You’re NOT Sick—You’re Suppressed: The Real Reason You’re Exhausted & In Pain | Gabor Maté

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 In this me-focused culture where it's all me, me, me, and what are my needs, and what do I need to do, and how can I better myself, I feel that we often don't feel of value to others. We don't feel important. And so it makes sense that in that culture you might overwork.

Gabor Maté 0:20 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:20 You might keep pushing yourself because if you're not working and feeling important there, then actually you may not have that sensation in any other aspects of your life.

Gabor Maté 0:32 Well, if, well, if you weren't given the, um... It's very simple. If in early childhood you're given the sense that you're valued just 'cause you existed, your parents welcome you, and validate you, and value you, and, and celebrate you just 'cause you are, then you don't have to keep proving it afterwards.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:51 Mm-hmm.

Gabor Maté 0:52 But if you don't get that sense, then you have to be important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:55 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 0:56 So that sense of needing to be important has to come from missing out on being valued for who you are or being only valued for your achievements. You know, you're valued-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05 Mm.

Gabor Maté 1:05 Like, look, my parents, bless their souls, but they valued my intelligence, you know? And so a lot of my persona was caught up in being smart and, and proving my value that way. Well, it's good to be intelligent, but your value should... doesn't depend on-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26 Mm

Gabor Maté 1:27 ... or shouldn't depend on any one quality, whether you're cute or cuddly or handsome or-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32 Mm

Gabor Maté 1:32 ... successful or good at sports or smart in school, any of that, is you- your value is intrinsic-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39 Mm

Gabor Maté 1:40 ... or g- innate, inherent 'cause you're a human being. In this society, as you say, it tends to value people for what they do, and so that can become very, very addictive. But again, going back to your friend who says, "My parent, my f- my patients need me," and you think about it, and I'm not accusing them of anything, but they're not realizing just how egotistical that statement is. It's as if it depended on them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06 Mm-hmm.

Gabor Maté 2:07 Their patients need good medical care, but they don't need him or her-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13 Mm

Gabor Maté 2:13 ... or them specifically, which means that they should be able to take care of themselves as long as they make sure that when they're not there-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:22 Mm-hmm

Gabor Maté 2:23 ... their patients are receiving-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:25 Mm

Gabor Maté 2:26 ... the care that they need. So it's not about us, and I used to think it was always about me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:30 Mm.

Gabor Maté 2:30 If I'm not there for the delivery of this pregnant woman's baby, oh, my God.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:34 Mm.

Gabor Maté 2:34 You know? Like as if it all depended on me. It, it-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:38 There's probably a control issue there as well, isn't there? That I, I know how I would do it-

Gabor Maté 2:42 Ex- exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:42 ... so I need to be there 'cause I know how I would manage this birth-

Gabor Maté 2:46 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:46 ... and that sort of stuff-

Gabor Maté 2:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:47 ... which is an inability to let go.

Gabor Maté 2:49 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:49 Like, someone else can probably do this as well.

Gabor Maté 2:52 Yeah. Or if they can't do it as well, so be it, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:55 So be it. [laughs]

Gabor Maté 2:55 You know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:56 Yeah. As I was walking to the studio this morning thinking about our conversation, the word impressive kept coming up for me.

Gabor Maté 3:07 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:08 And I've been reflecting on the word impressive because, again, I think culturally we, we think it's a good thing to impress others.

Gabor Maté 3:17 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:17 Like, hey, that bit of work you did is impressive.

Gabor Maté 3:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:21 But actually, if you, if you really unpick impressive, or certainly if I do it, it implies to me, and maybe this is my own bias because this is what I have done for much of my life-

Gabor Maté 3:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:36 ... I've changed who I am in order to impress others.

Gabor Maté 3:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:44 I didn't feel I impressed others by being myself.

Gabor Maté 3:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:47 I impressed them by changing.

Gabor Maté 3:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:50 So what comes up for you when you hear the word impressive? Have we got it wrong? Has it been, you know, has it been taken to mean something it's not? Like, how, how do you see the word impressive?

Gabor Maté 4:03 Hmm. Well, um, impressive first of all has to do with what? It has to do with our impact on other people, how others see us. So if I can just be myself and express my own truth and not drive myself into activities that are not good for me and people are impressed, well, that's great. But if my intention is to impress other people, if I need for me to make a certain impression in somebody else's mind, then where am I living? Then I'm living in their minds rather than in myself. So the question is, where do I wanna live, here or in your mind, you know? And, uh, our society is so, um, addicted to people being impressive in the minds of others. That means that we live in the minds of others more than we live-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:07 Mm

Gabor Maté 5:07 ... in ourselves. So if I c- if you can be yourself and find that impre- if I find that impressive, that's great, but you're not doing it to impress me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:16 No.

Gabor Maté 5:16 You're just doing it 'cause that's, you're expressing who you are. If I'm impressed, great. If I'm not impressed, that doesn't take anything away from you. But to the degree that we're dependent on impressing others, we're robbing ourselves. So that's how I see that word.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:36 The third regret that Bronnie writes about was, "I wish I had the courage to express my feelings."

Gabor Maté 5:43 My emotions, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:44 Which is, I guess, not dissimilar to the first one about living a life that's true to yourself.

Gabor Maté 5:50 No. And it, again, it, again, it's the word courage that shows up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:53 Mm.

Gabor Maté 5:54 And these people are judging themselves. A more interesting way to put it is, why is it that I didn't express my feelings, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:04 Mm-hmm.

Gabor Maté 6:04 Now, here's the thing. Um-Again, in my writing, uh, in The Myth of Normal, I quote this great neuroscientist who died in his mid-70s of cancer a few years ago. Those of us who knew him still mourn him. His name was Dr. Jaak Panksepp, P-A-N-K-S-E-P-P. He was, uh, from the Baltic states, whether he was Estonian, I think he was, but maybe L- L- Latvian, you know. And he was an effective neuroscientist, so he studied the neurobiology of emotions and wrote a book called The Archeology of the Mind. It's among the seminal books-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:44 Mm

Gabor Maté 6:45 ... of modern science. And he pointed out that we share certain emotional circuits with other animals. So we have circuit... And he capitalized these circuits, these systems. So y- he, he-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:57 Mm

Gabor Maté 6:57 ... the C-A-R-E, the care system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:59 Mm-hmm.

Gabor Maté 7:01 And there was a system for anger, system for fear, for lust, for playfulness, for joy, in other words, for seeking, which is curiosity-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:15 Mm

Gabor Maté 7:16 ... um, grief, and we share these brain circuits with other mammals. In other words, these emotions are not luxuries. They are emotionally, I should say, they are evolutionarily determined aspects of who we are. So if you take the care system, it's essential because without care, the mammalian infant doesn't survive.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:43 Mm.

Gabor Maté 7:43 There's gotta be something in the parent's brain that drives that parent to take care of the infant-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:49 Mm

Gabor Maté 7:50 ... and something that's in the infant's brain that impels them to connect with the parent in order to be taken care of. That's just evolutionary biology. So we have all these emotional systems. Anger is one of them, um, as I mentioned, fear, grief are others. And children, one of the emotional needs of children, when I studied and invest- you know, and interviewed experts on child development, uh, one of the things I learned and write about is that one of the needs of children for healthy brain development is the freedom to experience and express all the emotions that come up for them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:29 Mm.

Gabor Maté 8:30 That's just necessary for health. Um, now, what happens in this society where a lot of parents get the message that certain emotions on the part of their kids are not acceptable. So, you know, a kid might experience a loss, like a dog might die or grandpa might die, and the child is upset, and the parent can't handle the child's grief. "So snap out of it, it's just a dog," or, or, "Yeah, get over it, people die," you know. Um, or a child experiences anger-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:04 Mm

Gabor Maté 9:04 ... uh, 'cause you didn't give them a cookie before dinner, you know, and a two-year-old throws a tantrum, and you can't handle it. Um, I think you and I have talked about this before.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:13 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 9:13 Then the child gets the message that in order to be acceptable to the parent, they have to suppress their emotions. So when these people talk about that, and that suppression of emotion, as I've often made the case with you and in my books, actually undermine health and, and, and our physiology and our immune system. So when these people, in their dying weeks, regret not having had the courage to express their emotions, what they're really talking about is that a long time before, when they were children, they were forced to suppress their emotions for the sake of being accepted.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:51 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 9:52 And now they regret it 'cause they, they sense that they were forced to abandon themselves.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:59 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 9:59 And so again, I would remove the word courage and ask, instead of judging them for lacking courage, I would say, "What happened to them?" Because again, no infant ha- lacks the capacity to express their emotions.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:15 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 10:17 So if they lose it, it's 'cause they learned that they had to.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:21 In terms of something practical around this point, Gabor, if, if there's any parents listening, and their kids, let's say, sometimes get angry or have a tantrum-

Gabor Maté 10:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:37 ... whatever it might be.

Gabor Maté 10:38 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:39 Of course, there is a, a certain conditioning in our modern, certainly in Western society, about what one should do about that.

Gabor Maté 10:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:48 Given your view in terms of what is important for a child-

Gabor Maté 10:52 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:52 ... and what you've just said, what would you encourage a parent to do when their child is, I was gonna use the word playing up, but that, that's a ridiculous term because playing up is a societal construct.

Gabor Maté 11:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:05 The child is just expressing emotions, and we're calling it playing up because we don't like, you know, what it's doing or-

Gabor Maté 11:12 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:12 ... what the people next door are thinking or whatever it might be, right?

Gabor Maté 11:14 The North American term is acting out.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:17 Acting out.

Gabor Maté 11:17 Yeah. Do they use that phrase here? Uh, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:19 Yeah, they do. They, they use this phrase here.

Gabor Maté 11:21 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:21 So, so going back to that, um, the parent who may be struggling but wants to be a better parent, wants to go, "Actually, you know what, Gabor? I really want to make sure that I allow my child to express their emotions."

Gabor Maté 11:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:36 "Do you have any advice for me?"

Gabor Maté 11:37 Well, I do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:37 What would you say to them?

Gabor Maté 11:38 No, I do. Well, so, you know, there's, um, we can talk about three modes of parenting. One is the permissive parenting, where you allow any behavior and you don't intervene or, you know. That's not... That's the worst thing you can do. Kids need to-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:55 But that is allowing them to express themselves.

Gabor Maté 11:58 Yeah, but-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:59 I think

Gabor Maté 12:00 ... uh, uh, there's a difference. Uh-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:01 Okay

Gabor Maté 12:02 ... they might express themselves by hitting their sibling, for example, and you don't allow that. Parents need to f- kids need to feel that somebody's in charge.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:09 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 12:10 Parenting is not a democracy. It's a hierarchy. Um, in a hierarchy, there's a dominant-Force. The parent dominates the child not to exploit or to suppress, but to nurture and to support, you know? So that, you know, y- you live in Manchester, and I don't know how cold it gets in Manchester, but if you have a one-year-old child, they don't get to vote on whether they get to crawl outside in the wintertime in Manchester, you know, naked, you know? The parent says, "No, you don't go outside naked, you know? You have got to put clothes on." That's just how it is. It's a hierarchy. It's not a democracy. The one-year-old doesn't get a vote-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:47 Okay

Gabor Maté 12:47 ... on g- being going into the, into the slush and the snow in the middle of December or whenever. Um, so that's permissive parenting. That's not very good. Uh, then there's repressive parenting, which some experts that we've talked about advocate. That's authoritarian parenting. In between them is the golden mean. So there's permissive parenting here, authoritarian parenting here, then there's authoritative parenting in the middle. Authoritative parenting is, "I'm in charge. I know what's good for you.

Gabor Maté 13:18 Um, I'm the authority, um, so I know what to do with you." So if a child is upset, you say, "Oh, you're upset. You know, you're angry with Mommy. Mommy won't let you have a cookie before dinner. Yeah. You're really upset about that. Yeah. Well, come here. I know how you feel." In other words, you validate the emotion, you don't punish the child for it, and you hold the child, 'cause the child needs to learn that they can go through these difficult emotions and get through them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:47 And still be loved.

Gabor Maté 13:48 And still be loved, yeah. Now, that doesn't mean you let them pull the cat's tail or to break the, break the glass, you know, or, uh, smash the furniture or hit their sibling, but it does mean you validate the emotions and you hold them. And then they learn, "Ah." And, and actually, and when they... And it's also age-specific.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:09 Mm.

Gabor Maté 14:11 Like, y- there's no point saying to an angry one-and-a-half-year-old, "Let's find... Let's express it through words." They don't have the words.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:18 Mm-hmm.

Gabor Maté 14:18 But to a five-year-old you can say, "Can we find some words for your anger?" In other words, you can teach them to express their emotions in ways that are, um, socially appropriate.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:30 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 14:31 So at any age, you have to be age-appropriate, but fundamentally, you validate the emotions, and you hold the child, and you make them feel that you can have these emotions. I don't want you behaving that way, but you can have the emotion, and I'm not gonna reject you for it. It's not that hard, and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:47 No

Gabor Maté 14:47 ... people do it un- intuitively sometimes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:49 Yeah. And the impact of parenting like that will be felt for the rest of that child's life.

Gabor Maté 14:58 Well, absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:00 And that's the key, isn't it? You look at, look around society. It's very, very hard to not make the case that we have to set up society so that those early years are where the kids get good nutrition, they have calm environments, they have present parents. You know, I'm always shocked at the amount of leave that, um, people in America-

Gabor Maté 15:24 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:24 ... get or mothers get in jobs in America. I think one of my friend's partners in America got two weeks off.

Gabor Maté 15:32 Oh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:32 Which, which I, I, I thought, what? Two weeks off after giving birth.

Gabor Maté 15:36 Well, when I researched The Myth of Normal, I found that 25% of women in the States go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, which 25% of women. Now, needless to say, this is both economically and racially determined, but it means that it's a massive abandonment of the child-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:54 Yeah

Gabor Maté 15:55 ... 'cause as from the point of view of the development of enzymes in the child, the child's physiological unfoldment, psychological security, they need the mother for many, many, many, many months. And you try and take an infant away from a, an orangutan at two weeks and see what happens.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:13 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 16:13 You know? And, uh, in fact, they've done some very cruel studies with monkeys that shows the impact of maternal deprivation at those early ages. You know, studies that are terrible to read about.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:30 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 16:31 And they prove what? They prove that love and contact and connection is important, something we should've known all along.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:37 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 16:37 But the point is that the statistic that 25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of work, within two weeks of giving birth, it's a massive abandonment of children, the s- the impact of which will show up in their mental and physical health decades on.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:53 Yeah.

Gabor Maté 16:54 And then they wonder why there's so many problems. [upbeat music]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:57 If you enjoyed that short clip, I think you are really going to enjoy the full conversation, which you can check out here. [upbeat music]