authenticity: Overcoming People-Pleasing Habits

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté43:43

       uh, uh, exactly. So, um, Sheryl Crow, the American singer and musician, um, developed breast cancer, and she said that, "Since my breast cancer, I've been a different person. Until then, I was always trying to please others, and now, and there's w- there used to be voices in my head that are always telling me that I was wrong. I don't listen to them anymore." You know, so that, uh, people pleasers are the ones who gave up, not by conscious choice but as a matter of survival, their authenticity in order to stay liked and accepted and attached with, but then they carry that on in the rest of their lives, and they're at risk. I always worry for the very nice people. I think this is fascinating. I looked at the back end of our YouTube channel, and it says that since this channel started, 69.9% of you that watch it frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button. So, I have a favor to ask you. If you've ever watched this channel and enjoyed the content, if you're enjoying this episode right now, please, could I ask a small favor? Please hit the subscribe button. It helps this channel more than I can explain, and I promise if you do that, to return the favor, we will make this show better, and better, and better, and better, and better. That's a promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the subscribe button. Do we have a deal? You always worry for the very nice people. Yeah. You talk a, a lot about that in When the Body Says No. Yeah. Why is being nice a potential risk to one's health? Well, there's two re- there's two places to be very nice from. One is just genuine human compassion and concern for others, but you're still grounded in yourself. That's great, but a lot of people are very nice because they are afraid not to be. Because if they weren't liked for who they were, they weren't loved for who they were, being nice was their way of getting the, the love and the attention they needed. Let me tell you a story. In, uh, uh, in 1870, there was a French neurologist called Jean-Martin Charcot who was the first one to describe multiple sclerosis, which is an inflammation of the nervous system, very debilitating. And Charcot said in 1870, without any scientific research, but just from his own observation, that this was a stress-driven disease. Okay? Now, since then, there's been a lot of research to show how stress and trauma potentiate multiple sclerosis, and that's not even controversial. Not that any neurologist knows that, they don't get taught this stuff in medical school, but the research is there, and I present it in, in my books. In any case, when I was writing When the Body Says No, a group of, a self-help group of multiple sclerosis patients phoned me and said, "Would you come and talk to us? 'Cause we understand you're working on stress and, and illness." And I said, "Yeah, sure. I'll come and talk to you," and there's about 25 people in the group. This is in Vancouver, Canada. And I gave them very tentatively, apologetically, apologetically, I said, "Look, I don't know this for sure, but the sense I get from my work in family practice and palliative care is that the people that des- develop your condition and other conditions tend to be people, people pleasers, that they have a, they tend to have difficulty saying no, they tend to be very nice people." And I, I said, "You know, I'm sorry if I've offended you. I don't mean to. I'm just giving you something very tentative. I haven't done the research yet. I'm just giving you my observations." They said, "You've just described us," and they all said that. And there's a woman who says, in the group who says, "I don't even know how to say no." I said, "Terrific. Give me $100 right now." She says, "Well, I don't, I don't, I don't have $100 with me right now." I said, "It's not a problem." I said, "Outside the m- outside this building, there's an ATM machine. We can go and, after the meeting, we can go out, you can get $100 and give it to me." She says, "Uh, I'm, uh, I'm not comfortable doing that." I said, "Listen, I'm just trying to get you to say no to a ridiculous demand by a perfect stranger to whom you, you owe nothing whatsoever." She said, "I can't say the word." Because in childhood... Now, by the way, when you have kids, you're gonna find out what the word no means because age one and a half, all kids start saying no. They say that long before they say yes. Why? Because that no is their boundary defense of, "I'll figure out who I am. I'm not gonna accede to your demands, I need to figure out what I want." "Put your shoes on." "No." And the parents think there's just something wrong. There's nothing wrong. It's nature individuating the child. When families punish that, the child will repress the no, and the body will say in the form of multiple sclerosis. For example, niceness, ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or known in

11. 48:41 – 49:08

    🧠 Repressed Anger and its Link to Illnesses like ALS

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté48:41

       Britain as motor neuron disease. Um, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with it at age 21. He was told he'd be dead within 10, two years. He lived another 55 years. Doctors don't know everything.... you know. Um, but there's been studies on ALS patients, they're extraordinarily nice. So, um, there was, uh, from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, a major referral clinic,

12. 49:08 – 52:11

    🩺 ALS Patients' Niceness and its Connection to Health

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté49:08

       two neurologists published a paper at an international ALS or motor neuron congress, "Why are ALS patients so nice?" And what they described was that when people came to their office for diagnosis, before they met the physician, they had underwent EDX, electrodiagnostic testing of the nerves. And the technicians who would perform the tests would write on the side of the test, "This person can't have ALS, she's not nice enough." Or, "I'm afraid this person has ALS, they're too nice." And the physicians, the neurology specialists said despite the shortness of their contact with their patients, and the obv- obviously unscientific nature of their observations, invariably they turned out to be right. And then I called Dr. Wilbourn, who did the study, and I said, "What did the others ther- what did the other neurologists say when you presented this?" They all said, "Yeah, we all noticed this. We just can't explain it." Since then, there's been a study where they've asked neurologists about their patients, and the answer is, "All our ALS patients are extraordinarily nice." Now, what the neurologists don't do is they don't make the connection. That, that re- that, that, that, that niceness is a repression of healthy anger, and that repression of healthy anger plays a role in the onset of that disease. So, it's not a accidental connection. So, why do I worry about very nice people? 'Cause they're putting themselves at risk. Again, niceness can come from genuine concern for others, but that's not accompanied by an ignoring of yourself. You also care for yourself. Then you can be as nice as you want, but you also know how to say no, and you also know how to set boundaries. You know how to s- and you know how to be angry if you need to be. But the niceness that comes from self-repression, that's the one that hurts.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett51:01

       There's clearly gonna be a lot of very nice people hearing that-

    3. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:04

       (laughs)

    4. SBSteven Bartlett51:05

       ... now, that know they're nice, that know they're people pleasers, that know-

    5. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:07

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett51:08

       ... they've experienced in their lives the consequences of putting everyone else before themself.

    7. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:14

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett51:15

       I can ... It's funny, as you were talking, I was thinking about the person that I know who I think is "nicest"-

    9. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:20

       Yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett51:21

        ... and that individual is sick all the time.

    11. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:24

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett51:25

        And I just connected that dot in my head, but I remember making a joke to her about, "Oh, you're, you're sick, so like, whatever. You're sick a lot." And then also thinking, "Oh my God, she is probably the nicest..." N- nice is an interesting word because that can be misconstrued as, like, "Hiya!" Or like, you know-

    13. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:42

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett51:42

        ... saying nice things to someone else. But it's really at a deeper level, f- from what I've observed in that person, putting everyone else before them-

    15. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:49

        Exactly.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett51:50

        ... or chronically serving other people's needs before their own.

    17. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:54

        Well, so my contention is, as I said earlier, when people don't know how to say no, the body will say no for them in the form of illness.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett52:02

        Mm-hmm.

    19. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:02

        And f- and, and for a lot of people with serious illness, the illness is the wake-up call.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett52:06

        Yeah.

    21. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:07

        And they actually learn. And when they do, that can make a difference to the course

13. 52:11 – 1:00:46

    🚪 Setting Boundaries: Key to Healing and Self-Discovery

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:11

       of their illness sometimes. Not always, but I've seen examples of remarkable healing when people learn to say no and stop being people pleasers. And I just only wish that physicians understood this. So, when somebody comes to them with chronic eczema or an- all these other chronic conditions, they would not just provide the physical treatment, but they would also talk to the person about how much stress are they taking on. It's very stressful to take on everybody else's issues and ignoring your own. It's very stressful. That stress has a physiological impact on the body.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett52:44

       How does someone who is a people pleaser, how do they turn that ship around? Because it's, they'll hear that, but because their niceness or their people pleasing is so deep within them-

    3. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:55

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett52:55

       ... and it started so early, th- they're not gonna, they're not gonna change. Most of them won't change.

    5. GMDr. Gabor Maté53:00

       Well, uh, they may change if they get sick, you know, and if they learn something from it. I've had a lot of people tell me that. Um, but it is ... happens very early, uh, but it's everybody's second nature, not their first nature. That's, it's a very interesting phrase, "second nature." It needs to be the first nature. Now, no baby is born as a people pleaser. No baby lies there... No one-day-old baby lies there thinking, "Gosh, um, I'm hungry, and wet, and, and, and, and lonely. But gosh, mom and dad have been working so hard, I better not bother them." You know, babies will express their needs very volubly and very articulately and very loudly. That's how we're born. We're meant to be born that way. So, that this suppression of that is our second nature, and that first nature never goes away. We can always retrieve it, but you have to become conscious of it. So, and, and when the body says no, I lay out certain principles of healing. Um, in The Myth of Normal, I, I actually teach this exercise. Ask yourself this question, where in your life are you not saying no? Where, where a no wants to be said, but you're not saying it. Like, let me ask you ... uh, let me give you an example. Let's say I come to London and, and, and we're friends, and I call you up, "Hey, Stephen, here I am. Do you want to have coffee?" Um, but you've been up all night helping a sick friend, or otherwise you're just too stressed to wanna meet me right now. Your desire is to say no. But what if you suppress that no, and you say yes for the fear of displeasing me, or disappointing me, or losing my friendship? "If I say no, Gabor won't like me anymore." What's going to be the impact on you if you keep behaving that way? Physically, what's going to be the impact?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett54:53

       I'm gonna be...... you're gonna be more tired, more exhausted. You're probably gonna be more stressed.

    7. GMDr. Gabor Maté54:58

       All that.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett54:59

       Yeah.

    9. GMDr. Gabor Maté54:59

       You can be resentful.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett55:00

        Disconnected from...

    11. GMDr. Gabor Maté55:01

        Yeah, exactly. You know, so, so there's not a, this, so this person, they need to l- I, I teach this exercise in the book about, where am I not saying no? And what is my belief behind saying, not saying no? Well-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett55:16

        I don't wanna upset Gabor if he's coming over.

    13. GMDr. Gabor Maté55:17

        Exactly. And, and, and I, and I depend on Gabor's liking.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett55:20

        Yes.

    15. GMDr. Gabor Maté55:21

        You know? Uh, which means as a child, you depend on your parents' liking, and you had to suppress your no to be liked. Thirdly, where did I learn this belief that if I say no, I'm not likable, or I'm guilty, or I'm not worthwhile, you know? And the fourth question is, um, who would I be without that belief? You know? Um, and so if, if your friend does this exercise regularly, believe me, she can turn it around, but it takes some practice.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett55:49

        Who would I be without that belief?

    17. GMDr. Gabor Maté55:51

        Yeah.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett55:52

        When I put myself in her shoes, or I put myself in a people pleaser's shoes, I wouldn't... I'm a people pleaser in, in certain environments, but I wouldn't say I am generally.

    19. GMDr. Gabor Maté56:01

        Yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett56:01

        Um, I can imagine someone would respond to that and say, "Well, I'd lose all my friends."

    21. GMDr. Gabor Maté56:07

        She'd find out who her friends really were, because her real friends would celebrate it. They'd say, "Oh, finally, we're so glad to see you being yourself." The friends that were just using her or relying on her to be their supporter, um, unconditionally, uh, will turn away. And I say this to people, "This contest between attachment and authenticity can be a painful one, but you can decide which kind of pain you want." As a child, you had no choice. As an adult, it's true, if you're authentic, you might lose some attachment relationships. That's gonna be painful. But which pain would you rather have? The pain of being authentic and losing some friendships that were no friendships at all, or the pain of, of, of, of losing yourself and all its implications and all its impacts on the body? So, um, it, it would be difficult for her, and it's true, some relationships that she has now, they would fade away. But my God, she would also attract much more genuine and authentic relationships, and her true friends would really celebrate her. You know? Now, let me tell you something that just occurred to me, but forget it. Th- there was a, um, book written by an Australian nurse about 12 years ago, and she... This nurse... Like, I used to work in palliative care with dying people. She works with, uh, in hospice, with dying people, and these are people who tend to die of, of, of malignancy and chronic illness well before their time. And she wrote a book called The, The Top Five Regrets of Dying People.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett57:39

        Brilliant work.

    23. GMDr. Gabor Maté57:40

        And, uh, you know what the top regret was? That I wasn't being myself. That I wasn't true to myself. I wasn't being authentic. That's the top regret of dying people. And, and they, um... The third one was that I didn't express my feelings for fear of disturbing or, or displeasing others. So authenticity is not just a new-age concept. It's actually a central dynamic in staying healthy human beings. Oh, one more thing. So, yesterday I was in Westminster Abbey, and I was looking at all these beautifully and articulately worded monuments to all these colonialists, to all the people that oppressed and murdered and robbed and despoiled native people all over the world. They're the heroes of the British Empire. And I think one of the reasons there's such a strong pushback against the idea of trauma in this society is if you recognize trauma, which exists not only on the personal, individual level, but very much on the collective level, the ruling elites in this country would have to come to terms with the fact that their wealth is based on the traumatization of foreign peoples, which incidentally was one of the crimes of Harry, is that he pointed that out. The, the, that, let's face it, the royalty, the wealth that I was born into was achieved at the despoilation and oppression of people around the world. So trauma is not just a personal issue. It's very much a social and collective and historical issue.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett59:26

        What's the cure? You know-

    25. GMDr. Gabor Maté59:28

        The cure-

    26. SBSteven Bartlett59:28

        ... because if we're, if we're... Many of us are byproducts of generational trauma, and we're seeking different ways to ease our pain through, through the means of addiction, whether it's pornography or heroin or alcohol, um, we can't all afford expensive therapists, but we exhibit those self-destructive behavior patterns maybe every single day, maybe with social media addictions or whatever.

    27. GMDr. Gabor Maté59:52

        Yeah, yeah.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett59:53

        What, what do we do?

    29. GMDr. Gabor Maté59:55

        Unfortunately, uh, the healthcare systems around the world, um, have very poor appreciation of the emotional contribution to people's physical or mental ill health. And most physicians and most psychiatrists are not trained in it, unfortunately. There's a huge, um, gap between science and research on one hand and medical practice on the other. It's maddening sometimes to contemplate it. Um, so the first step would be to educate the, the caregivers. Just educate doctors about the actual science of the mind-body connection and the impacts of trauma. Educate them, so when you go to a physician with, um, say, chronic fatigue or, um, inflammation of your joints, they don't just

14. 1:00:46 – 1:11:31

    🏥 Preventing Trauma-Related Illnesses: Addressing Emotional Needs

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:00:46

       give you the necessary medication, which I'm not against, but they also ask you what's going on, you know? So, that's the first thing.... second thing is, let's prevent the problem. So, let's support young families to be really there for their kids, so that, uh, families don't have to struggle economically, and the parents are so stressed. Um, as I may have mentioned, I've forgotten now, when parents are emotionally stressed, economically stressed, according to a number of studies, the kids' stress hormones levels are abnormal, and that is a harbinger of future disease. And so, let's look after young families. Let's make people feel secure. Uncertainty, lack of control, uh, lack of information, these are some of the drivers of physiological stress. So, let's create a society where there's more sense of mutual acceptance and communality and, and, and social support, you know? Let teachers be educated, that the kids who are so-called misbehaving are kids who are actually troubled, troubled because of stuff at home, and that the solution is not to exclude them or to punish them, but to actually give them emotional support in the classroom and in the schools. Let the schools be. The human brain, I'm quoting a Harvard study, develops, um, from before birth. It's an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. The necessary condition for human brain development is safe, uh, supportive emotional relationship with adults. Let everybody who deals with children, from social workers, to teachers, to daycare workers, to kindergarten, um, supervisors, to, to parents understand the emotional needs of kids, and, and provide that safety. Uh, let the justice system, so-called, about which there's very little just ... Um, uh, in Canada, 50% of the women in jail are Indigenous. They make up 6% of the population. 50% of the jail population. You call that justice? You take the most traumatized people who then act out their traumas, and then you punish them for it. So, let the medical system, let the educational system, let the legal system understand child development and trauma. Now, in terms of the adult, to answer your question more specifically, so there's a social answer.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:23

       Mm-hmm.

    3. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:03:24

       But then there's the individual answer. Yeah, a lot of people can't afford good therapy, it's true, and it's expensive, and, and, and even though there's a lot of people who are, get therapy, but not getting appropriate therapy. Well, if you can't afford therapy, go to the library, read some books. My own, but not just my own. I could rattle off five other books you should read. Read Dick Schwartz's, uh, book on, uh, internal family systems called No Bad Parts. Read Bessel van der Kraan's book on trauma called The Body Keeps the Score. Read Peter Levine's book, Waking the Tiger, on trauma. Read Oprah Winfrey's and Bruce Perry book, What Happened to You? Read Bruce Perry's book, uh, called, uh, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. Um-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:09

       I'm interviewing Peter Levine-

    5. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:04:11

       Oh, you have?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:11

       ... soon.

    7. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:04:12

       Oh, good. Oh, good, wonderful. I'm glad to hear that. He's one of my mentors and friends, and we often work together. Uh, so this is ... And, and, and all of these books will have some advice about how to help yourself, including my books. Then, there's a lot of stuff on the internet. So this, uh, the interview that you and I had a year ago, I checked this morning, has been seen by two and a half million people.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:38

       Hmm.

    9. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:04:38

       I'm sure it's helped a lot of people. Uh, there's a lot that you can get, just, you know, freely. Nobody's gonna get charged, uh, you know, on the YouTube. Um, lots of my talks are available, lots of talks by other really good people are available, do that. There's self-help groups of all kinds. Um-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:56

        Is there a risk here? This is what the, the one side of the narrative sometimes argue-

    11. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:05:01

        Yeah, yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:01

        ... you can kind of over-traumatize your life in terms of over, over labeling everything that you do as a trauma. So, you know, and, I mean, that, that always happens, right, when, when people become aware of something-

    13. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:05:17

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:17

        ... they become over-aware, and they start over-labeling and saying, "That's a trauma response. That's a trauma response. That's a trauma response." And they kind of live with a feeling that they are inherently broken.

    15. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:05:26

        Yeah, but my point is that nobody's broken. Um, actually, I talked about our first nature, that's always there. When people recover, it's an interesting word, recovery. What does it mean to recover? When you recover something, what are you doing?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:43

        Going back to her.

    17. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:05:44

        You're finding it.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:46

        Oh, yeah. I'm sure, yeah. That's the definition of the word, isn't it?

    19. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:05:48

        What do people find when they recover? They find their true selves. That's what they'll tell you. Their true self never went away. Nobody's damaged goods, nobody's broken. To talk about trauma is not to disempower people, but to empower them. If I learn that my response to the British media and the Harry issue was ... Actually, it's nothing to do with the present moment, it's actually some old programming. Oh, okay, now I can drop it.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:18

        Are you glad it happened?

    21. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:06:20

        I'm glad that everything happened 'cause everything is learning. Nothing in this, this life is wasted if you know how to use it properly. And, um, so what I'm saying is that to under- to, to be aware of trauma is not to lose power, but to gain it, because it's not an excuse. I can't keep going to my wife and saying, "I'm being resentful of you and, and punishing you because my mother didn't take good care of me when I was a baby 'cause she was too stressed." You know? I mean, that, that, that's lack of responsibility. But, uh, for me to understand that my demands on my wife to take care of me like a mother would of a baby actually is my trauma response, then I can drop it, 'cause I'm not a baby anymore. I don't need-... I'm not that helpless, I'm not that resourceless, um, I'm not that, um, ungrounded. So that when you recognize trauma, it's not in order to use it as an excuse, but to actually to overcome it. That's the whole point.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:17

        When we talked about su- the suppression of our emotions and anger, you used the word healthy anger-

    23. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:07:22

        Yeah.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:23

        ... when you... You know, 'cause there's a, there's a risk, isn't there, when you're saying that anger can be a positive thing, that people will then assume that berating someone behind a counter at, or a waitress in a restaurant because they-

    25. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:07:34

        Yeah.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:35

        ... got one item on your order wrong is standing up for your boundaries?

    27. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:07:38

        I've done it. (laughs)

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:39

        Yeah.

    29. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:07:40

        Uh, no, it's not. So, healthy anger is in the moment, and it's just a boundary defense. It's not outrage, it's, "You're in my space. Get out." Th- th- that's its purpose. That's its only purpose. Or to protect something, like, uh, um, you wanna see anger? Um, (scoffs) try and tell a mother bear not to, uh, be close to their ba- to their cubs, you know? You'll find out what healthy mother anger is all about, you know? That's just healthy. The kind of rage you're talking about... Have you ever had that kind of rage?

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:18

        Definitely on a spectrum. I've got f- I've got... So, the reason I struggle with the answer is because I've got a friend that's fully shown me what the- th- that's-
15. 1:11:31 – 1:12:28

    💔 Childhood Experiences and Adult Health: Heart Attacks and Strokes

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:11:31

       can lead to chronic illness, but so can rage lead to, uh, heart attacks and, uh, and strokes and so on. So, anger is a delicate thing.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:41

       Should I say something about my friend that we found out? Because he then went to a childhood psychologist-

    3. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:11:47

       Oh, good.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:47

       ... to help him stand himself, and that's why I said that was the last time. So, you can imagine, that was three years ago-

    5. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:11:51

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:51

       ... in the pandemic. Two, three years ago. He went to a childhood psychologist, and what they uncovered through their work was that as a kid, he, we- he was not only, um, a foot shorter than all the other kids-

    7. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:01

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:01

       ... but he was both dyslexic and struggled a lot intellectually.

    9. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:05

       Hmm.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:05

        So, um, the people around him and on his report card basically called him stupid as a child.

    11. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:11

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:11

        And then he actually found a te- I think he found a text message at some point between his mum and his nan-

    13. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:15

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:16

        ... where they were diminishing his chances of success. And he grew up with this deep sense of like, "I am not intelligent." A deep, deep sense of it. And it's come out in all

16. 1:12:28 – 1:15:26

    🧠 Impact of Negative Labels on Self-Worth: Childhood to Adulthood

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:28

       of these ways as an adult, and that-

    2. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:29

       Yeah, yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:29

       You're right. That's what was going on-

    4. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:31

       Yeah, see-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:32

       ... in that moment. I was challenging... I was taking him back probably.

    6. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:34

       Well, and you know what? That, again, to come back to Harry, that's what happened to him. They called him stupid, and fickle, and naughty, and he was none o- none of those things. He just had trouble f- concentrating and paying attention because of all the stress. And-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:50

       My friend has ADHD as well.

    8. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:52

       Yeah, yeah, and, and so i- in his book, he describes that he's been told he had, had post-traumatic stress. I didn't diagnose him with all this stuff. It's in his book. I said, "You know what? But I think given the hard dis- you s- you, you were distracted as a kid, you had trouble paying attention, y- um, they called you stupid."... this is ADD. And, um, I wasn't saying he's got a disease, I was saying you're actually... That was a normal response that you had to an abnormal situation, where they, you were under a lot of stress and they made you wrong for it. They called you naughty, they called you stupid, they called you fickle. You're not any of that. Now, the whole bunch of British psychiatrists got their knickers tied in a knot 'cause I made that diagnosis, you know. Um, my God, people. I was saying to the guy, "You don't have a disease, you have a normal response to abnormal circumstances. You are not stupid, ever." But, but children undergo this character assassination like your friend did. And imagine the rage inside him. So, when you disagree with him, you're triggering all that. It's just, that's just how it works. Now, interestingly enough, people calling me stupid, that's not a trigger for me.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:04

       Yeah. It's not for me.

    10. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:14:05

        Because, uh, I know I'm not. You know, I, I always grew up with a sense of my own intelligence. Not to overstate it, but I don't... Never had any doubt about it. But certain things you can do-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:16

        Yeah.

    12. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:14:16

        ... like not see me, and that'll trigger me.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:20

        And for context for anybody that doesn't know why you not being seen triggers you...

    14. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:14:26

        Well, look, I was born, you know... I, I may have mentioned this last year. So, I was born two months before the Nazis occupied Budapest, then they started exterminating all the Hungarian Jews. So, literally, my life was under threat, 'cause they didn't see me as a human being. They saw me as vermin. You know? Now, not that I knew that directly, but my mother... Can you imagine what it was like for her to have a two-month-old and living under the risk of death all the time for a whole year? And then, as I mentioned before, she gave me to a stranger to save my life, and I didn't see her for five weeks. Well, that's not being seen. And my father's not there to see me 'cause he was in forced labor. So, literally not being seen threatened my life. So, no wonder when people... Uh, when that happens now, you know, th- that, for me, is the trigger. Now, the... Of course, the answer is, is to see myself.

17. 1:15:26 – 1:20:47

    🙅‍♂️ Childhood Emotional Recognition: Importance of Self-Awareness

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:15:27

       If I fully see myself, it doesn't matter whether you see me or not, you know? So, if you see me... If you're not seeing me, if you're distorting who I am in your mind and in your words bothers me, it's only 'cause I'm still counting on you, uh, and other people, to see me 'cause I don't know how to see myself. If I'm fully confident in myself, I'll say, "Gee, that's too bad. You know, Stephen doesn't see me." Well, maybe we talk it, talk about it or maybe he'll never understand it, but I don't live in his mind.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:03

       How do I fully see myself? It's hard to do, right?

    3. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:16:06

       It's, it's, it's hard to do because when you were seen, it's not hard to do, because you... Children see themselves through their parents' eyes.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:16

       Yeah.

    5. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:16:17

       But when you're not seen, then you have to learn it. This is w- one of the things w- to go back to meditation, that's not the only way. First of all, notice all the ways that you're not seeing yourself. Like, two days ago, when I had this anxiety about how I, maybe I didn't give my best talk on Monday evening. You know what? I did my best. May not have been perfect, but I prepared for it, I put myself out there for two hours and, um, I spoke a lot of truth. Might not have been the best, but so what? But f- at that... But, but, but at that moment, I wasn't seeing myself, you know? I can still lose it. So, meditation, which is really. The form of meditation that at least I am learning, is about just noticing and seeing what's going on inside without judgment, so being aware. So, it's practice.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:07

       And do you also suggest removing the things from your life that will stop you from seeing yourself, like social media?

    7. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:17:16

       Well-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:16

       Because that can be a lot of feedback.

    9. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:17:19

       I can't remove social media from my life, but what I can remove is my attachment to it. For example, I don't have to look at the comments on all my talks on YouTube. Who says what, who likes it, who doesn't like it. You know? I'm not on Facebook, I don't have a f... Uh, I have a professional Facebook page, but I don't administer it. Um, but people go on Facebook and who says what, who likes me, who doesn't like me. You know? They can wean themselves off that. So, it's... We may not be able to stay off social media, um, to write my books, thank God for the internet, but I don't have to be attached to it. So, it's, it's, it's using it, but not letting it use you, which is very hard.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:07

        A new podcast sponsor that I'm super excited to talk about with all of you is LinkedIn Jobs. Hiring, as I would know, is one of the most important steps in your business. Without good people, there is no company. Trust me. I found out along the way that your business is nothing without good people. You wanna be 100% certain, though, that you have access to the best candidates available, and that's why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs helps you to find the right people for your team faster and for free. So, when I'm expanding my team, LinkedIn is my first port of call. I'd highly recommend it. On LinkedIn Jobs, posting a job is super easy, and you can add a purple #Hiring frame around your LinkedIn profile to spread the word. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. Post your job for free at linkedin.com/doac. That's linkedin.com/doac to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. As you may know, this podcast is sponsored by Huel. If you're living under a rock, you might have missed that. I discovered Huel's RTD about four years ago. Huel's RTD is basically a meal in a bottle. It is nutritionally complete, it contains 26 of your essential vitamins and minerals. It's got your protein in there, 20 grams of protein. It's got slow release energy in there, in the form of those slow release carbs.... it's just nutritionally complete. Not only have I got a good relationship with it in terms of health, but it saves my life in terms of those busy days where there's a higher probability of me reaching for something I might regret. If you haven't tried Huel's RTD, you could probably seen it in a couple of supermarkets, but you can order it online, and the link is in the description below. Let me know which flavor is your favorite, and also tell me if it ends up adding value to your life in the form of making you nutritionally complete on those difficult days. (page turns) The other, th- the social media and all of these things, these stimuli, as they... I, I feel like they've... I'm concerned that many of us are living in a state of chronic stress, mild background-

    11. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:20:04

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:04

        ... stress.

    13. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:20:05

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:05

        Uh, and I say that a lot because the amount of times that I catch myself, I spoke to James Nestor, who talks a lot about breathing and breath.

    15. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:20:11

        Yeah.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:11

        Um, and the amount of times that I now catch myself very shallow in breath-

    17. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:20:15

        Mm-hmm.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:16

        ... after just looking at my ph- my phone or thinking about something. (breathes deeply)

    19. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:20:21

        Yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:21

        Let me get my- get some oxygen back into me. In bed at 1:00 AM as I'm trying to sleep, catch my breath being shallow. During this podcast when I start thinking about something, my breath gets really shallow. Looking at my phone, my breath gets really shallow. I live in this c- I feel like I'm living in this state of, like, c- constant, subtle background stress.

    21. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:20:38

        Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm glad you mentioned breath because, um, it's one of the- uh, to go back to the question of what people can do for themselves,

18. 1:20:47 – 1:24:18

    🌬️ Shallow Breathing and Chronic Stress

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:20:47

       they could learn to breathe. And Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher, um, he says that, um, rather than go to retreats and therapists, just take a f- few conscious breaths several times a day. If you- i- I mean, not that, not to dismiss the other, but that's more important than anything else. And interestingly enough, the Buddha, when he was teaching his monks, in fact, one of the Buddha's assistants, Ananda, asked him, um, "Oh, holy one, do you still meditate?" And he said, "Yes." "And what kind of meditation do you practice?" says Ananda. And, uh, the Buddha says, "Observing the breath." So in Buddhist meditation, and, and I'm not here to advocate for any particular pathway and I'm not a practitioner of any religion, but hey, this, this, this very wise man, um, he thought awareness of breath is the most important portal into, into reality.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:46

       What do you think the, the antidote is for the way we've designed our lives to be constant in this sort of stressful stimulation? And... 'Cause we're clearly... (sighs) I was just wondering if human beings are supposed to endure this much constant stimulus and stress in their lives, and with, you know, chronic inflammation and all these kinds of things are now killing people at alarming rates, the, the co- you know, the, the diseases that are caused by inflammation. What can we do about our stress? And is it, is it okay? Maybe it's okay.

    3. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:22:16

       Well, um, it's the norm, so you can say it's normal. Is it okay? Well, the, the question is to be answered by looking at what the impacts are, and what are the impacts? You know, the impacts are very serious for, um... You can see it on the individual level in terms of mental health conditions, as I said earlier, are burgeoning internationally. Um, autoimmune conditions are, uh... But if you look at it on a, also on a social level, there's more conflict, there's more, um, division, there's more, uh, intolerance in our culture than there has been for quite a while. These are the impacts of the stressful culture that we live in. So is it okay? Yeah, if you wanna, if you want this, it's okay. But if you don't, it's not okay. It depends what you want.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:06

       Relationships.

    5. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:23:07

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:08

       Romantic relationships.

    7. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:23:10

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:10

       Um, thought a lot about the role that our trauma plays in our ability to form relationships.

    9. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:23:16

       Yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:16

        Obviously, society has changed quite profoundly in the last couple of decades. Different sort of gender transformations have caused certain mismatches and difficulties with people connecting. The world has gone very digital now-

    11. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:23:28

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:28

        ... so dating apps run the, run a lot of dating. I think 50% of people originally meet online.

    13. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:23:33

        Mm-hmm.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:33

        That's their first point of contact. Dating is very, very hard for people, and there's a lot of people that are kind of giving up on it.

    15. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:23:38

        Mm-hmm.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:38

        Um, attachment, dating, trauma. Um, I've come to learn that we are mirrors. I think I found love in my life when, not when I discovered anything externally, but when I did a lot of work to figure out the, the barriers that were standing in my way of connection.

    17. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:23:57

        Well, you just answered your own question.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:59

        Oh, really?

    19. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:24:00

        Yeah. We can't form proper relationships until we have the capacity to be alone and be comfortable with ourselves. You know? And the more comfortable you can be alone, which is different from being lonely, by the way, um, the more capacity to be actually to be, to be allow-

19. 1:24:18 – 1:34:43

    💑 Building Genuine Emotional Intimacy for Meaningful Relationships

    1. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:24:18

       to be with yourself and to ground yourself in your own truth, the more likely you are to form meaningful and positive relationships. And rather than asking me... A lot of people run into relationships to solve their problems, then there's the initial in-love phase where everything is just ideal, you know, and then reality hits. And then all of a sudden, that person who you were so infatuated with becomes your enemy and you hate them so much. You know? I mean, I've experienced such hatred for my wife over the years. And, uh, when I've been disappointed or dissatisfied, you know? Because I was looking to her to fill me with... And nobody can fill you from the outside. So, so once you no longer need it, um, once you no longer are dependent on it, then you can enter into a healthy relationship. Or, to put it more positively, (clears throat) a relationship can be a real ground for mutual growth. So you can enter into a relationship, you're not gonna be perfect, you're never gonna be perfect. Um, carry a certain degree of trauma, a certain degree of dysfunction, certain things that trigger you, as we said earlier.... but you-- but if both people are committed to the truth, which my wife Ray and I have been, I mean, that's one thing you can say about ourselves, you know? For all the stuff that we've been through, ultimately the truth mattered more than who's right and who's wrong. So, if you're committed to the truth and working it out, and if the fundamental love is there, then you can grow together. And so, for me, the relationship has been the most important growth, growing ground of my life. Not the therapy that I've had or the reading that I've done. Uh, not that I'm dismissing any of that, but the actual relationship has been my, um, most important schooling in- in- in- in how to become authentic.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:17

       There's no real chance of a good relationship if one or more parties in that relationship aren't committed to truth and they're committed to being right or to victory or-

    3. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:26:27

       It happens all the time. Uh, as I said earlier, people always meet at the same level of- of- of- of, um, emotional development or trauma resolution, so that water finding its own level. But when one person starts growing and the other doesn't, it becomes impossible. Either the person that does the growing gives it up and goes back to their previous selves, which is almost impossible, or the other person is challenged to start growing themselves, or they're gonna split. That- that's just what's gonna happen. And again, to go back to the situation between men and women, this is what tends to happen, v- and I've seen it in my own marriage, I've seen it in- as a physician, as an observer of human beings, the couple are kind of getting along, but then the children come along. Now the mother's caring energy has to go towards the children, where it needs to go. The father may feel now a bit of the- their nose is a bit out of joint, 'cause now they're not getting the attention, and now the woman has a decision to make. Do I look after the three-day-old baby or the three-month-old baby, or do I look after the 35-year-old baby? And to the extent that the mother chooses to look after the 35-year-old baby, she's depriving the three-month-old. A lot of mo- women then make a choice, that I need to look after my kids and I can't put all this caring energy, mothering caring energy, into my husband anymore. And then relationships get into trouble 'cause the guys can't stand it. I've seen this over and over and over a- and I'm not saying it's universal, but it's very common.

Episode duration: 1:52:53