How To Stop Feeling So Lost, Anxious, Stressed & Unhappy | Dr. Gabor Maté

how can somebody escape the victim mindset well so if I was talking to a person like that I would say first of all I get it cuz I've been to that place myself I mean I've had moments when I didn't think life was worth living and I imagined my own suicide never that I planned it or I was going to do it but I kind of fantasized it you know I've been to those places so I get it secondly I would say I feel that the world's against me that's not a feeling it's a belief

okay if you have that belief it's because at some point you had that experience but you're not having that experience right now that experience was that of a child who was helpless and alone so what showing up in your belief system is not your present situation but your childhood emotional experience and like I said before in the present we can heal no matter what happened then we can heal in the present so the first thing I would ask a person like that is are you willing to consider that healing is possible for you or have

you totally given up by the way a person who's totally given up wouldn't be telling you this because when people talk this way whether they know it or not they're asking for help if they weren't asking for help they wouldn't say anything they just slink off of their own and isolate themselves and as some people do so anybody who speaks the way that you just cited is already whether they know it or not they're looking for help and if that's the case then they can be helped and so that's the second point is don't try

and solve this on your own we're human beings we're creatures that evolved in connection and Community you're not alone with this it may feel like you're alone and you certainly might feel lonely but you're not in fact alone Millions feel exactly the same way and they're not crazy and you're not crazy those beliefs and feelings are normal responses to abnormal circumstances so that's how I begin working with the people with a person with that mindset and I guess to take this one step further you know I've heard you talk about like that one of the

main problems with society today is that a lot of people who have mental health struggles and they're struggling with situations like this where they feel stuck and they can't get out of their own way at times they feel like people are against them they're dealing with trauma and then they you know they might go see somebody who's not trained in trauma they don't have the experience like how can somebody begin to take that path and make sure that they're finding somebody that is like you know trained in that and then also that they're able to

self-regulate themselves when needed well that's a huge question because unfortunately look I've been through medical training I'm a physician and uh the average physician never hears any of the stuff I just talked about the average psychiatrist doesn't get any training in trauma not in they learned something with PTSD which is a specific form of trauma but they learn they don't learn about the traumatic basis of depression and anxiety and ADHD and they they learn nothing about it so that it's very difficult to find good help within the medical system now many therapists also don't get

any such training there's a lot of therapists that are designed only to change your beliefs and your behaviors but not to address the fundamental reasons for those behaviors so a lot of psychologists trained in CBT cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy a lot of them are not really and I know this believe me I know this they just don't know much about or anything about trauma then they can't help you with the fundamental wound that you're carrying they can help you with the manifestation and that's not that's not useless but they can't help you

heal at your core so then there are therapies that are deeper than that there is um body based therapies such as somatic experiencing developed by my friend and teacher Peter Dr Peter LaVine there's sensory motor Psychotherapy developed by P Ogden there's EMDR that works for some people there's internal family systems or IFS devel my friend and colleague Dr Richard Schwarz this compassionate inquiry which is based on my work and I train therapists in that method there are others other names I could mention there's Larry heler Lawrence heler in his work and his students so what

you have to look for is somebody who's trauma informed and is willing to work with you not just on your behaviors but on your core wounds of which the behaviors are symptoms yeah thanks for bringing that up because like my own experience I mean I've struggled off and on with my mental health over the years I mean I've told you a bit about my story in our last conversation and you know when I would go there wasn't like a lot of talk about my childhood there was it was just like all right you're having some

anxiety cool like here's a pill and then I would just take it and I would just think okay this is going to cure my anxiety and then I would realize like it's not really I'm still getting anxiety I'm still struggling like what's going on with this and it wasn't until I understood like my past and my trauma and how that was all related related to what I was experiencing in the present that things were able to change and so let's just say that that somebody has now they found somebody they're comfortable with that's helping them

heal their trauma and change their present and their current behaviors and patterns and that sort of thing and then they go down weeks down the road months down the road and they're on the up and up but get triggered or they experience a situation where they're like oh my gosh like I thought I was getting better why is this coming up what's your advice to people who are dealing with triggers when they're on the road to uh recovery from trauma well there's two ways to ask that question that you just raised why is this coming

up is that a question what is it actually what is this teaching me no when you say why is this coming up like that that's not a question it's a statement it's a statement that says this shouldn't be happening to me okay now you ain't going to learn anything that way but if you actually ask it hm I wonder why this is coming up no you can learn something if I came to you and said why are you doing this how would that feel to you I get probably get defensive and I would just feel

like a little ashamed exactly but what if I said hm I wonder why you doing this it would force me to think a little bit and practice the pause and say well I don't know if it would force you but at least it would invite you right right right right yeah now so that's the first point is is how should we ask this question it's a good question but we have to ask it as a question not as a statement of resentment or resistance that's the first point the second point is use the word trigger

really great word now if I showed you a rifle with a trigger how big a part of the rifle is the trigger it's very small very small for that trigger to set off anything that what there has to be there has to be a mechanism to deliver ammunition there has to be ammunition there has to be an explosive charge when I get triggered let's say you say something to me and I get triggered what you say it was a very small little thing I'm the one who's got the explosive charge and the ammunition you didn't

cause me to do that if I didn't have that ammunition and explosive charge you could say whatever you want and I just sit here saying hm I wonder why he's saying that you know so triggering is a great opportunity to learn when you get triggered you could either focus on resent and resist the trigger or you could say huh what was I still carrying inside that I haven't looked at yet that I haven't resolved yet so if you know I used to tell the story you know being married to 50 years now my wife and

I so let's say 20 years ago um I might ask to sleep with her and she would say no you know which is nobody can ever believe that that ever happened but it did used to happen you know and how would I respond I would respond by going to a rage and curling into a fetal position and not even wanting to live okay now the trigger is the no that she said the explosive is my belief that I'm being rejected and Abandoned and not wanted and that I'm an infant and helpless which is what happened

to me otherwise if she says no oh I can get curious are you tired or have I done something to turn you off or is there something youone we can talk about or I can just be disappointed and let go of it and say okay well thanks you know there'll be another day so how I respond is not dependent on the external event is dependent on what charge I'm carrying so triggers are wonderful times to learn about yourself so if you ask a question not why did I react that way but huh I wonder why

I reacted that way now there's a whole lot of learning to be done so that's what I call Compassionate curiosity where we actually curious about ourselves but not in a self- judgmental way but in a compassionate way oh this brought up the pain of rejection obviously I'm still carrying that that wound well let's look at that cuz it's not happening in the present I'm glad you brought that up and that we have to change the language and how we talk to ourselves during those moments because for me personally I'm extremely hard on myself so that

like voice that you were saying like you know like why is this happening or why is it doing this to me like that's something that I've said in my life very very frequently because of the fact that I'm really hard on myself I sometimes when something doesn't go my way or when I get triggered or bothered by something even though I've done a lot of work on myself I'm I'm so hard on myself because I'm like gosh like I'm better than this I know I should be doing better than this so that was really eye

opening for me so thanks for sharing that well and you know that voice in your head that tells you all that stuff in this book I actually talk about getting into a relationship with that voice because this is what I call a stupid friend you know because at some point that voice came along when you were quite small see if you were suffering as a kid or things weren't going well there's two assumption the child could make unconsciously what one is the world is dangerous my parents don't know how to love me value me I

can't trust anybody I'm all alone I'm going to suffer in this world the other belief unconsciously is there's something wrong with me and maybe if I work hard enough I can fix it now which belief is more protective for the child do you think the second one is more protective exactly so it came along as kind of a friend to keep you going it's a friend I say it's a stupid friend the reason I'm joking when I call it stupid but the stupidity comes in cuz it doesn't learn that you're no longer that child it

keeps giving you the same message so my suggestion Doug is next time you hear that voice say hello to it and say thank you you know what because ask yourself how old is that voice I mean what how old were you when it first came along I mean I was young because I remember there was this idea that I developed about myself from when I was a child that I wasn't good enough because I wasn't picked for sports teams I got yelled at a lot so give me an age five six seven yeah I mean

I would say I was in elementary school I think but let's call him a seven-year-old this voice is a seven-year-old kid telling you a story so say hi to it hello I got it you're still working to make me better in this world but you know what relax kid I can take care of it now you know it it's this just a little immature little friend that's all it is it didn't come along to torment you it came along to actually protect you right and I think you're right it's so important to have a conversation

with that voice and then also change the conversation with that and then along the lines of like you know childhood one of the things that my audience wanted me to talk to you about more in depth is is like parenting and that parents are having a hard time right now I think with their kids growing up in this world that is hard you're easily distracted you're easily addictive you're easily on your screen all the time like what advice do you have for parents who are who are raising kids in this world today so that they

can you know raise them to the best of their ability it's very difficult ult to risc is these days because we're not living in the way that human beings evolved like every animal evolves in a certain environment and context and is suited to that environment and context if you want to understand elephants don't study them in a zoo study them out in uh in the forest or where they live you know and human beings we no longer live in the environments even close to the image we evolved out there in nature in small groups connected

to each other parenting kids was used to be a group activity it happened in the tribe in the clan parents had lots of support kids spent their whole day around their parents it wasn't goodbye in the morning hello in the evening and most of our time is spent away from each other that would never used to be the case not through millions of years and 100 thousands of years now we can't go back to that life you know nor would anybody want to necessarily but we have to understand what we've lost so first of all

you have to understand a few things understand a few things the great Buddhist teacher tikad Han who died about a year ago he said that the greatest gift a parent can give to their child is his or her own happiness so take care of your emotional states because your kid is sensitive enough to be downloading your emotional states and making them their own so if you're stressed unhappy depressed anxious addicted believe me your kid is going to absorb all that and make it about themselves that there's something wrong with them so take care of yourself

live a life that you can live with and if you get the first three years right by the way you got it made so your kids are really small consciously make the first three years as stressfree and as clear of psychologial dysfunction as possible that means work on your traumas work on your relationship with your partner your spouse that's the first thing beginning with pregnancy by the way number one number two understand what the needs of children are needs of children are for unconditional loving Acceptance in the context of a secular relationship where the child

doesn't have to work to make the relationship work the acceptance and the regard should be unconditional allow the child to have all their emotions what are the emotions are let the child have them understand them don't force them to suppress their emotions I'm not saying be permissive with behaviors I'm saying don't force the child to suppress their emotions don't tell them not to be angry don't tell them to cheer up when they're sad validate the anger validate the sadness these are essential brain circuits for such feelings nature gave them those for reason allow the child

to experience them that way they can stay connected to themselves thirdly there's a need for spontaneous free play out in nature get the hell away from these devices don't give a one-year-old an iPad or a cell phone get rid of the screens in your house when your kids are small have a screen in a locked room for yourself if you need one but don't be phoning and texting and and emailing around your kids cuz the message they get is the devic is more important than they are don't go for a walk with them and texting

and looking at your cell at the same time don't give the kids these devices they've been documenta shown to interfere with the healthy development of brain circuits this has been shown on brain scans so if I was raising kids today I wouldn't let them near a screen for years on the other hand I would encourage them to be outdoors be with them play with in nature spontaneous creative play so these are the essential needs of children I talked about in this book They're difficult to provide in this culture cuz if you do any of this

stuff you'll be an outlier cuz all your friends and all your kids friends parents will be on their cell phones all the time so you have to make a decision not to buy into the false values of this what I call this toxic culture so that's some basic advice you know easily said hard to achieve but at least these are the goals that we need to be striving for I wish I had known this stuff when my kids were small that's