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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeDr Rangan Chatterjee

When the Body Says No - The Unlikely Link Between Stress, Trauma & Disease | Gabor Maté

Dr Gabor Maté is a fellow physician, renowned author, speaker and friend. His is one of the most important voices globally on health, trauma, stress, addiction, and childhood development.

Dr. Rangan ChatterjeehostDr. Gabor Matéguest
Dec 13, 20232h 56mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 5:13

    Personality Patterns Linked to Chronic Illness

    1. RC

      I think one of the most powerful things it gives people is awareness.

    2. GM

      Mm.

    3. RC

      Because everyone wants to jump from awareness to, "What do I do now?" And, and-

    4. GM

      That's right

    5. RC

      ... and I think we underestimate just how powerful that first step is.

    6. GM

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      Just to be, "Oh, well, that's why I behave like that. [laughs] Oh, I had no idea." You know? We, we... I guess we're blind until we're not.

    8. GM

      That's right.

    9. RC

      We're unaware until we're not, and then we can't unsee what we see.

    10. GM

      Exactly.

    11. RC

      And I, and I, I really feel your work beautifully helps people see patterns in their life that they weren't previously aware of, and there are multiple ways that they can then go and move forward through that. But I, I think that's very, very powerful. In terms of patterns, you write in, in this book about personality.

    12. GM

      Yeah.

    13. RC

      And there's a very powerful section where you talk about the association between certain personality types-

    14. GM

      Yeah

    15. RC

      ... and disease.

    16. GM

      Yeah.

    17. RC

      And in particular, I like that section where you mention William Osler, and he was talking about the type of people who he observed getting angina.

    18. GM

      Yeah.

    19. RC

      And you contrasted that with this kind of Type C personality, which is-

    20. GM

      Yeah

    21. RC

      ... associated with all kinds of other chronic conditions.

    22. GM

      Yeah.

    23. RC

      I wonder if you could speak to those things a little bit.

    24. GM

      Sure. So, um, again, um, these are the things that nobody teaches you in medical school. But I, as I advanced in my experience in family practice and also did seven years of palliative care work, I began to notice that who developed chronic illness and who didn't wasn't accidental, that the people that developed chronic illness, by that I mean autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, uh, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, lupus, um, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, um, uh, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic asthma, et cetera, et cetera, these people had certain personality patterns that I kept noticing over and over again, and especially in palliative care. When people were dying of chronic illness, often malignancy, I, I, I would see these patterns. And what were they? So there were, um, automatic concern for the emotional needs of others while suppressing your own, um, exemplified by a woman who... This is a true story. She's diagnosed with breast cancer. Her husband's first wife died of breast cancer, and now the doct- doctor tells her she's got it, and her first response is, "But I'm worried about my husband. How will I support him?" Now, she's the one that's gonna have to go through chemotherapy, radiation, and, and possibly surgery or whatever. "How will I support my husband?" So this automatic concern for the emotional needs of others while ignoring your own. That's a salient characteristic of people who develop chronic illness. Secondly, uh, a rigid identification with duty, role, and responsibility. Is, is in the case of when I was writing the book, and I was rigidly identified with the book, and my blood pressure was going up.

    25. RC

      Yeah.

    26. GM

      You know? 'Cause I wasn't thinking of myself, you know? Um, number three, repression of healthy anger. That's a major one. Healthy anger is one of my healing principles, and, and it's essential. Healthy anger is simply a boundary defense that says, "No, you're in my space. Get out." That's what healthy anger is. It does its job. It's gone. But without that boundary defense, you get trampled on all the time, and these really so-called really nice people who never get angry, they're the ones to develop malignancy and autoimmune disease. Uh, and the fourth characteristic is, um, two fatal beliefs. And I say fatal beliefs, potentially fatal. One is that you're responsible for how other people feel, and the other is that you must never disappoint anybody. Now, how these traits predispose... I don't say they cause the disease. I don't deal in causes. It's simplistic to talk about single causes. But they contribute to the onset significantly, and people with chronic illness invariably have them.

    27. RC

      Yeah.

    28. GM

      I never find otherwise. These are not... Nobody's born with these traits. I mean, have you ever met a one-day-old baby that doesn't know how to say no?

    29. RC

      [laughs]

    30. GM

      Try and feed them something they don't wanna eat, you know? Um, these are personality traits that we develop to fit in with our environment.

  2. 5:13 – 15:12

    Disease as Teacher, Blame, and Agency

    1. GM

      Then the body says no. The body rebels and says, "No, this is not good for you." But the question is, are people gonna learn from their disease or not? And a lot of people, whether through help or whether through some intuition or some grace, if they learn to, to look at their diseases not just as something to get rid of but also as a teacher of, "Where in my life was I not being myself?" Now, I don't recommend disease as a way of learning, and I'm not saying people shouldn't do whatever they can to get treatment and to heal in other ways. But at the same time, if they open that inquiry-

    2. RC

      Yeah

    3. GM

      ... of, "What is this disease here to teach me about me?" they're gonna find that these patterns were present, and they don't need to be.

    4. RC

      Yeah.

    5. GM

      Because they're no longer the children that are constrained to be that way.

    6. RC

      It's not either/or. It's not either it's emotional [laughs] or it's physical.

    7. GM

      No, it's not.

    8. RC

      It's these, these things are complex and, you know, disease as a teacher-

    9. GM

      Yeah

    10. RC

      ... wow. I mean, I completely agree with you. That is something that many people may find triggering.

    11. GM

      Yeah.

    12. RC

      Uh, the medical profession certainly, in my experience of it, the Western medical profession-

    13. GM

      Yeah

    14. RC

      ... doesn't really acknowledge that side of things. Disease is that discrete entity. Now you have it, we've got the proof.

    15. GM

      Yeah.

    16. RC

      Now we need to treat it.

    17. GM

      Yeah.

    18. RC

      Without an understanding. You know, it's, it's the biomedical model, not the biopsychosocial-

    19. GM

      Social

    20. RC

      ... model, right?

    21. GM

      Yeah. Spiritual. Yeah.

    22. RC

      Spiritual, yeah.

    23. GM

      Yeah.

    24. RC

      I mean, what, what role does spirituality play in modern medicine at the moment?

    25. GM

      Yeah.

    26. RC

      Very little for me, and it's... I think, I think it's very important, you know, you, you explained that there with compassion. Um, it, it is such a tricky area, I've found, to communicate with people because-

    27. GM

      Yeah

    28. RC

      ... a lot of people who are that way inclined feel this as, as blame. You know?

    29. GM

      Yeah.

    30. RC

      "I've, I've made myself get sick. Uh, what are you saying, Dr. Maté? Are you saying that my, my personality has caused my illness?" And let's just sort of expand on that a little bit-

  3. 15:12 – 22:23

    A Patient's Story, Personality vs Adaptation, and the 10-Minute Consultation

    1. RC

      there, there's a patient I wrote about in Happy Mind Happy Life, who's this 48-year-old lady who she had upper abdominal pain, she had bloating, she had bilateral upper arm pains, and she'd been to see a variety of physicians. Um, she wasn't getting much better. The medications weren't helping.

    2. GM

      Mm.

    3. RC

      She then had... was reading things online. She was empowering herself. She made changes to her lifestyle. She changed her, her diet.

    4. GM

      Yeah.

    5. RC

      She would move more regularly.

    6. GM

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      She would prioritize her sleep and stress reduction. And there was some improvement, but there, there was still a ceiling. There was-

    8. GM

      Yeah

    9. RC

      ... still these symptoms affecting her. And when she came to me I remember thinking, "What are we missing here? What are we missing?" Her, her life, a lot of these choices now in her life look, look pretty great. Well, what's going on here? And as I inquired, as I compassionately inquired, right, it became very clear. She, she said something. She... Th- this is when I knew, oh, here we go. She said, "Doc, I always end up in relationships with older men. They're usually married-

    10. GM

      Yeah

    11. RC

      ... um, and they always treat me really badly."

    12. GM

      That's right.

    13. RC

      And as you, as I, as, as we sort of together inquired-

    14. GM

      Mm-hmm

    15. RC

      ... we obviously all routes went back to her childhood.

    16. GM

      Yeah.

    17. RC

      And she perceived as a child that her older sister got more attention than her from her parents. And it was incredible because even as she was saying it-

    18. GM

      Mm

    19. RC

      ... you could see the, the light bulb moment-

    20. GM

      Yeah

    21. RC

      ... in her own heads.

    22. GM

      Yeah, yeah.

    23. RC

      This wasn't physician-

    24. GM

      Yeah

    25. RC

      ... healing the patient.

    26. GM

      No.

    27. RC

      This was, you know, me just simply being a guide to help her find her own truth. And as she came to terms with that, as she did a variety of things to help process that-

    28. GM

      Yeah

    29. RC

      ... honestly, right, six months later she ends up in a relationship with a man her own age who treated her really well. Three months later all her symptoms had gone, and they haven't come back since.

    30. GM

      Wow.

  4. 22:23 – 29:16

    Why Women Have More Autoimmune Disease, and Maté's Healing Principles

    1. RC

      So, um, Gabor, as we come towards the end of this conversation, just to close the loop on something you mentioned earlier, which is women and increased rates of chronic disease.

    2. GM

      Mm.

    3. RC

      I don't wanna leave that open-ended.

    4. GM

      Ah.

    5. RC

      Um, could you just explain maybe why you think there may be a relationship there?

    6. GM

      Well, if you take something like multiple sclerosis, which I've mentioned a number of times, the gender ratio in the '30s was about one to one.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. GM

      So for each man diagnosed, there'd be a woman. The gender ratio now is three and a half women for every man. Now, that tells us a few things immediately. Can't be genetics, 'cause that doesn't change over a short period of time. Can't be the diet or the climate, 'cause that doesn't change more for one gender than the other. What is it? It's stress. Now, if you look at those four character traits that I said contributed to the onset of illness, the emotional concern for the needs of others, the, uh, suppression of healthy anger, the, uh, identification with duty, role, and responsibility, the belief that you're responsible for the people's emotions and you mustn't disappoint anybody. Which gender is acculturated in our society to take on those traits more than the other? Of course, it's women. So women have 80% of autoimmune disease.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. GM

      80% of autoimmune disease are women, and a b- b- big mystery. It's not a mystery. They're acculturated to play a certain role. Their role has always been to absorb the stresses of their families and also of their spouses, and certainly that's a role that my wife took on early in our relationship, and she had to rebel against it to stay healthy, you know? Um, there was a study in Sweden that showed that, this is remarkable, that if a woman was depressed prenatally, that increased the risk of a late premature birth, 32 weeks to 36 weeks. If the man was depressed, the father was depressed prenatally, that increased the risk of an even earlier premature birth. Why? Because the woman was absorbing the stress of the man. And so women do that automatically, not biologically necessarily, but because that's the role they've been given in the society. Plus that they have to go out and work now as well to make a living and to make a, a, you know, money for the family to survive and, or to just to succeed out there in the workforce. And people are more isolated than they ever were. So in Britain, there's, they, they appointed the Minister of Loneliness.

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. GM

      So greater stress, more isolation. That's why women are getting more autoimmune disease. And during COVID, there was an article in The New York Times about women who took on the emotional stress of their husbands and their children during COVID, and they felt guilty 'cause of the suffering of their men and their children, 'cause it was somehow their job to, to eliminate or alleviate it. Well, that socially appointed and then automatically assumed role that women have been thrust into has physical implications. That's why women get most autoimmune disease. What if we just recognize this?

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. GM

      You know, and this, this big mystery. No mystery. This is a particular dramatic example of the biopsychosocial nature of human beings.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. GM

      Our biology is inseparable from our psychological functioning and our social relationships.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. GM

      And who has the brunt of all that? Women of color.

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. GM

      They're much more likely to develop these diseases than Caucasian women. Why? Because of the added stress of social and, and, and racial-

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. GM

      ... uh, s- s- uh, oppression, you, or, or, or exclusion.

    23. RC

      I guess the culture, the society around us impacts so much of how we experience-

    24. GM

      Yeah

    25. RC

      ... the world and, and what we chase and what we pursue and how we are. And of course, it can take a long time for culture to change.

    26. GM

      Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying that people have to wait for the society to change. If they did wait, it'd be a long, long wait, I would think. So there's a lot that we can do even in the context of this culture. Now, of course, what we can do is not totally, mm, freely, uh, um, available equally to everybody. Let's face it.

    27. RC

      Yes.

    28. GM

      Certain classes of people have much less, fewer options than others. That's just the reality of this culture that we have to really look in the face.

    29. RC

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      You know? But there's still a lot that people can do. And but if I can go back to the confluence of your book and mine, you have these three concepts of, of the healing concepts of alignment, which is, I call authenticity, being, being, becoming true to ourselves. That's available to all, all of us. You talk about contentment, which I talk about in terms of acceptance. Just actually-

  5. 29:16 – 35:45

    ADD, ADHD and the Genetics Debate

    1. RC

      Your book, Scattered Minds, i- is, is a, is a fabulous read, and actually a very close friend of mine read that book about three years ago and realized through reading it that they had ADD, and, you know, have, has taken steps in their own life to, to try and address it. But, you know, this is where labels, again, not to be too black or white, this is where labels can be helpful, at least initially, to know, oh, I'm not crazy. I'm not mad. There's nothing wrong with me. This is what I've got because of what happened when my brain was developing. Now that I know that, I'm empowered to do something about it rather than be a victim to this thing that just happened, and there's nothing I can do. So I think, I think that's really important. Um, but I wonder if you could just clarify, Gabor, ADD, ADHD, these are terms that I think people have heard of, so could you just clarify what those two abbreviations are, and then what would critics of your work say about the way you view ADD? What would they say, and how would you counteract that?

    2. GM

      So, so the diagnosis simply means, um, that you have these traits of, um- Distractibility, tuning out, poor attention skills. So your mind tends to be elsewhere a lot of the time, an unwilled kind of tuning out. Most people tune out sometimes, you know? Um, but people with ADD, they tend to do it much more than the average person does, and it does interfere with the capacity to learn or to complete tasks and so on at- sometimes. Um, so that's the attention part. The H part, which is sometimes present, sometimes isn't, it, it also means poor impulse regulation. So when something occurs, it ... people tend to blurt things out and say things, and their mind tend to wander a lot, and sometimes when you talk to a person with ADD, like they'll start talking about one thing, and that one thing leads to something else. And if you don't stop them, an hour later they're still talking far away, tangentially far away from the original point of the conversation. Um, so that's the distractibility, attention part, poor impulse regulation, uh, I've certainly had that in my life. Um, uh, and then the H part, if it's present, is the hyperactivity, difficulty sitting still, being uncomfortable, becoming bored easily, wanting to move and get away from things. Um, generally when I go to public meetings, unless I'm the speaker, uh, [laughs] I tend to sit at the back so I can make a quick getaway in case I get bored, you know? Um, in a classroom, the very hyper kids, you can easily recognize them 'cause they have trouble sitting still, you know? So they're the ones that are easily diagnosed. Now, I'm saying that all these are normal responses to stresses in, uh, on highly sensitive kids in early life. What the critics would say is that, uh, number one, this is a genetic disorder. It's, it runs in families, therefore it's not a question of the environment. Uh, secondly, it's biological. It has to do with lack of dopamine in the brain, and therefore, when we give somebody medication that elevates dopamine levels, which is the incentive motivation chemical, they cannot pay attention. Now, I've taken medication. It's true. It helped me. When I wrote Scattered Minds, I was taking a stimulant. That helped me, you know? What I say in response to the critics though is number one, just 'cause something runs in families, it doesn't make it genetic. I mean, you're a medical doctor. I'm a medical doctor. If our kids became medical doctors, which there's no risk in my case of that happening, would that mean that the practice of medicine is a genetic disorder? You know? In other words, could be, but maybe it isn't. In other words, there's a way in which we pass on stuff that's environmental rather than genetic. And my kids didn't experience stress the way I did. There was no war. But they grew up in a family of origin where there was a lot of conflict between the parents.

    3. RC

      Yeah.

    4. GM

      You know, and that had an impact on them. So we can pass on stuff, not genetically, but through these circumstances. As far as the biology is concerned, this is what the average psychiatrist does not understand, because they're not taught it-

    5. RC

      Yeah

    6. GM

      ... that the b- biology of the brain is shaped by the emotional environment. So yes, there's biology involved, but that biology is not determined by genetics. What is genetic here is what I've said about Harry and a lot of other people. There are genes for sensitivity. So here's the, here's the shinny on, on genetics and mental health. For all the talk about depression and bipolar illness and schizophrenia and ADHD and, uh, being genetic, there's no gene or group of genes that if you have them you'll have a certain disease. There's no goo- gene or group of genes that if you don't have them, you will not have that mental health condition. What there is, and every time they think they've discovered some gene for an illness, two years later they have to retract it. What there is, it seems to be, this is as, as best I can understand the latest research, there's a large group of genes that the more of them you have, the more likely to have any number of mental health conditions, but no specific one. What is being actually transmitted genetically is sensitivity.

    7. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    8. GM

      The more sensitivity genes you have, the more likely you'll be affected by the environment.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. GM

      So when there's dysfunction, trauma, stress in the environment, you'll be more affected by somebody who's not as sensitive as you are genetically. That's what's genetic here. But the, but the so-called diseases are not. The diseases themselves, as I keep pointing out, or what we call diseases, are so-called, or so-called diseases are adaptations.

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. GM

      The depression is an adaptation. The, um, so-called personality disorder, not trusting people, it's an adaptation. The tuning out of ADHD, it's an adaptation on the part of sensitive children to stresses in their environment.

  6. 35:45 – 41:43

    Pressures on Women and Men: Shock Absorbers and Suppressed Vulnerability

    1. RC

      Gabor, last time we spoke, we mentioned the unique pressures on women in society today. You've written a whole chapter on this in The Myth of Normal, how women are society's, I think, shock absorbers, I think is how you referred to them, and you drew the strong connection between women's roles and the fact that 70 to 80% of autoimmune diseases are afflicted to women, right? So we've covered that, and I think it's really, really interesting. This is not really in relation to Harry. I wanna broaden it out beyond Harry, because I think Harry had some quite unique pressures [laughs] that most of us, 99.9% of the world's population, will never know what sort of expectation there is to behave a certain way, to be a certain way, to perform a certain way when you're a prince, right? So I don't think that's maybe that relatable. But the point I'm trying to get to is- There's unique pressures on women in society, but there's also unique toxic pressures on men. What do you see as the key difference between what we're being asked to do, and is it biological or is it cultural?

    2. GM

      Well, deep question. Um, statistically, women are much more likely to be diagnosed with PTSD, double with anxiety and depression. They tend to take... They're, they're the ones who tend to take psych- psychiatric medications much more often than men do statistically. And, uh, I don't think that has to do with any biological, um, determinant. This has to do with what you just summarized, which is that women tend to act as the emotional shock absorbers. So very often... There was a fascinating study out of Sweden. They looked at, um, prematurity, premature birth. If a woman had depression during pregnancy, I- I think in the first trimester or the second, that increased their chance of premature birth, late premature birth, so 32 weeks or afterwards. But if the father had depression, that increased the chance of even earlier premature birth.

    3. RC

      Wow.

    4. GM

      Now, how do we explain that? Because the woman absorbs the stresses of the husband, so, and that affects her physiology. So the w- the reason women are more likely to be diagnosed, quite apart from the fact that being a woman in society, being a female child really exposes you to trauma, not that being a male protects you from it, but sexual abuse, which happens to men as well, young boys as well, as we know-

    5. RC

      Yeah

    6. GM

      ... is more likely to happen to a young girl. And, uh, so that, um, so trauma, that particular form of trauma, which is a significant risk factor for mental health conditions, depression, substance abuse, anxiety, and so on, um, happens to young girls more. So, and then there's the general role of women as shock absorbers. Now, men also suffer, just as you say, but the way that, um, men are acculturated is to act out their stresses whereas women act them in. So that in the women it tends to be more internal. The man will act out his suffering through substance use or through violence, um, through dominating a woman, um, through finding a woman to absorb his stresses. You know? Um, um, there's this toxic masculinity. When you, when you talk to men with PTSD, soldiers who've been in battle and come back with severe symptoms, one of the things that inhibit their healing is the expectation that they should be tough and suck it up and not talk about their vulnerability.

    7. RC

      To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free breathing guide that's gonna help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below.

    8. GM

      So that the expectation on men not to be vulnerable is a huge source of, uh, pressure and dysfunction for men. And when they heal, these tough veterans who've had their friends killed, who they themselves may have been injured, who've killed others, they soften up. They start having, finding their tears. They start finding their vulnerability that they've had to suppress all their lives. So that's how it works with, with men.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. GM

      And you know, Harry and I did talk about vulnerability. Vulnerability comes from the Latin word vulnerari, to wound. And, uh, human beings are profoundly vulnerable from conception until death. We're all vulnerable. We can all be wounded. But in our society, men are expected to stifle and hide and reject their vulnerability. "Don't be a sissy." We, we, we, we associate vulnerability with feminine qualities that we're supposed to disdain.

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. GM

      And that's a big pressure on men.

  7. 41:43 – 50:23

    Blame, Remorse and Healing Across Generations

    1. RC

      Thank you. Gabor, just to finish off this conversation, I think there's just two points to, to, to try and address. In relation to what you've just said about the importance of vulnerability for men and women, but let's say particularly men in the context of what you've just said, you are actually someone who I think is a pretty phenomenal example of that. You share your vulnerability in every single one of your books. And actually in our last conversation, the third conversation we had together on this podcast, you shared a story that when Daniel, one of your children, was young, you mentioned and you shared openly how you slapped him across the face for something that you can now reflect on and see as being very trivial. Now, what's really interesting is that when we put that out, it's amazing to see how triggering- Content like that can be for people. Now, some people are admiring you and going, "Wow, this is why I love Dr. Maté. He's sharing. He's not trying to present himself as being perfect." But other people are being very judgmental and saying, "I can't believe he just admitted child abuse in public. You know, this is not something to be celebrated. This is something he should be ashamed about." Right? So again, we have a very polarized debate around you sharing something that you're not looking for sympathy for. You're just trying to say, "This is a matter of fact. This is what happened. This is what I did. This has been the consequence." So I think there's a, there's a wider point here, which is about blame. Okay? It relates to the Prince Harry conversation. It relates to even how we talk about the royal family. Um, your conversation with Prince Harry, what I've heard of it from what you've explained, was not about blaming his brother or his father or his uncle or his grandma, right? It was simply about saying what is. It was understanding that we're all playing out our trauma. We're all doing the best we can based upon what we've experienced. You mentioned Prince Charles, now King Charles, how he was brought up and how he was taught to show affection, so of course he's gonna replay that. So I wanna really just make sure we get across that we're trying to be compassionate. We're not blaming anyone. But also for people, Gabor, who hear what you're saying about, oh, if the mother's stressed during pregnancy, the child's more likely to be stressed, a lot of people go immediately to guilt, and they go, "Oh man, I was so stressed during my pregnancy. Oh, I did this to my child." So I wonder if you could wrap up those themes together and leave people on an inspiring note, if that's possible.

    2. GM

      Sure. Well, when we talk about the importance of pregnancy and early childhood, almost inevitably it brings up a lot of remorse in a lot of parents. And there's no question about it, but it's not about blaming anybody 'cause they all did their best.

    3. RC

      Yeah.

    4. GM

      When Prince Charles came into Harry's room and told him, "Your mother has died," touches him on the knee and says, "It's gonna be okay," and leaves, he was doing his best. That was his best based on what happened to him as a child. There's nobody to be blamed here. Um, when I hit my son when he was three years old, I'm not proud of it. I have remorse about it, but it happened, and I have to understand what happened and why I did it, and I didn't do it deliberately. It just came upon me, you know? Um, and it had consequences. And my son Dan and I just wrote this book together, The Myth of Normal, that you've mentioned, and we're writing another book together called Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Adult Children and Their Parents.

    5. RC

      Oh.

    6. GM

      Just yesterday, I arrived home from a hiking trip that I did with my two son- my two adult sons. So when I talk about this stuff, it's to say, first of all, don't blame yourself. You're not different from me. I'm not different from anybody else. We do our best, but our best sometimes can be very hurtful to the next generation because of our own unresolved stuff. And secondly, we can look this in the eye. We can actually deal with it, and without shame, understand what happened. You can have remorse, but shame, beating yourself wrong and, and, and thinking you're a terrible person, that's not helpful to anybody. And to all the parents who say, "I passed, passed on my stresses to your kids," you know, sometimes when I give talks, somebody will say, "I'm afraid I've sc- screwed up my kids." And, and I say to all those people who think, "You screwed up my kids," I said, "Don't worry about it. Of course you did, you know? We all do. That's what happened." But if each, if at each generation we can just heal a little bit or a lot, we'll pass on a lot less. And what I say to all parents is what morn- who feel guilty, I say to them, "What morning did you wake up and decide to screw up your kids? Was it a Saturday afternoon that you made the decision to screw up your kids? Was it Monday morning? Were you 19 or 25 or 35 when you made that decision?" People laugh. Nobody makes that decision to trouble or to hurt their kids.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. GM

      We just do, but it's not a guilt. It's not a fault. It's not a deliberate act. It's just the unresolved impacts of our own trauma, and that can be healed. And the more as parents we heal, the more we heal our kids.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. GM

      And that healing is a lifelong process. And so that the fact that my sons and I just came back from this beautiful hiking trip in Utah, and that my son and I are, Dan and I are writing two books together, that's an example of the healing that can happen, both each in ourselves and also in our relationships. So to go back to why talk about all this stuff, precisely the point is if you recognize that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with us, but many of our dysfunctions, mental health conditions, challenges are the outcomes of traumas, that's not victimization or passing of responsibility. That is the seizing of responsibility 'cause when I understand what happened, now it's my responsibility and my liberty to find the healing. So to me, it's an entirely positive message.

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. GM

      And in, across all mental health conditions, if we understand the wounding that's at the heart of them, we can heal that wound. Sometimes we will require medications to get us through a difficult time. That's all right, but the medications don't heal anything.

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. GM

      The healing- Has to in- g- i- involve getting help, looking at yourself, and understanding the wounding, and to realize that you're not that wound-

    15. RC

      Yeah

    16. GM

      ... and that wound's gonna be healed at any time. That's my message.

    17. RC

      Thank you, Gabor. I think it's so powerful when someone as respected as yourself in this field shares things like that. I think it's great when people like Prince Harry share that you can get traumatized anywhere, and this, it really speaks to honesty, helping people understand. Because without the honesty and the self-awareness, you're never going to change. We're unconscious until we're not. Says, Maya Angelou says, "Once you know better, you do better."

    18. GM

      In response to what you just said about, uh, we're, until we're not conscious, remember Pinocchio? Pinocchio is this puppet who wants to become a real boy, and as long as trauma- traumatic dynamics run our lives, we really are like puppets on a string. We're being pulled by unconscious forces, and to recognize the trauma and to heal it is to liberate ourselves from those strings. You know what Pinocchio says at the, uh, at the end of the book when he becomes a real boy? He says, "I was so foolish when I was a puppet."

    19. RC

      [laughs]

    20. GM

      Well, we're all so foolish when we're puppets, and none of us have to be.

  8. 50:23 – 59:40

    Practical Paths to Healing, Including Without Money

    1. RC

      Gabor, it's great that we can raise awareness of these issues, but what can people actually do to start healing themselves?

    2. GM

      Yeah, so this question very much came up in my conversation with Prince Harry, and, uh, reading his book but also, you know, doing my own work and, and, um, observing, uh, there's certain principles or practices, and s- some of them show up in, in his book. So therapy. So in other words, just asking for help, talking to somebody, when that's available to you, you know? Absolutely essential. Just when I needed help recently, I reached out for help. Asking for help. A peer counselor, a professional, but somebody. Don't be alone with it, in other words. Share it. Talk about it. That's the first principle. Harry, in his own book, writes very beautifully about his experience with nature. Nature was very healing for him. Being outdoors in the Arctic or, or, or actually the Antarctic or, or, or, or in Africa. My boys and I just came back from this week-long hiking trip in Utah. Incredible mountains and rocks and, oh, sunsets and sunrises. Nature is harmonizing. In our society, we're so alienated from nature. We have to get back into nature to heal. Um, Harry talked about meditation being very important for him. Now, that's not easy for a, an ADD brain to do, but, or for any brain to do, but you know, recently I've been rededicating myself to awareness. So when I eat now... I, I was just reading a book by the Buddhist teacher, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who died over a year ago now. Wonderful teacher of mindfulness. Eating mindfully, walking mindfully, being aware, really powerfully important for healing. Doesn't cost a penny. Um, relationships. In my own healing, my marriage relationship has been such a reality check. I know that's true for Harry as well. We talked about that a bit. He talks about it in his book. I know it's true for your marriage 'cause you've talked a bit about-

    3. RC

      Yeah

    4. GM

      ... you know, your relationship with your wife, and she's the one that provides the reality principle, you know, brings you back to yourself and grounds you-

    5. RC

      Yeah

    6. GM

      ... and calls you on your stuff. So I think relationship is really important for healing. Um, Harry mentioned service to other people. In other words, living a life that isn't just for you, isn't a life that isn't all about what can I acquire, attain, and achieve, and possess, but how do I give to others? People find that incredibly healing as well. F- spirituality, whatever that means for you, um, but the sense that we're part of something larger than just the individual isolated ego, that we are connected, that we belong, that we are part of a unity, that's incredibly healing, and I know Harry's had some of those experiences of recognition of unity and connection. Now, spirituality means different things to different people. We each have to, each have... Nobody can prescribe it to anybody else. But in the Indigenous medicine wheel in North America, they talk about the four quadrants of health. Health, which is, uh, mental, physical, social, and spiritual. So that's spirituality. And, and you come from a country where there's a lot of spiritual tradition and practice and, and, and wisdom. So that's an important part, whatever form that takes for you. And then Harry and I talked about psychedelics as well. Uh, we've both had experiences with it. Uh, he told me, uh, how did he put it? Um, he said that, um, I have this written down 'cause I wanna ex- remember his exact words, but he said that, um, "The psychedelics didn't simply allow me to escape reality for a while. They helped me redefine reality." And he got to see that there's m- more to him than just in the individual isolated self. So for him, as in my own life and my own clinical work as well, and again, there was a lot of negative commentary about this in the British press, who didn't know what the heck they were talking about, psychedelics are not a panacea. They're not for everybody. Um, they're not without their risks. But believe me, I've seen so many people undergo such profound healing with the help of- ... psychedelic substances, whether it's natural plants like ayahuasca or mushrooms, or whether it's human-made substances like MDMA, I've seen incredible healing f- for mental health conditions because the psychedelics remove a kind of membrane between the conscious and the unconscious mind, and they help you see what's underneath it.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. GM

      So in the right context, they can be very helpful as well. So these are some of the modalities of healing. Now, in terms of therapy, there's all kinds. There's internal family systems, the Dick Schwartz that I think you know very well.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. GM

      There's compassionate inquiry, which is what I teach. There's, uh, sensory motor, uh, psychotherapy of Pat Ogden. Uh, there is Bessel van der Kolk's amazing work, Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing. There's EMDR. There are many modalities, none of which are taught in the average medical school, and yet all of which go way beyond the narrow view of mental illness, and they all affect, or they all address the fundamental traumatic, uh, conditions that give rise to mental illness, so- or what we call mental illness. So lots of healing modalities out there, some of them freely available to us, some of them we have to seek out, but nobody needs to be stuck. Nobody needs to be stuck.

    11. RC

      Yeah, Gabor, thank you for sharing that. Throughout this conversation, we've both been very mindful to talk about privilege and opportunity, and of course, someone like Prince Harry would no doubt have had the resources and access to some of the best therapists out there. Now, of course, you mentioned statistics from people, um, in more deprived communities than, let's say, Prince Harry, certainly from a physical and materialistic, uh, viewpoint. For someone, because these conversations go all over the world, right? So there'll be somebody listening or watching to this right now who has resonated with a lot of this content and who's thinking, "You know what? Yeah, that's me. I'm being driven by patterns from my past. Trauma is driving so much of what I'm doing. I've just had a realization, but I've got no money. I can't access a therapist," or whatever it might be. To that person, what would you say to them?

    12. GM

      Well, first of all, yes, that's a real dilemma, and, uh, I wish I had an easy answer for it. I do wish that healthcare providers, systems like the National Health Service in, uh, in Britain or the Canadian system, understood the importance of psychological healing and did provide resources for it. Now, in fact, they're depriving resources rather than increasing them, but I do wish that systems understood that people need these kind of services, number one, but that's a hope. It's not a reality. Um, I would say, look, yeah, bud, it's true, but there's lots of content online that is free. This conversation-

    13. RC

      Yeah

    14. GM

      ... is online. It's gonna be free. I'm sure, R- Rangan, that you've had people approach you or write to you saying that this podcast really tran- changed my life. I don't mean this podcast with me. I mean some of your other podcasts, including perhaps some of them with me. So you can gain a lot of insight and self-awareness by a lot of free content that's on the internet.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. GM

      There's the books that you've written. There are the books that I've written, that many other wonderful colleagues have written. They're available in libraries, published in many languages. People can read them. People can self-reflect. People can find peer counseling. People can fi- join groups online or in person to find support. People can walk out in nature. They can meditate. They can... Lots of free meditation instruction on the internet or available in, available in wonderful books, including by the aforementioned Thich Nhat Hanh. Um, there's journaling. There's expressing your emotions through art if you have the talent or the interest. So there's a lot of things that people can do. You don't need to be... And talk to your friends. If you have good friends that can listen to you, just ask them to listen.

  9. 59:40 – 1:08:47

    Stress, Psychosomatic Illness and Childhood Trauma

    1. RC

      Stress is endemic these days. The World Health Organization still calls stress the health epidemic-

    2. GM

      Yeah

    3. RC

      ... of the 21st century, right? So how do you see stress, and how do you see its relationship to disease?

    4. GM

      Well, it's one of those, as you, uh, imply, it's one of those words with a double meaning, and it's all depends how we use it. A, a related word is psychosomatic. Like you and I both know, in the best possible sense of the word, that a lot of illnesses are genuinely psychosomatic because psyche means they're emotional apparatus and soul, if you will, and soma is the body. And because of the mind-body unity and the unshakable unity of our emotional system and the brain's emotional circuits with the nervous system, the immune system, and the hormonal apparatus, it's a unit. It's a psychosomatic unit. That's a really great word. But when most people hear psychosomatic, they think we're just telling them they're imagining their diseases, which is very often how doctors have used it.

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. GM

      And it's the same with stress. Now, stress is a genuine psychophysiological event. Stress isn't some fancied, imagined, uh, fantasy on the part of the patient. Stress is actually what happens when the organism faces pressures that are beyond its capacity to deal with chronically, and that results in the release of stress hormones, uh, adrenaline and cortisol, uh, amongst other things. Stress also affects the immune system. Stress affects the gut. Stress affects the brain. Uh, it affects the heart. You mentioned high blood pressure. What's the medical term for hypertens- for high blood pressure? Hypertension. And we, as, as physicians, we're trained that, well, there's 5% of hypertension is explainable due to kidney disease or some hormonal abnormality, but 95% is what we call essential hyper-

    7. RC

      Essential

    8. GM

      ... essential hypertension, which means we haven't got a clue what's causing it. Come on, people. Read the word. Hypertension. Hypertension. Too much tension. That's what causes hypertension. I mean, and those from all kinds of studies. In other words, it's the impact of stress and high levels of adrenaline on the cardiovascular system. Now, when your doctor use the word stress and the patient is, thinks that they, "I'm being dismissed," they often are being dismissed because the physician himself or herself or themselves don't recognize the unity of mind and body.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. GM

      So when they're, when the word leaves their lips, they do mean a kind of dismissive, "I can't find anything physically wrong with you, therefore, it's just stress." Well, that's not how it works. In the genuine sense of the word, as we know from millions of studies, stress has huge impacts, and they have impacts even sometimes when we can't measure them, when, when we don't have the clinical tools to measure something. You mentioned fibromyalgia earlier. Well, there's no clinical test that'll diagnose or rule out fibromyalgia, but it's clearly a stress-related condition. And when you study people's lives with fibromyalgia, salient amongst the findings is significant degrees of childhood trauma and, and, and childhood adversity and their impacts on the body.

    11. RC

      Yeah. Can, can we at that point, Gabor, just explain what exactly do you mean when you say childhood trauma?

    12. GM

      Well, geez, I'm so glad to, to be able to talk about that because that's another word that's, on the one hand, not appreciated, understood, even recognized by much of medical practice. On the one hand. The other hand, it's used too loosely sometimes. So people say, "I went to a movie last night and it was, I was really, uh, traumatized." No, you weren't. You just were upset. You were sad. You were, you know, angry, but that doesn't mean you were traumatized. So what does it mean to... What does trauma mean? Well, again, if you look at the word origins, the wo- the or- the origin of the word trauma is a Greek phrase for wounding or, um, a, a, a wound. So trauma is a wound that you sustained. Now, when people think of the word trauma, they often believe it has to do with what we call the big T events, the big trauma events such as sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, a parent dying, violence in the family, parental addiction, um, maybe a s- a rancorous divorce. These are traumatic, but trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you. So trauma is the psychic wound that you sustained. S- that's the first point. The second point is if we understand the nature of a wound, really there's two ways to look at a wound. If it stays open, it's very sore. You touch it. If I pat myself on the shoulder right now, I feel no pain. But if there was a wound there, and my shoulder was bare, and my nerve endings were close to the surface-

    13. RC

      Mm

    14. GM

      ... in other words, if I was thin-skinned-

    15. RC

      Yeah

    16. GM

      ... and if I tap myself with the same force, there'd be severe pain. So one aspect of trauma is like an open sore that if you touch it, you just react like you were just wounded all over again. That's one aspect of a wound. The other way to look at a wound is, is, is that it forms a scar. Now, scar tissue protects the wound, but at the same time, it's thick, it's inflexible, it's hard, it's not capable of growth, and it lacks nerve endings, so you don't feel. So trauma both sensitizes us to certain stimuli and on the other hand numbs us to our own feelings and, and, and, and, and separates it from our bodies 'cause it's too painful to be in our bodies. Now, to traumatize people, you can do bad things to them, as I mentioned earlier, but you can also wound people, particularly sensitive kids, but all kids, but especially highly sensitive children, not just by doing bad things to them, but by not giving them the good things that they need. So not just what shouldn't have happened but did, but what should have happened but didn't. So for this, we have to understand children's basic needs. Children have certain developmental needs for healthy emotional and brain development.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. GM

      One of them is to be seen and heard and to be accepted for exactly who they are without any condition.

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. GM

      Now, lots of people tell me they had happy childhoods, nothing traumatic, but when I delve into them, their histories even a little bit, that lack of un- unconditional un- uh, acceptance and understanding and being seen, um, is salient. You can hurt people that way. That can wound people. And so these traumas then show up in all kinds of coping mechanisms and adaptations. Many of them, we call them mental illnesses. Like take something like depression. Uh, again, look at a word origin. What does it mean to depress something? You push something down. Now, what gets pushed down in depression, and I've been diagnosed with that, um, what gets pushed down in depression is your emotions. But why would you push down your emotions? You push down your emotions when to feel them puts you at odds with your environment, so that if, if your parents can't handle your verve and your enthusiasm- Or your sadness or your grief or your anger, then in order to fit in with the family environment, you will push down those feelings, not consciously, but simply as a matter of automatic adaptation. Thirty years later, you're diagnosed with this disease called depression, but it was a response to a childhood wounding, the wounding of not being seen and accepted with all your emotions, which is another essential need of the child. The child should be able to experience all their emotions no matter what they are. So that's a very simple example of childhood wounding trauma, which then shows up in the form of adult distress. And I can show the similar patterns for all manner of chronic illness, that there was childhood wounding either because of things happening that shouldn't have or what I call the small T trauma of things not happening that should have, that then leads to adaptations, which adaptations in the long term promote illness.

    21. RC

      Yeah. There's a couple of things there, right? So childhood trauma then shows up later in a whole variety of different behaviors, a whole variety of different diseases.

    22. GM

      Yeah.

    23. RC

      Right. So there's-- the question there is then, as an adult, how can we start addressing this?

  10. 1:08:47 – 1:30:59

    Parenting, Sleep Training and Letting Go of Guilt

    1. RC

      But there's also another piece, which is many people listening or watching are parents themselves.

    2. GM

      Yeah.

    3. RC

      And they may recognize certain things and certain behaviors they've had in their own life, uh, as I, as I certainly have done. But there's also, well, how do we not traumatize or, or shall I say minimize the trauma that we put onto our kids? You know, what are those... If we, if we maybe start there-

    4. GM

      Yeah

    5. RC

      ... because we, we are living in a society where it's very hard to be parents. It's very hard to be a mother.

    6. GM

      It's very hard.

    7. RC

      You know, really hard. And actually, through no fault of parents-

    8. GM

      Yeah

    9. RC

      ... they're struggling to be present and have time and, and patience-

    10. GM

      Yeah

    11. RC

      ... with their children. I know in, in the book, you, you write that being understood as a child is as much of a need as food and shelter-

    12. GM

      Yeah

    13. RC

      ... which I found really profound.

    14. GM

      Yeah.

    15. RC

      Being understood, being seen, being heard.

    16. GM

      Yeah.

    17. RC

      Right. So what can parents think about when trying to bring up their kids?

    18. GM

      So first of all, it's very important to avoid any hint of parent blaming-

    19. RC

      Yeah

    20. GM

      ... uh, a- as you say. And so it's not matter of individual failure, it's really the question of a society that doesn't put children's needs in the forefront at all. And so let's take a really simple example. Now, in, in the book, I talk about my personal history, which is, you know, a Jewish infant under Nazi occupation in Hungary. Very dramatic, um, be a terrible, uh, time in history for be a-- to be a, an infant.

    21. RC

      Yeah.

    22. GM

      And then, and then my mother and I live under really deplorable conditions under threat of death, and at one point she gives me up to a total stranger in the street. By the way, I was just in Budapest, uh, my, my home city, uh, two weeks ago, and I swam every morning at a sports club. It was right across the house where mother gave me to a stranger-

    23. RC

      Oh, wow

    24. GM

      ... seventy-six years ago, seventy-seven years ago, to save my life. So that's very dramatic. But forget the Nazis, forget genocide, forget the war. When my mother and I are still in the hospital, maternity hospital, and I'm two weeks old, she writes in her diary, "My poor little Gabor, my heart is breaking for you because you've been crying for the last one hour and a half wanting to be fed, but I promised the doctor I'd only feed you every four hours. So it's not time yet. You're gonna have to learn that nighttime is for sleeping, not for eating." Her heart was breaking. She's completely suppressing her parental instinct to please the doctor. So forget the war, forget the genocide, forget all the drama. Just a mom, a twenty-four-year-old mom following doctor's orders. Now, in this society, parents are often advised to ignore their kids' needs just like that. For example, you have this thing called sleep training, where parents are told, "Don't pick up the crying child." Now, you tell a mother orangutan not to pick up their crying child. You tell a mother cat to ignore the cries and distress of their infant. But we tell human beings this every day, and we call this sleep training, you know? And what we're doing is giving the child the mes- Now you know it works. You ignore a child's cries for four nights, they're gonna sleep through the night. You know why? 'Cause they give up, and they, they can't stand it. They put themselves to sleep just to get away from the distress of it, and their brain is, brain is flooded with cortisol, which interferes with healthy brain development, and the message they get is that their feelings don't matter, that they're on their own, they're all alone. Now, this is done by loving parents under the advice of well-meaning professionals, and we call this parenting advice. Or another simple little device that parents are often told to do, time out. Now, there's a very famous Canadian psychologist who I don't need to name, but in his mega-selling book, he advises parents that an angry little child should be made to sit by themselves until they come back to normal. It's not normal for a two-year-old to be angry, and that child should be excluded. The message the child should get is, "You're not acceptable to us when you have that emotion." A lot of parents, there's best-selling books on this technique of time out-

    25. RC

      Yeah

    26. GM

      ... which basically means separating the child from yourself until they start behaving in ways that you can approve of. In other words, the message to the child is, "Your acceptance is purely conditional when you're pleasing me." Now, we're not talking about parents that are beating their kids. We're not talking about parents who don't love their kids. We're not talk- But parents who are trying to hurt their kids, we're just talking about parents who are, are, are complying with social norms and social values. Then there's the factor of stress that you mentioned, how stressful it is to be parenting. Again, we're not meant to parent in isolated homes, in one-person or two-person, uh, two-parent families. We're meant to parent in groups, in community. This is how we evolved as a species. We know already, and I spend chapters on this, the, a chapter on prenatal life-

    27. RC

      Yeah

    28. GM

      ... that, that, that stress on the pregnant woman. You know, I mentioned telomeres earlier?

    29. RC

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      The telomeres of infants born to highly stressed mothers are shorter already at birth. Uh, this is a new study that just came out since I wrote the book. So stress on pregnant women. Now how are-- just exactly how are we taking care of pregnant women in our society? Are we honoring their needs? Are we making provisions for them on the job, or even to give them prenatal leave to take care of themselves? Or tell we-- are we telling husbands to really look after their wives' emotional needs? I mean, I talk about in the book about just what a unsupportive husband I was when I was, you know, when we were expecting our children. That has an impact on the developing child already in the womb. Not because the mother doesn't love the child, but because when she's stressed, that stress translates into physiological impacts on the child. Now, there are times in the first year of life when every second, [snaps fingers] millions of circuits, millions of connections are being made in the brain. The mother's emotional states directly affect the br- the brain development of the child. We know this from scientific studies.

  11. 1:30:59 – 1:50:28

    Society, Mental Health Rates and Early Child Development

    1. RC

      Latest statistics in the UK are these. One in six adults above the age of 16 report moderate to severe depressive symptoms. That's not mild. That's just moderate to severe, and over eight million people in the UK experience an anxiety disorder at any one time. From your perspective, what's going on?

    2. GM

      Well, and if I may add, the similar statistics are even more so are, are evident in North America as well, where the rate of children's suicide is going up and the number of kids being medicated, seriously medicated for all manner of conditions is going up. Where 25% of women are on a psychoactive medication of some kind, where, um, depression, anxiety are rising, where overdoses... In the United States last year, more people died of overdoses than in America's Vietnam- ... Iraq and Afghan wars put together, almost twice as many in one year. So the mental health, uh, issue, and this is, uh, United States, May is mental health month, is an increasing burden on society and on individuals. So it really means we have to rethink our perspective on mental health and mental illness. Because the traditional medical view has it that it's a biological problem in the brain, usually potentiated by genetics. But if that was the case, it wouldn't be rising like the way it is, because genes don't change in a population over a short period of time. So we really have to look at broader social factors as they bear upon the individual. And the truth is that the individual cannot be separated from the environment. We're social creatures, and the functioning of our brains and our physiology is very much affected by our context. And so the question we really have to be asking is what happens in... what is happening in modern society that is increasing the psychological burden on human beings?

    3. RC

      Your latest book is called The Myth of Normal, and I think that title is incredibly apt in relation to what we're talking about. We've got to a stage now in 2023 where it's almost normal to have some level of mental health dysfunction. So from your perspective, what exactly is going on in society that is so stigmatizing, that is so toxic for our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing?

    4. GM

      Yes. Well, for that, we have to go back and ask the question, what are the needs of human beings for healthy development, and to what degree does our society or any society meet those needs? And this begins already in uterus, because we already know that stresses on pregnant women during the gestational period affect the brain development of infants in utero already. So the more stress there is on a woman when they're pregnant, the greater the risk that child is for mental health problems later on. It starts that early. And then we have to look at childbirth practices themselves, because the way nature set up childbirth, it wasn't just a matter of pushing a baby out of a womb. It was also a bonding experience. Chemically, a whole cocktail of hormones is released in the woman and the baby, oxytocin, endorphins, vasopressin, that help the bonding between mother and infant. Now, with the rising rates of intervention, unnecessary intervention, sometimes as you and I know as physicians, obstetrical intervention is lifesaving for mother and infant, and it's to be celebrated. But when we have situations where here in my province of British Columbia, there's a 40% cesarean section rate, and this is generalizing across the s- the industrialized world. Sometimes it's even higher. We're having a massive interference with the natural process. And then we have to ask, what are the essential needs of human children for healthy development? And they include a safe, secure attachment relationship with parents who are emotionally attuned and present for them, which is increasingly difficult for parents to provide in today's stressed society. It includes the child not having to work to make the relationship work, so the child can be at rest in a relationship. It includes the freedom of the child to ex- to experience and express all their emotions. Now, the human brain is wired, like all mammals are wired, for certain emotions, including joy, playfulness, curiosity, grief, fear, anger. When ch- parenting practices inhibit a child from experiencing all their emotions, that interferes with the child's brain development. And so take something like depression. Just a simple example. What does it mean to depress something? It means to push it down. What gets pushed down in depression? Well, I've had depression, um, and what gets pushed down is your emotions. But why would somebody push down their emotions? Because they weren't allowed to express them, because the expression of emotion threatened their relationship with their parents. And a lot of parenting practices today encourage parents to force kids to suppress their emotions.

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. GM

      And so there's so much where our needs are not met. A- and, and the biggest factor I would say, Rangan, is the stress on parents.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. GM

      The, the economic, social stress on parents and the increasing social isolation. All of these bear upon the developing child.

    9. RC

      So much there to pick up on, Gabor. I think in one of our previous conversations, I mentioned to you a case of a young lady who I saw in my first week in general practice who had symptoms consistent with depression, and it would've been very easy to diagnose her with depression, label her, and then put her on an antidepressant. But I won't retell that entire story, but over the course of four to six weeks, by seeing her every week, by listening to her compassionately, non-judgmentally, in a way that she didn't have outside the consultation room, her symptoms just started to resolve. And that really speaks to what you said about depression. We're depressing our feelings down, and I'm looking at that case now through that lens. I simply provided a safe space where she could start to undepress those feelings, elevate those feelings, get them out, and as if by magic, her symptoms started to get better. So yeah, I think that's a really nice way of thinking about depression- I just wanted to talk to you though about brain development. You mentioned there, you know, where, you know, the, your central thesis behind your book, to me at least, is that the culture around us is making us sick, right? This is not really an individual issue. This is a societal and environmental issue. And then so if we then look at various aspects of modern society, at least modern Western society, when mothers and parents are having children these days, it's often, it's later than it used to be. It's often mid-late 20s, maybe into 30s, maybe sometimes into early 40s. This often coincides with them trying to make their way in their careers. Two parents working, they've moved away from home, they don't have support around them, so they're actually trying to incubate a baby inside the womb at a very stressful time. Often they're pushing themselves to try and buy a house where they can have a little garden and have s- have room for the little one. Society doesn't make it easy for us to have that calm, relaxed, attentive environment for the woman when she's pregnant or for the children when they're born, does it?

    10. GM

      No. And I, I wonder, Rangan, when, when you were in medical school, when you were taught prenatal care, did anybody ever suggest to you that you pay attention to the emotional needs of the pregnant mother? I wasn't taught that either, and, uh, yet as I've already mentioned, that's a huge, uh, influence. Now, let me quote to you an article from Harvard University, from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, which is the world's most prestigious child developmental study organization. The article appeared in a major medical journal, Pediatrics, in February 2012, and it talked about brain development, and I'm gonna quote it as best I can. It said that the architect- the architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth, continues into adulthood, and establishes either a fragile or sturdy foundation for all the health and learning and behavior, and behavior that follow. So the architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process beginning before birth, continuing into adulthood. Which means that in any process of development, you have to have the right conditions from before birth to adulthood. That's the first point. The second point is, the second sentence in that same article says that the most important influence on the development of the brain is the emotional mutuality in the relationship between parents and children, especially in the early childhood years. Now, lots of studies have shown that when parents are busy, they're stressed, they're anxious, they're economically pressured, that interferes with their capacity to emotionally connect with their children. We're not blaming parents here. They're doing their best, but they're doing their best in an abnormal environment. Abnormal from the point of view of human development, because human creatures, we evolved in a communal context where parents had lots of support, lots of companionship, and kids were always surrounded by other kids and by adults, uh, who cared for them. That's how we evolved. That's our need. Now, if you get a society that increasingly isolates and stress parents, um, that's gonna impact the very circuitry of the child's brain, and that's gonna affect the child's psychological functioning.

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. GM

      So that we know from British studies, for that matter, that mothers who are depressed, their kids are more likely to have ADHD later on. Why? Because the parents' emotional states affect the brain development of the child, and therefore the psychological development of the child as well. So what we cannot do is to separate the environment from the physiology of the brain. So in modern psychiatry, which really looks at mental health conditions as biological problems, the point they don't get and they ignore is that the brain's biology itself is, uh, affected by and shaped by the emotional and social context. And so when you have increasing isolation, parents who are stressed, struggling, as you say, without the community to support them anymore, uh, with, with the loss of connection, of course you're gonna get a lot of kids who are gonna be mentally challenged and emotionally, uh, in trouble. Of course you are.

    13. RC

      Given how important those formative years are, it would seem relatively urgent that we try and restructure elements of society to really prioritize those early years. So I know in America, I read a recent statistic that... is it 25% of women within two weeks of giving birth are back at work? I mean-

    14. GM

      Yes

    15. RC

      ... if that is true, that's an absolutely incredible and, and actually very worrying statistic, and really shows us what that society is valuing and putting first. I'm interested, though, if we compare that to, let's say, Scandinavian countries where there's less financial inequality as there may be, let's say, in America. There's, I think, nine months in some of these Scandinavian countries, nine months of paternal leave, uh, same amount if not longer maternal leave. You know, clearly as a society, we're saying or they're saying, oh, the, the first nine months are very, very important. So I'm interested, number one, do we see less rates of mental health problems in cultures like that? Uh, perhaps we could, we could address that first, and then I'll go onto the next point.

    16. GM

      Well, I wish I couldn't... I wish I knew about Scandinavian statistics. There are, there are significant mental health problems in the Scandinavian-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. GM

      ... countries as well. Um, but Finland, for example, is considered to be the happiest country in the world, according to a recent study. And, um, they have very different approaches to child rearing and schooling and so on. In the Scandinavian countries, there is trauma and, and, you know, the- it's not that they're without their problems.

    19. RC

      No.

    20. GM

      Um, but the... They don't, they don't nearly have the rate of children being medicated, adults being medicated that North America does. The, um, as, as best I know, the, uh, 25% figure, um, is accurate. Um, actually, it was... I saw it in The Guardian, um, based on an American report. The British, uh, anthropologist, the British-American anthropologist Ashley Montagu, um, talked about ex utero gestation. So there's ante utero gestation, which is the child in the womb, but then ex utero gestation is the continuing of the gestational process outside the womb. Because the human child is the least mature, the least developed, the most dependent of any cr- any mammal and, and our brains are far less developed than, say, that of other mammals. A horse can run on the first day of life. We can't do that for a year and a half, which means that the brain circuits that are in a horse are already present at birth, in a human being don't come online for another year and a half. And so that the gestational process needs to continue for a longer period of time in human beings. Now, when mothers are forced to return to work at such a high rate for economic reasons, what that amounts to is a massive abandonment of children. Ashley Montagu talked about the... He wrote a book called Skin: The Human Significance of Touch. The importance for the biological, physiological, and mental development of the child to have skin-to-skin contact with the mother. Now, in our society, increasingly that's less and less available.

    21. RC

      Yeah.

    22. GM

      That actually has an impact on the child's sense of security and, and safety in the world. No wonder we have rising rates of anxiety.

    23. RC

      Yeah. Another element of culture I've really been reflecting on recently, Gabor, is about this idea of kids living with their parents. Now, it's really interesting. I'm from an Indian background, so I remember in the summers when I'd go to India and spend six weeks with my family, you'd have joint families, extended families, three, four generations living in the same house. Now, I'm not saying everything was fantastic about that. There's pros and cons with everything in life. But I was chatting to my wife a few weeks ago saying, "Where did this idea come from that if you're still living with your parents at age 20 or 21, you're somehow a failure in life?" It seems to be a very Western, um, idea that I absorbed as a child that I think is there. You'll see social media posts, you'll see things online where if someone at 26 is still living at home, they're almost frowned upon in this society. And again, I've just been reflecting as to where did that come from. I'm not saying necessarily we shouldn't be promoting independence, we shouldn't be encouraging people to, you know, once they've had their child rearing, to move on with their adult lives with that strong degree of independence. But have you reflected on this? You know, where did this idea come from, and what do we see in, in tribes and more native cultures?

    24. GM

      Well, in our society, there's a real push on parents to drive their kids towards independence so that, um, e- even at an early age, um, we try and push them towards independence.

    25. RC

      Mm.

    26. GM

      We think that we have to foster independence in the child by kind of pushing them away. And this enters into a lot of parenting practices. Now, actually, um, we forget something, which is that independence is nature's natural agenda. So if you look at bears, nature's agenda is that at some point the baby bear, the cub, grows up independent and goes off on their own and no longer dependent on the mother. The mother doesn't have to push them towards independence. Nature does that. It's in the agenda of nature that we develop into independent creatures because at some point our parents will die, you know? And so each generation needs to find its own independence. Um, but it does so in a, at a natural pace consistent with its own nature. The way you actually foster independence in human children is by inviting dependence, is by meeting... 'Cause the human child is very dependent. If you meet the child's needs, we don't trust nature in a society is what it is. If, if you meet, if you meet the child's needs for dependence and belonging and connection and attachment, that child will automatically develop a sense of independence 'cause it's in the child's nature to do so.

    27. RC

      Yeah.

    28. GM

      So we don't, we don't have to push it. On the contrary, it's not that we should coddle kids and, and sort of, kind of hobble them and, and, and, and, um, you know, infantilize them. You just have to meet their genuine attachment needs, give them a sense of security. They will naturally move towards independence, exploration, finding their own way in the world. So this is another thing that, um, in our society we totally miss, and then we push our kids out. We expect them to find their way. Uh, older societies used to have rituals for inviting children into adulthood. These rituals would exist in virtually all traditional cultures. We have lost those rituals. So we've lost a lot of the map that would guide people to be genuine human beings in our culture.

    29. RC

      Yeah.

  12. 1:50:28 – 2:18:36

    Prince Harry, Trauma and the Press Backlash

    1. RC

      We're talking today about mental health, and I think that public figures can play a very important role both from a point of view of raising awareness, but also from a point of view of highlighting that we all share a common humanity, and no matter who we are, what family we were born into, we're all susceptible to the same pressures with the same consequences on our physical and our mental health. Now, Prince Harry is, I think, one of the m- most prominent figures [laughs] certainly in the UK talking about mental health, arguably globally. Until recently, I would say he was a very much a well-loved figure by all. But by talking about mental health, um, that seems to have changed. And you had the opportunity to talk to Harry that was publicized to a lot of people around the world. I'm first of all interested from talking to someone so prominent about their mental health, about their trauma, what did you learn?

    2. GM

      Well, [laughs] having read, uh, Harry's book Spare, which really is a depiction of a child deeply traumatized, uh, suffering adult mental health problems as a result of that, in fact, in childhood as well from that trauma, um, and being made so wrong for it all in the, in the media. The first thing I learned is just how... [laughs] Well, there's a lot of things I learned by reading Harry's book and talking with the man, and by the way, I have to tell you, I really liked him.

    3. RC

      Yeah.

    4. GM

      Down-to-earth, sensitive, insightful, intelligent, well-meaning human being who really wants to make a difference in the world. So I learned about him personally. Um, I also learned what he's up against because in the aftermath of our conversation, I was just caught up in this gale of venom in a lot of the British press, and, um, I was just astonished by the degree of, um, poisonous commentary, of poisonous attitudes. I just received a small portion of what he's been living with for so long now. Now, I was aware of Prince Harry's and his brother's interest in mental health issues. Back in 2017 already, they had already started a foundation to talk about mental health issues because they were traumatized kids. Their mother died, and they grew up in a family that was very dysfunctional, um, a loveless marriage. I mean, I could go on. Every... This is, this is public knowledge. And so these two young men started talking about mental health issues, and their grandmother, the Queen, at some point said, "Enough of this. Go back and talk about... Do your royal duties and forget these personal interests in mental health." That... This was publicly reported in the Sunday Times back in 2017. So he's had a commitment to talk about mental health and, and, um, I saw how that's much... that's resented in, in, in, in modern society because he's like the whistleblower. He's somebody who talked about his own pain, his own trauma, and, and the impact of that, and he also talks about healing. And so what I saw was a human being who's suffered, who recognizes that he grew up in incredible privilege, but inside that royal gilded cage, he was never allowed to be himself, and his... and he had this lifelong struggle to liberate himself from the expectations and programming that came with being a royal child, where literally was not... The message he got was, "Don't be yourself." He said this in so many words. So here's a man who's struggling to become himself, and how much opprobrium that attracts from a lot of people in the media and in society. So the conversation was eye-opening for me in that here's this prince, grew up one of the most wealthiest families in Britain, uh, never mind wealthy, also revered and historically elevated to this high status, and he suffers like the rest of us.

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. GM

      And he needs to s- and he needs to, and he needs to, he needs to, um, struggle with that suffering. He needs to make sense of it. He needs to try to find himself. He needs to liberate himself. So that's what the conversation's about, and it was... to me, it was a very refreshing, um, very interesting, uh, conversation.

    7. RC

      Yeah. I mean, thank you for sharing that. It's interesting, and maybe we'll get to this later on in this conversation, how polarizing any conversation around Prince Harry is. And it's really interesting because I don't know Prince Harry. Um, I've seen him talk. I've seen a lot of that interview you had with him. I've seen some of his other talks. So when I say I've seen his talks, I've seen the actual conversations, not what the media are reporting about the conversation or the commentary from a prominent media expert about it. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've heard it with my own ears. And as someone who's spent over two decades interacting with patients, reading them Trying to pick up the messages behind their words, trying to read their body language to really get an impression of who is this person? What is really going on here? I gotta say, the only thing I get from Prince Harry is somebody who is trying his best to come to terms with his past and then move on. I get the impression this is somebody who is incredibly emotionally grounded. And I totally get the impression that this is someone who does not see himself as a victim, someone who's trying to empower himself. I mean, what's your perspective on what I've just said?

    8. GM

      Well, that's how I perceive it as well. Now, he, he, he's a young man. He's 38 years old. 39, is he? Um, he makes mistakes, but I'm 79 and I make mistakes, you know? And b- but, but the overall arc of his life is precisely as you've, uh, as, as you've described it, and I do get the sense of a person who's very much committed to making a difference in the world. And to... By... And, and in terms of victimhood, like, I got all these ... I, I got a lot of followers on Instagram, you know? And all these venomous notes about, "I'm, I'm following you 'cause you talked to this ginger whiner," you know? And, and, and you got sucked in, you know, um, i- i- into it. He's not a whiner. Uh, the British word is spelled W-H-I-N-G-E-R. How do you, how do you pronounce that? Winger or whiner? Or what do you, what do you say?

    9. RC

      Yeah. Whiner. Whinger.

    10. GM

      Yeah. Ginger whinger they call them. Yeah. Okay. Uh, well, first of all, let me tell you something. Red-headed people are more sensitive than others. That- that's a physiological fact. They often need more anesthesia when they g- when they have surgery, for example. This is a well-known fact.

    11. RC

      Wow.

    12. GM

      So they ... The more sensitive you are, the more you experience, the more deeply you experience, the more things hurt. That's his nature. He's very... And, and he told me that all his life he felt different from others. He's just more sensitive. But he's not a victim. He doesn't perceive himself as a victim, not in the least. That's the first question I asked him.

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. GM

      And, and in fact, when we talk about trauma, which he experienced, certainly I have, and it's, it's my work in the world. I, I don't talk about trauma as a way of victimizing people, but as a way of empowering them. And, and in Harry's own case, as in my own case, and, uh, a lot of other people, when you understand how you've been traumatized, then you have the, then you have the responsibility and the freedom to do something about it.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. GM

      So to recognize trauma. Now, you can wrap yourself in this cloak of victim, "Well, I was traumatized. I can't help it. This is the way I am." Most people I know are not like that. Most people wanna understand what happened to them as a way of empowering themselves to heal, and that's his particular trajectory as well. So he's not a victim. He doesn't see himself that way. I don't see him that way, and, uh, he is increasingly grounded. He's far happier now than he ever used to be, as he should be. And as, as far as his children, he's determined not to, um, inflict on his children the kind of pain and emotional deprivation that he experienced in his childhood. And isn't that just what all parents want, is, is not to make our kids hurt the way we were hurt? I mean, again, it's the universality, the, the, the ubiquitous humanity that shows up in his life experience despite his incredibly special circumstances.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. GM

      That's what's so interesting.

    19. RC

      If you look at that story, Harry's story from the outside, and you remove the royal family component, which of course for many people it's very hard to do. But of course, as clinicians, uh, as physicians, Gabor, we always have to treat the people who come in front of us with compassion. It doesn't matter if they're a CEO or they're addicted to drugs or they're poor or they're rich. Makes no difference to a, to a healthcare professional. We treat them all the same. So if you look at this as a human story and you remove the royal family element, we would be celebrating this, saying, "Wow, what strength to confront your past, to speak up about it, to try and move on, to try and not pass on your own trauma to your children." And so why, why do you think that is? Why, when you put the royal family envelope around this story, why does the narrative start to change?

    20. GM

      You know, I think it's ... First of all, people want to idealize. They want to have these fantasy bonds with figures that, whose lives they find glamorous and more meaningful than their own, and they don't want that illusion shattered. I think that's a part of it. But I think there's a more general cause, which is doesn't have to do with royalty. So if you look at, um ... If you look at, uh, Harry's life, he's born to a young, emotionally, fairly, hmm, troubled woman who is in a loveless marriage, whose husband basically ... W- whomself was ... Charles himself was a bullied, sensitive child, emotionally deprived. There was a story about Prince Charles, current king, um, five years old. His mother, Queen Elizabeth, goes on a royal tour for several months. When she comes back, she greets him by shaking his hand. When ... Now that's a deprivation. Ashley Montagu talked about the need to be held. When Harry's mother dies, Diana, his father comes into his room early in the morning to tell him, doesn't hug the child. Imagine telling a child that your mother just died and you don't hug the child. He spends a few minutes, touches the kid on the knee and says, "It'll be okay," and leaves, and Harry's left on his own. Now, take that out of the royal context. Would you not see that as an example of tragic deprivation, emotional deprivation?

    21. RC

      Yeah.

    22. GM

      And so... [sighs] And here's one of the funny things in the, about the British press. I quoted Ashley Montagu, and I said that Montagu talks about the importance of cuddling and holding kids, and skin-to-skin contact, and I said even animals cuddle their kids. I mean, you tell a mother orangutan to ignore her child's emotional distress, you know, or a mother monkey, or a mother cat for that matter. I said even animals hold their kids. The Sunday Times wrote that I said that the royal family treated their kids like animals. I said the opposite. I said, they only wish they had treated them like animals, cuddled them when they needed to be held. And so that's an example of, of, of severe deprivation. Not anybody's fault. It's multi-generational in that family. So when I asked Harry, "Well, where does that leave you?" He says, "It leaves me wanting to cuddle my kids and hold them all the time."

    23. RC

      Yeah.

    24. GM

      You know? 'Cause he doesn't wanna pass that pain on. What is so difficult for people to understand about that, you know? It's because people are themselves hurt, and they have trouble looking at the sources of their pain. So when Harry talks about the source of his pain in his family of origin, and again, this is not a blaming conversation. We pass on our stuff, I did to my kids without meaning to, so he was in the same position, and now he wants to liberate his own children-

    25. RC

      Yeah

    26. GM

      ... from that multi-generational transmission of essential emotional deprivation and trauma. He's vilified for it because he is speaking about what you're not supposed to talk about in this society, which is the emotional pain that suffuses so many families.

    27. RC

      Yeah. If we take the macro and bring it right back to the micro, any individual who has become aware of some slightly toxic family dynamics, again, no blame there. You know, I will admit there's been some toxic dynamics in my own family that since I became aware and started to address them and change them, initially there was a bit of friction, but on the other side of that is a real beautiful, authentic connection and interaction that comes from a place of want, not a place of obligation, and I think there's a real opportunity there for all of us-

    28. GM

      Can I interrupt you for a minute?

    29. RC

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      'Cause you just gave me a thought. Can you imagine what an incredible gift to the world it would be? It's not gonna happen. But what a gift to the world it would be if the royal family all said, "Yes, for all our privilege, we carry trauma. The trauma that was inflicted on a generation of men in our family, in those public schools with their bullying and their whippings and their, and their, uh, cruel treatment of children. The suppression of women. If you look, we as a royal family are now willing to look at our traumas, and anybody who knows the history of that family knows that in every generation there's been one difficult relationship after another, one divorce after another, one dysfunction after another. But we recognize the multi-generational trauma, and we as a family want to heal it, and we're gonna take that on as our task, and we encourage all of you in society to do the same thing." Can you imagine what a gift that would be to the world? It's not gonna happen.

  13. 2:18:36 – 2:26:30

    Addiction as Pain Relief, and the Pornography Example

    1. RC

      Would you go as far as to say that pretty much all of us in Western society are addicted to something?

    2. GM

      Well, your words about what it means to be a human being really speak to me because addiction is the most human thing there is. And, uh, when you understand it, when you don't understand it, it looks like an aberration and an abnormality and some kind of a, a moral deviation. But when you understand it, it's a very human thing. So let's just define addiction as, um, manifested in any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves and continues with it despite negative consequences. So the definition then involves pleasure, relief, craving in the short term, harm in the long term, inability to give it up despite the harm. Now, by that definition, of course, we're not just talking about drugs. We're talking about all manner of behaviors, from, uh, sex to pornography to gambling to eating to shopping to the internet to, to gaming, um, to self-cutting, uh, to work, as probably as a physician you know-

    3. RC

      Mm-hmm

    4. GM

      ... and, and to any number of other activities. And my contention is that all addictions, they're not primary problems, they're not inherited diseases, they're not aberrations, they're not moral failures. They're attempts to gain pain relief, emotional pain relief for something or another. And so the first question in addiction for me is not why the addiction, but why the pain?

    5. RC

      To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits. We can all make short-term change, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life? Often they don't, and that's why in this free guide, I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take. They're really, really effective. If you want to get hold of that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below.

    6. GM

      And so if you have to look at why the pain, we have to look at people's lives, their life experience, their traumas, their, um, their adversity, their, their suffering. And so that's why I say that now when you talk to other people, "What did you get from your addiction?" They'll say, "Peace of mind." They'll say, "Connection with other people." They say, "Sense of control." They say, "Stress relief." Um, they say, "Sense of purpose." Those are all supremely human qualities. In fact, they're qualities that we all want-

    7. RC

      Yeah

    8. GM

      ... in fact, have every right to expect. So that's why I say there's nothing more human than addiction. Now, problem, of course, is it creates more pain. But the, the, but the impulse is simply the addict just wants to feel like a normal human being. That's all.

    9. RC

      Yeah. It's such a profoundly different way of looking at addiction compared to, I think, the norm in society. Certainly the way many people view, you know, addicts.

    10. GM

      Yeah.

    11. RC

      There, there's a, there's a certain view, isn't there, the, the, the addict is on the street corner, is homeless, is destitute.

    12. GM

      Yeah.

    13. RC

      Yet we often don't want to put that mirror up and look at our own lives and go, "Oh, wow," you know? By your definition-

    14. GM

      Yeah

    15. RC

      ... by that definition, there's probably very few of us who can honestly hold our hands up and say, at some point in our life we weren't addicted to something.

    16. GM

      I think in this society, hardly anybody. Hence, in part, hence the title of my book, The Myth of Normal. Like, we think that so many things are normal, then there's the abnormal people-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. GM

      ... who are different from us. I'm saying that that's a myth. That, that, that from the, th- from the most abject and most dependent and most ill drug addicted people that I worked with in Vancouver, Canada, to the most elevated segments of society, addictions are just rife.

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. GM

      And, and, and we're completely are blind when we choose one segment of the population to ostracize and to punish and to feel superior to. And what we're really doing is denying our own humanity-

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. GM

      ... when we do that.

    23. RC

      There's all manner of different things that people can be addicted to.

    24. GM

      Yeah.

    25. RC

      I want to talk about one which I don't think is spoken about enough, and that's online pornography.

    26. GM

      Yeah.

    27. RC

      It is something that I think is, it's just seeping there underneath. People aren't talking about it. I remember one of my patients, uh, not that long ago, this young man, he couldn't look at me, Gabor.

    28. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    29. RC

      He couldn't look at me in the eye.

    30. GM

      So ashamed?

  14. 2:26:30 – 2:43:55

    A Society That Demands We Be Other Than Ourselves: Competition and Success

    1. RC

      One of the big messages I feel the new book really makes a strong case for is that we're living in a society that has as, as core some values that are not conducive to good physical, mental, and emotional health.

    2. GM

      Right.

    3. RC

      And it takes a lot of pressure off the individual.

    4. GM

      Yeah.

    5. RC

      It doesn't mean that the individual can do nothing about it, but I think it helps people realize why they're struggling so much.

    6. GM

      Well, w- w- I know that a, a real core value for you is authenticity. You know? And then being oneself, being truly oneself. And I know that you've been some, some struggle in your own life to become yourself or to realize who you were and to let go what wasn't. And certainly that's been my pattern and struggle and, and commitment as well. This is a society that fundamentally demands of people that they be other than who they are. Because the demand, the expectations that we fit in, into structures and workplaces and education institutions and families and, mm, social settings, where if we ourselves, we risk being rejected, so that there's almost a universal demand for self suppression, which as we both, you and I know, uh, creates both mental and physical health problems. So that the, the core values of the society, which are fundamentally materialistic, individualistic, aggressive, and competitive, they go against what it really means to be a human being. And when you look at how we've evolved as human beings... Like, if you want to study a zebra, where would you study him if you want to understand his true nature? Would you study him in the London Zoo, or would you study him out in the savanna or wherever he-

    7. RC

      Yeah

    8. GM

      ... you know, he or she lives? Well, you'd have to study him in the natural environment. In our natural environment, I'm talking about eons and millions and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and even about 90% of our own existence as a species, we lived out in nature in small band hunter gatherer groups.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. GM

      Connected, engaged, belonging, connected to nature, connected to our gut feelings. We had to be, otherwise we wouldn't survive.

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. GM

      Th- that's what it means to be a human being. Now we can adapt to other, other environments, but that doesn't mean that we can thrive in them as well. And so that in a sense, what I'm saying about our species, really, we're, we're like zoo creatures right now.

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. GM

      We're living in an unnatural environment. I'm not suggesting we go back to being hunter gatherers, but I am suggesting we realize what we've lost, and how the particular social system in which we live right now demands that we stay lost.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. GM

      That's my whole point.

    17. RC

      Once our eyes get open to this-

    18. GM

      Yeah

    19. RC

      ... because as, as you mentioned, for much of my life, I've been blind to this.

    20. GM

      Yeah.

    21. RC

      You know, I, I felt that success was important, being competitive was important, being a winner-

    22. GM

      Yeah

    23. RC

      ... was important. And-

    24. GM

      Yeah

    25. RC

      ... as I've shed a lot of these behavioral adaptations to my own childhood, I find an inner sense of peace and contentment-

    26. GM

      Mm

    27. RC

      ... and calm that I never had before.

    28. GM

      Yeah.

    29. RC

      And actually what's really interesting is as you do that, a lot of the addictive tendencies I had, which-

    30. GM

      They fall away

  15. 2:43:55 – 2:56:04

    Filling Holes, Writing the Book, and Not Identifying with Success

    1. RC

      now, honestly, I sit here before you like a different person to when I first met you three or four years ago.

    2. GM

      Mm.

    3. RC

      Like I, I feel when I, when I met you last time face to face, I feel I had multiple holes in my soul.

    4. GM

      Mm. Mm.

    5. RC

      And you know, we had a great conversation that people enjoyed for sure, but I feel I sit alongside you today complete and whole.

    6. GM

      Mm.

    7. RC

      And I've never felt this deep sense of-

    8. GM

      Mm

    9. RC

      ... contentment and happiness.

    10. GM

      Mm. Well, I'm so happy for you. Um, when you talk about holes, there's a, a teacher of mine that I quote often, A.H. Almaas, and, uh, h- he says that we're born with these, um, innate essential qualities. As the world doesn't recognize them or discourages them, we shut them off, and we develop holes instead. Then we spend all our lives trying to fill these holes until we realize that as soon as, you know, like self-love or, you know, self-acceptance or clarity or courage or love for others or sense of belonging or- ... sense of unity. Uh, these get shut down, develop these holes instead. Then this whole society is so expert at selling us stuff to fill those holes temporarily, but only temporarily, so you have to get getting more and more and more. And the whole society lives on trying to fill people's holes that can never be filled from the outside. This is the whole ethic of this culture. In terms of the, writing the book, I was sharing with you before and in, in writing this one, um, it, it, it, it really wasn't, "Okay, I'm gonna write this book and become even more famous." Uh, honest to God, because, uh, I suffered writing this book. I mean, I, I'm not saying this self-pityingly, I'm just telling you what happened. 10 years I collected 25,000 articles f- uh, of newspaper reports, scientific papers, medical journals, and so on, a couple hundred books, uh, 300 interviews, and then three years of writing, like every day. And at times I sat there, had nothing to say, I didn't know ... There's nothing was coming out of, flowing from the tips of my fingers, and I thought, "I can't do this." I talked to Russell Brand once, and Russell said, "Remember something, you're not doing this for yourself, you're doing this for the world." And that really helped. Get over your own ego. Just do what you need to do. And at some point, I actually weekly talked to a therapist for a couple of months. I was so despondent about this feeling that I had ... I went, "There's so much I want to say, and then what I want to say is, at least I think is so important, and I'm not finding the way to, to get it out of me." So that wasn't done for my pleasure, believe me.

    11. RC

      No.

    12. GM

      That, that, that was really done because there's something in me that just wanted to be said.

    13. RC

      You know, that's so powerful, Gabor, because I think for people to hear that-

    14. GM

      Yeah

    15. RC

      ... that you, this esteemed, globally respected physician, when writing this latest book, and you've written many fantastic books already, right?

    16. GM

      Yes. Yeah.

    17. RC

      That you are getting consumed with self-doubt and insecurity about, you know, have I got anything worthwhile?

    18. GM

      I get my, my b- my blood pressure, which is usually that of a baby's, was going up.

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. GM

      I was getting concerned. I w- "Do I have to go on blood pressure?" No, of course I didn't have to go on medication, but it was just the ... Finally somebody, you know what somebody said to me? A very wise therapist, uh, she said, "Your problem is not the book. Your problem is your relationship with the book." And just like that, that rugby player that you mentioned, I'd allow myself to be totally identified with the book.

    21. RC

      Yeah.

    22. GM

      So my success or my validation as a human being depended on how well this book was doing. Well, actually, what's the reality? Let's say if I'd written a lousy book and nobody wanted it, and it's not the end of the world. It doesn't change who I am. It just means that for once I didn't succeed, you know? But it's the identification that had me so anxious.

    23. RC

      As we have this conversation, you are maybe two months out from publication.

    24. GM

      Three.

    25. RC

      It's okay. Three months.

    26. GM

      [laughs]

    27. RC

      Okay. But this is gonna come out-

    28. GM

      Yeah

    29. RC

      ... when the book's out.

    30. GM

      Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:56:04

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