The Diary of a CEOGabor Mate: The Childhood Lie That’s Ruining All Of Our Lives. | E193
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,239 words- 0:00 – 2:04
Intro
- GMGabor Maté
Financial stress on the parents translates into physiological stress in the children. They didn't inherit anything in terms of a disease. They're just reacting to the environment.
- SBSteven Bartlett
People call Dr. Gabor Maté the people whisperer.
- GMGabor Maté
Legendary thinker and best-selling author. He's highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, stress, and childhood development. The evidence linking mental illness and childhood adversity is about as strong as the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer, and the average physician doesn't hear a word about that. It's astonishing. I can give you the example of, uh, Donald Trump. I mean, his father was a psychopath. You are the enemy of the people. Go ahead. For him, these were not choices so much as survival techniques, and that's the mark of a traumatized child, a denial of reality.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do I have to understand about your earliest years to understand you?
- GMGabor Maté
My grandparents were killed in Auschwitz, and my mother and I barely survived, and then my mother, to save my life, gives me to a stranger. And the sense I get is that I'm being rejected and abandoned because I'm not good enough.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How did that rear its ugly head throughout your life?
- GMGabor Maté
Any number of ways. See, trauma, as I define it, is not about what happens to us. It's about what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us. It's costing us in terms of our physical health, our relationship, our mental health, and so on.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How does one go about correcting that?
- GMGabor Maté
It's a multi-layered answer. First of all...
- SBSteven Bartlett
Before this episode begins, I just want to say a huge thank you to all of our new subscribers. 74% of you that watch this channel didn't subscribe before, and we're now down to about 71%. So, that helps us in a number of ways that are quite hard to explain, but simply, the bigger the channel gets, the bigger the guests get. So if you haven't yet subscribed to The Diary of a CEO, if I could have any favors from you, if you've ever watched this show and enjoyed it, it's just to, to please hit the subscribe button. Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
- 2:04 – 8:16
Early context
- SBSteven Bartlett
My dear little man, only after many long months do I take it in hand, the pen, so that I may briefly sketch for you the unspeakable horrors of those times, the details of which I do not wish you to know. Those are words that your mother wrote into her diary in the 1940s during the Holocaust.
- GMGabor Maté
She wrote those words in April of 1945, three months after the Soviet Army expelled the Nazis from Budapest, where, which is where we lived. So she was referring to the previous year, and the beginning of that year, late 1944 and early 1945.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And in those diary entries, she's addressing many of them to you directly as a baby.
- GMGabor Maté
She wrote her diary to me directly, um, as if it was like a account of my life, addressed to me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You talk so much in, in your, in all your books, um, and much of your work about the importance of that early context. It's really been, I mean, the center point of all the writing that I've read recently. And I know because it's, it's so evident in everything that you've done that that's been a key... Your own early context has been a key inspiration for why-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... you've taken such a, an interest in these topics. What was your early context? What do I have to understand about your earliest years to understand you?
- GMGabor Maté
So, it's just a fact about human beings that the template that forms us will affect how we see the world, how we understand ourselves, how we relate to other people. And, um, that early template is our earliest months. Even in utero, already in the womb, we're being affected by the environment, but certainly in the early years when our brain is being formed and our personality is taking shape. And so that forms our world view. Now my world view was, and my sense of self was shaped by the fact that at two months of age, when I was two months of age, the German army occupied Hungary. Hungary was the last country in Eastern Europe where the Jewish population had not been exterminated, and now it was our turn. The day after the German army marched into Budapest, which was March the 19th, 2000, 1944, the day after, my mother called the pediatrician to say, "Would you please come and see Gabor? 'Cause he's crying all the time." And the doctor said, "Of course I'll come, but all my Jewish, Jewish babies are crying." And so that, the fact is that when mothers are stressed or in pain, the infant feels all that and takes it personally, and it becomes part of their template for how they view the world. So that was that year, that's when that year began in which my grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and my father was away in forced labor, and my mother and I barely survived, and it's a story I've told many times. But that's when my brain is developing and that's when I'm forming my sense of myself, and then my mother, to save my life, gives me to a stranger, and I don't see her for six weeks. And the sense I get is that I'm not wanted and I'm being rejected and abandoned and 'cause I'm not good enough. That's how my life began.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So your mother gives you away for five to six weeks-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in order to sort of save you from starvation in-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in a ghetto that, that she was going to, right?
- GMGabor Maté
That's right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is after, after your grandparents were killed-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in Auschwitz by-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the Nazis. Um, how do you know in hindsight that that, that moment of those six weeks created that sense of abandonment in you?
- GMGabor Maté
I, I wouldn't say it's just that one, that one moment. Children very much view themselves through their interactions with their parents. Now, first of all, I had no father 'cause he was gone. I hadn't, hadn't seen him, except very briefly when I was a month old, but there was no father in the picture. My mother was grief-stricken and terrorized and full of woe and worry about what's gonna happen to us, and just the, the task of surviving each day.... she's not playful with me. She's not smiling at me very much. She's worried-looking, she's stressed-looking. The infant takes everything personally. That's just the nature of the infant. As infants, we are narcissists. We think it's all about us. So, when things are great, "Hey, we're great," but my mother's unhappy, it's because she doesn't want me, or I can't make her happy, or I'm inadequate. So that separation from my mother certainly set a template for some of my relationship interactions with my spouse decades later, but the sense of not being good enough and, and, and, and being responsible, um, that was inculcated in me throughout that whole first year of life. So much so that in this book, The Myth of Normal, I, I actually talk about a, an experience with psychedelic mushrooms a- at, at the, with a therapist. This is not that long ago, seven years ago maybe, um, when I'm at least 70 years old and I'm in this therapeutic session with the psilocybin, the, the medicine, and the therapist, and I know that I'm 78, 70 years old, and I know this is a therapy session, and I know her name, and I know who I am in the world. But at the same time, I'm experiencing myself as a one-year-old baby, and she's my mother. And I start crying. Tears come down on my, my face, and I say, "I'm so sorry I made your life so difficult." Now, that was an unconscious memory of my sense of myself as a one-year-old that I made my, uh, mother's life so difficult because that's the way the baby interprets it. So, even if your mother loves you, which mine did infinitely, not that she always treated me the best way possible, but she did love me. And, um, can you imagine what a great act of love even giving me to a stranger in the street would have been for her? You know? But because of her own unhappiness, I can only conclude that I'm not good enough. It's ... and it's my fault.
- 8:16 – 9:33
How does someone correct their traumatic events?
- SBSteven Bartlett
A- at 70 years old, having that psilocybin experience, coming to that realization or having that sort of, um, having that response to your therapist where you-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... they take the role of your mother and you're a one-year-old, how does somebody at 70 years old go about correcting that, that sort of interpretation you had of that traumatic early, early event?
- GMGabor Maté
Well, by bringing it up to the conscious level, eh, then when I notice that sense of guilt or responsibility in me, I say, "Oh, that's what it's about." So, it's, it's, it's a meaning ... See, to trauma, as I define it, is not about what happens to us. It's about what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us. And so the wound in my ... And trauma means wound, so the wound in this case is my sense of deficiency or not being good enough, not being worthy enough. Once I realize that, oh, this has got nothing to do with anything except this interpretation that I made with my own experience all those years ago, then when I notice it, I can no longer believe it. I don't have to any longer be a, a, a subject to that interpretation of myself in the world. So awareness is one step. It's not adequate, but it's an essential step towards, um, letting go.
- 9:33 – 14:54
How did your traumatic event show shape you?
- GMGabor Maté
- SBSteven Bartlett
That, that one, um, belief that you weren't good enough-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... how did that rear its ugly head throughout your life?
- GMGabor Maté
It, um, made me a workaholic physician, 'cause I had to keep proving my worth. And it doesn't matter now, I don't know if you've ever had an addiction, but the nature of it is that we're trying to get from the outside something that only can arise and fulfill us from the inside. So, when you're looking at it from the outside, it's addictive because you get it temporarily, but then that internal emptiness, that hole never goes away. So, it has to be filled over, and over, and over again, and it can only be done so temporarily. So, it becomes runaway addictive. So then, you know, work becomes an addiction because I keep trying to prove my worth. And, uh, it doesn't matter how many times, you know, I, I, I may show up in a positive way at the beginning of someone life, at the end of somebody else's life, or anytime in between, it never fills that emptiness that my sense of lack of worthiness creates. So, that's one way it shows up. Another way it shows up is if, um, in my relationship, (clears throat) I don't feel as satisfied, my wife doesn't please me the way I like her to, um, then I get angry. But why am I getting angry? I'm getting angry because it's my sense of not being good enough that's being now revealed. It, it gets uncovered, this, this, this, this self accusation. Um, but I get angry at her because her job is to make me not feel that. You know, we, we, we get into this relationship for all kinds of reasons. Some of them are conscious, some are not. Some are positive, some are come out of trauma. In my case, I want that relationship to prove to me how good I am. So when it isn't proving that, then I get upset at my partner, you know? Well, except the gap is inside me, not inside ... it's not coming from her. So, it shows up f- it showed up in my parenting. It, it shows up all over the place.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, I think both of those examples sound a lot like me, especially the first one.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, the second one as well, but the-
- GMGabor Maté
In what sense?
- SBSteven Bartlett
In the sense that I, I'm definitely a workaholic, and I thought, I think, in the earlier phases of my life-
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... I, like, sacrificed everything-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in this pursuit of becoming a millionaire and, and having all this stuff and really getting this validation.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sacrificed meaningful connections, everything in the pursuit of this one thing.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, part of the toxicity of the culture that I-... talk about in this book is that it actually rewards that kind of emptiness, or that, or that desperate, uh, seeking to, to, to f- to fill that emptiness. We get... 'Cause, you know, y- you get rewarded. You make a lot of money. Uh, a lot of people admire you. Uh, you get to feel good about yourself. Mind you, my guess is that good feeling's only temporary, at least if my example is any, uh, guide. You know, that, that feeling good 'cause somebody from the outside values you is only a temporary salve for the, for the wound that's inside. But the world actually rewards it, you know. So, you're a workaholic doctor. Great, you make more money and all these people respect you. Meanwhile, you're hollowing yourself on the... from the inside, and you're not available for your family, you know. So that, that's part of the craziness of this culture.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it's like the, it's like the hedonistic treadmill in a s- in a sense because you just never... Enough is never enough, as you say.
- GMGabor Maté
That's right. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, the last achievement needs to be surpassed by a greater achievement-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... for me to get-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... an applaud or a clap. I've never really made the connection that the reason why I'm a workaholic is because I am trying to prove to the world that I'm enough, but I think that it's-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... (laughs) entirely true.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah. So in your case, like, like race and class in this society of inequality are certainly traumatic, potentially traumatic inputs, as I pointed out in this book. And, and, you know, to, to, to the degree that it affects people's physiology, you know. But also then, I don't know your family of origin or what kind of relationship you had with your parents, but there also may have been a sense... Like, I got with my mom for, you know, reasons, and, and for whatever might have happened in your family, maybe you got the sense as well that even in your family of origin, you weren't good enough somehow. S- so-
- SBSteven Bartlett
S- so my mom would scream at my dad for like seven hours a day.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And my dad would just sit there.
- 14:54 – 16:40
What did you focus on in your career?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so, 12 years old, you, you emigrate to Vancouver.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, by 28, y- you joined the medical profession.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you spend the next 32 years, roughly, working in medical practice.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, at, at 28, I went back to medical school actually. I, I, I took a detour. I was a high school teacher for a while, and um... And then I was 27, 28 when I started medical school. At age 33, I think, I began my medical career of 32 years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And in those 33 years, what, what was your practice? What did you specialize in? What did you focus on?
- GMGabor Maté
So, I was a family physician, which meant I delivered a lot of babies and I looked after people's problems from beginning to the end of life. I also worked in palliative care. Uh, I was the director of a unit at the hospital which looked after people with terminal disease. And, uh, I did... That was 22 years or so of my practice, 20, 22 years. And then, then I switched gears altogether and I went to work in the downtown east side of Vancouver, British Columbia, which is north- North America's most concentrated area of drug use. We have more... People coming from anywhere in the world are shocked by what they see there. Thousands of people in the streets injecting, selling, using, inhaling, uh, ingesting drugs of all kinds. And people are... suffer the consequences of drug use in a society that doesn't understand drug use, so it punishes it and excludes it, ostracizes it. So, people get HIV from dirty needles and, and, and hepatitis C. So, this is the population. Often, they're homeless. So, that's the population I worked with for 12 years, u- till the end of my medical work.
- 16:40 – 20:34
What did working with patients towards the end of their life teach you?
- GMGabor Maté
- SBSteven Bartlett
That experience working with patients that were in palliative care-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... so that's, for anybody that doesn't know, that's patients that are approaching the end of their life-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that have terminal illnesses and that are aware that they're going to, to die. What did that experience teach you?
- GMGabor Maté
It took an acceptance of one's lack of (laughs) , lack of omnipotence as a physician. 'Cause you go into the... You wanna cure people. You wanna... You want people to heal. And that takes a tremendous acceptance to say, "You know, we've reached the limit of our knowledge. And that doesn't mean we can't help people, but we certainly can't cure them." You know? And so, it taught me how to be with the inevitable. And, and, and when you're working with people who are in the process of dying, bu- I mean, by the way, who isn't in the process of dying, you know? But, but people whose time is more limited than the rest of us. Acceptance, you learn a lot about acceptance. It challenges you to do your best when you know your best isn't going to be saving anybody's lives. But it's to help people live a life of as little suffering as possible and as much dignity as possible. So, it really challenges the best parts of you to, to show up. Patience, acceptance, um, intuition. Personally, it taught me a lot to listen to people. Interestingly enough, people really wanna be heard, eh, when they're dying. Uh, they wanna make sense of their lives. They wanna tell their stories, and they want their stories to be heard.And so, um, I listened a lot. I just sat by the bedside and I listened. Um, all that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you listened, did you, did you hear any themes relating to regret or things that actually mattered? Because I always imagine in, if I was given such news, that my life was coming to an end and there was an approximate date, it would be quite a powerful way of finally realizing what truly matters and what never did.
- GMGabor Maté
You know, people react to their impending death in different ways. So, there were, um, some people who just fought it to the end, you know. They didn't really wanna accept it. But most people w- were more along the lines that you describe, where they really get to see what's important. And so, I mentioned this a number of times, it sounds strange and I don't recommend it, but I've had patients say to me, "Doctor, I don't know how to tell you this, and I can't even explain it perhaps, but this illness that's gonna take my life is the best thing that ever happened to me." And what by meant, they meant a couple of things by it. They meant what you just said, about finding out what's really important in life. In this book, The Myth of Normal, I interview a young man called Will Pai, who wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor. And I thought, "Huh? What kind of blessing is that?" So, I said, I asked Will, "What's the blessing?" And he said, "It made me appreciate every moment. It meant every time I talked to somebody, this, I knew this might be the last conversation I'm gonna have with them. So, it better be a human, genuine interaction." So, there was that aspect of it. The other aspect of it was that, again, my view is, as I pointed in this book and in previous works, who gets sick and who doesn't isn't, isn't exactly accidental. There are certainly personality patterns based on traumatic experiences in your childhood that make disease more likely. And people very often realize that throughout their lives, they had abandoned who they were, they lived a life that didn't, wasn't meaningful for them. And around death, they reconnected with themselves in a, in an authentic way. And that seemed to be worth a lot to people. Again, I don't recommend that way of going, to reconnect with yourself, but people have certainly... I certainly saw it. So, those are the two big lessons.
- 20:34 – 27:13
The importance of following our passion
- GMGabor Maté
- SBSteven Bartlett
After your 33 years in medical practice, um, you, you described that you had a bit of a, you kind of tuned into a creative calling, which was writing.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, I, I began to write when I was a physician.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GMGabor Maté
So, um, uh, my first book on ADHD, after I was diagnosed with it, was published in 1999 now, so that was 23 years ago now. So, I began to write. And even before then I wrote, because I wrote, uh, columns for newspapers. But yes, uh, there was a time in my life where the writing impulse, which had been with me all my life was stifled and, and, and, and, um, stymied. And so was I, 'cause I had this frustration. Uh, in fact, I had this sense that there's something I needed to express, but I didn't know what and I didn't know how. And at some point I realized, oh yeah, I need to write. So that began before I finished medical practice, but it certainly, um, has been essential to my ongoing unfolding as a human being.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was so compelled by that when I, when I read about that, because, um, I started to really understand the value of creativity in all of our lives-
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... regardless of whether we have the luxury of being called an artist or not.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so what, in your view, is the importance of that?
- GMGabor Maté
Well, you're, you're singing my tune here, if I may say it that way, because, um, I quote in this book, uh, there's a great, uh, Hungarian-Canadian stress researcher called Janos Selye, S-E-L-Y-E. And Selye is the one who actually coined the word stress in the sense that we use it today. And he's the one that showed in a laboratory how stress diminishes the immune system and disorganizes, disorganizes the hormones and, and ulcerates the stomach and all this kind of stuff. But Selye also said, and I quote him here, "What is in us must out. What is in us must out. That we all have to f- follow or cure the urges in a way that nature prepared for us. Otherwise, we can be hopeless, hopelessly hemmed in by frustration." I'm paraphrasing him very qu- uh, closely. So, we are created in the image of God. I mean, as, you know, w- what are your religious views are, but that sense that we're created in the image of God means that we are creators, because the essence of God is creation. In fact, we call God the creator, and we call the result of that creation. If we're created and if we're, if we're offshoots of that creative dynamic in the universe, then it means that it's in us to create. And whatever form that takes, I mean, you know, you don't wanna see me do art, you know, unless you... (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- GMGabor Maté
I can do a pretty good stick figure, you know. But, but I'm married to an artist. Um, so that creativity doesn't have to take the form of formal art, but it does have to take some flow of something that's inside you that needs to come out. Otherwise, as Selye says, you get hopelessly hemmed in by frustration. And so in that sense, everybody's got that creative urge, and that may take the form of social intercourse. It might take the form of gardening, I don't care, uh, communion with nature, um, athletic expression. I don't care what. But it, but it, but there's, somebody, everybody's got it. And if people don't realize they have it, it's only 'cause life has hemmed them in and they're too busy. And sometimes they are trying to make a living or trying to survive or too disconnected from themselves. But it's in all of us. And to the extent that we don't give it expression, uh, we suffer.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the things that really hems it in is, um...... is the prospect that we might not be good at it because we think to express ourselves creatively, we kind of join a competition of sorts. And that's- that's a trap we can fall into. So, if I'm gonna DJ, I need to become a good DJ-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... but in social comparison, or else I don't want to... But- but what I've come to learn is, in fact, the act of DJing alone in my kitchen at midnight-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... is- is the reward, regardless of outcome or whether there's a crowd there. If it's just me and my dog listening-
- GMGabor Maté
Absolutely.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that is, the expression is the reward, not the achievement or the medal that I might get, or the-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah, not the external. Well, look- look, I went through that in the writing of this book. So, here I am, this, you know, writer who writes about, you know, trauma and, you know, healing. And all of a sudden, I'm in a panic because I'm writing a book, and I realize that the problem was that you- you talked about identifying with your work, so I'd identified with this book. So, the problem wasn't the book, 'cause let's say I write the book and it's not a success. I mean, okay, big headline in the Sunday Times, "Book not a big success." You know, like, how big a big deal is that in the history of the universe? But if I identify with the book and it's not going well, then if the book fails, then I'm failing as a person, which then goes back to my very earliest, uh, concern about not being worth it, you know? So, once I disidentified, once I said, "No, this is just a book. It may be a good book. It may be an important book. It may be a book that doesn't hit the mark, but it's only a book. And how it goes says nothing about me or my worth." Once I could decouple that, then I could confidently and much more comfortably go back to the writing of it. But I went through that crisis.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. It seems like a bit of a paradox that this- the lack of self-worth would- would motivate someone to- to create great things because they want the approval, but at the same time-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... make the process so agonizing because their self-esteem seems to be on the line-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... or their sense of self-worth is on the line.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, that dynamic was in me. Once I realized it, I let go of it, you know? So it didn't- it didn't dominate me in the end. And, uh, honest to God, by the time I finished the book, I'm not just saying this in retrospect. It's- it's a bestseller now in several countries, but I actually said to myself, and I meant it, "Now, I've done the book. That's what matters. I've said what was in me to say. How the world reacts, I can't control, and it doesn't actually matter." On a fundamental level, it's not that I don't want this book to be excess, I mean, success. Of course, I want it to sell 10 zillion copies. But that doesn't define my self-worth or how I function in the world or how I feel about myself. Honestly, it does not. And I- I- I understood that by the time I finished working on it. So, once it's done, it's out there doing its work or not doing its work, but I don't have to hang my own sense of self on how the book does.
- 27:13 – 30:57
The Myth Of Normal
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because at that point, that's an outcome you can't control, right? So, trying to control that would be-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... anxiety and-
- GMGabor Maté
And... Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you can't control it, no.
- SBSteven Bartlett
10 years, this book-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... took you to write.
- GMGabor Maté
Took me to prepare. It took three-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Prepare.
- GMGabor Maté
It took about three years to write. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You describe it as a calling.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The myth of normal.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What... Four words to- to sort of pull people in and to, in some ways, summarize a 550-odd page book.
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why- why those four words? Why that phrase?
- GMGabor Maté
Can I pause for a moment to find a quote on my cell phone? Is that okay?
- SBSteven Bartlett
100%.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
100%.
- GMGabor Maté
I just... So, this is, um... Are you familiar with the work of Eckhart Tolle?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, Eckhart Tolle. Yes.
- GMGabor Maté
Okay, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GMGabor Maté
So, Tolle lives in Vancouver, like I do. And, um, in one of his books, he says, "The normal state of mind of most human beings contains a strong element of what we might call dysfunction or even madness." You know? So, um, in- in medical, um, parlance, uh, normal means healthy and natural, so there's a normal range of blood pressure, normal temperature. It's a range. Outside that range, there's no life. There's no health. Either too high or too low, you're gone. So, normal means it's- it's equivalent with, synonymous with healthy and natural. However, we make that same assumption, that out in society, what we're used to, what we call normal is also healthy and natural, which is a myth 'cause I'm saying that in this society, what we consider to be normal is neither healthy nor natural. In fact, it's har- hurtful to us. So that using the word normal in- in a way that doesn't apply... In a narrow medical sense, it's accurate, but in a broader sense, that which we're used to in this society, we consider normal, is just not good for us, you know? And norm is kind of a statistic or it's a kind of a, um, average. So, if everybody in... You have a dog, if everybody in London mistreated their dogs, and if you didn't, then you'd be abnormal.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- GMGabor Maté
You know? So, it's a myth to say that what is normal is healthy and natural. That's what I mean by the myth of normal. That's one- one thing I mean. The other thing I mean is, if we understand the actual science of the unity of everything, I'm not talking about spiritual insight here, I'm talking about, you know, physiological science, that our physiology and psychology is very much affected by our life experiences beginning in utero, childbirth, early childhood, and throughout the lifetime. It also follows that illness and health are not individual attributes. They are actually manifestations of our relationships and our situation in the world and- and our history. That also means when these circumstances are abnormal, you expect people to be sick.... you know, just as if you gave animals something that wasn't healthy for them. They'd be sick. That'd be what you'd expect. So, this idea that the people who are ill, either physically or mentally abnormal, I say, "No, these are normal responses to an abnormal set of circumstances." And rather than being sort of those abnormal ones and then the rest of us, it's really a spectrum that we're all, pretty much all on it. So, in those three senses, this idea of m- normal is, is, is a myth. Uh, and, and it's one that keeps us from seeing reality.
- 30:57 – 41:06
How would our approaches change if we took away the concept of normal?
- GMGabor Maté
- SBSteven Bartlett
And we're all un- abnormal in some way.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, if you, maybe my, my, maybe my attention is different. Maybe my, you know, my, my interpersonal relationships are abnormal, but in some way, I'm going to be abnormal. As it relates to treatments-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... how do you think that the medical profession and the psychological profession would respond differently if we removed this idea that there is a normal?
- GMGabor Maté
Hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How would, how would our approaches change to treating people?
- GMGabor Maté
Hmm. Well, that's, it's, it's a multi-layered answer. Um, first of all, we would recognize that our diagnoses are not explanations for anything. So, you know, I've been diagnosed with ADD, you know, legitimately so. Uh, my first book was on it. Um, but, but it doesn't explain anything. So, so I tune out easily, very easily, you know, and sometimes when I don't, often when I don't want to, but you know, unless I'm highly motivated. Uh, so, so you might say this person has ADD. How do we know? 'Cause he tunes out a lot. Why does he tune out a lot? He's got ADD. How do we know he's got ADD? 'Cause he tunes out a lot. So, the, the, the, so first of all, you have to understand that our understanding of normal and what's outside the normal, they don't ex- doesn't explain anything. They, they can, they can describe, if you describe my mental functioning as that of somebody who's got an automatic tendency to tune out, you'd be accurate. So as a description, it's helpful. As an explanation as to why this person isn't behaving, quote-unquote, "normally," it's, doesn't explain a thing. Now, if you understood that I spent my infancy under very difficult circumstances where I was very stressed because of all the stuff I already talked about, and that tuning out was a normal response to, to those circumstances as a way of protecting myself from the stress of it all, and this was happening when my brain was developing, then you'd understand there's nothing abnormal about my, my tuning out. In fact, it is the normal response to a set of abnormal circumstances. So, that's the first point. And I could go through the same kind of dialectic with all manner of physical and, uh, mental diseases, by the way, so-called. The second point is-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why do you say so-called?
- GMGabor Maté
Um, well, look, the disease model is, as long as we understand it's a model, it's okay. When we think it's, it describes reality fully, it doesn't. So, um, for example, um, we call, we talk about mental illnesses, and we're assuming that there's a kind of definite pathology there just as in rheumatoid arthritis you can describe the inflammation of the joints and the blood levels of certain antibodies being abnormal and hormonal levels being disturbed, you know. We're making the same assumption in mental illness. There's no such evidence in mental illness. There's no physiological parameters that you can say somebody's got mental illness. Uh, there's just been a study, um, a few months ago of thousands of brain scans of people with mental illness diagnoses. There's nothing diagnostic about the ma- about the brain scans. It's not like I can take an X-ray of a lung and say that this is, this lung has got what we call consolidation or, or, or fluid indicating, uh, inflammation. There's nothing like that in mental diagnoses. There's no blood test you can do and so on. So, illness is a, is, is, um, is a model. I mean, it, it might, yeah, somebody's really depressed, um, even suicidal perhaps, and they might need pharmacological intervention which could really save their lives. That may be true, and in that sense, you may say that they're ill, as long as we realize that this is a construct that we're applying here, but that there's no actual measurement of that that's at all similar to what we call physical disease. But even in physical disease, we make certain assumptions. Um, for example, somebody has rheumatoid arthritis. Now, that, nothing wrong with that statement on the face of it, but there's an assumption there. The assumption is that there's this thing called rheumatoid arthritis, and there's this person called me, and this person has this thing. Now, you know the example I often give. Here's my cell phone, I'm holding it in my hand. I have a cell phone. It's not part of me. This is nothing about me. It just, it's, it's a discrete object. Its nature doesn't depend on my nature. Nothing. Is that true about rheumatoid arthritis, or is it more true to say, as I found out, that this is a condition that shows up in people with certain life experiences and certain ways of functioning in the world? And that because of the science-documented unity of mind and body and the impossibility of separating the activity of our emotional apparatus from, say, our immune system 'cause it's all one...... organismic unit. Therefore, the, when the immune system turns against the body, as it does in rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system actually attacks the body. Is that a thing that's got a life of its own or is there a process that's happening inside that person because of certain aspects of their lives? Now, if I say it's the thing that happens to you, then that thing has got a life of its own, and that's how most doctors see it. They see somebody with rheumatoid arthritis, they say, "Okay, this is the kind you've got. This is what's gonna happen. This is w- this is the only thing we can do, is to s- is to mitigate the symptoms." I find that's not true. I find that the rheumatoid arth- by the way, not just I find it, the science finds it, that rheumatoid arthritis is very much related to stress and trauma. And the more stress there is, the more likely it is to flare up. And if people deal with that stress, if they know how to prevent it, their illness abates. Which means that it's not a thing that's separate, it's a process that happens inside them. This is a subtle concept. Um, I'm wondering if I'm explaining it clearly enough.
- SBSteven Bartlett
No, you are. And it's, and it's really making me question how much we misunderstand the r- the relationship between the mind and the immune system-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... because that's the real, that's the important connection to understand if you, if you are to accept all the things you've just said-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which we don't, we don't understa- I don't think typically we understand that my mind and my immune system have such a close relationship.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, uh, uh, the, there's a whole new science that studies those relationships called psychoneuroimmunology, which studies the interlinked unity of the emotional apparatus of our brain and body with the immune system, with the nervous system, and with the hormonal apparatus. I mean, it's just so obvious. I could change your hormonal state in this split second right now without touching you, just by screaming at you and threatening you. That would necessarily create a change. I mean, it's just clear that our emotions are inseparable, you know. And, and the other funny thing is, well, several funny things. How do we treat most conditions in medicine, by the way, inflammations? If you go to a dermatologist with inflamed skin, if you go to a rheumatologist with inflamed joints, if you go to a gastroenterologist with inflamed intestines, if you go to a respirologist with, um, inflamed lungs, uh, if you go to a neurologist with an inflamed nervous system, as in multiple sclerosis, they're gonna give you steroids to settle the inflammation. Now, what are steroids? They are stress hormones. And you would think that as physicians we would ask ourselves, "Gosh, we're treating everything with stress hormones. Does stress maybe have something to do with this condition?" And when you look at the scientific literature, yes, yes, yes, and yes. So the f- um, there's a great Canadian physician actually knighted by Queen Victoria, s- one of the great medical teachers of all kinds, Sir William Osler. And he said in 1890 that rheumatoid arthritis is a stress-dri- driven disease. The, the French, uh, neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot, who first described multiple sclerosis, he said, "This is a stress-driven condition." And since then, there's been so much research. So, what, what I'm saying is that this, this way of looking at what we call disease as a process is so much more accurate scientifically actually in understanding the mind/body unity. And then, you know, naturally, when people are traumatized, that has a huge impact on their physiology. Their psychological trauma has a huge impact on their physiology. It's just science. But it's science that's not taught to medical teach- medical, uh, doctors. It's just for some strange reason, well, the average physician never hears a single lecture about, say, trauma and its relationship to illness. And yet there's studies internationally, thousands of them, showing those relationships. So, there's this strange gap between science and, and medical practice. S- but it would, it would change medical practice for the better. Because what would happen if you went to a physician and you presented with this symptom. And they'd, they'd say, "Okay, look, we'll give you such and such medication to deal with your symptoms. And then let's look at your life in the context that you live it and see how that, the stresses that you may be taking on, the traumas you may be carrying might be affecting the physiology of your body." Now, they don't have to be all trauma therapists to do that. They just have to raise the question and to start, uh, and, and to begin the inquiry. That'll make a huge change to that person's life and to their disease process.
- 41:06 – 44:27
How parents behaviour can impact a child
- GMGabor Maté
- SBSteven Bartlett
And clearly to their kids' lives as well because I remember-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... reading in your book about the, uh, the study with the rats-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... um, and how they... Could you tell me about that study, how the, the stress study with the rats and how the parents', um, treatment of a child impacted their stress response? And then also they passed that on, which I thought was interesting.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah, that was an interesting study. It was done in Canada, uh, at McGill University, uh, (coughs) um, I think maybe sometime in the last 20 years, early 2000s, I think. And they looked at how mother rats i- interacted with their infants, the newborns. And some, uh, uh, and there's this process called grooming in which the mother rat licks the infant on the perin- peri- uh, perineal or perianal area, you know, on the genitalia. This is shortly after birth. These mother rats just start licking their infants. Some mother rats did it in a more efficient and caring kind of way than other mother rats. Those that had the better kind of caring, the better kind of grooming, grew up to be calmer and responded to stress in more functional ways than those little rats who as neonates had not been given that same kind of efficient and quite as caring grooming.What they found out, in the brains of those adult rats who had been groomed one way or the other as infants, the stress apparatus was different, certain receptors for the stress hormones. So one of them could calm themselves more easily than the other. What was interesting is you might say, "Well, so what? That's just genetic. The calmer mothers passed on their genes to their infants." No, they didn't, 'cause if you took the infants of mothers who groomed beautifully and put them with mothers who didn't, and then conversely, you took the infant rats of mothers who, um, didn't groom so well, but you put them with mothers who did-
- SBSteven Bartlett
It changed...
- GMGabor Maté
It changed the brain for, for the adult.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It changed the brain?
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah, it changed the genetic functioning, not the genes-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GMGabor Maté
... but the genetic functioning. This is called epigenetics, how genes are turned on and off by the environment. And then those mother- and those rats who were groomed well as infants, doesn't matter what the original mother was, but those rats who were groomed well, they went on to groom their infants in exactly the way they'd been groomed. So this is how we pass on our parenting stuff from one generation to the next, both behaviorally, but also through the turning on or off of certain genes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So in essence, the, how nurturing our parents were has a big impact on our own s- um, ability to handle stress positively or negatively-
- GMGabor Maté
Oh, absolutely.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and then we pass that down to our children.
- GMGabor Maté
How, how, how stressed our parents were, how they reacted to our own stresses as infants, you know, uh, that has everything to do with how our brains handle stress later on. And so some people just don't handle stress very well. They don't handle the frustration very well. You should've seen me this morning at the hotel when the swimming pool didn't open in time. You know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- GMGabor Maté
(laughs) But I, I, I was a lot better than I might have been years ago, you know? Uh, but yeah, our stress responses are very much programmed by our early, uh, developmental experiences.
- 44:27 – 46:57
How do you define trauma?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Speaking about our early experiences, the first word in the sort of subtitle of your book is the word trauma.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, it's a word that I've, I've talked about a lot on this podcast, and I've, you know, I've had a lot of people here that have opened up about their traumas. How, how do you define trauma? I know society's defined it in its own way, but how do you define it, the word?
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah. I define it very specifically. Um, it's not something bad that happens to you. It's not some, not, it's not that when you, you know, "I went to this movie last night, and I was traumatized." No, you weren't. You were just sad or you were, had some emotional pain, but you weren't traumatized. Uh, uh, uh, trauma means a wound. That's the literal meaning of the word. It's a Greek word for wounding. So trauma is a psychological wound that you sustain. And, um, it behaves like a wound. So on the one hand, a, a wound, if it's very raw, if you touch it, it just really hurts. So if I, if I have a wound around not being wanted, then... or, or the belief that I'm not, then decades later, if anything reminds me of that, it hurts as much as it did when I originally incurred the wound. So in, in one sense, trauma is an unhealed wound that touched, we get triggered. That's what triggering means, by the way. So an old wound, wound gets activated or touched. And the other thing that happens to wounds is that they scar over, and scar tissue has certain characteristics. It's thick. It has no nerve endings, so there's no feeling in it. So people traumatized disconnect from their feelings. Um, scar tissue is rigid. It's not flexible, so we lose kind of response flexibility. So when something happens, we tend to react in typical, stereotypical, predictable, dysfunctional ways 'cause of the rigidity. And scar tissue doesn't grow like healthy flesh. So people who are traumatized tend to be stuck in emotional states that characterized their development when they were traumatized. So when somebody says to you, "Don't be such a baby," uh, (laughs) it doesn't sound very pleasant, but there's some truth to it. It means that you're probably reacting according to the lines of some wound that you sustained as an infant, and now you're, you're reacting as if that wound was happening all over again. This is what one of my friends in the trauma world, Peter Levine, calls the tyranny of the past. So something happens in the present, and we react as if we were back there in the past when this first happened, and we're not in the present moment at all.
- 46:57 – 50:51
Does everyone have trauma?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I was, I was trying to figure out how many people, um, as a percentage of the population have a... have trauma. But then I, uh, I, you know, I read this stat that 60% of adults, um, say that they've had sort of a traumatic early upbringing or whatever or traumatic-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... events from their childhood. But then I thought, maybe everybody has trauma.
- GMGabor Maté
It depends on, um, how we understand trauma. So if we understand trauma as only the really terrible things that happen to people, which do happen to people... You know, in the book, I talked about a British friend of mine now living in Canada. Um, they are a yoga teacher and a meditation teacher and a psychologist and an artist, actually. And they grew up in some orphanage here in Britain where they were racially taunted every, every morning. You know, words that are in the book, by her permission, which I'm not gonna cite here publicly. And that gave her a sense of deficient, a sense of self that, "I'm just not good enough, that I don't belong," and so on. There's those obvious traumas, or the obvious trauma of being sexually abused. So men who are sexually abused, according to a Canadian study, have triple the rate of heart attacks as adults, you know, and all kinds of physiological reasons why that should be the case. So there's those self-evident, lar- big T traumas that we call big T trauma or cat- T with a capital T, trauma with a capital T. There's a certain percentage of the population, much larger than we think, subject to that. If you include, um, all the known factors such as physical, sexual, or emotional abuse... Spanking, by the way, has now been shown to be as traumatic as-... uh, h- harsher forms of physical abuse, spanking, which is still recommended by so-called experts, who shall be named, uh, remain unnamed for the moment. Uh, the death of a parent, violence in the family, violence, parental violence against each other, um, a parent being jailed, a parent being mentally ill. Did I say a parent being addicted? A rancorous divorce. These are the identified big traumas, big T Traumas. Not, not to mention poverty, not to mention extreme inequality, um, war, and so on. But then, if you remember that trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you. It's the wound. People can be wounded not just by bad things happening to them, but small children can be wounded in loving families where they don't get their needs met. I mean, that's obvious in a physical sense. If a child doesn't get proper nutrition, th- their body will suffer, their mind will suffer. We- we're also creatures with emotional needs as important as our physical needs. So, when a child's emotional needs are not met, that child is wounded, and that's what we call small T trauma, which is not the big ticket events such as I described, but just the child's need to be loved unconditionally, to be held when distressed, to be responded to, to be seen, to be heard, to be allowed their full range of emotion without them being stamped on in the name of so-called discipline. Um, the right to play creatively, spontaneously, out there in nature, not with these damn digital gadgets that subvert and, uh, hijack the child's imagination, but spontaneous play that's essential for brain development. So, what I'm saying is that when these needs are not... for the unconditional loving attachment relationship, when those needs are frustrated, children are also hurt. And I call that trauma as well, because it shows up later in life as the impact of painful wounds. So, trauma in this society, for all kinds of reasons, is far more common
- 50:51 – 1:01:44
Why can two people with the same trauma turn out differently?
- GMGabor Maté
than we imagine.
- SBSteven Bartlett
From sitting here and speaking to, I don't know, somewhere over 100 different people that come from all walks of life, but specifically people that are successful in their industries-
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and you talked about, you know, how, um, an anomalous early upbringing can create sort of abnormality in an adult. A lot of people I sit here are successful because of some kind of abnormality, or at least their interpretation of some kind of early event-
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that caused them to have some sort of abnormal belief about themselves that they're not enough, so they become a billionaire or a gold medalist or whatever-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... it might be.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the things that I thought I could predict is, I thought I could... if they told me... I thought after doing 100 episodes, if they told me the traumatic event they'd been through, I could predict the, the outcome in them.
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But there's a disconnect there, because, you know, I'd sit here with a guest who went through one of your tall T, um, capital T traumas-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... like domestic violence-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and one of them might become incredibly angry-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and one of them might become the most peaceful, loving person I've ever met.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And th- that taught me that there's this thing in between the event, which is what you call interpretation.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I found that re- I found that as, uh, that kind of makes it really difficult to diagnose.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, now look. So the two examples you gave, um, that really peaceful person may be really peaceful for genuinely good reasons, such as they found the milk of human love flowing through their veins and they've had some spiritual, mm, reconciliation with the world, or they may have let- genuinely learned compassion for themselves and others. But they could also be very nice and peaceful because they're suppressing their healthy anger, because they're actually sitting on their rage w- unconsciously, which is gonna show up in the form of some kind of health manifestation, I guarantee you, later on. So, you can't tell from the outside without asking some questions. Uh-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- GMGabor Maté
... or I can give you the example of, of a Donald Trump, who had a really traumatic childhood. I mean, his father was a... As, as described by his psychologist niece, Mary Trump, his father, Trump's father, who is Mary's grandfather, was a psychopath, and who really, uh, demeaned and harshly treated their, their children. So, Trump decides, unconsciously, that... By the way, I'm not talking about his policies here. I'm not... This is not a political debate. And in the book, I point out that his opponent was also traumatized, uh, Hillary Clinton. So, this is, this is a, a ecumenical, uh, view of trauma and politics. I'm not choosing sides. I'm just saying that you can see his trauma in every moment he opens his mouth. His grandiosity, his need to make himself bigger, more powerful, aggressive. And he's as much has said in his autobiography that the world is a horrible place, a dog eat dog place, where everybody is after you. Everybody wants your wife and your house and your wealth, and this is your friends, never mind your enemies. But that's the world he lives in. Now, that world that he lives in reflects his childhood home. He developed that worldview. He came to it honestly, you might say, because that's the world that he lived in. And he gets to be really successful in this crazy world, you know, financially, although people question, you know, was he really as big a success as he says he was? But he certainly was successful politically, if by success you mean the attainment of power. His brother, on the other hand, Mary Trump's father, Trump's niece's father, drank himself to death, and they were both responses to the same... You can never say it's exactly the same for two kids, but there was a, there was a toxic home environment. One ends up dead as an alcoholic. The other ends up at the pinnacle of power.Um, and when I look at them both, I see dysfunction there, significant dysfunction there.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So one of the ma- one of those, the consequences of that early upbringing was it materialized itself as sort of addiction, and the other got the same psychological reinforcement or the thing missing from power and work and money. They were, they were both-
- GMGabor Maté
Well, the other, well, well, Donald Trump learned that the way to survive is to be aggressive and harsh and competitive and to get the other before they get to you, which is a faithful reproduction of his early childhood experiences. So for him, these were not choices so much as survival techniques. And, uh, when they talk about his lying, well, I don't know when he's lying and when he's not, but my sense is that often he actually believes what he's saying. And actually his biographer or the person who co-wrote his quasi-autobiography called The Art of the Deal, this, this writer says that he's never met anybody who is so capable of believing something that's not true to be true if he wants it to be true. Now, that's the mark of a traumatized child. You know, a, a denial of reality. It is an inauguration, there was a certain number of people that came to the... He couldn't stand it that there weren't as many people there as came to Barack Obama's inauguration. There were a much slum- smaller number of people there. He created this reality where many more people came to his inauguration. Now, what age behavior is that? (laughs) That's a four-year-old with more kids came to his party than my party. That can't be true. But that's Donald's way of dealing with reality. It's not a moral failing as such. That's how he survived, and his survival, um, mechanisms form- then b- get to form our personalities. And again, in this world, sometimes they pay off in certain ways.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that, is that often the case with pathological liars? They've learnt to lie as a way to survive?
- GMGabor Maté
Oh, absolutely. The, the, the German philosopher writer, Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche said, "People lie their way out of reality who have been hurt by reality." And so I've lied, you know, like when I had my shopping addiction. I lied every day to my wife, you know? And even afterwards when she tried, when she stopped trying to change my behavior, I said, "Just tell me if you're going to shop. You're gonna spend another $1,000 on music. Just tell me." I still couldn't 'cause I was so ashamed of it. And so the lying became like a, a way of survival for me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Defense against reality.
- 1:01:44 – 1:04:20
Being controlled by our trauma
- SBSteven Bartlett
how you get on. (page turns) You talked about expressing one's emotions.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And something you've talked about in this book, but also previously, is this idea that there is such a thing as healthy anger.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, it's one of the seven A's of your, of healing-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... as you say. The first being the topic, a topic we've talked about already, which is acceptance.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, the next being awareness.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, awareness I wish we had put into this book, but we didn't.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GMGabor Maté
Not into this book. Uh, I, I, in this book, I put four As, and, uh, I left out awareness, and that was an omission on my part. I-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah, it was. I'm sorry, but it was.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So in the book you have authenticity, anger, autonomy-
- GMGabor Maté
Acceptance.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... agency, you have.
- GMGabor Maté
A- A- A- authenticity and, and agency, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. And yeah, acceptance.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So w- awareness, uh, you've said before, before this book, that awareness is the starting point.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I've found that to be so true in my life, but it's not very easy. I feel like awareness is a, is a luxury or a, a privilege that is very hard fought.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because you're guessing.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You're guessing ba- based on pattern recognition. So I was guessing, 25 years old, I can't get into a relationship. Anytime a girl comes near me-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... even if I've pursued her, I run off.
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- 1:04:20 – 1:05:56
Do we ever cut the puppet master strings?
- SBSteven Bartlett
there's kind of two ways t- I wanna go with that. But the first question I have about, about trauma and the puppet master analogy is, do we ever f- do we ever really cut the strings? Or do we just kind of learn to pull against them when they try and tell us to do something with more force than they're exerting in the opposite direction?
- GMGabor Maté
Um, that doesn't work very well, pushing against it, because that's still reactive. You're still not in charge. You're just in automatic resistance mode to something. There's no freedom in that either, you know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm. So, still a-
- GMGabor Maté
Uh, so, yeah. Um, but awareness, that you mentioned, is huge because once you're aware that there's this... See, the thing about... These strings may not fray right away, but once you're aware that, ah, this reaction of mine, it's not about what's going on right now. There's something old being activated here. That awareness alone weakens the... It slackens the strings a bit. Now you no lo- they no longer is taut, they're no longer as automatically, um, capable of pulling on you. So it, it does have to begin, begin with awareness of them. Ultimately, if we realize that this puppet master is just a desperate little person trying to get you to survive, the only way he/she/they knew how when you were small, when they were small, if you make friends with it, but we relieve it of its duties, say, "Thanks very much, but I can handle it now," i- it, it eventually becomes our friend rather than, sort of, our master, you
- 1:05:56 – 1:09:18
How does someone become more aware?
- GMGabor Maté
know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
On that first step of just acknowledging, just understanding that there is a puppet master there controlling us and exactly which strings that puppet master is, is pulling in our lives, how does one go about awareness? The process of awareness? Is there, I mean, is it introspection, keeping a diary, therapy? What, what is it?
- GMGabor Maté
Well, all that. I mean, uh, all or any.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GMGabor Maté
But even when you ask how you go about it, what is the it? Well, for you to say how to go about it, you already must have some degree of awareness. If you didn't, you wouldn't even be asking the question.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GMGabor Maté
So that's the very first step of realizing that there's something here to work on, there's something here to work through. It does not need to be the way it is. That already is the biggest step. The Buddha said that, that, that to, to recognize the source of your suffering is the first step towards relieving the suffering. And so as soon as you ask how you go about it, you've already taken a huge step. 'Cause, 'cause a lot of people don't even know that there's an it.They just think this is reality, that this is life. So, real- realizing that this "it" doesn't have to be the way it is, that's already a huge step. Now, beyond that, yoga, meditation, um, nature, um, therapy of all kinds, body work, um, of all kinds. Like, like, like somatic experiencing or, um, or, um, craniosacral treatments, or even massage therapy. Um, it's incredible what can be revealed just through body work like that. Then all kinds of forms of therapy, the ones I teach, the ones other people teach, um, journaling, um, certain exercises in this book that we recommend. Like, just ask yourself where you have trouble saying no in life to things you don't really wanna do, and working that through on a regular basis. So, there's lots of ways once you open the door. You know, I have a chapter on psychedelics here which is, uh, again, it's not like a panacea or for everyone, but certainly it's a helpful mo- modality for a lot of people. So, um, some people may actually benefit from taking pharmaceutical medications if their situation is dire enough. But not as the final answer, but as a way of getting respite that allow them to go to work on the real issues that cause them to be depressed or anxious or tuning out. You know, so any and all of these things.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A lot of people don't even wanna open those doors though, because they- there's so much pain associated with maybe going back or revisiting an early experience that they just think it's better keep the door shut-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... um, and get- get to tomorrow.
- GMGabor Maté
That's true, um, to which I have two answers. Um, one is, it's true, it's painful, um, because all the pain you didn't wanna feel and you've been running away from through your compensatory behaviors, like- like your addictions, are nothing but an attempt to escape from pain. That's all they are. That's all they... You know, they're not a disease, they're not genetic, whatever it is. Addictions are very simply an attempt to escape pain, which create more pain, but that's what they are. And so, we get addicted to work, to sex, to pornography, to gambling, to the internet, to shopping, to eating, to power.
- SBSteven Bartlett
On that point, I
- 1:09:18 – 1:13:28
Addictions and how we develop them
- SBSteven Bartlett
find it so fas... You know, th- when you mentioned in your previous book that, you know, you classified things like food-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... social media-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... shopping-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... porn, and work as types of addiction.
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That was, uh, that in and of itself was a bit of a revelation for me, because I never saw work as an addiction.
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The minute you said it was, and I kind of link it to, you know, heroin addiction-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which is providing a, you know, a certain psychological or physiological, um, benefit to me.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah, temporarily.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Temporarily.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Of course it's a fucking addiction. Of course work is an addiction.
- GMGabor Maté
Well-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Of course I have that addiction.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, work can be an addiction.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GMGabor Maté
Work can also be sacred. It can also be fulfilling and a manifestation of your creative urges. But it's... So it's not the... But strange to say, not that I recommend it, but it's possible even to use heroin in a non-addictive way. I don't personally get it, and I will never want to. But the addiction is never in the behavior itself. It's in your relationship to the behavior. So, if the particular activity gives you temporary relief or pleasure and therefore you crave it, but it causes harm in the long term and you can't give it up, you got an addiction. And I don't care what the activity is, could be drugs and all the other things that we mentioned. And it, and it, and it employs the same brain circuits, by the way. The workaholic is after the same brain chemical that the cocaine addict is after, dopamine. You know? And people can be even addicted to their own stress hormones, like adrenaline. The so-called adrenaline junkies, they're such a thing. You know, so almost anything can be addictive if it serves the purpose of temporarily easing some distress but causing harm in the long term.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is es- is escapism the right word to use then for it? If we're... 'Cause it, it doesn't sound as much like we're escaping v- rather than we are seeking something that we're missing.
- GMGabor Maté
We're seeking relief from a certain mental state. Like, like, I just gave you a definition of addiction, so think... I don't know what addictions you've had-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Work.
- GMGabor Maté
... or haven't, or ha-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Work.
- GMGabor Maté
... or haven't besid- you know. But what did that do for you temporarily?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um-
- GMGabor Maté
It gave you something.
- 1:13:28 – 1:14:05
How do we find our sense of worth?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And how one would go about, how would one go about getting that sense of worth? I'm asking for a friend. (laughs)
- GMGabor Maté
(laughs) Well, um, that would be a matter of, um, some form of work. Uh, people who meditate often deal with that issue through their meditation, not always. Certainly therapy. You know? Um, by recognizing also that what you're doing to get a sense of worth doesn't really do it for you, just by getting honest about it, you know? So, there's all kinds of ways but the first step is the recognition.
- 1:14:05 – 1:18:51
Why is authenticity so important
- GMGabor Maté
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's the first step that you say is, uh, missing, missing from the book, which is that sort of awareness.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The next thing which I've been... It's been really front of mind in my life recently 'cause I've been asked this a few times on stage, and I've been trying to find the words to really, um, articulate the importance of it, is... And this is one of your forays in this book about how to heal, is authenticity.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really interesting concept because I've been trying to articulate why the fact that I've just shared all this stuff with you-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and the fact that I do this every week-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... I'm, I'm getting closer and closer to that sort of authentic self where there's really-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the mask is kind of dropping on me.
- GMGabor Maté
Uh-huh.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why that's been so healing for me? Why is authenticity such a good way and important way for us to heal?
- GMGabor Maté
It's much more than a way for us to heal. It's actually who we are. Like, what you're ask, really asking is, why it is important for a creature to be true to its own nature, 'cause that's what we're meant to do. We're meant to be here as ourselves. You know? And, and, and when we are not ourselves because we had to abandon ourselves or betray ourselves or disconnect from ourselves in order to survive, um, we lost connections with our essence. And, uh, I mean, how does it feel to be a successful CEO and, you know, more than realizing your financial dreams, but to be a workaholic and, and, and, and, and not to be available to yourself in areas of your life that really matter to you? As opposed to being honest about your stuff, sharing with other people, uh, dropping the veil, dropping the... I mean, to answer your question, what does it feel like? I mean, d- can you sense the difference in your body?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It feels lighter.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Expansive.
- GMGabor Maté
Exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, that's the answer.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GMGabor Maté
That's why it's so important.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's ju- uh, s- so many of us, so many of us, um, live inauthentic lives because as you said, it's, it's bec- either because from an early age, we were es- escaping-
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... um, some kind of, you know, reality in order to help us to survives. Or, then the other thing that happens a bit later on in life is we develop an identity which becomes a career, which becomes-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... a social circle, which becomes-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... a prison of, um, our inauthentic selves. We get trapped in there.
- 1:18:51 – 1:20:09
Taking personal responsibility
- GMGabor Maté
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you said the word there, agency, which is the second of the four A's-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... on how to heal. Now, agency, when, when you, when I read that word, I, I hear, like, personal responsibility, taking personal responsibility-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... over my life.
- GMGabor Maté
Exactly.... which also means not letting, you know, y- y- you don't use trau- you don't wear trauma as a badge, you know, or you don't use it as a get out of jail pass in a game of Monopoly. "Oh, I was traumatized so I can't, I can't be any other way." You know? I mean-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Giving all the power to the puppet master.
- GMGabor Maté
Y- yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So agency means actually I take responsibility, not for what happened to me, not even how I interpreted the world as a result going backwards, but how I interpret the world from now on. Do I still wanna interpret the world and my role in it based on some decision I made when I was a one-year-old? That's where agency comes in. Agency also means that if I have, um, any kind of dysfunction or illness, it's not just that I put my hands in the hands of a, put my, m- my fate in the hands of a, a physician or a healer, but I, I have agen- I make the decisions. I listen to your advice. I accept some, I don't accept some. But I'm the one who's making the decisions along with what seems right to me. So agency.
- 1:20:09 – 1:26:36
The 5 Rs to take control of your life
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's interesting in your, in your work, throughout your work, you use alliteration as, a lot-
- GMGabor Maté
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... as a way to kind of summarize and make ideas really memorable. It really helps.
- GMGabor Maté
It's an old trick.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's a trick?
- GMGabor Maté
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's a writing trick, right?
- GMGabor Maté
Well, uh, it's, uh, it also works, you know? The-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GMGabor Maté
... the four A's or, uh-
- SBSteven Bartlett
The four R's.
- GMGabor Maté
But I don't, I don't want to say, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm denigrating my work if I say it's a trick. No. It's just something, just the way things occur to me. That's all it is.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the, one of the, um, alliteration devices you use is also, uh, relates to limiting beliefs and how we can undo-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... self-limiting beliefs with the five R's.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Relabel, reattribute, refocus, re- revalue, and recreate.
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Now from what I understood of those, relabeling is the story and the belief that is limiting to us, um, so redefining it.
- GMGabor Maté
Well, well, uh, take something like, um, your workaholism.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GMGabor Maté
"I need to go to work. I need to do this work."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GMGabor Maté
Relabeling is, "I don't need to do this work. I just have a belief that I need to do this work."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GMGabor Maté
So that relabeling just takes a degree of separation from the behavior. And, and actually it's true. It's not that you need to do all this work because you have this belief. So relabeling just says it for what it is. By the way, I have to acknowledge that I, these, th- these five R's, only one of them is mine. I stole the other four from a psychiatrist.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's fine. That's art.
- GMGabor Maté
T- just, I, I, I mention that in the book but I, I find it a very helpful technique. But the, the, it was developed for people with obs- obsessive-compulsive tendencies. So the relabel is not that I have to wash my hands 100 times, I just have a belief that I have to wash my hands 100 times. Uh, that's the context in which it was developed. I think it works for all kinds of beli- uh, all kinds of, uh, dynamics.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then if I, and then so I've relabeled it. I don't have to work to feel a sense of validation-
- GMGabor Maté
Yeah.
Episode duration: 1:59:37
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