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

1. 0:00 – 3:19

   Welcome

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:00

      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.

   2. MRMel Robbins0:19

      I had a wildly traumatic birth. I got rushed to emergency surgery-

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:24

      Oh, gosh.

   4. MRMel Robbins0:25

      ... and lost two and a half liters of blood.

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:27

      Oh, gosh.

   6. MRMel Robbins0:28

      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-

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:49

      Yeah.

   8. MRMel Robbins0:50

      ... and she really wants me to come.

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:52

      Yeah.

   10. MRMel Robbins0:52

       And it's my husband, and then it's my mother-

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté0:55

       Yeah.

   12. MRMel Robbins0:55

       ... 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)

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:05

       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.

   14. MRMel Robbins1:24

       It makes me sad that I didn't know this sooner.

   15. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:32

       Yeah. Yeah.

   16. MRMel Robbins1:33

       But I feel very grateful for your work.

   17. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:35

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MRMel Robbins1:38

       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.

2. 3:19 – 9:01

   Dr. Gabor Maté's Personal Journey with Trauma

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté3:19

      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.

   2. MRMel Robbins4:20

      I love that. No one is damaged goods.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté4:23

      Yeah.

   4. MRMel Robbins4:24

      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-

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté4:32

      Yeah.

   6. MRMel Robbins4:32

      ... if we could go back.

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté4:34

      Sure.

   8. MRMel Robbins4:34

      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?

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté4:51

      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.

   10. MRMel Robbins7:26

       Well, that's a big nutshell.

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté7:27

       Yeah.

   12. MRMel Robbins7:28

       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?

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté7:41

       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.

   14. MRMel Robbins9:00

       And

3. 9:01 – 36:01

   The Formation of Trauma in Childhood

   1. MRMel Robbins9:01

      what have you learned about how childhood experiences shape who we become as adults?

   2. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:09

      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.

   3. MRMel Robbins9:23

      I just wanna make sure that the person that's with us in this conversation-

   4. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:27

      Yeah.

   5. MRMel Robbins9:28

      ...really gets this.

   6. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:29

      Yeah.

   7. MRMel Robbins9:29

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

   8. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:39

      Yeah.

   9. MRMel Robbins9:39

      ...impacts the nervous system and development of the human being inside you.

   10. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:44

       Absolutely.

   11. MRMel Robbins9:44

       And it makes sense.

   12. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:46

       Well-

   13. MRMel Robbins9:46

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

   14. GMDr. Gabor Maté9:52

       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.

   15. MRMel Robbins11:23

       Mm.

   16. GMDr. Gabor Maté11:23

       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.

   17. MRMel Robbins12:08

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

   18. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:22

       Yeah.

   19. MRMel Robbins12:22

       ... the way that childhood experiences and in vitro experiences-

   20. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:26

       Yeah.

   21. MRMel Robbins12:26

       ... when I was inside my mother's body, impacting-

   22. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:29

       In u- sorry, in utero.

   23. MRMel Robbins12:30

       In utero? Is that what it is?

   24. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:31

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   25. MRMel Robbins12:31

       Okay. See, I'm not a medical doctor here.

   26. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:33

       No, no, in vitro means in the laboratory.

   27. MRMel Robbins12:34

       Oh, okay, you're right. In, in utero.

   28. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:36

       Yeah.

   29. MRMel Robbins12:36

       Exactly.

   30. GMDr. Gabor Maté12:37

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4. 36:01 – 44:40

   Birth Trauma and Postpartum Depression

   1. GMDr. Gabor Maté36:01

      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-

   2. MRMel Robbins36:21

      Hmm.

   3. GMDr. Gabor Maté36:21

      ... 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.

   4. MRMel Robbins36:31

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

   5. GMDr. Gabor Maté36:40

      Yeah. Yeah.

   6. MRMel Robbins36:41

      And one as a human being who was a daughter-

   7. GMDr. Gabor Maté36:44

      Yeah.

   8. MRMel Robbins36:44

      ... who has recognized that there were lots of small things that happened-

   9. GMDr. Gabor Maté36:49

      Yeah.

   10. MRMel Robbins36:49

       ... and one big thing that created a tremendous, like a traumatic response inside me.

   11. GMDr. Gabor Maté36:55

       Sure.

   12. MRMel Robbins36:55

       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-

   13. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:08

       Yeah.

   14. MRMel Robbins37:08

       They had to induce me, here in Boston.

   15. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:10

       So they- so they-

   16. MRMel Robbins37:10

       And my daughter Sawyer, who is sitting outside this studio and-

   17. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:15

       Oh, yeah?

   18. MRMel Robbins37:15

       ... yeah, worked on the Let Them Theory book with me-

   19. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:17

       Yeah.

   20. MRMel Robbins37:18

       ... she did not wanna come out.

   21. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:20

       Yeah.

   22. MRMel Robbins37:21

       So it was 36 hours.

   23. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:23

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MRMel Robbins37:23

       They had to use a... Forceps didn't work, they ended up doing a vacuum extraction.

   25. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:29

       Mm-hmm.

   26. MRMel Robbins37:29

       And then I tore and I got rushed to emergency surgery.

   27. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:34

       Oh, gosh.

   28. MRMel Robbins37:35

       And lost two and a half liters of blood.

   29. GMDr. Gabor Maté37:37

       Oh, gosh.

   30. MRMel Robbins37:37

       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.
5. 44:40 – 51:41

   The Relationship Between Stress and Trauma

   1. MRMel Robbins44:40

      How does unresolved trauma impact the way that you deal with stress as an adult?

   2. GMDr. Gabor Maté44:45

      So, um, the body's stress regulation apparatus, which is physiological-

   3. MRMel Robbins44:51

      Mm-hmm.

   4. GMDr. Gabor Maté44:52

      ... 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.

   5. MRMel Robbins45:06

      Well, neither do adults (laughs) , right? Right.

   6. GMDr. Gabor Maté45:08

      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.

   7. MRMel Robbins45:16

      (laughs)

   8. GMDr. Gabor Maté45:16

      (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.

   9. MRMel Robbins45:30

      Mm.

   10. GMDr. Gabor Maté45:31

       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.

   11. MRMel Robbins45:52

       Mm.

   12. GMDr. Gabor Maté45:53

       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-

   13. MRMel Robbins46:58

       Which is why we come back to your original point, no human being is damaged goods.

   14. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:02

       No.

   15. MRMel Robbins47:02

       That the good news is that if you can recognize that your response to stress-

   16. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:08

       Yeah.

   17. MRMel Robbins47:09

       ... and traumatic situations and overwhelming emotional situations-

   18. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:13

       Yeah.

   19. MRMel Robbins47:14

       ... is something that you can identify and change-

   20. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:17

       Yeah.

   21. MRMel Robbins47:18

       ... that that's what the opportunity is here in terms of being able to heal and resolve trauma.

   22. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:24

       Absolutely, and especially if you begin by recognizing that it's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with you.

   23. MRMel Robbins47:31

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

   24. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:39

       Yeah.

   25. MRMel Robbins47:39

       ... and never around, and narcissistic personality style, and lots of drinking-

   26. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:45

       Okay.

   27. MRMel Robbins47:45

       ... and stress in the marriage, right? And his response to stress is to just shut down.

   28. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:52

       Yeah.

   29. MRMel Robbins47:52

       The man goes silent and stoic-

   30. GMDr. Gabor Maté47:54

       Yeah.
6. 51:41 – 1:07:24

   Identifying and Healing Childhood Trauma

   1. MRMel Robbins51:41

      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.

   2. GMDr. Gabor Maté51:55

      Yeah.

   3. MRMel Robbins51:56

      And that even though I wasn't to blame for the emotional volatility or the-

   4. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:03

      Yeah.

   5. MRMel Robbins52:03

      ... emotional shutdown in my parents-

   6. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:06

      Yeah.

   7. MRMel Robbins52:06

      ... 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-

   8. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:20

      Yeah.

   9. MRMel Robbins52:21

      ... the way that it impacted me 'cause-

   10. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:23

       Yeah.

   11. MRMel Robbins52:23

       ... it did ha- have a massive impact on my behaviors. Constantly feeling on edge-

   12. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:27

       Yeah.

   13. MRMel Robbins52:27

       ... people pleasing, anxiety, ADHD-

   14. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:31

       Yeah.

   15. MRMel Robbins52:31

       ... drinking too much-

   16. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:32

       Yeah.

   17. MRMel Robbins52:32

       ... chasing success as a way to prove that I was worthy of something and to make other people happy.

   18. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:38

       Yes.

   19. MRMel Robbins52:39

       It was everywhere.

   20. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:40

       Yeah.

   21. MRMel Robbins52:40

       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.

   22. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:52

       Yeah.

   23. MRMel Robbins52:53

       And that if I wanted my life to feel different-

   24. GMDr. Gabor Maté52:56

       Yeah.

   25. MRMel Robbins52:56

       ... that I needed to lean in to everything that you're saying.

   26. GMDr. Gabor Maté53:00

       Yeah.

   27. MRMel Robbins53:01

       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.

   28. GMDr. Gabor Maté53:12

       They did.

   29. MRMel Robbins53:13

       And that there was a lot that I didn't remember.

   30. GMDr. Gabor Maté53:17

       Yeah.
7. 1:07:24 – 1:17:53

   The Importance of Play and Joy in Adult Life

   1. MRMel Robbins1:07:24

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

   2. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:07:33

      Yeah.

   3. MRMel Robbins1:07:33

      ... creativity, and that we sacrifice that.

   4. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:07:36

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MRMel Robbins1:07:36

      Can you talk more about that?

   6. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:07:38

      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.

   7. MRMel Robbins1:08:00

      Hmm.

   8. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:08:01

      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.

   9. MRMel Robbins1:08:19

      Mm-hmm.

   10. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:08:19

       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-

   11. MRMel Robbins1:08:45

       Why is it one of your all-time favorite books?

   12. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:08:47

       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...

   13. MRMel Robbins1:08:57

       (laughs)

   14. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:08:57

       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-

   15. MRMel Robbins1:10:32

       But you-

   16. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:10:33

       Play is just, play is just essential.

   17. MRMel Robbins1:10:34

       And you weren't played with, so did you play with your kids?

   18. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:10:38

       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.

   19. MRMel Robbins1:11:33

       Mm-hmm.

   20. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:11:33

       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.

   21. MRMel Robbins1:11:42

       Well, a very surprising insight for me as I've been working to resolve-

   22. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:11:49

       Yeah.

   23. MRMel Robbins1:11:49

       ... issues from my past is noticing that I'm a very warm person-

   24. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:11:53

       Oh.

   25. MRMel Robbins1:11:53

       ... but I'm not affectionate.

   26. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:11:56

       Uh-huh.

   27. MRMel Robbins1:11:56

       And it's this epiphany of going in more for the hug-

   28. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:02

       Yeah.

   29. MRMel Robbins1:12:02

       ... being more physical in terms of embracing my kids-

   30. GMDr. Gabor Maté1:12:07

       Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 1:17:53