Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal

Dr. Gabor Maté 0:00 Trauma is not what happened to you, it's what ha- what happened inside of you as a result of what happened to you. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, uh, of children, neglect, a parent being addicted, a parent dying, a parent being jailed, poverty or racism. These are big T traumatic events that can wound kids.

Mel Robbins 0:19 I had a wildly traumatic birth. I got rushed to emergency surgery-

Dr. Gabor Maté 0:24 Oh, gosh.

Mel Robbins 0:25 ... and lost two and a half liters of blood.

Dr. Gabor Maté 0:27 Oh, gosh.

Mel Robbins 0:28 And they sent Sawyer home with Chris, they kept me in the hospital, and by the time I went home, I had severe postpartum depression. She's recently, uh, gone into therapy and one of her visions is a vision that she has... where she's in her crib-

Dr. Gabor Maté 0:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 0:50 ... and she really wants me to come.

Dr. Gabor Maté 0:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 0:52 And it's my husband, and then it's my mother-

Dr. Gabor Maté 0:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 0:55 ... and then it's my mother-in-law, and then it's my friend Joni that would sit with me while Chris went to work and I never came. (sighs)

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05 That's one of the impacts of trauma is that there's shame-based view of the self, they- these people start blaming themselves that somehow you invited it, or deserved it, or you didn't fight back hard enough. The healing needs to begin with some compassionate curiosity towards the self, not why, but why? It's a totally different conversation.

Mel Robbins 1:24 It makes me sad that I didn't know this sooner.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:32 Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:33 But I feel very grateful for your work.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:35 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:38 Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so thrilled that you're here with me. It is always an honor to be able to spend time together with you. If you're brand new, welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast. And I know because you chose to listen to this episode that you're the type of person who values your time, and you're also interested in learning about ways that you can improve your life. I love that. I love that you're listening to this episode. And you wanna know what else I love? I love that you and I are gonna get to spend time learning from the extraordinary Dr. Gabor Maté. Dr. Maté is a world-renowned physician and best-selling author whose work dives deep into childhood development and the impact of trauma on how it shapes your mental and physical health over your lifetime. Dr. Maté has completely transformed how the world sees, talks about, and understands trauma. And he has absolutely had that impact on me, and it's been life-changing. I promise you, this episode is gonna shift the way you see everything. How you show up for yourself, how you connect with the people you love, and why you experience life the way that you do. It's gonna help you understand why coping has become your default, and how you can move toward true healing. I am so excited for both you and me, so please, please, please help me welcome the extraordinary Dr. Gabor Maté to The Mel Robbins Podcast. Before we dive in, Gabor, I would love to have you speak directly to the person who's listening to us, and just share with them what they might expect to experience if they really take to heart what you're about to teach us and share with us today.

Dr. Gabor Maté 3:19 Well, a lot of people are facing challenges, um, a lot of people are very hard on themselves, a lot of people think there's something wrong with them. Uh, my fundamental understanding and what I've learned is, is that underneath there's nothing wrong with anybody, that everything you're dealing with came along for a reason. They were adaptations or they were responses to difficult situations. And the more you can understand where your issues came from, and even when your negative self-view, and the shame, and the self-loathing, and the self-criticism, and the perfectionism that you experience, that they were actually responses to some kind of life experience, and that fundamentally there was and there is nothing wrong with you, and those things can be looked at, and you can understand them, and you can, um, transform that and really become yourself, who you are. That's available to you. It's available to everybody. So nobody's damaged goods.

Mel Robbins 4:20 I love that. No one is damaged goods.

Dr. Gabor Maté 4:23 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 4:24 We are gonna unpack this, uh, in this conversation at length, but I think it might be helpful for someone who is not familiar with your work-

Dr. Gabor Maté 4:32 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 4:32 ... if we could go back.

Dr. Gabor Maté 4:34 Sure.

Mel Robbins 4:34 And can you share, if we go all the way back to your childhood, just what was happening in your life and, in particular, how finding your mother's journal really impacted you and sent you in a certain direction in terms of your life's work?

Dr. Gabor Maté 4:51 Well, so I was born, uh, 80 years ago this year, um, in Budapest, Hungary, uh, January 1944 to Jewish parents whose, um, lives were already impacted by the Second World War. My father was in forced labor with the Hungarian army, uh, Jewish men had to go into forced labor when I was born, so he wasn't there when I was born. In, um, March, the German army occupied Hungary, and then the genocide, the Holocaust that had obliterated the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, but not yet that of Hungary's, began in our country. And within three months, between March and June, they murdered half a million Jews, including my grandparents, and we came very close to being deported ourselves, my mother and I. So I spent the first year of my life under Nazi occupation, uh, with a mother who was terrorized and grief-struck. Didn't know if my father was dead or alive for most of that year. And then when I was 11 months of age, to save my life, my mother gave me to a complete stranger, a Christian woman in the street, and she conveyed me to some relatives living in relative safety in hiding.Um, I didn't see her for five or six weeks. And all this is recorded in the journal that she kept. I, I didn't discover the journal. I, I always had this, her, her journal, but for many years, when I tried to read it, I'd get dizzy. It's almost like something in me knew that this was too painful for me to handle. So it wasn't until some years ago, when my mother was still alive, when I asked her to actually read the journal to me so I could really read what happened, and she wrote in the journal that, "I'm writing this 'cause if our son, if my son grows up, I want him to know what happened." So that's in a nutshell, but those events left a deep imprint in my nervous system, in my body, and, and in my psyche. Um, and those traumatic events created a lot of psychological wounds in me that took me some years to even recognize, let alone to heal. And, uh, it wasn't until I was into m- late adulthood and, or middle a- age that I really began to deal with it, uh, and to recognize the subsequent impacts that then I passed onto my kids without meaning to, but just for the lack of awareness. So, that's it in a nutshell.

Mel Robbins 7:26 Well, that's a big nutshell.

Dr. Gabor Maté 7:27 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 7:28 Wow. So, how did those experiences in your life really start to shape your work? Like, w- how did you start doing what you do today?

Dr. Gabor Maté 7:41 Well, before it shaped my work, it shaped me and how I functioned in the world or how I dysfunctioned in the world in so many ways. So it's, it's when I began to experience challenges in my life. Um, I was a successful doctor in my early 40s. Um, respected, but depressed and unhappy. Um, I was married to the love of my life, and we had a very strained, conflictual marriage. And my kids had issues. In some ways, they were afraid of me 'cause I was very unpredictable. Um, so all those issues then made me start looking for some answers. So the work began by having to look at myself and trying to understand the sources of my behaviors. Um, and that coincided with me noticing things as a physician in my medical practice, and that's how I began to look at childhood development, the impacts of early years, um, the concept of trauma and what that represented and its impacts on adult or childhood mental health, physical illness, and so on. So both my personal experience and my professional work kind of led me in this direction of exploration.

Mel Robbins 9:00 And

Mel Robbins 9:01 what have you learned about how childhood experiences shape who we become as adults?

Dr. Gabor Maté 9:09 They're largely decisive. And, um, this begins even before birth. So already, the emotional states of the mother while carrying the baby will affect the child's brain development.

Mel Robbins 9:23 I just wanna make sure that the person that's with us in this conversation-

Dr. Gabor Maté 9:27 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 9:28 ...really gets this.

Dr. Gabor Maté 9:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 9:29 Because I didn't first learn that your emotional state and your physical state when you're carrying the child-

Dr. Gabor Maté 9:39 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 9:39 ...impacts the nervous system and development of the human being inside you.

Dr. Gabor Maté 9:44 Absolutely.

Mel Robbins 9:44 And it makes sense.

Dr. Gabor Maté 9:46 Well-

Mel Robbins 9:46 But, but can you explain more about that? Because this is an idea that was brand new to me just a couple years ago.

Dr. Gabor Maté 9:52 Sure. What we have to nail down first is we're not blaming mothers here. They do their best. We're talking about the stresses acting on a pregnant woman. That's no fault of her own. But speaking of stress, when people are stressed, they release stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. When the mother is stressed in pregnancy, those stress hormones go through the placenta, the umbilical cord, to the baby. That affects the child's nervous system and his development. Uh, cortisol has a huge impact on the development of important brain circuits. You can look at the heart rate of infants in the womb, as it changes as the mother's more or less stressed. So these are just physiological facts. So, um, there was a study done after 9/11, after the tragedy of nine- 9/11. Women who were pregnant then, uh, and who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in the third trimester of pregnancy as a result of 9/11, their infants had abnormal stress hormone levels a year later. Now, abnormal stress hormone levels have an impact on brain development and on physiology, uh, on the physiology, and physiological health as well. So you can expect those kids, unless something's done to, to correct it, to face more challenges later on.

Mel Robbins 11:23 Mm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 11:23 And we know that mothers who are stressed during pregnancy, depressed during, during pregnancy, their children are more likely to have ADHD, Attention Deficit Disorder, or other mental health challenges. So it's just... Now, what's interesting here is, indigenous people have always known this. I was talking to a, uh, a native group in British Columbia where I live, and this guy comes up to me and says, "You know, doc, in our community, when a woman was pregnant, there was a rule that if you're stressed or upset, you were not permitted to go near them. We didn't want your stress and upset to affect the baby." So this modern science has only confirmed indigenous wisdom. But it's a huge issue in this country, in this culture, 'cause people are so stressed for so many reasons.

Mel Robbins 12:08 Well, it's interesting to listen to you-... explain all this, because for me personally, your work has impacted both me and recognizing-

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:22 ... the way that childhood experiences and in vitro experiences-

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:26 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:26 ... when I was inside my mother's body, impacting-

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:29 In u- sorry, in utero.

Mel Robbins 12:30 In utero? Is that what it is?

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:31 Okay. See, I'm not a medical doctor here.

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:33 No, no, in vitro means in the laboratory.

Mel Robbins 12:34 Oh, okay, you're right. In, in utero.

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:36 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:36 Exactly.

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:37 So, impacted me when I was inside my mother developing-

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:42 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:42 ... you know, into a baby.

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:44 Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:45 And then I think about your work in the context of me as a stressed-out mother-

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:50 ... and the state that I was in when I was carrying-

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:53 ... any one of our three children-

Dr. Gabor Maté 12:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:54 ... and how that absolutely impacted their development.

Dr. Gabor Maté 13:00 Sure.

Mel Robbins 13:00 There's this kind of conflict that I feel between, oh gosh, you know, I hurt my kids, and I didn't mean to, and also this understanding that I think this is part of the human experience on some level.

Dr. Gabor Maté 13:16 Well, f- first of all, when my mother was carrying me, I don't think she even wanted to be pregnant. I mean, what Jewish woman really wanted to be pregnant in the middle of the Second World War when my- when her husband is in forced labor? Already in utero, kids can feel if they're not wanted. I've seen this s- show up in many, many, many, many ways. Now, the- the- the thing that I would take up with you is, on the one hand, there's the awareness that this is what happened, but the way you formulated it, that you hurt your kids, no. Pain flowed through you to your children.

Mel Robbins 13:53 Mm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 13:54 But you didn't hurt them. You didn't, it's not that you did something deliberately or consciously to hurt them. It's just that the way it worked is that trauma is transmitted trans-generationally. But that's not to blame anybody, and it's really important to remove blame 'cause parents feel so guilty already. Parents with kids who are challenge- have challenges, believe me, I've been one of them, there's a tremendous sense of guilt which is entirely unwarranted and undeserved and it doesn't even help. So, let's just agree that the trauma does come through us, but we don't do it, as such.

Mel Robbins 14:32 That is incredibly helpful way to think about it, the way you said that it's pain moving through you.

Dr. Gabor Maté 14:37 Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 14:38 That made my shoulders drop.

Dr. Gabor Maté 14:40 Mm.

Mel Robbins 14:42 How do you define trauma? Particularly for somebody who isn't aware whether or not they've experienced it.

Dr. Gabor Maté 14:49 Um, the way I define it is very straightforward. Trauma comes from a Greek word for wound or wounding, so trauma's a wound. It's a psychological wound in this case. Could be a physical wound, but here we- we're talking about psychological wounds. The important distinction to make is that trauma is not what happened to you, it's what ha- what happened inside of you as a result of what happened to you. So, in my case, my trauma wasn't that my mother gave me to a stranger. The trauma was the wound, which is that I perceived myself as not wanted, I perceived myself as abandoned. Who gets abandoned? Somebody who doesn't deserve to be loved. So, then I developed this sense of not being good enough, not, um, being lovable enough. Now that means I spend much of my life trying to prove that I'm good, that I'm lovable, that I am important, which then drives all kinds of behaviors, which then create more problems. But the trauma is not the event. That's the traumatic, um, episode, but the trauma's the wound that happens inside you. So, if I get a blow on the head, that's not the trauma. The trauma's the concussion that I develop, yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:01 Now in that case, it's physical. And I wanna-

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:04 ... kinda hover here because-

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:06 Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:06 ... for a long time, I just assumed trauma was something that happened to people-

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:11 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:11 ... who were at war or-

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:13 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:13 ... were in a country that was occupied by, you know, a fascist-

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:16 For sure.

Mel Robbins 16:17 ... government or-

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:18 For sure.

Mel Robbins 16:18 ... country coming in, like your parents were.

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:20 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:21 And that you were.

Dr. Gabor Maté 16:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:22 I, or somebody that was the- the victim of a violent crime. I never understood that experiences that may seem insignificant on the surface, somebody's mood, somebody criticizing you, feeling left out, that these are things that can also leave a mark, just like a blow to a head can hi- can actually leave a concussion. And I would love for you to explain to us what actually is a psychological wound, because one of the things that I see happening a lot is people either shame themselves for being stuck, or they say, "I'm just too emotional," or, "I should just get over it." And there is something deeper that you mean when you say it's a psychological wound, so.

Dr. Gabor Maté 17:08 Well- well, that self-talk, that negative self-talk that you just articulated is itself a psychological wound. It's a sign of psychological wound, it's a sign of self-rejection, which is one of the deepest impacts o- of trauma, is that people traumatized, they develop a shame-based view of themselves. So, they begin to think that there's something wrong with them. That itself is a wound. Now, when you talked about seemingly insignificant things, we have to make a distinction here. There are what we call the big T traumatic events. Those are- have been well-studied, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, uh, of children, neglect, a parent being addicted, a parent dying, a parent being jailed, um, violence in the family, um, a rancorous divorce, a parent being mentally ill, to which we need to add social factors such as poverty or racism. These are big T traumatic events that can wound kids, and we can talk about the ways in which it h- happens. But you can also wound kids not by doing bad things to them that you shouldn't, but by not doing the good things that they need. In other words-... children have certain needs. A human child is born with certain evolution-determined needs. Those children whose needs are not met that way, for example, for unconditional loving acceptance, and I'm not talking about the parents' love, I'm talking about the capacity of the parent to unconditionally accept a child and to see the child...

Mel Robbins 18:41 What do you mean when you say unconditional acceptance? Because I think most of us, it's revelatory to hear, no, no, no, there's a biological hardwired need that you have as a child to feel unconditional acceptance and safety-

Dr. Gabor Maté 18:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:55 ... from the adults around you-

Dr. Gabor Maté 18:57 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:57 ... and in your environment, and if you do not feel that way, it creates a response inside your body. There is a reaction to that. But most of us, I think we even just skip over that fact, Gabor, that there's a fundamental need that a child has to feel accepted. And so what does that mean, if you could unpack it for us?

Dr. Gabor Maté 19:20 Sure. Children get to experience and see themselves the way they are seen by the adults. So if a child gets emotional and they get criticized, they then just think there's something wrong with their emotions.

Mel Robbins 19:35 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 19:37 If a child is very sensitive and they're told, "Don't be so sensitive," they think there's something wrong with them. If, um, a child, a young toddler's behaving a certain way and the parent thinks that the way to correct this is to punish the child, then the child, and the child is just being a two-year-old, then the child begins to believe that there's something wrong with them and they have to compensate for that by meeting the parents' expectations. So, now the acceptance is no longer unconditional. I'll accept you if you look this way, talk this way, behave this way. And then all your life, you'll be worried about how do people see you. That's a sign of a childhood wound, 'cause fundamentally, uh, we need to be connected to ourselves, and, and, um, when parents don't see us, we don't see ourselves. That's just a fact. And if you look at human evolution, um, we didn't evolve under the conditions that kids are raised now. We evolved under conditions for millions of years, until 15,000 years ago, living in small communities where there were many adults. It takes a village to raise a child. Um, the kids were always with the parents, there was no separation. Kids were carried everywhere, they were not put down to let et- let them cry it out. They were just unconditionally accepted, and, uh, not punished actually, not hit. It's a totally different paradigm of parenting. That's how we evolved.

Mel Robbins 21:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 21:23 Which means that the human child expects to be treated that way, unconditiona- you know, uh, unconsciously. When those needs are not met, kids are hurt. Children have another need, which is we're wired to have certain emotions, you know, along with other mammals. We're wired to have anger. It's a, anger is essential for survival. Fear, we're wired to have fear. We're wired to have, um, curiosity, seeking. We're wired to have, um, separation distress, so that if the adult's not around, we should be upset, we should panic-

Mel Robbins 22:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 22:01 ... so we cry so the parents come and get us.

Mel Robbins 22:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 22:05 We're wired for play. And children have this need that when those emotions arise, parents should understand those emotions and, and not necessarily do what the kid wants them to do, but to understand the child's feelings.

Mel Robbins 22:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 22:20 And when children are denied that kind of understanding, they think there's something wrong with their emotions. They, then they start telling themselves, "I'm too emotional. I'm not good enough. Uh, I'm too sensitive. I am, um, not lovable." Or when children don't get the attention that they need, guess what they develop? They need to be attractive so they can attract attention. Now look at the damage done in this culture by people thinking that they need to meet certain standards of physical looks and the trouble that people go to. It's all because they were not accepted just for who they were, and, and now they're trying to attract attention.

Mel Robbins 23:03 Is there a human being on the planet that doesn't have trauma from their childhood? (laughs) I mean, 'cause I, I'm sitting here listening, and it's an interesting conversation because you listen to it both from your experience.

Dr. Gabor Maté 23:16 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 23:17 And I love that you said, "We're not gonna blame mothers."

Dr. Gabor Maté 23:20 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 23:21 And pain is moving through people.

Dr. Gabor Maté 23:23 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 23:23 This is why trauma passes through your family and through cultures generationally.

Dr. Gabor Maté 23:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 23:29 And learning about this helps you understand the responses to your childhood that helped you survived.

Dr. Gabor Maté 23:37 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 23:37 And it also helps you feel empowered to take responsibility-

Dr. Gabor Maté 23:41 That's right.

Mel Robbins 23:41 ... to change those now subconscious responses that you have.

Dr. Gabor Maté 23:45 Yeah. So going back to your question about is there anybody on the planet, yeah, but in this culture, th- that would be the exception, because there's so many features of this culture that don't meet human needs that human, make human life difficult. Look, the United States is the richest country in history. 70% of adults are at least on one medication. 40% of adults are at least on two medications. More and more kids are getting medicated for all kinds of conditions, from ADHD to self-cutting to, to aggression to so-called oppositionality to anxiety. We can look at this two ways. Either...Human beings are just innately troubled, or there's something wrong with the environment in which we're raising our kids and in which we're trying to, striving to doing our best, but we're facing conditions that are inimical to healthy human development. So, in a sense, when we talk about trauma, we're talking about the conditions under which parents have to function these days. If I was functioning in a laboratory, trying to grow microorganisms, the world is called culturing. We're trying to culture organisms, laboratory culture. If in that laboratory culture, a lot of those microorganisms began to develop pathologies or die off, you'd have to say this is a toxic culture.

Mel Robbins 25:10 Hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 25:10 Well, it's the same thing with human beings. So, rather than look at the source of people's problems strictly within themselves, we have to actually look at the conditions. For any creature in the world, whether it's a plant or animal, you have to look at the conditions under which people are living, and raising kids, and trying to function. So that's what I'm doing here.

Mel Robbins 25:32 When you think of childhood trauma, how do you identify it?

Dr. Gabor Maté 25:36 Well, again, I mentioned those 10 conditions.

Mel Robbins 25:40 The big T.

Dr. Gabor Maté 25:41 The big T's ones, um, adding to it poverty and racism. Those things actually affect the physiology of the body. So people who are traumatized that way, they have a much higher risk. For example, people who've had several of those big experiences that I talked about have a higher risk for autoimmune disease, higher re- for, for, higher risk for cancer, much higher risk for addiction, much higher risk for mental health problems and so on.

Mel Robbins 26:08 Why? Like can you explain for, from a medical reason, like in the body? This show is l- has listeners in 194 countries.

Dr. Gabor Maté 26:16 Sure.

Mel Robbins 26:17 And this might be the very first time as you're listening to Gob Earth that you're actually starting to go, "Wait a minute. Everything that he's saying is what I experienced."

Dr. Gabor Maté 26:26 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 26:27 Or at least pieces of it. I've never considered that this could be trauma.

Dr. Gabor Maté 26:31 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 26:31 And we've talked about it as a psychological wound, but I think it'd be really helpful if you also explained how does this create either programming or conditioning in your body that starts to define who you become as an adult and create behaviors that you never intended?

Dr. Gabor Maté 26:51 So that happens on both the physiological and the psychological level.

Mel Robbins 26:55 Okay.

Dr. Gabor Maté 26:56 On the physiological level, trauma incites inflammation in the body. So people who are severely traumatized in childhood, you can measure their level of inflammatory particles in their bloodstream. They'll be abnormally high, which makes them more at risk for cancer, more at risk for autoimmune disease, more at risk for depression, mental health problems and so on. That's just a physiological fact. Trauma can affect they way, uh, genes are turned on and off. So genes don't function independently. Um, there are very few conditions that are purely genetically determined. There are some. One runs in my family, muscular dystrophy. If you inherit the gene, you'll have the disease. But that's very rare, relatively. But genes are turned on and off by the anima- environment, so the wrong genes can be turned on and the, and the right genes can be turned off by trauma. Then, trauma can dysregulate the body's stress mechanism, so people are secreting more cortisol and adrenaline. These are the stress hormones, which in the short term are lifesaving 'cause if I was threatened or you were, we would generate cortisol, adrenaline from an adrenal gland and we would be stronger and faster and better able to counter the threat, either to escape or to fight back. But in the long term, those same stress hormones thin the bones, create more clotting in the blood, narrow the blood vessels, elevate the high blood pressure, uh, e- elevate the blood pressure as you get hypertension, suppress the immune system, put fat on your belly, creating higher risk for heart disease, uh, makes you depressed, ulcerate your intestines. These are the stress hormones.

Mel Robbins 28:36 Wow.

Dr. Gabor Maté 28:37 So, there's all that, um, on the physiological side, and I could say more about it. But if you, for example, I- I- I mentioned racism. So if you look at the chromosomal aging of black people in this country, they age faster than Caucasians. And black kids already have higher blood pressure measurements than their Caucasian counterparts. It's got nothing to do with genetics. It's got to do with the stress of racism. Uh, a black woman in this country, the more episodes of racism they experience, the higher their risk for asthma. Children whose parents are stressed are at higher risk for asthma. This has been known for decades. I could go on a great length about that. So these are some of the physiological impacts. Then there are the emotional impacts. So, like in my case, being given to a stranger gives me the sense of not being wanted, not being important. Then I develop behaviors where I try and prove my importance, so I become a workaholic doctor. So I drive myself too hard, and I don't pay so much attention to my family 'cause I'm out there trying to prove my importance in the world. Now that has impact on my kids. That has impact on my marriage. So there's these, um, behavior, emotional impacts which result in certain behaviors. Then we can talk about addictions. Addictions is a huge consequence of childhood trauma of all kinds, and there's all kinds of science behind that. So, the, one more thing, if I may say. When people get the message that their emotions aren't acceptable to the adults, children will push down their feelings in order to be accepted, and they'll try to be nice and cooperative.... and they'll try to fit in with other people's expectations, which then means they'll be stressed all the time, which then potentially is all kinds of illness.

Mel Robbins 30:42 You know, I am sitting here thinking about ways in which I can try to distill down what you're saying, because the information has been so life-changing for me in my own life-

Dr. Gabor Maté 30:57 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 30:57 ... to really accept, acknowledge, and seek to understand how childhood experiences created a traumatic response inside of me.

Dr. Gabor Maté 31:08 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:08 And I wanna focus on the, I guess you would call it the smaller T stuff-

Dr. Gabor Maté 31:14 Sure.

Mel Robbins 31:14 ... which is that you have fundamental needs as a child.

Dr. Gabor Maté 31:18 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:18 And when they are not-

Dr. Gabor Maté 31:19 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:20 ... provided to you-

Dr. Gabor Maté 31:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:21 ... that it creates trauma inside of you. And is it fair to say that another way to think about trauma is that it's something happening outside of you that creates this almost, like, alarm or bracing in your body? It's like it, it kinda flips you into that fight or flight. 'Cause I have this experience of-

Dr. Gabor Maté 31:42 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:42 ... not, like, going back to my childhood and not, like, seeing anything that's massive related to my parents, but just having this sense of constantly being on edge, constantly feeling like, you know, it's my job to make everybody happy, don't say the wrong thing, this hypervigilance.

Dr. Gabor Maté 32:00 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 32:01 And I never knew where it came from.

Dr. Gabor Maté 32:02 Yeah. Well, the child is very sensitive to the parents' emotional states, and, uh, even if, for example, you can, uh, one of the ways you can tell if a marriage is troubled is that you can ask the parents or you can measure the child's stress hormone levels. So, the stresses of the parents are directly relate- um, affecting the child's physiology and the child's psychology. So, you may not have articulated and, and, and clearly see what was going on, but, especially if you're a sensitive person genetically, and that is genetic, sensitivity, you'll feel exactly what's going on and you'll think it's all about you. And then you also develop the belief that it's your job to fix it, and then when you can't fix it, you develop this tremendous sense of guilt and shame 'cause you failed at your job of making your parents happy, which never should've been the child's job in the first place.

Mel Robbins 33:02 What is a child supposed to do?

Dr. Gabor Maté 33:04 About what?

Mel Robbins 33:06 (laughs) Just as you're growing up. It's interesting because I think so many people, at least in my life and my lived experience, is that that, that's my job.

Dr. Gabor Maté 33:17 Well, that's-

Mel Robbins 33:17 To protect myself, to, like, make everybody happy, to-

Dr. Gabor Maté 33:19 But, but, but you see, that's so you survived, because what you needed most of all is a relationship with your parents, and one of the needs of children that I haven't mentioned is what we can call rest, which means, you know, 'cause in a rest state, we can develop and grow and unfold. Now, rest means the child doesn't have to work to make the relationship work with the parent.

Mel Robbins 33:41 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 33:41 The relationship is just there. There's nothing the child can do to break the relationship. Now, in a situation where that's not the case, then the child necessarily has to work to make the relationship work, because without that relationship, they know they can't survive. So, that adaptation, the v- the hypervigilance on your part... Remember I said in the beginning that nobody's damaged goods?

Mel Robbins 34:07 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 34:07 So that, that, that hypervigilance on your part, and that belief that it's your job to make the situation peaceful, that's an adaptation on your part.

Mel Robbins 34:17 So, that's a form of trauma?

Dr. Gabor Maté 34:18 That's an outcome of trauma. The problem is that that becomes then wired into your personality, but children don't have any choice in the matter. They have to adapt to the situation. Those adaptations then become wired into their personalities, and that's who they think they are. That's not who they are. Those are their adaptations, their traumas showing up in their behavior and in their emotional functioning.

Mel Robbins 34:45 One of the ways that I've seen people really deny-

Dr. Gabor Maté 34:48 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 34:49 ... the existence of trauma inside a family is between siblings-

Dr. Gabor Maté 34:53 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 34:53 ... where two siblings will grow up in the same household and be like, "Well, that never happened," or, "Mom wasn't like that," or, "You're just being too sensitive." In your work, what have you discovered about how siblings can grow up in the same house-

Dr. Gabor Maté 35:07 No siblings grow up in the same house. No siblings have the same parents. No siblings have the same family. No siblings have the same childhood. Why not? There are a whole lot of reasons. Number one, there's the birth order. Parents don't relate to the first child the way they relate to the second child. Then there's gender differences. Parents don't relate to... Uh, and I'm not talking about whether the parents love the kids or not. I'm talking about what actually happens. The child doesn't experience the parent's love. The child experiences the way the parent shows up.

Mel Robbins 35:40 Hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 35:40 So, um, number one. Number two, the parents' relationship might be in a different phase one child than another. Then, um, the parents might be in a different economic situation. The parents' lives might be different. Um, then, each child

Dr. Gabor Maté 36:01 will evoke a different response from the parent. Like with my three kids or your three kids, or the f- yeah, you have three children. Yeah, you have two daughters and a son. I have two sons and a daughter. It's not that I loved or we loved any one of them more than the other, but we responded to them differently. And there's one more factor, which is children are born with different temperaments-

Mel Robbins 36:21 Hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 36:21 ... which is they experience the world differently. So, even if I could be the same parent to all of my kids, which I couldn't be, they'd still have three different parents because they would experience me differently.

Mel Robbins 36:31 Hmm. Well, you know, I, I...... a-am sitting here listening, again, kind of from two places. One as a mother, (laughs) right?

Dr. Gabor Maté 36:40 Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 36:41 And one as a human being who was a daughter-

Dr. Gabor Maté 36:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 36:44 ... who has recognized that there were lots of small things that happened-

Dr. Gabor Maté 36:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 36:49 ... and one big thing that created a tremendous, like a traumatic response inside me.

Dr. Gabor Maté 36:55 Sure.

Mel Robbins 36:55 That created hyper-vigilance and anxiety, and probably ADHD and... I'm also thinking, and I'm gonna share this 'cause I think it'll be really helpful, that I had a wildly traumatic birth. I was two weeks overdue-

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:08 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:08 They had to induce me, here in Boston.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:10 So they- so they-

Mel Robbins 37:10 And my daughter Sawyer, who is sitting outside this studio and-

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:15 Oh, yeah?

Mel Robbins 37:15 ... yeah, worked on the Let Them Theory book with me-

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:18 ... she did not wanna come out.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:20 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:21 So it was 36 hours.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:23 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 37:23 They had to use a... Forceps didn't work, they ended up doing a vacuum extraction.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:29 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 37:29 And then I tore and I got rushed to emergency surgery.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:34 Oh, gosh.

Mel Robbins 37:35 And lost two and a half liters of blood.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:37 Oh, gosh.

Mel Robbins 37:37 And they sent Sawyer home with Chris, they kept me in the hospital, and by the time I went home, my skin was as gray as a dolphin.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:46 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:46 And I had severe post-partum depression.

Dr. Gabor Maté 37:50 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:51 And the kind, Gabor, where I could not be alone with her because I was in such a depressive and scary state, and I was on medications that made it completely unsafe for me to breastfeed her.

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:06 I understand.

Mel Robbins 38:07 And for the first 10 weeks of her life, I was a zombie on medication. And, oh my God, it just like kills me to think about this, and she's recently, uh, gone into therapy and has started doing EMDR.

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:26 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:27 And one of her visions, when they kind of trace her, you know, responses to stressful things in the moment-

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:36 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:36 ... and it goes all the way back to the first vision-

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:38 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:39 ... is a vision that she has where she's in her crib-

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:45 ... and she really wants me to come.

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:47 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:47 And it's my husband, and then it's my mother-

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:50 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:50 ... and then it's my mother-in-law, and then it's my friend Joni that would sit with me while Chris went to work and I never came.

Dr. Gabor Maté 38:57 Yeah. So we went through the same thing, uh, with one of our children. And my wife had a severe post-partum depression. She couldn't even look at the kid and, um... So let me say a couple of things here. Um, one is that sometimes birth trauma happens, you know, but yours was severe. Now, birth was created by nature in a certain way, and, um, during the birth process, there's natural hormones that are released, both in the mother and the infant. It's been called a love cocktail. It's a combination of internal opiates and oxytocin and other brain chemicals which create the bonding between the mother and the infant. Now, sometimes medical intervention is lifesaving and essential, but we've medicalized birth so much, that we interfere with it so much now, that we're creating a lot of birth trauma where it's not necessary. I'm not saying that was the case in your ca- situation, but nevertheless, we're doing it a lot, you know? And that interferes with mother and child bonding, number one. Number two, the child does have this need to stay with their mother's body for many months, um, because the human child is the, um, least developed and the least mature and the most dependent of any mammal. And the maturation, like a horse can run on the first day of life. Human beings can't do that for a year and a half. The horse is a year and a half ahead of us in terms of brain development. That's because we develop these big brains, th- these big heads. If we waited any more than nine months, we would never get born. Sometimes even now we barely get born 'cause the head is, gets stuck, which is probably what happened in, in your case.

Mel Robbins 40:46 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 40:47 Which means that the development that in other animals happens in the womb, in human beings have to happen outside the womb.

Mel Robbins 40:56 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 40:56 That's been called external gestation. There's internal gestation in the womb and external gestation outside the womb. Now, that means the mother's body, the mother's skin, the mother's heartbeat close to the baby for many, many, many, many months. So when that doesn't happen... And in the US, 25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, which is a massive abandonment. Now, they don't do it because they want to. They d- they have to do it for economic reasons. It's a massive abandonment of children. So, so there's the birth trauma and its impacts, which then there's the mother's depression. And that has an impact on the infant. So people, kids whose mothers were depressed post-partum have a higher risk of ADHD.

Mel Robbins 41:46 (laughs)

Dr. Gabor Maté 41:46 And, and we can talk about why that's the case.

Mel Robbins 41:48 Why is that the case? 'Cause all three of my children have ADHD. (laughs)

Dr. Gabor Maté 41:52 Well, I- I can tell you what I... Uh, the first book I ever wrote, Scattered Minds, was on ADHD, after I was diagnosed. And, um, we can talk about that, but let me just say it now, that's just the case and we, we can discuss it. They've done electroencephalograms on six-month-old infants whose mother was depressed and whose mother was not depressed. You could tell from the EEG of the infant whose mother is depressed and whose is not. Not because the depressed mother loves the child any less or is any iota less devoted than the non-depressed mother, but because the depressed mo- depressed mother can't respond to the infant with the same smiling, uh, playful, attuned interaction...... which the child needs for healthy brain development. It's a sacred thing, and, and society needs to hold it sacred. Now, how mothers used to develop or- or raise children is in their community, where they gave birth in a community, where there were doulas.

Mel Robbins 42:56 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 42:57 Where, um... Now, mind you, they didn't have the advantages of modern medicine, which again, I'm not dismissing. I'm just talking about how we evolved.

Mel Robbins 43:05 Right.

Dr. Gabor Maté 43:06 And there was such a thing as allomothering. Other mothers would come and support the mother. When the mother needed to rest, other women would come and hold the baby.

Mel Robbins 43:15 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 43:16 Um, and mothers are left very much on their own in this society, and that depression in the mother then affects the child's brain development. Not only that, given that we develop our sense of ourselves based on how the adults look at us, when the mother or the parents can't look at the child or they can't hold the child, again, the child begins to feel there's something wrong with them.

Mel Robbins 43:42 It feels like there's a million ways-

Dr. Gabor Maté 43:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 43:45 ... for this to actually happen.

Dr. Gabor Maté 43:46 Well, there is.

Mel Robbins 43:47 And I- And I share the story because it's true. I was a completely different mother-

Dr. Gabor Maté 43:50 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 43:51 ... when I gave birth to our second child, Kendall-

Dr. Gabor Maté 43:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 43:54 ... just 19 months later.

Dr. Gabor Maté 43:56 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 43:56 And her birth was different.

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:00 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:00 And Chris and I were different.

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:02 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:02 And so I can see how, without any ill intention-

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:07 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:08 ... you are a very different parent.

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:10 Absolutely.

Mel Robbins 44:10 And the child is a very different child.

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:12 And the child is born with a different temperament.

Mel Robbins 44:14 Correct.

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:14 So even th- So they- They experience you differently to start with, you know?

Mel Robbins 44:18 So how do you... Like, how does this sort of unresolved trauma from childhood that I would imagine m- You know, a lot of us learn about this as an adult, and then we start to recognize that this is an explanation-

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:32 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:32 ... for a lot of the patterns of behavior-

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:34 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:35 ... that you don't really like, but you're not quite sure how to get control of them.

Mel Robbins 44:40 How does unresolved trauma impact the way that you deal with stress as an adult?

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:45 So, um, the body's stress regulation apparatus, which is physiological-

Mel Robbins 44:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 44:52 ... it has to do with the connection between certain, uh, brain centers, um, down to the adrenal gland, which is the stress gland, you might say. No child is born with stress regulation. Infants don't know how to regulate their stresses.

Mel Robbins 45:06 Well, neither do adults (laughs) , right? Right.

Dr. Gabor Maté 45:08 Well, as you say, as you say in your book, most adults are eight years old, i- i- if that. But I- I thought that was pretty generous. It might have been four- three or four years old.

Mel Robbins 45:16 (laughs)

Dr. Gabor Maté 45:16 (laughs) Um, well, stress regulation, like other functions, has to develop, so that when something stressful happens, I know how to face it without being overwhelmed.

Mel Robbins 45:30 Mm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 45:31 And that depends on the development of these brain circuits and receptors for brain chemicals. Now, trauma interferes with the development of the body's stress regulation apparatus, so that become adults, and we don't know how to handle stress, and then we seek escape. So one of the ways that people escape from stress is addictive behaviors.

Mel Robbins 45:52 Mm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 45:53 You know, for example, so if you lo- if you talk about or talk to addicts, or if you're like, I feel like in my own addictive behaviors, even if I go, quote unquote, "sober" for a while, and then I relapse, what usually happened is that I got stressed, and then I reach for that addictive outlet as a way of soothing my stress. So, that's how it shows up, but it l- but physiologically, it shows up by a dysregulation of the body's stress regulation apparatus. So it is not just psychological. We're talking physiology here. And you can s- You've done these studies in- in laboratory animals, where the way the mother handles that infant rat pup in the first few days of life will have an impact on the adult rat's capacity to handle stress. And if you take the rats, by the way, whose mothers don't handle them as well, and you put them with mothers who do, their brains develop normally. So it's not a genetic effect. It's what's called an epigenetic effect. It's the environment acting on the genes-

Mel Robbins 46:58 Which is why we come back to your original point, no human being is damaged goods.

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:02 No.

Mel Robbins 47:02 That the good news is that if you can recognize that your response to stress-

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:08 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 47:09 ... and traumatic situations and overwhelming emotional situations-

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:13 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 47:14 ... is something that you can identify and change-

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 47:18 ... that that's what the opportunity is here in terms of being able to heal and resolve trauma.

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:24 Absolutely, and especially if you begin by recognizing that it's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with you.

Mel Robbins 47:31 You know, when I think about my husband, who absolutely experienced trauma by having a dad that was a workaholic-

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:39 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 47:39 ... and never around, and narcissistic personality style, and lots of drinking-

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:45 Okay.

Mel Robbins 47:45 ... and stress in the marriage, right? And his response to stress is to just shut down.

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 47:52 The man goes silent and stoic-

Dr. Gabor Maté 47:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 47:54 ... and in our marriage, one of the things that have come up a lot, which you can, uh, direct line to his response to his own childhood, is he doesn't really know what his needs are because they weren't met.

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:08 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's right.

Mel Robbins 48:09 And for him, it took a long time to call that trauma from his childhood-

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:14 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:15 ... because he's like, "Well, I had food. My parents were there. I-"

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:20 I know.

Mel Robbins 48:20 "... went to school. It's not like they beat me."

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:24 I know.

Mel Robbins 48:24 And for me, I am the opposite. I'm a reactor. Like, I'm a human volcano.

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:30 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:30 And when I get dysregulated or triggered or upset or overwhelmed, I'm like, "Wah!" And I-

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:38 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:39 And it's even though I know this-

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:41 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:41 ... (laughs) and I've been working on it, and I...... am a completely different human being, I feel that way-

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:51 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:51 ... over the last three years.

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:53 I still erupt.

Dr. Gabor Maté 48:56 Well, w- join the club. Um-

Mel Robbins 48:57 And w- w- so how do you personally navigate your-

Dr. Gabor Maté 49:02 Well-

Mel Robbins 49:02 ... daily challenges and when you get overwhelmed by stress?

Dr. Gabor Maté 49:06 So, let me say something about Chris first, if I may.

Mel Robbins 49:09 Yes, please.

Dr. Gabor Maté 49:11 When he says that I wasn't beaten or we weren't starving, I had food, and therefore I wasn't traumatized, here's what I would say to him. "So listen, Chris. Let's take one of your kids, and let's say you were an alcoholic, which means that you came home in different moods all the time, and the kids didn't, couldn't rely on who dad was gonna be from one minute to the next, and your mom was constantly stressed. And you, and, and, and if you were this way, do you think your kids wouldn't be hurt by that? So, just plug your kid into the situation that you were in. You'll see how. And if you wanted w-... your kids came to you and said, 'Dad, I, I don't like it that you're drinking and you're behaving this way or that way, and, and you're a workaholic and you're never around,' what would you say to your kid? 'Well, there's food on the table. What are you complaining about?'" You know?

Mel Robbins 50:02 No, but I did.

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:02 Yeah. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 50:03 No, that happened in our house, like-

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:05 Okay.

Mel Robbins 50:05 ... 15 years ago.

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:06 Okay.

Mel Robbins 50:07 And he felt bad, and I was an asshole.

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:10 Oh, okay.

Mel Robbins 50:11 Again, more trauma and more pain passing onto-

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:16 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 50:16 ... our kids.

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:17 Yeah. I'm, I'm just saying that when people look at their own childhoods, they kind of minimize.

Mel Robbins 50:23 Why do we do that?

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:24 Because it was too painful to accept in the first place, so that people dissociate, and they disconnect from their bodies and their feelings. Now, you said that he had a hard time feeling what he feels. That, that itself is a trauma impact. It's a protection.

Mel Robbins 50:40 Mm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 50:41 It's not a fa- flaw. It's not a damage. It's an adaptation. If I was hurting you right now, and you couldn't escape, and you couldn't fight back, and you couldn't ask for help, then dissociating and not experiencing your feelings would be your only protection. But then it gets wired into you, and then all your life you go through not knowing what you feel and not knowing what your needs are. So again, it's an adaptation. That's what I'm saying, is that nobody's damaged goods. These are just adaptations. The abnormality is not in the individual. It's in the circumstances to which the individual had to respond that way, so that his response or yours, or mine for that matter, were perfectly normal responses to abnormal circumstances.

Mel Robbins 51:32 Mm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 51:32 I say abnormal, in a sense, circumstances that did not meet human needs.

Mel Robbins 51:37 One of the things that's coming to mind is thinking

Mel Robbins 51:41 back to my own life and the moment where I first bumped into your work, and I learned that the seemingly little things created a lasting impact.

Dr. Gabor Maté 51:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:56 And that even though I wasn't to blame for the emotional volatility or the-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:03 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:03 ... emotional shutdown in my parents-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:06 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:06 ... when I was growing up, that it impacted me, it was real, and it was my responsibility to heal and to decide whether or not I wanted to do the work to change-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:20 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:21 ... the way that it impacted me 'cause-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:23 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:23 ... it did ha- have a massive impact on my behaviors. Constantly feeling on edge-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:27 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:27 ... people pleasing, anxiety, ADHD-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:31 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:31 ... drinking too much-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:32 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:32 ... chasing success as a way to prove that I was worthy of something and to make other people happy.

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:38 Yes.

Mel Robbins 52:39 It was everywhere.

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:40 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:40 It honestly just defined how I ran on default. And I remember the moment though when I started to truly accept the fact that these were all indications of trauma.

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:53 And that if I wanted my life to feel different-

Dr. Gabor Maté 52:56 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:56 ... that I needed to lean in to everything that you're saying.

Dr. Gabor Maté 53:00 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 53:01 And I felt a lot of conflict about that moment, because I felt guilty for identifying it that way, because I know my parents were just doing the best that they did.

Dr. Gabor Maté 53:12 They did.

Mel Robbins 53:13 And that there was a lot that I didn't remember.

Dr. Gabor Maté 53:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 53:19 And I'm wondering if you could just talk to the person who's listening who is having that awakening for the first time, where they're really accepting that some of the behaviors and the negative self-talk and the anxiety, that this is a result of experiences that you had as a child where you were not given the things that you needed.

Dr. Gabor Maté 53:43 Mel, there's a lot in what you said. Okay. First, it's a, you- you behave that way by default. There's a difference between default and fault.

Mel Robbins 53:52 Hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 53:52 Okay? Default, you didn't know you were doing it. You didn't know any better. You were just following patterns that were programmed into you, but it's not your fault, okay? There's a huge difference, important distinction, number one. Number two, it's never the child's job to make the parents happy or to create peace in the family, and the child invariably fails, which instills a huge sense of guilt and inadequacy for not having fulfilled a task that never ought to be in yours, never should've been yours in the first place. It's a reversal of roles, 'cause whose job it is to hold who emotionally, to create peace? And so when a child is forced into that position, again, is an adaptation to maintain a relationship with the parents. She's given an impossible task that she's bound to fail at and bound to feel shame over it.... which means that any shame and guilt that you feel is completely undeserved. When we start to noticing these patterns, we can start asking ourselves questions. But it depends on how we ask them. So I could say, "Why am I behaving this way?" Now, is that a question?

Mel Robbins 55:08 No, it's an indictment.

Dr. Gabor Maté 55:09 It's an indictment. But if I said, "Hmm, I wonder why I'm behaving that way?" So we need to begin to develop that compassionate curiosity towards the self, where we start looking not to, "Why did I?" Not as indictment, as you say, but genuine curiosity. And from that perspective, everything, pretty much everything anybody thinks is wrong with them, is actually an ad- begins as an adaptation or it begins as a failure of development 'cause the conditions for development were not adequate. And so, then we can understand. N- now, it's not a question of being victims. That's the last thing we wanna do is to, uh, foster victim mentality, "They did this to me and now I can't help it." No. That happened and it's your responsibility and it's your capacity to change that now. So, you have to drop the victim mode altogether, but that doesn't mean that we don't recognize what happened.

Mel Robbins 56:09 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 56:10 So to say that stuff happened to you, and I get the sense that something big happened that you haven't articulated yet, but something big happened to you at some point, um, to recognize that is not to say that you're a victim. It's just to say that whatever happened had certain impacts and fostered certain adaptations on your part that made you behave and undermine your development in certain way.

Mel Robbins 56:33 Oh, I'll share with you. When I was in the fourth grade, I woke up in the middle of the night on a family vacation and an older kid was on top of me.

Dr. Gabor Maté 56:40 Okay. All right.

Mel Robbins 56:42 And that had massive implications on my life.

Dr. Gabor Maté 56:47 In what way?

Mel Robbins 56:48 Uh, I was fourth grade.

Dr. Gabor Maté 56:51 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 56:52 And I was sound asleep, so I was in a safe space.

Dr. Gabor Maté 56:54 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 56:55 Wake up to an older kid on top of me who was fondling me.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:00 Okay.

Mel Robbins 57:01 And in the scheme of things that can happen, it was... But here I go j- j- dismissing it. You're looking at me, you're like-

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:09 Don't, d- d- don't-

Mel Robbins 57:10 ... "No, no, no, no, no."

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:10 Don't go there.

Mel Robbins 57:11 Okay. Okay.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:12 Okay?

Mel Robbins 57:12 But I, like, it's almost like I'm shaming myself-

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:14 Yeah, you are.

Mel Robbins 57:15 ... for having trauma about this.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:16 No. Can I unpack this for you a little bit?

Mel Robbins 57:18 Sure.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:19 Are you open to it?

Mel Robbins 57:20 Oh, I'm so open to it. Yeah.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:21 Okay. Here's a question I'm gonna ask you.

Mel Robbins 57:24 Okay.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:25 How did you feel when this happened?

Mel Robbins 57:28 I felt very confused-

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:29 Okay.

Mel Robbins 57:29 ... and scared.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:30 Confused and scared, good enough. Who did you speak to about it?

Mel Robbins 57:33 No one.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:34 Okay. Now, if something like this happened to one of your daughters in grade, was it grade four?

Mel Robbins 57:42 Yeah.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:42 Okay. If one of these things happened to, um, Sawyer or Kendall-

Mel Robbins 57:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 57:47 ... in grade four, and if they didn't talk to you, how would you explain that?

Mel Robbins 57:54 I'd feel... How would I explain it? I would explain it... And I'm about to go intellectual. I personally, as the mother, would feel heartbroken.

Dr. Gabor Maté 58:03 I understand how you'd feel, but really I'm not asking you how you'd feel.

Mel Robbins 58:05 But, okay, so let's-

Dr. Gabor Maté 58:06 I'm, I'm, I'm asking how you'd explain it. "Why didn't, wasn't my daughter talking to me about feeling scared and confused and violated?" Why she wouldn't-

Mel Robbins 58:14 Because she didn't feel safe talking to me.

Dr. Gabor Maté 58:16 That's the trauma. The trauma began before that happened. 'Cause if you had been able to talk to your parents and they would've said, "This is awful. You must feel terrible. Come here, let me hold you. And let's deal with the situation." So the trauma is not only in what happened, it's that you were so alone when it happened. And that aloneness was yours before this traumatic event ever occurred. As a matter of fact, abusers can tell with almost laser-like accuracy who's defended and protected and who's not, who can be victimized and who cannot. So that your primary traumatic event was not this event. Not that this wasn't traumatic, of course, it was hugely traumatic, but it became hugely traumatic 'cause you were alone. And that sense of lack of safety and, and, and lack of protection. Furthermore, y- you may not even have wanted to bother your parents 'cause they're already, they were already stressed enough already. You were protecting them. That's the primary traumatic situation.

Mel Robbins 59:23 I've never looked at it like that.

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:25 Yeah. Do you see that when ?

Mel Robbins 59:26 Oh, 1,000%.

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:28 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:28 And I can also see, when I think about experiences that friends have shared with me-

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:33 ... where they did say something-

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:34 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:35 ... and then there was denial.

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:36 There was dismissal and denial.

Mel Robbins 59:37 Or dismissal-

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:38 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:38 ... or, "We're not gonna tell anybody."

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:40 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:40 Or, "This stays within us."

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:42 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:43 Or even if they then go after the person and confront it, it blows up and somehow you're to blame, and so I can see how...

Dr. Gabor Maté 59:53 That's... Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:54 And, and, oh, and of course, when you shove it down, you then think you've done something wrong, and that was the other thing that happened for me is that I felt like I had done something wrong.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:00:02 That's one of the impacts of trauma, is that shame-based view of the self th- that people start blaming themselves, that somehow you invited it or deserved it or you didn't fight back hard enough, or... Which, if you didn't, was also self-protection. You know?

Mel Robbins 1:00:17 Well, I think that was one of the original moments that at least that I remember where I literally left my body-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:00:23 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:00:24 ... and disassociated.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:00:25 Which was a defense.

Mel Robbins 1:00:27 Yes.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:00:28 So, again, it's an adaptation. So, that's what I would say about that incident.

Mel Robbins 1:00:33 That makes perfect sense.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:00:35 Yeah. But, again, the problem is in the environment and in, in the lack of being held and being seen. So, there's nothing... And then in, in your, in your initial impulse when you began that narrative about how it's not as bad as what ha-, you know?

Mel Robbins 1:00:50 Right, right, right.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:00:51 Would you say that to your, your gr- if, if you-

Mel Robbins 1:00:53 Oh, my God, no.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:00:55 ... if, if y- uh, if your daughter comes to you and says, "You, well, it's not so bad. Think of all the kids that are, you know, being beaten," or, you know, y- y- so, that lack of self-compassion.... is one of the ways that trauma shows up.

Mel Robbins 1:01:05 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:05 And that's why I'm saying the healing needs to begin with some compassionate curiosity towards ourself. Not, "Why?" But, "Why?" It's a totally different conversation.

Mel Robbins 1:01:17 And then I can also see and take responsibility and have a lot of compassion for how my volatility emotionally-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:25 A- but, ab- absolutely.

Mel Robbins 1:01:25 ... just passed that onto my daughters.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:27 Absolutely.

Mel Robbins 1:01:28 And so, there are things that happened to them that, in the time, they didn't feel comfortable coming to me-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:34 Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:35 ... because the exact same thing.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:37 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 1:01:38 And, you know, it, it, mm, of course, just makes me f- it, it makes me sad that-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:47 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:47 ... I didn't know this-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:52 ... sooner.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:52 But I feel very grateful for your work-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:01:55 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:55 ... because I know it now. (claps hands) (smacks lips) (sighs) And so do our children, and so does my husband.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:04 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:02:04 And that knowledge gives you the, the ability to truly address the things that happened and the response that happened in your body-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:18 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:18 ... and how that has created these default patterns and this inability to manage stress, or emotion-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:24 Right.

Mel Robbins 1:02:24 ... or conflict-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:25 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:26 ... in a way that is healthy-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:31 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:31 ... and that keeps you connected to yourself instead of constantly abandoning yourself and feeling disappointed in yourself and shaming yourself. And so while I can reflect on that with a lot of sadness and grief-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:45 ... and regret-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:46 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:46 ... I feel more empowered, honestly-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:49 Well, that's the whole point.

Mel Robbins 1:02:50 ... about what's possible.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:51 That's the whole point is that we all wanna be free, but as long as we're running on default mode and we're just reacting to stuff, there's no freedom in it.

Mel Robbins 1:02:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:02:59 We're actually like puppets on a string. And if you remember Pinocchio, you know, when he becomes a real boy, he says, "How silly I, how foolish I was when I was a puppet." Well, we're all puppets in that sense. As long as these traumatic impacts are running our lives, we're puppets on a string, and those strings are unconscious. So it's the whole thing about becoming really free, and that real freedom looks at, depends on looking at how it was and getting in touch with our capacity to take responsibility now, you know? So what really the work is for all of us is how to become free so we can be in the present moment, connected to ourselves. The great trauma psychologist, Peter Levine, says, "No longer living under the tyranny of the past."

Mel Robbins 1:03:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:03:43 And it's totally available. It's totally possible.

Mel Robbins 1:03:46 It is totally possible.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:03:48 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:03:48 And it's possible for you. It's possible for your children. It's possible for anybody that you know and love. It's possible for your parents if they accept the invitation to look at themselves.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:03:57 If, if they ch- if they choose it, yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:03:58 Yes. What is the first step? Is it asking the question, like, why? Like, just being curious with a level of compassion, like, "Why am I like this?" Because if I reflect on your question, that's what happened for me. I started to say to myself, "It's no longer tolerable for me-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:04:14 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:04:14 ... to operate like this. I don't wanna be this person. I don't wanna feel like this. I don't want to feel disconnected from other people. I don't wanna have-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:04:24 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:04:24 ... this level of anger inside me."

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:04:26 Yeah, so that's actually the first step, is to recognize when suffering, rather than taking it for granted, which incidentally is the Buddha's first teaching is that life is Dukkha. Life is, life is, brings suffering, you know?

Mel Robbins 1:04:40 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:04:41 And then the second question is, okay, why? You know? So it, it does begin with recognizing the suffering rather than denying it and running away from it. And there's many ways to run away from our pain, um, through certain behaviors and addictions, and the point is stop running from your pain. Accept that it's there and be curious about it without blaming yourself for it. So those are the first steps, and then you ask for help. I mean, the, if help is available. (clears throat) The natural... We are born seeking help.

Mel Robbins 1:05:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:18 You've never, you've never met a one-year-old and a one-day-old infant that doesn't know how to ask for help. But let me ask you a question. How easy has it been, going back, for you to ask for help?

Mel Robbins 1:05:30 You mean if I think about when I was in fourth grade?

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:34 Um, then and, and, and even decades later, did-

Mel Robbins 1:05:38 Oh.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:38 ... are you s- are y- uh, can you ask for help or is that a pr- challenge for you?

Mel Robbins 1:05:41 Well, I ask for a lot of help now, but, but-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:44 No, I don't mean now. I mean, I mean, mean, t-

Mel Robbins 1:05:46 Oh.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:46 ... before your transformation.

Mel Robbins 1:05:48 Absolutely, like, like, when you just said that-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:50 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:05:51 ... I had this epiphany-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:53 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:05:54 ... that I've always felt like, "I gotta do it myself."

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:56 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 1:05:57 I've always felt like, "It's on me."

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:05:59 (coughs)

Mel Robbins 1:05:59 I've always felt like, "Uh, I just, I'll just take this on. I'll just do this." Like-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:06:04 Wh- which was an adaptation 'cause there was no help available. But you were, you were-

Mel Robbins 1:06:08 You know what's interesting?

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:06:10 S- sorry, go ahead.

Mel Robbins 1:06:11 Is you just said there's no help available, and I felt this knee-jerk need-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:06:15 Yeah, to protect your past?

Mel Robbins 1:06:16 Yes.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:06:17 I understand.

Mel Robbins 1:06:18 Because I do know, uh, like, I, I mean, I know my mom well enough to know that she would've picked up a shovel and probably clocked the kid into next week. Like, I-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:06:27 Yeah, yeah. That's not what you needed your mother to do. You needed your mother to say, "Oh, gee, that's awful. Come here. Let's talk about it." You weren't born not knowing how, how to ask for help. You were born with a supreme capacity to ask for help. I mean, as we know, any infant knows how to ask for help. So something educates it out, educates it out of us. Something compels us to suppress-

Mel Robbins 1:06:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:06:55 ... our capa- our capacity to seek help. So if the first step is recognizing our suffering and the second step is getting curious about it, then the third step is, "I need some help here."

Mel Robbins 1:07:09 It's beautiful.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:07:10 Mm-hmm. Well, it's only the simple truth.

Mel Robbins 1:07:15 It is so simple when you lay it out like that.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:07:18 Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:07:19 And it's also so freeing.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:07:20 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:07:21 One of the things that you write about that I think is so important

Mel Robbins 1:07:24 that I would love to have you explain, is this idea that we are naturally wired and have a fundamental need for joyfulness, playfulness-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:07:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:07:33 ... creativity, and that we sacrifice that.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:07:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:07:36 Can you talk more about that?

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:07:38 Well, so there's, um, a book written by a palliative care nurse in Australia, and I used to work in palliative care, and it's called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People. And she's talking to people who have died before their time, you know, from cancer usually. One of the regrets is, is that they worked too hard, they didn't play enough.

Mel Robbins 1:08:00 Hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:08:01 Now, playfulness is built into our brains. All mammals play. Bear cubs play, lion cubs play, uh, puppies, kittens, they all play. We're wired for play. Why? 'Cause play is essential for a number of things. One, it's essential for brain development.

Mel Robbins 1:08:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:08:19 It's much more important for brain development than academic learning. I'm talking about scientifically, you know, brain physiologically. So play is important. Play is also important to form relationships. 'Cause in play, you can kind of rough house a bit, but you're not actually being enemies, so you're making friends that way. So play is essential. Winnie the Pooh, which is one of my all-time favorite books-

Mel Robbins 1:08:45 Why is it one of your all-time favorite books?

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:08:47 Well, well, it's so playful. And, um, but at the very end, and- and- and I know you're married to Chris Robbins, which is Christopher Robin, you know...

Mel Robbins 1:08:57 (laughs)

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:08:57 Who's, I mean... Anyway, there's a passage at the end of the book, Winnie the Pooh, where Christopher, the- the boy... By the way, him and his father had a terrible relationship, which is a whole other issue. I'm talking about the real Christopher Robin. Um, but the fictional Christopher Robin is now growing up, and he has to go to school, which means he won't be able to play with his animals anymore, and he's trying to explain this to these animals, including Winnie the Bear. And the book ends with this statement that I'll paraphrase where it says th- th- they go off walking together hand in hand, and the book ends with, "But whatever they do, and wherever they go in the intan- in the enchanted forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing together." And that passage as an adult would bring me to tears, because as a kid, as an infant, I wasn't played with. My mother was way too terrorized and depressed to play with me. And- and kids, peekaboo, play starts so early. It's essential for our mental health. It's essential for our brain development. So there's poor people who are looking back on their lives and saying, "I wish I had played more." Play is just essential. And I have to say that one of the things that has kept our marriage going 55 years now is that we play so well together, and we're just playing all the time, when we're not fighting, which (laughs) , which by the way is long gone. Not long gone, but gone. Um, so, um-

Mel Robbins 1:10:32 But you-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:10:33 Play is just, play is just essential.

Mel Robbins 1:10:34 And you weren't played with, so did you play with your kids?

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:10:38 It's interesting. I have two brothers. They're both intuitively playful with young kids. They just know how to be with them, how to pretend, how to just get into their space. I watched them and I don't know how the hell they do it, 'cause I didn't know how to play with my kids. Um, not really. I- I- I kind of faked it, but I- I always kept waiting, waiting for them to develop minds that I could engage with verbally, 'cause th- on that ver- verbal level, I'm very comfortable. On a play level, I wasn't. I was rather stiff. I wish I was a grandfather, I am not yet, because I'd learn how to play. I'd let that infant teach me how to play. But no, I didn't know how to play. I didn't know how to play. I, I really lacked that, because it wasn't given to me when I was small. My brothers had it, but they grew up under very different circumstances.

Mel Robbins 1:11:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:11:33 They didn't have the same parents, you know, in the way we talked about it. So they know how to play, I don't, with kids, I mean.

Mel Robbins 1:11:42 Well, a very surprising insight for me as I've been working to resolve-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:11:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:11:49 ... issues from my past is noticing that I'm a very warm person-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:11:53 Oh.

Mel Robbins 1:11:53 ... but I'm not affectionate.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:11:56 Uh-huh.

Mel Robbins 1:11:56 And it's this epiphany of going in more for the hug-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:02 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:12:02 ... being more physical in terms of embracing my kids-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:12:07 ... and it's something that I definitely did not receive. And I come from a long line of farmers and hard workers-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:12:17 ... and pull up your, you know, big girl panties and let's move on, and that's the way that my mom is, even though she's warm and amazing and loving-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:27 Hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:12:27 ... but not physically embracing.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:29 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:12:30 And so I really relate to that because it's something as an adult that I recognize that I truly want to change.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:36 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:12:37 And it's, takes effort. It takes effort for me to go, "Oh, I noticed I'm just standing here."

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:42 Wow.

Mel Robbins 1:12:42 "I gotta put my arm around."

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:43 Just count to five.

Mel Robbins 1:12:44 (laughs)

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:45 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:12:46 That's true.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:47 And then hug somebody. Um, the, um-

Mel Robbins 1:12:50 True.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:50 I used to be hug phobic.

Mel Robbins 1:12:52 R- and I embraced you when you walked in.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:12:54 Yeah, you did, but I, honest to God, when people in a room would start hugging each other, I'd stand there like this.

Mel Robbins 1:13:00 And is that a response...

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:13:02 It's a response to really not being held, and it's also, um, a kind of a protective shell. I don't want to make myself that vulnerable.

Mel Robbins 1:13:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:13:11 I don't want to open up, you know?

Mel Robbins 1:13:13 What might be some surprising adult behaviors...... that are an indication of unresolved trauma from your childhood?

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:13:26 Well, sometimes it's attributes and behaviors that the world respects you for. So great success can s- sometimes be an outcome of childhood trauma, 'cause y- you're working so hard to prove something to the world, like I talked about my own workaholism and, and, you know, 'cause I had to prove that I was important. Now, that made me a very successful and respected physician from the outside. On the inside, different story. And in my family, a different situation altogether. Um, people who are very attractive and who put a lot of effort into being very attractive, the world admires them, but it's very often, like I said before, they're trying to attract the attention they should ha- that should've been their birthright.

Mel Robbins 1:14:21 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:14:22 And they don't feel good-

Mel Robbins 1:14:23 Hm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:14:24 ... if they're not attractive. And you see this, uh, as, as people age, this desperation to keep looking young, because, um, they're not acceptable the way they are. So it, sometimes it shows up in success, in what the world considers success.

Mel Robbins 1:14:41 And other ways? Like, you talked about kind of not being the kind of person that is open to hugging or, "My husband shuts down."

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:14:49 Well, my response to, um, a sense of, mm, disruption in my relationship with my wife is to shut down.

Mel Robbins 1:15:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:15:01 So I just, you know, go sullen and, uh, noncommunicative. I mean, I talk about it in the first chapter of the book. It's just, you know, I, I arrive home from a speaking trip and she texts me that she hasn't left home yet to pick me up from the airplane and I go into a sullen withdrawal stage, because I'm reliving my abandonment unconsciously, but I don't realize it. And when I saw my mother again, after that five or six week separation, I didn't even look at her for several days, which is the typical response of the child. Because the child's brain says, "You were so hurt when you were abandoned that you will not open yourself up again."

Mel Robbins 1:15:41 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:15:42 So y- your husband is exhibiting the same thing that, that has been very dominant problem in my relationship in my marriage, is my tendency to shut down, uh, in response to any sense of hurt, even if the hurt has nothing to do with the present moment, but it's a re-triggering of some old wound.

Mel Robbins 1:16:05 You're so amazing. What are your parting words?

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:16:09 You know what comes up for me is that beautiful movie, um, with Robin Williams and, uh, Matt Damon where-

Mel Robbins 1:16:16 Mm, Good Will Hunting.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:16:17 Good Will Hunting.

Mel Robbins 1:16:18 Here in Boston.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:16:19 Yeah. That's right. Where the psychologist, Robin Williams, grabs this very dysfunctional, dysregulated client played by Matt Damon and he says, "It's not your fault." If you can only get that, that's the biggest takeaway, I would say. Just get it's not your fault, but there's a reason for it. It can be worked through.

Mel Robbins 1:16:45 Well, thank you, thank you, thank you-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:16:49 My pleasure.

Mel Robbins 1:16:49 ... for being here, for sharing all of your wisdom and your research and for not only validating-

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:16:58 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:16:59 ... our experience, but giving us three simple things we can do to reconnect with ourselves and truly take our power back. You're amazing.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:17:12 My pleasure. Thank you.

Mel Robbins 1:17:13 You're welcome.

Dr. Gabor Maté 1:17:14 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:17:14 And for you on YouTube, I just wanted to thank you for watching all the way to the end, for choosing to watch something that is so important to your happiness, to your health and for sharing this. And I also wanna thank you for hitting subscribe. One of my goals is that 50% of the people that watch this, uh, YouTube channel, that are subscribers to the channel, because it really supports our team and it tells me that you love this content and it helps us continue to bring it too. And I know you're thinking, "Oh, my gosh, this was so incredible. What should I watch next?" This is the video that you should watch next. You're gonna love it and I'm gonna be waiting for you when you hit play.