How to stop people pleasing and set authentic boundaries while staying kind: Gabor Maté

foreign [Music] about this question of authenticity so here's how it works how it works is and some of you may have heard me say this before but how it works is a child is in need a child is an absolute need for what we call attachment attachment being the drive to be close to somebody so we can be taken care of that human child being the most immature helpless underdeveloped and for the longest period of time creature in the universe or a period of attachment is very very long but especially in the early years it's

absolutely indispensable we just don't can't live with I can't survive without attachments no mammal can but at least to look in human beings so we have this need to attach to be close to people so they'll take care of us that's obvious we have another need though that Evolution gave us which is to be as you said authentic and authentic is not some fancy new age a spiritual state it's actually feeling your gut feelings it's absolutely essential less demonstrated let me ask you all a question I'll get a show of hands if you've had the

experience of having a strong gut feeling about something then you ignored it and you were sorry afterwards just raise your hand okay the vast majority of people here why is that because God's feelings were given us by nature to sense danger or safety that's what they've given to us for we evolved in the wild we've all done there in nature we've all got there for millions of years and even our own species until if our own species has existed for an hour then until six minutes ago we lived out there in nature now how long

does any animal living in nature survive without their gut feelings so it's essential Park what happens is a two-year-old you're angry about something you're angry because you didn't get a cookie before dinner you know if your mom or dad are doing their job they're not gonna give you a cookie before dinner so you're gonna get angry well that's all right but what happens if your Mom and Dad read many many psychology books Jordan Peterson for example uh who uh who says that an angry child should be made to sit by themselves until they come back

to normal now the only way we develop emotional health is if we're allowed to feel all our emotions as children including anger grief sadness Joy but some families they can't handle that maybe the father grew up in a home where there was a lot of yelling and he can't stand the kid yelling so he gives the message that if you're angry you're gonna sit by yourself in other words I'm going to threaten you with the loss of the most important thing to you which is the attachment relationship if you feel your feelings you're going to

be disattached when you no longer feel your feelings you can come back and talk to me well not as a conflict or what happens if the parents are in conflict with each other there's a lot of stress and the child just doesn't want to bother them with their own emotions so now the child becomes the Parents emotional caregiver by suppressing their own feelings so there's this conflict between attachment and authenticity so in that conflict attachment is going to win every time and people suppress their authenticity and specifically if they weren't loved for who they are

they're going to work very hard to be liked and if you want to be like just please everybody never say no take everything on be responsible for other people feel never disappoint anybody they're all gonna like you but nobody's going to love you because they don't know you so it will work in this and not only that then there's all the social expectations that you should fit in and think like everybody else thinks or dress like the old dress or behave like they all behave you know so there's all these pressures not to be yourself

and then what happens is you get sick you get depressed you get anxious you get cancer you get autoimmune disease you you get addicted because the pain of not being yourself is too much so how do you get back to yourself well the good news is that the self that you abandoned all those years ago not deliberately not consciously and it was never your fault but what happens is that that self that you disconnected from which is the essence of trauma is the disconnection from yourself that never went away it's still there and it's talking

to you and it's talking to you through your body and it's talking to Theory emotions so it's a matter of learning how to pay attention and at some point you have a decision to make as a child I had no choice when there was a conflict between attachment here authenticity over here I had to choose I didn't even choose because it's not conscious I had to go with the attachment as an adult I don't have to anymore and yes if I'm authentic I may lose some of my attachments some people who really liked me before

will not like me so you lose the attachment and you have a decision to make what would you rather have who you'd rather have in your life than or yourself that's the decision you're gonna have to make some time like this Saturday