The Dangers Of Being Too Nice | Dr. Gabor Maté

[Music] there's a deep need to belong a deep need to be loyal and a sense of betrayal when that loyalty somehow uh insulted people if you didn't feel get the love that you needed you'll be consumed by being like then they'd be very likable and very nice and you might become a helpful very helping individual which is a coping pattern now you can be genuinely nice and genuinely supportive of others and still look out your own needs that's human nature i think but a lot of people are very nice and likable and helpful by suppressing

their own needs that's a coping mechanism everybody says how nice they are and when they die at age 50 of cancer everybody shows up at their funeral and number they weep but how nice they were how selfless they were the the child basically has two needs we have the need for attachment which is the seeking of closeness and proximity with another human being and fundamentally the the attachment dynamic is the most powerful dynamic in human life and its basic purpose is the protection and nurturing of the young so that infants attached to their parents and

parents attached infants forward the purpose of on one hand are being taken care of and the other of taken care of so that's attachment and we're wired for attachment all our lives it's the most important dynamic we have and as general petraeus could tell you you know that we're right for attachment and sometimes when our attachment needs get sent in certain directions it'll trump everything else that's one need that we have for attachment without attachment there's no human life it's just impossible and without making without communities we would not have survived as a species either

as rugged we would not have got off the first evolutionary base you know let alone you know come to where we are right now so it's you know the whole idea of human beings is competitive and aggressive is total nonsense but the other need that we have is for authenticity to be ourselves and and that again has to do with survival if you're not in touch with yourself out in the wild you don't survive so authenticity is being in touch with yourself and being able to being able to act on the awareness of self in

relation to the environment i mean that's just authenticity so if i feel something i pay attention to that if i don't i'm in danger so we have this need for authenticity but if a child is confronted with a dilemma that if i'm authentic express my feelings then my attachments are threatened because my parents can't handle it because they're too stressed depressed or traumatized themselves then perforce the child will not automatically i should say will automatically but not consciously their authenticity and so that the suppression of gut feelings and authenticity is a coping mechanism that means

i'm no longer in touch with my needs i no longer pay attention to my feelings my emotions i will no longer be aware of them i won't express them i won't know what i need which is all kinds of implications but one of them is is that i'll be compulsively then i may then compulsively serve the needs of others ignoring my own hence disease or i may then develop all kinds of false needs which then really are what addictions are all about so that it's that irresolvable tension between authenticity and attachment that many children in

our society are are are faced with that results in their self-suppression and that's one of the outcomes not all not the only possible outcome but one possible outcome is then that niceness is a coping mechanism almost anybody when they're being authentic has a sense of them being authentic how do we know that we're being authentic like years before i had any of these concepts formally worked out in my mind or had read much about it but i already knew when i was betraying myself and being being less than myself and being other than myself how

did i know that there's some inner knowledge from many of us simply because the authentic self not that it disappears and then when we're not in touch with it there's a kind of a shame there's a kind of a suffering that happens so that shame and that internal suffering that that that sense of self betrayal is our sure guide that we're not being ourselves on one level that happens to a lot of people and then we may look good in the eyes of others and yet internally we suffer shame because we know that we're not

being ourselves when we say how do we know that for many of us there's an internal knowledge that arises now why why because that essential self hasn't gone away and it's calling to us and we don't feel right when we betray it or when we're not out of contact with it no that doesn't happen for many people that doesn't happen for everybody for some people then it takes some catastrophe so what i'm saying is that at some point or another if you're not in touch with that inner voice if you don't hear it the body

will speak to you loud and clear you're gonna get something happen to you uh and sometimes that'll happen in the form of illness or symptoms then the body's talking to you the body's saying no when you're not saying no if the voice doesn't speak to you directly or if if it speaks to you don't listen your body at some point is gonna kick in or you're going to get depressed or anxious or something else or something will happen in your personal relationships and at that point you can say well it's i'm not with the right

partner screw them it's all their fault which many of us say or for some people it becomes the the opening of a door where we begin to look okay what in here wasn't authentic what in here wasn't uh genuine how did i create this situation how do i keep creating these situations over and over again am i just a victim of bad luck or is there some pattern here in other words something happens some difficulty happens to um to shake you out of your your complacent belief that things are just fine the way they are

and and as the california foreign based uh great great teacher h alma says that the the most difficult thing that ha things that happen to us are also the most compassionate things because basically there are ways of a part of it how he puts it a part of us the part of us that loves us more than anything else puts these roadblocks in our way saying that's not the way that's not the way that's not the way you better know what that you know so he there's roadblocks in a way to bring us to ourselves

you know and so we can look upon our difficulties as problems to get rid of or we can look at them as teachings to bring us back to ourselves [Music] foreign