By playing, you agree to uListen's Terms and Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service.

Coronavirus: Gabor Maté on How Your Past Is Affecting Your Present | Feel Better Live More Podcast

Think back four or five weeks ago. How much of what you were engaged in then seems relatively trivial now? How much has the experience of coronavirus already clarified what your values really are?

Dr. Rangan ChatterjeehostDr. Gabor Matéguest

Apr 8, 20201h 10mWatch on YouTube

Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.

Great conversations run long. Their best ideas don't have to.

uListen is free on iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, and Claude.

See how

CHAPTERS

Chapter summaries

Viral Fear and the Contagion of Information
Rangan opens by recalling Judson Brewer's idea that online content lets us 'sneeze on the brains' of people worldwide. Gabor Maté adds that the constant flow of virus information can itself spread panic virally while also delivering useful information quickly.
- •Brewer's analogy of sneezing on the brains of everyone worldwide
- •The WHO director's reference to an 'infodemic'
- •Technology both informs efficiently and carries fear
- •Panic and fear can spread like a virus
Maté's Broader Philosophy: Mind, Body and Context
Rangan offers a short summary of Maté's work as being about addiction and childhood, and Maté corrects it as only one aspect. He says mental and physical illness can be traced to early and lifelong experience within a family system and culture, so mind and body are unified and tied to the environment.
- •Maté rejects the summary as limited to addiction
- •Mental and much physical pathology can be traced to childhood experience, though genetics and other factors also play a role
- •Individuals are part of a multi-generational family system and a culture
- •Reducing illness to biology alone is narrow reductionism
Defining Trauma and Panic as Triggered Childhood Fear
Maté defines trauma as a wound that either stays raw or forms rigid scar tissue. He says panic in the current crisis can be old childhood fear being triggered rather than a response to the present, and that trauma makes responses programmed rather than chosen.
- •Trauma comes from the Greek word for wound
- •A wound is either raw or scarred over and inflexible
- •Genuine concern differs from panic rooted in past fear
- •Trauma makes responses more programmed than consciously chosen
Helping Children: Being Curious About Our Own Emotions
Rangan asks how parents can limit the stress their children absorb while families are cooped up at home. Maté suggests these emotions may always have been there and were masked by distraction, and that the best thing for kids is for parents to attend to their own fear.
- •Lockdown removes the usual distractions from long-held emotions
- •Maté notices an unusual feeling in his chest and wonders if it goes back to infancy
- •Prenatal stress can affect an infant's brain structure
- •Being curious about reactions and sitting with our own fear lets us sit with our children's
- •Kids sense bland reassurance from a parent who is roiled inside
Distraction, News Consumption and Awareness
Rangan compares the situation to a stress test that exposes hidden weaknesses, and says many behaviors like drinking or scrolling are distractions from discomfort. Maté says our culture is intent on distraction and that even compulsive reading about the virus can be a way to avoid our own feelings.
- •The hamstring analogy of a system being stress tested
- •Drinking or scrolling as distraction from sitting with ourselves
- •Five minutes is enough to catch up on virus news
- •Reading news for hours can distract from one's own feelings
- •Awareness is the core of the approach
Snapping at Kids: Practical Guidance for Parents
Rangan asks what a stressed parent can practically do in the moment, and Maté notes that neither doctor's training prepared them for this. Maté endorses the stress-test metaphor and advises taking a parental timeout without making the upset the child's problem, and Rangan shares how he explained his tension to his kids and invited a table tennis game.
- •Nothing in their medical training prepared them for this
- •The crisis acts like a cardiac stress test of our emotional supply
- •A parent can step away to breathe, think or listen to music
- •Acknowledge vulnerability without making it the child's problem
- •Rangan's table tennis example of honest explanation
Childhood Roots of Self-Pressure and Listening to the Body
Using Rangan's account of pressuring himself to communicate publicly, Maté suggests the pressure comes from a part shaped by childhood, as in Internal Family Systems. He says the urge to save the world is distinct from a genuine choice to help, and that the body's signals should be heeded.
- •Rangan describes pressure he put on himself to share information
- •Maté links a messianic urge to childhood trauma, citing his own depressed mother
- •Genuine desire to help differs from pressure to validate one's existence
- •Bodily signals such as Rangan's upper right back act as a warning
- •Maté cites his book When the Body Says No
Compassionate Inquiry: Attending to Ourselves as We Would a Child
Asked what to do after noticing a bodily feeling, Maté turns the question around: how would you treat an anxious child? He says presence and attention are the soothing element, and that bringing the same compassion to oneself, and asking whether a feeling is familiar, is the healing process.
- •Turn the question around: what would you do for an anxious child
- •Presence matters more than what is said
- •Don't talk a child out of it, ignore it or give unwanted advice
- •Compassionate inquiry applies this attention to oneself
- •It may be done several times a day and doesn't take long
The Crisis as an Opportunity: Values, Society and Inequality
Rangan wonders whether this could be the biggest growth opportunity many have lived through, citing his 91-year-old neighbor's comparison to the war. Maté raises questions about NHS cutbacks and inequality and says the crisis clarifies values and our internal resources.
- •The neighbor says the war had a common enemy, while this enemy is invisible
- •Questions about NHS cutbacks and inequality's health impact should be asked after the acute crisis
- •The crisis clarifies what is important: connection, solidarity, compassion
- •Difficulty is like heavy lifting that builds inner strength
- •Ask daily what can be learned
Global Interdependence, Air Pollution and a Call for Kindness
Rangan says we cannot be well individually if everything around us is unwell. Maté points to the preventable toll of air pollution, illness from poverty, and conditions in places like Gaza, and asks for a moratorium on anything that makes others suffer.
- •Individual or national wellness is impossible if all around is unwell
- •Air pollution kills far more people than the coronavirus has so far
- •Illness from poverty is shielded from the West's view
- •Maté cites blockade and sanctions as imposing illness in Gaza and Iran
- •He asks for an international moratorium on causing suffering
Gratitude Journaling and Keeping a Plague Journal
Rangan suggests writing down daily the small things people now appreciate, such as cafes, parkrun and hugging his mother. Maté likes the idea and compares it to a journal of the plague years.
- •Write down things once taken for granted
- •Examples: meeting a friend, parkrun, hugging his 79-year-old mother
- •Journaling is a way of sitting with ourselves
- •It helps us not forget when the crisis is over
Judgment, Compassion and Our Communal Nature
Rangan observes the judgment directed at panic buyers and people ignoring distancing. Maté says to ask with curiosity rather than judgment, suggests such behavior may be a trauma response, and draws on hunter-gatherer societies to argue that humans feel best when giving.
- •Rangan notes that much 'panic buying' may just be slightly larger purchases
- •Maté asks what happened to people who hoard or distrust authority
- •Distrust of authority can be a trauma response
- •Hunter-gatherer societies treat individual accumulation as a weakness
- •People feel best when they give freely
Gender Differences in Coping
Rangan asks whether men and women deal with the crisis differently. Maté says research shows women tend to be more in touch with emotions and men lean toward explanation, but he doesn't know how it is showing up now.
- •Maté's wife draws and does crosswords to relax
- •Women tend to be more in touch with emotions
- •Men tend toward explanations and intellectual formulations
- •These are tendencies, not exclusive to gender
- •How it plays out now would be a study for later
Costs of Isolation, and Whether Society Will Learn
Rangan poses a thought experiment about the mental health costs of isolation and the neglect of chronic threats. Maté tells of the Hungarian woman unaware of the pandemic and says he is pessimistic that society will change, citing austerity deaths, power structures and lack of prevention spending.
- •Rangan expects possible mental health consequences from isolation
- •Both stress these questions are thought experiments and that authorities' advice should be followed
- •Story of an elderly Hungarian woman who had never heard of the pandemic
- •Maté is optimistic for individuals but pessimistic for society in the short term
- •Scientists warned of pandemics but prevention wasn't funded
- •Will we remember the big questions after the crisis?
Maté's New Book and Closing Message on Vulnerability
Maté says his new book, The Myth of Normal, is due next year, and that he sought help from Dick Schwartz about a panicky inadequate part. They close on the lesson that we should be vulnerable, ask for help, avoid distraction and sit with our feelings.
- •New book is expected next year
- •Maté spoke with Dick Schwartz about a panicky part
- •Everyone needs help at this time
- •Be vulnerable and ask for help
- •Sit with feelings rather than distracting yourself