Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma

is it fair to say that your childhood and the conditions and the experiences that you have directly create or cause ADHD addiction and autoimmune issues that's right if you look at children in poverty or or who experience racialized circumstances they're more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD the children of women with postpartum depression are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD the children of women who are stressed during pregnancy are more like to be diagnosed with ADHD there's no parent blaming here but we have to recognize the importance and impact of early experiences the diagnosis

doesn't explain anything what do you mean the diagnosis doesn't mean anything don't ask why the addiction ask why the pain and if you want understand the pain look at the person's life rather than just their genes hey it's your friend Mel I so excited that you're here with me today it is always an honor to be able to spend some time with you to be together to learn together if you're brand new I want to take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family super excited that you're here and because you chose

to listen to this episode I know something about you you're the type of person who values your time and you're also in learning about simple ways that you can improve your own life and I absolutely love that and you know what I also love I love that you and I are going to get spend time today learning from the extraordinary Dr Gabor mate he's a world renowned physician a New York Times best-selling author and a renowned addiction expert who dies deep into childhood development and the impact of physiological and psychological trauma and how it shapes

our mental and physical health over your lifetime and today specifically you and I are going to dive deep with Dr mate into how ADHD people pleasing addiction your inability to say no and autoimmune disorders are not things that you're born with they were created by your childhood so please help me welcome Dr Gabor mate to the Mel Robins podcast thank you I'm really excited about the topic today and your work around how childhood conditions and experiences in your childhood are connected to ADHD addiction and autoimmune diseases and disorders and I have so many questions I

want to ask you why don't we start with just your definition of what you're talking about when you mean childhood conditions so that as the person is listening to us today and spending time with us together we're all using the same words and Concepts and we kind of start on the same page so child conditions include the physical conditions um nutrition housing um comfort protection but they also include the emotional conditions which it has to do with um a child's sense of being accepted or being loved or not just as loved but actually being seen

understood and also in the Parents emotional states um are the parents stressed are the parents struggling with economic difficulties uh other parents carrying traumas that they hadn't worked through yet like I had when I was a young parent um other par parents in a marriage that's relatively peaceful is there a lot of conflict there's a lot of instability is there unpredictability what kind of Community Support there is is there an extended family that can spell off the parents and give them some kind of emotional support are they rather isolated are you single parent struggling to

make a living and raise a child so all these conditions affect the personality and the Brain development of the child I know you wrote the original book on childhood development in ADHD scattered Minds 25 years ago it is still on the bestseller list when it comes to ADHD topics yeah I don't know if I'm going to say this correctly but is it fair to say that your opinion is that your childhood and the conditions and the experiences that you have directly create or cause ADHD addiction and autoimmune issues yes along with certain genetic predispositions okay

but I can talk about genetics later but what I want to say about them now is a predisposition is not as a same as a predetermination okay so you can have predispositions but then depending on the environmental conditions those predispositions can be expressed one way or another way so you can have animals with the same genes or humans with the same genes they have very different outcomes depending on the kind of condition under which the early years were spent under so that's what I'm saying yes and um and the first recognition of that in my

life came when I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 53 or 52 or something so I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 46 okay when our son Oakley was going through the process of going through neuros pych evaluations for schools and IEPs and as they were doing his evaluations I started going oh wait a minute that's not that's a lot like me yeah and then I went through the formal process of being evaluated and diagnosed dyslexia ADHD yeah and I had never ever ever heard anyone connect your childhood and adverse conditions or conditions

where you didn't get your needs met yeah being a contributing factor or a cause of ADHD how is that even possible well it's possible because Western medicine and separates the Mind from the body so they tend to look at things purely from a biological point of view so ADHD is considered to be a genetic disease that you inherited here's the problem with that number one if that's the case why the numbers going up genes don't change in a population over 10 20 or 30 years so something's going on in the environment that's affecting the Child

Development number one number two even if you look at the physiology of the child's brain was not understood by most Physicians because it's not taught in the medical schools but it's first firmly and completely unequivocally and uncontroversially established in brain science is that the brain is a social product that the brain development of the child depends on the emotional conditions under which the child lives from In Utero onwards and so that um the very circuitry of the child's brain it's programmed by the action of the environment on the genes so different environments will act differently

on the same genes no if you look at ADHD yes what's the medication that we give I took it for while stimulant yeah what do stimulant do they elevate the level of a chemical called dopamine in the brain and dopamine is essential for motivation and therefore for focus and that's what rline and dexedrine and Nal and all these medications Elevate now the dopamine ccy of the child's brain develops in interaction with the environment and this is what most people who deal with ADH they just don't look at even though it's just a pure scientific fact

you know and the summary from Harvard University pointed out that the child's brain develops in interaction with the environment especially the emotional relationship with the nurturing adults now dopamine is a brain chemical we have receptors for in our brain and receptors are molecules where the dopamine can land and do his job the number of dopamine receptors in a child is affected by stress on the mother already in pregnancy let alone afterwards if you take mice um and you isolate them the number of dopamine receptors will go down if you bring back back into companionship the

number of dopamine receptors we Elevate in other words the brain is a social organ it's interactive with the environment all our lives and therefore environmental conditions affect the brain especially during its phase of early development it's just pure science is not even controversial so the problem here is the tendency of the medical profession in which I was trained is to separate the Mind from the body and to look at brain biology in isolation from the life circumstances that shape that brain biology so that's one problem here so I'm going to try to distill what you

just said because I've never heard it explained quite like that and I believe you what you're saying is that your brain is a social organ that is developed in partnership with your relationship to the adults around you exactly when you are when you're literally inside your mother's womb yeah all the way until you are you know developing as a little kid yeah and if you are in a condition whether it is the condition of being inside your mother's womb and your mother is depressed or experiencing racism or abuse or poverty or any of these things

that create chronic stress on a human being it impacts the development of your brain exactly and what you're also saying is that ADHD and the way that it is treated is typically through prescription drugs that's right that flood the brain with dopamine yeah and that is what helps your underdeveloped brain or whatever we want to call it or the brain that's been impacted by stressful conditions during your childhood or your development in in womb and that the stressful conditions are what has interfered with the brain development and continues to now can I ask you a

quick question yeah so I understand that when as a human human being you're experiencing stress yeah or you are experiencing a threat yeah or you're feeling isolated and lonely and like you're invisible or nobody cares about you yeah that it switches between that your body naturally switches from being present and in the prefrontal cortex to the amydala taking over and you're now in like fighter flight when you're in fighter flight and you're kind of in that stress response state does it interfere with dopamine it interferes with dopamine it interferes with uh cortisol it has effect

on the memory centers in the brain like the hippocampus it affects the amydala all those things and uh if you look at children in poverty or or who experience um racialized circumstances they're more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD the children of women with postpartum depression are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD the children of women who are stressed during pregnancy are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and there's this myth about it being genetic because it tends to run in families like you were diagnosed your kids are diagnosed I was diagnosed a

couple of my kids are diagnosed but it's not because the the so-called disease P it's not even a disease but it's not because the so-called disease was passed on but because the conditions that they created your beingin were also then repeated in your children's childhood as in mine so something running in a family says nothing about genetic causation and uh going back to the flight or fight thing if a child is feeling stressed and by the way I think there is something genetic here and what is genetic here sensitivity and the more sensitive kids are

the more they feel what's going on around them so if the family If the parents are stressed the child feels the stress can the child Escape or fight back no what did they do they tune out but when did they tune out they tune out when the brain is developing so that gets wired into the brain and now they're told you got this genetic disease no you don't it's an adaptation that it began as an adaptation and as as with many of these childood adaptations later on they create problems so they serve their purpose but

now they are wired in and you know not to mention if you look at the traits of ad HD which is the absent mindedness the tuning out and then the other traits of ADHD are poor impulse regulation which means that when you want to do something like I might have an Impulse to do something there's nothing with nothing wrong with the impulse but there's something wrong with me acting out the impulse but impulse regulation depends on certain circuitry in the brain no baby is an Impulse regulation it has to develop for anything that's developmental the

conditions have to be right if a plant in your backyard wasn't growing the way you expected it youd look at what's missing here nutrition sunlight irrigation it's the same with kids when they got these challenges let's look at the conditions that shape their development so impul regulation is another brain circuitry that doesn't develop well in people with ADHD and incidentally in people who are addicted which is why there's such a great link between addictions and ADHD and then the third one is which is sometimes they're not always hyperactivity yeah more tends to be they more

boys not girls Y and regulation of the body is a function of the midfrontal cortex that has to develop so under conditions of stress given that the brain is a social organ and it's also a historical organ I do you know that does the name Bruce Perry mean anything to you is he in Wisconsin I don't know where he is but he's a well wellknown child trauma py yes he's I believe he's in Milwaukee Wisconsin I think but don't quote me on that did he write the book with Oprah win yeah he wrote the book

what what happened to you and he says the brain is a historical organ so it stores the impacts of Life Experiences so when we look at brain biology let's not think that the biology is somehow distinct and separated from life experience so there's no fault laying here and sometimes I do get accused of blaming parents it's the last thing I want to do I don't hear you blaming parents I hear you talking very factually no but but but there's a very well-known ADHD psychologist who goes on YouTube and says I blame parents and I don't

actually I think parents do their best they love their kids but their best is limited by their own particular challenges and limitations you know there's no parent blaming here but we have to recognize the importance and impact of early experiences so what I'm saying is that ADHD is the result of all that stress and its impact on the brains of especially sens genetically sensitive kids that's what inherited that's what's inherited is the sensitivity but but if there was only the sensitivity and optimal conditions they never have ADHD so it's not the ADHD that's inherited it's

the sensitivity now that's the good news because if if you were a parent with a kid with ADHD and if I was the doctor yeah and I said to you madam you got your kids got this genetic condition brain biology nothing we can do about it but here's some medication or if I said to you uh Mel you know your child's got this condition Your Child's Very Sensitive very responsive to the environment and even now at age eight or age 16 or whenever if we can create different conditions the brain can still develop in different

ways which message would you rather go with the second yeah of course this is a much more optimistic and much more science-based um attitude but unfortunately again given the dominance of Pharmaceutical companies and the biological mindedness what they call biological psychiaty which is just fixating on no biology and fixing it rather than looking at the conditions that shave topology we're very much stuck in a state where hundreds of thousands and millions of kids are being medicated and which and I'm not against medications I prescribed them I've taken them but they're not the answer what's fascinating

is that when you really wrap your brain around it it makes a lot of sense and I'm sure you're familiar with that metaphor it's not the most elegant metaphor that the genetics loads the gun yeah but the environment that pulls the trigger which means you come into this world predisposed to certain things but it's the environment that either deactivates or activates what you're predisposed to exactly so that makes perfect sense and the other thing that makes perfect sense in terms of my lived experience yeah is being diagnosed with ADHD late in life yeah and also

having a son yeah and two daughters that have ADHD yeah we were in Boston in a very competitive public school system in the go go go both spouses working running to the club sports doing this doing that busy busy busy busy busy yeah when we moved to Southern Vermont uhhuh open face amazing things change you change that's what I'm saying because the environment changes and if you just think about being on vac yeah you leave the go go go go of your dayto day and your work and your Social and all that stuff and you

step away to a space that typically has a little bit more open space yeah and a different pace to your life you change that's right and so I feel because I was about to ask you well why does this matter to know this but I feel that it matters deeply because if environmental conditions can shape your brain as a child and we know that the brain develops and grows and changes through neuroplasticity through your entire life yeah then environmental changes I suppose also help you change and address these conditions absolutely and so when a family

with ADHD child would come to me once I had this recognition I would say well we can consider medication in the short term if we need to but it's not the first step it's never should be the only step can we look at the family atmosphere can we look at the relationship between the parents can we look at the stresses on the family can you understand the child's behavior in a way that doesn't blame the child because these kids tend to be blamed a lot for how they behave now we talk about this phrase acting

out kids are acting out which usually means they're being obstreperous Oppositional Defiant or non-cooperative or rude or something it means they're not doing what the parent wants them to do yeah yeah but let's look at the phrase acting out is English meaning we act something out when we don't have the language to say it in words so in the game charades we not allowed to speak what do you have to do act it out you have to act out these kids behaviors are simply acting out their emotional needs and Dynamics it's up to the parents

to understand that rather than just to respond or react to the behavior in a controlling or punitive way let's understand what is being acted out which is one of the reasons I wrote that book is I want parents to understand what is is being acted out in his child's behavior and if you change the relationship to the child the child's Behavior will change so it's not Behavior control it's actually promoting different conditions that'll support the child's healthy development you know this reminds me of something that's always really just made me feel very heartbroken about the

state of society in the world particularly in the United States and that is when I was going through this experience where my husband and I were having our son go through the process of all the evaluations the school kept saying this is behavioral behavior and we were like I don't think so I don't think so yeah and so we were in a position to be able to have him tested here in Boston yeah at Mass General outside the school yeah and just three years prior we would not have been able to afford to do that

I understand and that diagnosis and understanding that his brain and the way that he learned and the development of his brain was just different that's right and changed the trajectory of his life and my life and before I did what I do now my earlier in my career I was a public defender in Manhattan yeah I read that doing criminal defense work yeah the statistics of people who are incarcerated yeah with ADHD yes with ADHD with learning differences who were never diagnosed that's who when you trace it back to what you're saying childhood conditions a

parent who is absent chronic racism which is a form of trauma yeah it makes very depressing and sad and unfair sense absolutely and I think a lot about the fact that it's simply because we were able to at that moment in our lives yeah to be able to afford a test yeah that sent him in One Direction when kids who don't have that are sent in a different one yeah we actually hurting people for having been hurt yes and then they act thought that hurt and then we blame them for it rather don't understand what

that's all about let me say something else the diagnosis doesn't explain anything what do you mean the diagnosis doesn't mean anything so male or gab or have ADHD how do we know well they absent minded they have poor impulse regulation and they're hyperactive why are they absent minded and have course uh uh um UL regulation and why do they have H activity because they have ADHD how do we know they have ADHD because they're hyperactive they tune out and they have Ros control why do they it's circular yes it's not an explanation it's a description

and we may and we mistake Medical practice tends to mistake descriptions for explanations they're not if you want to know why they ha have hyperactive or lack impulse regulation or tend to tune not you got to look at their lives as that as those lives acted on their genes that's the explanation the diagnosis describe something but it doesn't explain anything but understanding this helps you also understand the role that environment oh and how this happened I think descriptions are helpful we just mustn't mistake them for explanations that's all that makes a lot of sense you

know you mentioned addiction yeah and there is a lot of research that shows a direct link between ADHD and addiction yeah and what does your research and experience show about your childhood experience and conditions yeah and the connection to addiction so for for 12 years I worked in Vancouver British Columbus downtown east side which is North America's most concentrated area of drug use we have more drug users there in a few squadb radius than anywhere in the states or anywhere else in Canada in fact anywhere in Europe wow so I was there for 12 years

and um a significant percentage of my patients clearly at ADHD that had not been diagnosed now let's look at the commonalities first of all both addicts and people with ADHD lack impulse control like somebody said about addiction is that the problem is not free will not lack of free no the problem is in addiction is not lack of free will but lack of a free won lack of a free won't won't oh they have nothing to say no with because that circuit we didn't develop okay number one number two addictions all work on the dopamine

system which is what is affected in ADHD as well so stimulus addicts like crystal meth addicts cocaine addicts um nicotine addicts um caffeine addicts they're literally boosting their dopamine levels which is precisely what's the issue in ADHD is as well so if you look at the studies something like a good 30% or more of s and addicts actually are diagnosable with ADHD but again this is this is studied and reported but not much is done with with it in medical practice furthermore all addictions no matter what they are they work on the dopamin circuitry so

that I will Define addiction for you okay as manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief for pleasure and therefore craves but then suffers negative consequences as a result of and doesn't give up despite the harm so craving pleasure relief in the short-term harm inability to give it up that's what an addiction is now let me just go sideways a little bit okay let me ask you a question and you've already answered it but according to that norce said didn't say anything about drugs I said any Behavior yeah no if I speak

to a room of a thousand people and I give that definition and I say according to that definition which is not controversial if you ever had an addictive pattern in your life just raise your hand and out of 1,999 yes well raise their hands and there's one liar who won't you know but basically it's almost everybody now here's the second question and I don't care what your addictive patterns were whether whether they were to alcohol which you mentioned um or to whatever else no what was wrong with it but what was right about it what

did it give you in the short term that you wanted so what did it give you oh well with alcohol it was like a sense of belonging and relief and it was a way to turn turn my brain off okay and to escape okay when do people need to escape when they're stressed when they're suffering yeah okay so the addiction wasn't a disease that you had it wasn't your primary problem it was an attempt to solve the problem of emotional pain and isolation so my mentor under addiction is don't ask why the addiction ask why

the pain and if you want to understand the pain look at the person's life rather than just their genes okay and so both people are addicted and people who ADHD often share these genes for sensitivity which means they suffer more when circumstances aren't right and so they're both more obviously those conditions will go together and furthermore to go back to dopamine the shopping addict the gambling addict the pornography addict the social media addict the social media and I have had my behavior addiction the gaming addiction addict business you know what they're after they're after hit

of dopamine in the brain which they get through seeking that behavior and then you feel bad though that you did it well yeah and I had my behavior addictions but what I'm saying is it's all based partly on the dopamine circuitry and which didn't develop which didn't develop the way it should have so because of your childhood exactly so now you have to get your dopamine H through pornography and if you do brain scans on pornography addicts they get multiple spikes of dopamine hits in their brain when they're just like a drug addict yeah yeah

so so what do you do with this information because it makes perfect sense like I don't I I I don't know how this is would be controversial it makes absolutely perfect sense well how do you what do you do if you're listening to this and you either you yourself are recognizing this is you or you're like you are describing my spouse or my adult child or my parent or whomever in my life like what do you do with this particular information of the con between childhood conditions and development and ADHD and addiction may I just

say one more thing about the brain please yeah opiates okay so people get addicted to heroin or Oxycontin or deloted Hydromorphone or Codine or whatever you know fentin unfortunately which is a very dangerous one um these are opiates they come from the Opium plant in Afghanistan or they human manufactured copies of the same molecule now why do and it's responsible for a lot of debts in this country now why do opiates why does a plant from Afghanistan work in the human brain here in the states I don't know well because the opiate molecule we have

receptors for it in our brains which means we have our internal opiate system this is just pure your brain science and the opiate system it's called endorphins endorphin means endogenous internal morphine like substance so we have an opiate system in our bodies which affects many functions in our body from the gut to the immune system but what do it do what do they do in the brain if we understand opiate addiction we have to understand what do endorphins do in the human uh trajectory first of all they provide pain relief both physical and emotional pain

relief our internal endorphins do that we have to have pain in life because without pain we don't survive because we can hurt ourselves but we also have pain relief so endorphins relieve pain but not just physical pain also emotional pain because the part of the brain where people experience physical pain the suffering of physical pain it's also where they experience the suffering of emotional pain so the endorphins the opiates work there that's their first role the second second role along with dopamine is to give you a sense of pleasure Elation and joy but that's rather

important in human life because human life is difficult so we have to have some expectation of pleasure joy relief that's what the opiates do that's the second thing they do the third thing they do they facilitate the Little Thing Called Love endorphin help to feel as connected to other people and particularly they help feel parent connected to their kids without which the child doesn't survive and if you take little animals and you knock out their op receptors they will not call for their mothers on separation what would that do to them it would kill them

in the wild so that's how important the opiates are now who are these people that develop opiate addictions people whose lives have undermined their op circuitry and at had a sex trade worker in the downtown east side of Vancouver I have what did the Heron do for you she said the first time I did Heron it felt like a warm soft hug so just like the alcohol which gave you more sense of belonging it gave her a sense of being loved a sense of warmth that's why people get addicted is because they suffered that early

pain and that're trying to escape from and because their brain circuitry was affected by adverse conditions so that these circus didn't develop optimally now they have to substitute you know so that's that's the that's a shinny on addiction it's not an inherited disease it's a response to the environment and it's not genetic contrary to what 99% of Physicians believe the reason why this is so important is because there is so much shame and self-blame yeah when you have an addiction yeah or you have something that you're struggling with like ADHD and when you understand the

brain circuitry and the connection to brain development and human development and childhood conditions and experiences and how that has a direct impact yeah on the working and wiring of the functioning of your brain yeah you can separate yourself as a human being that's right from the thing that caused this that's the whole point and then that allows you from that moment of separation and Detachment and objectivity to go oh wait a minute I'm not to blame for this that's right this is a Circ and a conditioning problem it's my responsibility and now it's my responsibility

exactly yeah to do what I need to do with this yeah to heal it and make it better exactly right and and to go back to your question about now what do we do with this information if your parents if you are parents of a child who's been diagnosed with say ADHD M then make a considered medic decision about whether you want to K medicated or not medications can sometimes help sometime they C side effects no child should be forced to be on medication cu no child at any age should be get the message that

they're only acceptable to the adults when their brain is sedated you don't want to give that message to any child but they can help sometimes to mitigate symptoms MH they do nothing for brain development in the long term so then the question is can we create in this family better conditions for that child's brain to develop in more optimal ways and yes we can and that has a lot to do with the emotional atmosphere in the family and the degree of understanding and connection not love because that's already there but they actually understanding and connection

between the parents and the child and I mean that book's been out 25 years and I've been told by so often that it totally changed the family just to read that book you know and it totally changed their children well it's very empowering because I think if you're the person struggling with the addiction or ADHD or a condition like that you feel deficient you feel that you've done something wrong and you can never heal while you're punishing yourself at the same time and the world is punishing you yes teachers are punishing you uh true your

parents are are are are exasperated with you yes you know when it comes to treating addiction then um it's very complex but the person again needs to understand there's nothing wrong with them they weren't born with any kind of disease that addiction is a perfectly normal response to abnormal circumstances I mean look at all the veterans who are traumatized and they become alcoholics or opio attics and then there's the opposite study about the veterans from Vietnam yeah who were using opioids in Vietnam but then came home to a supportive environment exactly and were not addicted

exactly I quote that study in my book on addiction because it's such a Salient fact in fact it's been done with laboratory rats you know where they took laboratory rats and exposed them to different their environmental conditions and they tried to get them addicted to opioids now those rats that were stretched and isolated and and and and under adverse conditions they very easily became addicted to opioids the rats had good conditions you couldn't even make them addicted to opas doesn't matter how much you gave them but the the main thing is is that if the

environment is is actually creating the conditions in your brain and body yeah for addiction and ADHD then the environment is a huge piece of you healing this and growing in new ways and figuring out new adaptations for how to heal well and I think it's not an individual process it should be for the most part it should be you need the social help that's what the 12 step groups are I have my critiques of them but the 12 Steps themselves I think are wonderful and the group process is wonderful where people can share themselves and

be heard compassionately and not be shamed they can declare their so-called dysfunctions and be accepted you know so so I think it's not just an individual process but I think what's missing from the 12 sub GRS unfortunately is awareness of trauma which is interesting because Bill W the original fun was an abandoned child highly traumatized and for some reason trauma hasn't entered the conversation of the 12 step movement as much as I'd like to see it done but again healing should not be just seen as an individual process it should be seen as a social

process and people that deal with addictions they need to understand trauma what do you think is missing from the conversation that women need to know when it comes to diagnosing and supporting women who are largely getting lat in life diagnoses of ADHD yeah I love to think here um I think what happens is when we get older they tend to get a bit less repressed and the tendencies that are in them that they've tried to kind of control in order to be acceptable and to fit in it becomes intolerable for them particularly pmen and posy

it becomes a real chore for wom to to continue to fit The Stereotype in which they were molded so I think what whatever is in them is more likely to show up and I would say to them would I say to anybody get curious about what is being manifested in this condition you know in your book hungry ghosts you mention your own struggles yeah with addictions to praise even to classical music no not to the music Sorry to shopping for classical music oh there's a distinction yes I love the music but that doesn't make me

an addict that just makes me a music lover it's the shopping I would drop $3,000 in a music store and go back two hours later because I had to get the next one typical addictive behavior so it's the it's the shopping that I was addicted to it's the not the having but to the acquisition and that's and you know what when I was in the classical music store I had no ADHD I had high dopamine levels I was focused I can almost remember which record did I buy in which store you know which CD that

I so so just to make the distinction it's not the music it's the shopping I was addicted to I love that distinction because I can relate to it I think in the biggest moments of crisis in my life yeah like facing bankruptcy yeah literally about to lose it all if I had a tiny bit of money yeah I would go to the mall yeah as an escape yeah and I would say given that daily addiction whether it's the mom pouring a couple glasses of wine at or it is just scrolling for 3 hours or it

is mindlessly shopping or whatever it may be what strategies have you found most effective in really either controlling or managing through these Tendencies or patterns of behavior that that so many of us have well here's where we have to make a distinction between drug addictions and behavior addictions because drug addictions are become a very significant chemical problem and and people go through withdrawal and that has to be managed and all that now the behavior addicts by the way also go through withdrawal but it's less noticeable like with my work addiction my work holism when I

was at home I'd go through I'd be irritable and depressed that's withdrawal because the dopamine wasn't flowing you know so but obviously it's more easily manageable so I say two things um one is um let's understand let's look at the need that is serving in your life what is the need it is serving in your life yeah well Doom scrolling for me the need is to tune out no that's not the need what's the what is the need for tuning out serving in your life oh boy um scrolling out is oh I have no joy

play or relaxation okay so you don't know how to um you're not comfortable with yourself you need to you can't just be you have to be doing and your attention to be external yeah but that goes back to Early Childhood it it means that you weren't comfortable and you develop that comfort with the self you didn't develop that sense of your own goodness and validity and so that when you're alone and you're not doing something there's distress and your mind is going all over the place yeah you know so that's the need that it's serving

so then you say well it's meeting this need to escape from myself how can I get how can I learn to be with myself so what what techniques what what could I do and there's ways to do that I mean I I have many suggestions in my books but essentially it's recognizing the need that's being met not invalidating the need validating the need but recognizing that the behavior itself only temporarily suits it but it doesn't meet the need well I feel like I've been fixing the wrong problem because I'm focused on don't drink the drink

don't pick up the phone and what you're saying is no no no you're like over here looking at this thing there's a deeper issue yeah about just learning to be with yourself about learning to be in the 5 to 700 p.m. time zone and and be okay with all that comes up yeah and know that you can move through it without pouring a drink that's the whole point there's nothing wrong with saying don't drink I mean all that it's only that it doesn't it doesn't deal with the fundamental need need so let's recognize the need

those needs are valid your need for social contact or not being isolated and in your book when you experience certain degree of social isolation which you interpreted as rejection and your husband points out you're not being rejected they just you know something else but your childhood programming tells you that it's rejected it's true so does everything come back to our childhood yes pretty much that's when we're were shaped look have you ever had a puppy dog yes two okay well tell me about them I mean how you treat that puppy will not not Define mind

to a significant degree what kind of creature they're going to be it's true yeah well this human beings are infinitely more complex than puppy dogs and it's totally true so what I'm saying is recognize the need validate the need but then ask the question okay how can I meet that need in ways that are not harmful one of the things that you're talking a lot about is the connection between childhood conditions and experiences yeah how they shape you and the significant rise in autoimmune disorders and diseases in women you know the 80% of people 80%

of autoimmune disease which are diseases where the immune system attacks the body that is supposed to protect and can you just what are a few examples of an autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis rheumato arthritis systemic lupus probably fibromyalgia chronic fatigue ulcer of colitis Chon's disease forms of psoriasis um autoimmune eczema um Scleroderma I could go on and on there's about 100 or so of these and 80% of them happen to women why well so in my medical practice I began to notice and here's my advantage over my specialist colleagues is that they know a lot more

about certain body parts and systems as they should but they don't know the patient I knew people before they got sick and I knew them in their context of their families of origin and the m and and and the extended family very often so I got to see who got sick and who didn't and when I was in palot of care again I saw who ended up in P of care and who didn't and these people had four significant characteristics one is they tended to put other people's emotional needs ahead of their own and they

tended to ignore their own number one number two they tended to identify with rules Duty role and responsibility rather than the needs of the self number three they tended to be very nice which means they repressed healthy anger the healthy anger is a boundary defense and these tend people tend to be very nice and number four these people tended to believe that they're responsible for other people feel which is a point that you address in your book let them and that they they had just believe that there was never disappointed anybody mhm now those um

beliefs lead you to not saying no to the demands of the world and you're constantly taking on stuff and stress and other people stress you get stressed that stress undermines the immune system which then turns against you now in this and I could explain the physiology of it and by the way people because the immune system and the hormonal apparatus and the nervous system and the emotional system are one system they're not separate they're wired together in a whole lot of chemical and neurological ways I'm not making this up this is science science is called

psychon Immunology psychology and neurology immunology and endocrinology the hormones it's all one system people that repress healthy anger they're suppressing their immune system biologically no if you understand that it's all one system and if you ask why well what is the role of healthy anger it's a boundary defense what is the role of the immune system it's a boundary defense it's meant to let in what is good and nurture and keep up what is toxic and dangerous when you suppressing your emotions you're also messing with immune system because it's all one it's almost like you're

training your immune system not to protect you from the outside that's what happens and or to turn against you like like anger that you repress turns against you in the form of depression or self-loathing the same way that your negative thoughts where you think you're to blame for all of the stuff going on when you're a child that are not your responsibility turns into the negative selft talk that's aimed against you same way the immune system turns against you wow that's the whole point that makes so much sense well physiologically is just a fact no

why is it women cuz who in this culture is programmed to always looking after everybody El's emotional needs take on everybody's stresses um identify with their duties and their role um be nice all the time not be angry in a healthy way and to take responsibly for other people's feelings it's women it's not a gender issue it's a a cultural issue and so and the and of course the more stresses the women experiences the greater the risk of autoimmune disease so if you look at minority women they have a higher percentage because they women and

they're minority in I was just about to ask you whether or not there were studies for minority women and people that are in first responder many studies many studies and in Canada it makes sense in Canada an indigenous woman has six times the rate of rheumato arthritis than somebody else and this is in a population that never used to have rheumato arthritis and by the way again are we blaming people here no we're not cuz we have to look at what happened here what happened here is the child is born with all these emotions wired

into their brains the child has two big needs here the need for attachment for belonging for being held for being accepted supported and so on that's a need that you have it's not negotiable without it there's an infant as a young child you can you die yeah so that's one need but you have another need as well which I call authenticity which means being connected to your emotions and you got feelings now in any audience when I ask people people have you had the experience of having a strong God feeling about something ignoring it and

being sorry afterwards most people put their hands up you probably would no God feelings were programmed into us by Evolution we evolved out in nature for millions of years hundreds of thousands of years we lived out in nature how long does any creature in nature survive if they don't pay attention to the good feelings uh not until the end of the day you're you're goner that's point so we there two need attachment and authenticity being connected to ourselves now if the child gets the message that they're being authentic with their emotions and so on they're

not acceptable to the environment guess what get in the contest between oh you're got you get trained to not trust your instincts yeah and you're trained to disconnect and you're trained to push down your feelings so we give up for authenticity for the sake of attachment now in your book there's an example of this guy who's about to get married yes and all these misgivings yes and then he's afraid of what everybody else will think yes and you tell and and you're wishing he would say no to the wedding yes you know what's going on

he's stuck in this tension between attachment which is a need to be acceptable and authenticity being himself women are caught in that trap in the society so are many men of course it's not just a gender issue but overwhelmingly it's women who have to choose the attachment they're being acceptable over authenticity that's why they have much more autoimmune disease wow and often I'd say for a lot of us we choose attachment rather than staying connected to ourselves that's the whole point as as a child you have no choice the question is as an adult can

we develop that choice do I have to keep choosing the attachment over the authenticity and I'm telling you I know people with I just finished leading a workshop at k h nearby here two women came up to me and said reading your book when the body says no cured my Ms because I began to say no now I know so many examples of that and not only I other doctors as well well you also hear doctors say that all of these autoimmune dis disorders diseases whatever you want to call them flare up in moments of

stress of course in moments of overwhelm and the main thing that they're treated with is steroids yes and take better care of yourself oh yeah and rest no but but here's it's interesting typically for these conditions we give cortisol a stress hormone yeah yeah like for if you go into the Dermatology with an inflamed skin they're going to give you steroid cream cortisol if you go to a gastroenterologist with an inflamed intestine they'll at some point give you cortisol stress hormone if you go with an inflamed nervous system multiple sclerosis they can give you a

stress hormone cortisol I could go on but we never ask ourselves gosh we're giving stress hormones to people people is it possible that stress may have something to do with their condition so doctors know that in cases of acute stress that can flare up a disease that's clear right what they don't recognize is those emotional patterns that I'm talking about which stress people chronically but in less dramatic ways because what's it like to always having to repress your anger to be pleasing other people that's the whole point and that's what the stress that I think

often instigates You' abandoned yourself and now you're body function is abandoning you that's the whole point is there good news here yeah the good news is if you change these patterns you can actually significantly affect the course of your illness and I know lots of examples of that how can someone find the root cause of the emotional pain or the like how do you begin the process of healing and because you've now painted this landscape that helps us really understand the connection between childhood experiences and condition how that shapes your body your brain function your

physiology your immune system and how continued environmental stress and continued abandonment of self for the sake of being accepted to other PE by other people yeah when you see all this it's incredibly empowering what is one step that you would want someone to take if they're having an Awakening or they've been sent this episode by somebody who loves them and they're like this is me okay so let's take one example simple one prior to your Awakening and transformational journey um that you under undertook sometime in your 40s MH um how easy did you find it

to say no to other people's expectations oh I couldn't okay so you couldn't say no no all right so I ask people this question where in your life do you have difficult saying no uh it shows up in two areas work and in personal life okay so you couldn't say no the second question I asked people then is what's the impact on you of your difficulty saying no it's exhausting I uh don't like my own behavior yeah so it's this shame lack of control lack loss of control loss of control by the way anger all

blaming other people and making it their fault that I can't say no l that's right and uh loss of control is one of the most significant triggers for stress by the way according to the stress literature well that makes sense because we have a biological hardwired need for safety exactly which we try to achieve by controlling everything and everyone around us only because we learned in childhood that if we didn't there'd be no safety if we had learned that there was safety we would trust the world a lot more and we wouldn't have to control

so nobody's a control freak nobody's born a control freak it's a adaptive trait is what that is but here's what I'm saying so that going through this exercise so what's the impact You' Identify some impacts could also be frequent colds illness and so on the third question is what's your belief that keeps you from saying no so when you had trouble saying no what was the story what was the belief if that I would get fired from my job and then we wouldn't be able to pay our bills and then we would lose our house

and then on and on and on and on and on or they wouldn't like me or my mother would be mad at me or you know this would happen or that would happen the weight of the world on my shoulders exactly so then the fourth question is how did you develop that story that if I say no I'll be rejected how where did you learn that I'm sure for me even though I don't quite remember yeah it was that I had to it was my job to make sure everybody was okay in the house and

everybody was happy in other words you learned it and that made me feel safe in other words you learned it when you're two or three or four years old or five yes and now you're adult as you're saying my book let that that's why this has been such a game Cher because when I say let them I separate someone else's emotions and their expectations from what's my responsibility you're choosing authenticity over attachment is what you're doing oh I love that you're right I'm staying connected to myself that's the whole game that's what I'm talking about

here so once you understand that you learned the story when you were hypnotized into it as a by the way three or four year olds are in hypnotic States that's why they believe that when they're playing monsters they're actually monsters you know so those hypnotic influences are really powerful they stay with us so then the next question is who would you be if you didn't believe that you could that you mustn't say no who would you believe who would you be then free exactly do that exercise once a week five questions to Freedom it's in

the mythal normal Des a CH on it there's a sixth question what is the sixth question where you're not saying yes oh my God everywhere to free time to yeah play yeah to Joy to creativity creativity to to rest well that not saying yes is as harmful as the not saying no so those two little words just that little exercise you do that once a week it changes people's lives you just F the the sixth question yeah what are you not saying yes to that one made my heart contract a little mhm okay because that's

where I really saw truly what's what I'm missing out on yeah where are you not saying yes to play um and rest I mean I'm much better than I used to be as a matter of fact I've told the story many times but 5 years ago I was in London giving a talk on my book when the body says no and I was very articulate and Adept on stage but personally I was irritated I was working too hard I was driving myself too hard I was not kind to my wife and she said to me

her name is Ray and she said buddy you written the book called when the body says no now you better why one called when the wife says no and you know so part of what's helped me drop these patterns and I'm still working on it is cuz I love this relationship I it and I I don't want to be this person who's not saying yes I'm an 80 you know I don't again when you look at the top five regrets of dying people you know that book that I mentioned in another conversation this was written

by a paliative care nurse who worked with dying people the top regret was that I didn't have the courage to be myself MH and the third regret was I didn't have the courage to express my emotions and the fifth was and I Ed my friends the fourth and then the fifth one I think was I I I wish I hadn't worked so hard I wish I had played more I wish I had given more scope for the creativity and playfulness and and childlike self that I am you know so I'm still looking for that one

uh to develop it more um I'm a whole lot better than I used to be well we're a whole lot better than we used to be yeah because of what we're learning from you well thank you gabber mate wow any final things you want to say everybody's got the capacity to heal as long as there's Consciousness there's the capacity to heal and um for some people it's tougher because they don't have the resources but you know you can go on YouTube lots of my Talks on YouTube people have told me that changed their lives to

the better doesn't cost a penny and not just my Talks by the way Talks by other wonderful teachers um some of my colleagues some spiritual teachers um that doesn't cost any money to watch that you can take books out of the library that doesn't cost a penny and they can be very helpful you can um learn to meditate and be with yourself and observe your mind that can be very helpful there's free meditation instruction on on on the line or in many books um those people that can afford therapy if it's the right kind of

therapy they can address these issues um they can connect with Nature Nature has got a huge healing capacity as our indigenous people really know we can learn a lot from them about connecting with nature those people that have the capacity to get out of the city and or even go to a park and connect with the plants and the trees and the flowers that sounds hokey but it's hugely healing um exercise uh giving your body what it needs eating the proper food if you can afford it and most people may not be afford the best

foods but they could probably afford to eat better than they do if they paid attention to themselves so all those things are not inaccessible so in other words healing is possible it's avilable to all of us and it just takes the decision to embark on that path well you've empowered us to make the decision today yeah thank you thank you thank you well thank you you it's amazing to spend time with you yeah thanks there is so many people that I want to share this episode with I feel empowered and excited for you and so

I just want to thank you for listening all the way to the end and sharing this with people that you love and I also wanted to be sure to tell you in case no one else tells you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life and listening to this today is certain ly going to help you take the steps to create it and I will be waiting for you in the very next episode I'll see you there and I just want to acknowledge you

on YouTube for watching all the way to the end this was extraordinary wasn't it I mean I wish I had had this information 25 years ago but I'm so grateful that you have this information and I have this information now so thank you for sharing it thank you for watching all the way to the end and thank you for hitting subscribe it's my goal that 50% of the people that watch this channel are subscribers because it supports the show it tells our team that you love the content that we're putting out and it helps us

bring you new videos every single day and speaking of new videos I'm sure you're thinking oh my gosh I love this what should I watch next Mel you should check this out you're going to absolutely love it it's the perfect thing to watch and I'm going to be waiting for you as soon as you hit play