Dr. Gabor Maté: The SHOCKING Link Between Trauma and Life Expectancy!

you can be yourself or you can be accepted but not both at the same time at some point you start wondering who the heck are we anyway you know him as the best-selling author of a number of books his work on the relationship between addiction and childhood development please help me welcome Dr gavor M the top regrets of people who died before that time you know what it is that they weren't themselves they spent a whole life trying to please others that's the top regret how do we fix broken people before we jump into this

episode I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier healthier and more healed all I want you to do is click on the Subscribe button I love your support it's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started I can't wait to go on this journey with you thank you so much for subscribing it means the world to me the number one Health and Wellness podcast J shett J shett the one the only Jett I've had the burning desire to ask you this question

so I read this quote the other day and it says it's by Frederick Douglas and the quote goes it is easier to build strong children than fix broken men and my question was how do we fix broken people there's a wonderful song by Leonard Koh called come heal or come healing So It Begins oh gather up to Brokenness bring it to me now the fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow and then he says at some point and here's the answer to your question oh troubless concealing and undivided love the heart beneath is

teaching to the broken heart Above So this poet Prophet poet Visionary saying we have two hearts there the Brokenness of love and the undivided love that's below that's underneath he's saying there's the broken heart above and then is a heart beneath that teaching the broken heart so that implied in that is that nobody's broken that underneath the Brokenness there's wholeness so and that's not only Leonard cooh any spiritual teacher as you know will tell you the same thing so it's not a matter of fix see anything broken it's re it's finding the wholeness that's underneath

the Brokenness now Douglas is totally right Studies have shown that if you get children who suffer for first three years and then things get okay for them they do much worse than those children who are well treated and have a good life for 3 years and then everything goes to Pieces the latter group do do does much better cuz his words are it says the child is the father of the man so that that what happens early in life shapes our world view and our sense of ourselves so yes darkas is totally right but ultimately

when I look at people whether they agree with me or don't or whether they are suffering or not or whether they even when they do Terrible Things there's there's a wholeness there's undivided love underneath it isn't there there's a Shore right now in Los Angeles by somebody who's in a death row prison in Texas and his name is Obie sentenced to death and he's in death throw has been for the last 20 years while these appeals Winder slow way through the courts if he wins the appeal the best thing he can hope for is life

without perole and he's in love with life he's had a transformation he's dealt with his addictions he's dealt with his Brokenness he he learned meditation he's an artist and some of his art is being shown in Los Angeles right now unfortunately I can't go see it cuz it's only open certain days a week and I'm not here but there's somebody who came from a totally broken childhood and found a kind of presence if you saw him you and I could only Envy the kind of presence and and at least to speak for myself can't speak

for you the kind of presence and the kind of engagement at life that he's got on a in a death row prison well if that can be healed if that Brokenness the wholeness can be under discovered underneath there's no be broken very well said I I would agree to you at the core at the root at the essence none of us are broken yeah and our engagement with that which is broken and imperfect often rubs off on us but what would you say are the most detrimental experiences that people have in those three years that

end up creating horrific Ripple effects long term anything that makes them disconnect from themselves from their true SS from their gut feelings from their connection to their bodies um anything that deprives them of hope I remember I remember taking part in a retreat on is called an Enlightenment intensive where you do intensive spiritual work I won't go into the details but please go into the detail well it it's it's diads and two people at one time sitting across from each other in a meditation posture putting a question to one another first the question one person

asks the other one listens and then they switch places for four times and then you get a different partner and the question is tell me who you are the original question comes from um R Raman Mahari whose work I'm sure you know uh one of these Indian Rishi and gurus who just asked everybody tell me who you are and the idea is that by emptying your mind and saying whatever is in your head clearing out the mental space the direct experience of who you are will come to you a direct experience not a thought not

an emotion but a direct experience no I never had a direct experience and I was embittered at the end and at the very last diad person said tell me who you are and it just started shaking and my whole body was tingling and instead of paying attention to that I I plunged into bitterness and I said is it my fault they turned off the light in me they they killed the light in me so early so I truly believed that the light in me had been killed by what had happened to me as an infant

and for much of my life even I to became a Healer and even after I became a A Healer that was respected by so many people I thought I could help heal everybody else but I can't be healed myself so to go back to your question whatever early experience kills your faith in your own possibilities that's what's so damaging and for that it could be evidence or experiences of severe abuse it could also be very sensitive child who the world doesn't see for who they are who the world doesn't permit to express themselves so they

shut off from themselves in order to be accepted by the world so any early experience that deprives you of yourself and that happens to a lot of us so trauma is a huge Spectrum but anything that breaks your connection to yourself and you and your genuine not your false egoic belief in yourself but your genuine belief in your wholeness that'll do it and that happens to a lot of us I've always personally experienced it as the volume of my inner voice yes so I found that at different points in my life my inner voice was

extremely loud and clear and not only could I hear it clearly but the direction was clear and then I've had moments in my life where as you're ref referencing disconnected from yourself yeah that voice is extremely quiet maybe even non-existent or it's screaming out for help it's you mean the voice of your inner self is very quiet correct it can be but the Bible talks about the small still voice they actually call it that the small still voice and it really takes attention to notice it because there's so much noise in the world and so

much noise in our heads and there's all these other voices that are much louder you know the singer Cheryl Crow she had breast cancer and uh she said afterwards and this could be and I quote this in the myth normal and it could be right out of my own work but she doesn't know about me she just came to this awareness because the disease taught her something and she said that she always used to be serving other people and trying to meet other people's emotional needs and the breast cancer no she's actually listening to herself

and she says there used to be these loud voices inside myself telling me that whatever I did wasn't right enough she says no I've steal those voices you know so on the one hand the voices of self um disregard and and and self loathing or self- seduction are very loud and that true voice from most of us is just so quiet so it takes a lot of attention to to notice it a lot of what you're saying today we experience it as this idea of people pleasing shape-shifting yeah mediating wanting to make peace often in

our families in our friend Circle all of which are can be good Noble things but often we find ourselves disconnected from ourselves trying to play these different roles not only does that seem to be stemming from a form of trauma of being disconnected from yourself early on what steps can one take to regain one's connection with oneself so that we're not running around shape-shifting people pleasing but at the same time have genuine connections with others in in the book we talk about this tension between authenticity and attachment and authenticity being connected to our two selves

Our God feelings which is necessary that nature gave us good feelings for a good reason and gave us emotions for a good reason uh attachment is our need to belong and if we can be authentic and belong that's ideal so if if you can find relationships and you can be our two selves and be accepted and loved that's ideal but a lot of our families of origin our parents just couldn't give that to us like they had their own limitations they couldn't see us or they had their own traumas like I did as a parent

and so kids then get the message that you can be yourself or you can be accepted but not both at the same time at which point for sure survival St for sh survival's sake we go with what would we need to do to get accepted and then we get that message reinforced in school and on the playground and with their peers and at our work and at some point you start wondering who the heck are we anyway and whose life am I leading anyway well how to get back to it here's the question prior to

your Awakening and I'm sure that for you Awakening was probably both a series of unique events but also it was a long-term process for me it was mostly process rather than distinct experiences but say prior to Awakening did you sometimes know that you're not being authentic cuz I sure did I didn't know why I was choosing not to be authentic if I wasn't even choosing it I just was but something me knew well here's the question who inside us knows only that authentic self that's always there and so I say to people don't try and

look for the authentic self of just notice when you're not authentic just notice when you're not saying no when there's a no that wants to be said just say why you're not saying yes but there's a yes that wants to be said inside you notice the impact on you when you don't assert your true self how do you feel afterwards resentful ashamed or tired or whatever so notice the difficulty being authentic and ask yourself well what is the belief that I'm carrying that if I'm authentic then what so in other words not all that noticing

what does that do who's the one that's noticing is the authentic self so just by asking those questions you're strengthening you're empowering that authentic self and just going back to that the heart underneath is teaching the broken heart above well that whole is teaching the disconnection it's always there I find that in between those two hearts and in between those two layers there's almost a layer of guilt and shame so when we go against our authentic self we do it because we're scared of whether we feel guilty or we may feel shame or fear yeah

and if we act authentically we then sometimes feel guilt for acting that way because of how it impacts others or shame and fear so walk me through the construction of fear and guilt and shame which seem to be such like if you thought about the emotions we all experience most on a daily basis I mean let me ask you that actually what do you think what are the emotions that you believe people are experiencing most often most repetitively on a daily basis I was going to give you an easy answer answer to the shame guilt

fear question but then you threw a curveball uh sorry I went off I was I'm following my I'm following my authentic voice no I love C I love Cur balls I just have to think about it yeah so what are the emotions people experience most often I think um anger rage and resentment I think there's a lot more of that than we acknowledge not often unacknowledged experiened but not acknowledged for fear of consequences I think also love that we also enough often afraid to acknowledge because it's so vulnerable and we might see if I want

you to love me but I'm afraid to be vulnerable then I may try to impress you which may be the closest thing I can get so that you'll pay attention to me you know so that emotions shame I think is very frequent for a lot of people uh that's has to do with trauma more than anything else fear is something that people experience a lot um much more than they can admit to themselves Joy people are not so afraid of it well you know what there might be Joy has been very difficult for me in

my life and I think some part of actually some part of me used to say what right do I have to feel Joy when there's so much suffering in the world now that's logically a good question but it's a nonsensical question why because there is a lot of suffering in the world and there's a lot of joy in the world and the one doesn't negate the other so for me it was like what right do I have to experience Joy when my grandparents died in as I I quote this in the Mython normal my friend

and colleague and teacher Bessel Vander psychiatrist who wrote the book the body keeps the score he said to me once gabo you don't have to drag aritz around with you all the time which means that you don't have to allow not to forget about aritz but not to let that control your Consciousness which means you do have the right to feel Joy you you do have the right to be happy even as the world suffers not because the world suffers and not ignoring the suffering in the world but there's no contradiction let's dive into some

of those emotions because and I love how they were easy answers for you and then the curveball but I think as you said fear is a repetitive daily emotion thought for so many people yeah a lack of safety emotionally mentally physically on so many levels we feel unsafe yeah how does one process and heal through and with fear because it seems to be so consistent the way that fear shows up in most people's lives is in the form of anxiety see we are wired for fear there's a great uh neuros psychologist died a few years

ago before his time Dr PP and he identified all these emotional circus that we share with other mammals and fear was one of them we have a Circ for fear good thing we're not afraid we die are there in nature you know but that can become anxiety so let me tell you a story I want to show you this bracelet that I'm wearing it's beautiful um it is beautiful and I never thought i' everybody wearing a bracelet but I was given this just shortly after the time that I met you and this comes from a

place called ha guay in hau's Islands in Northern British Columbia where I live they used to be known as well they used to be known as haidu then with the British colonization they became known as Queen Charlotte Islands that's really funny cuz I was speaking in London on oh actually a couple of months ago to an audience of 2100 britishers and I said does anybody in the his audience know who the hell Queen Charlotte was nobody knew no one knew yeah well apparently she was some German princess who married King George the Mad King George

who was King of England when America became independent anyway so the British came they named it Queen Charlotte islands all of a sudden these indigenous people whose ancestors have been living there for something like 13,000 years all of a sudden they were living on not on highay anymore which means land of the people but they were living in Queen sh landland so I was giving a trauma Workshop there for hi people that's when they gave me this bracelet and the meaning of the carving set means these words matter at the end of two days almost

at the very end of the trauma workshop for the hi of people a woman in her seven at least comes up and she said I used to speak perfect Haida until I was 5 years old and then I forgot my language and even when I've gone back to school as an adult to learn my native language the words don't stick in my brain and I said what happened to you well what happened to her she went to this residential school residential schools where the indigenous kids were forced to go run by the churches mostly and

she dared speak her native language and the teacher took a stick and beat her mercilessly in her body and her head and her limbs oh native kids in in my own lifetime is when I was a teenager in British Colombia a four-year-old Indian n Indian they're not indians indigenous Canadian First Nation kid spoke their own language they'd have a pin stuck in her tongue so they literally so I said to her look you're losing your language was your organism protecting you it was your fear system telling you that if you do that again you know

you might not survive cuz she hated herself for it she hated herself hat herself for the anxiety she hated herself because I was so passive she said I said that passivity was your organism's only way m to protect you because had you fought back or had you asserted your right to speak your language much worse would have happened to you so that fear protected her but it translates into anxiety where it's no longer fear of a specific thing it's just fear of the world MH now the the rate of anxiety so we have a a

a system for fear and the the greatest danger to a young child is the loss of relationship because without relationship we can't survive I mean we're protected we're defenseless we're vulnerable we're helpless so the loss of protective adults is the biggest fear that the child has in this Society a lot of parents can't be there for their kids the way they need to be the way they want to be because of the stresses economic social racial political whatever they're going through just the nature of the disconnected C culture that we live in parents are not

there for the kids the way the children need to be the fear becomes chronic anxiety that we're never safe and now that becomes part of our sense of self so what you say but but this lack of emotional safety would it actually is is that early childhood fear because when a child is afraid they will ask for help but when repeatedly the help is not available and the adults don't come because they're too busy too stressed too traumatized too preoccupied too downtrodden or too propagandized by parenting experts to ignore their kids cries the child gets

the message that there's no safety so that original fear that's meant to result in a cry for help now becomes chronic anxiety so fear not dealt with gets ingrained as anxiety it's no longer going put anything specific is just being in the world is a source of fear but it shouldn't be it almost feels like as you were saying that what should result in a cry for help externally yeah becomes a Perpetual cry internally that's exactly without a feeling of being able to help yourself exactly you know that Beetle song Help yeah help I need

somebody not just anybody and John lenon sings and he was a very traumatized child as you know whose father left him when he was born and whose mother abandoned him a few years later and then he sings in his song when I was younger so much younger than today I never needed anybody's help in any way but now those days are gone I'm not so self assured so I open the door you know please help me no that's not the way it was when he was younger so much younger than today he needed a everybody's

help in every way but because the help wasn't available he had to shut himself down and make himself sort of like a self-created self-sufficient person and only later on do they realize you know what I actually do need help but he was never that person who didn't he just believed he didn't need help why did believe that as an adaptation because the help wasn't there so so many of us one of the biggest things that people are afraid to do is to ask for help when I give workshops and I I myself is my automatic

reaction when somebody offers help oh no it's okay I'm fine even though the help would be very welcome you know yeah how do you find that because I feel so many people today have someone in their life who's closed off from help yeah it might be your partner it might be a child it might be a parent we all have someone in our life who in our limited capacity but a little bit of Awakening we can notice that someone is really closed and won't receive help yeah how do you help someone who is rejecting help

or not accepting that they may need it because of the position they've experienced based on what you just said I myself used to believe I was one of these people I actually used to believe can you believe this I used to believe that everybody else could be stressed but I couldn't be I I used to feel like that too you I used to believe that I can help I can help everybody but I don't need help myself you know there used to be a time when I used to feel to so uh how do you

help something like that you help them by accepting them that's how it is for them right now and not trying to push your help on them cuz when you try and push help you're just going to get resistance so you if you can handle it you can be around them and be open but not insist or try and prove to them that they need help life will teach them when I meditate these days I do the uh compassion meditation which says you know that may I um face and overcome all of life's inevitable setbacks and

challenges and failes with patience understanding um strength and determination and May I Rise Above them with um compassion and morality and integrity and wisdom and and mindfulness if we can stare on people compassionately without trying to prove to them that they need something that they don't believe they need then at some point life will bring a challenge that may prove to them that yeah they they need help and if you still around open then they'll be shut to you if you try and convince them um bring them over um prove it to them force it

on them and I I believe I've done that I've done it with my own family I've done it with others you just invite resistance so the best way to help people is not to help unless the help is invited and that's almost what most of us don't want to hear because we want to again going back to our earlier point we want to fix and solve and make everything nice and perfect right now yeah and I guess that is also a form of trauma there's something there as to why we want that when and when

I write about people who are prone for chronic illness uh it's often people like like autoimmune disease for example it's often and and this is not just my finding other researchers have found this as well that there are people who tend to ignore their own emotional needs and are compulsively concerned with the emotional needs of others and um they tend to believe that um in the methan normal I quote an obituary and obituaries are really interesting to me because they often highlight as laudable qualities the very things that I think to the person's death let

talk about those yeah there was a book written by an Australian nurse 12 years ago now called the top five regrets of dying people mhm and she like I used to work in pal of care working with dying people as you mentioned in your introduction and um for seven years I was the medical coordinator of big pal of car and a dying dying people at B hospital and this nurse also P Care Health worker wrote this book the top five the top regrets of people who died before the time you know what it is that

they weren't themselves that they spent a whole life trying to please others that's a top regret now this this obituary you have to believe that I'm not making this up this is a physician in Canada who di age 72 of cancer and theary says Sydney and his mother had an incredibly special relationship a bond that was apparent in all aspect of their lives until her death as a married man with young children Sid would have dinner with his parents every day then he would go home as his wife Roslin and their three children waited for

him with another yet another dinner to eat and to enjoy not wanting to disappoint either woman in his life Sydney kept eating two dinners a day for years until gradual weight gain began to raise suspicions now this man suffered from two fatal beliefs and when I say fatal I mean fatal one is that he's responsible for other people feel and the other is that he has never disappoint anybody not so many of us go through life like that you know now actually I'm not responsible for how I feel I'm responsible for how I act for

how I speak what I do and what I say mhm I'm not responsible of how you feel in response M when you in Vancouver and you contacted me and if I hadn't feel like seening you but I hadn't slept all night say cuz I was up with some other Duty or looking after somebody and if I had said yes and still come make you for coffee cuz I had fear of disappointing [Music] you and because I I didn't want you to feel disappointed what would that have meant for me it would have meant for me

more fatigue and probably I would have resented the hell out of you m even though I was pretending to be you know you know thank God and you on the other hand if I said no if I was authentic and I said look Jay I'm sorry so glad you're in town but I was up all night I just you know now if he had felt hurt and perceived yourself as rejected by me that's not on me that's your interpretation of my behavior nothing to do with me I just said what was true for me so

but that fear of disappointment had I been afraid to disappoint you because I don't want to lose your friendship and I don't want to lose your friendship but if I believe that if I'm authentic I'm going to lose Jay's friendship that's going to keep me inauthentic and you'll never know me and even when you like me there's still going to be a fear in me what if he really knew me you know yeah so it doesn't even work y but we're so we're so afraid of disappointing others and then one day I may feel we

have an inauthentic friendship that's right I can notice that you're not being fully yourself yeah and then then I can even feel that way you can let me down even by trying to be everything I wanted you to be that's what I so find so fascinating in life is that you can let someone down even after becoming everything you thought they wanted you to be well exactly well go back to the example of coffee if I said to you J I'm sorry I can't do it today which honors you more MH if I believe that

you're so weak and vulnerable that you can't handle no or if I honor You by telling you the truth which shows you more respect you know definitely there so that I can be everything you want me to be and still not honor you yes yeah it's fascinating how we can be so opposite in our perceptions and viewpoints yeah and a big part of that comes also we talked about fear but I wanted to to talk about guilt because yeah oh yeah guilt guilt what do you want to say about guilt no well what well I

want to hear from you about guilt but when I think of guilt I think it's such a strong driver for so many actions in the world today it is we're guilty of something in the past and therefore we do something strange in the future or the present yeah that we wouldn't have done we feel guilty right now and that makes us something that we don't mean or something that we exactly how do we untrap ourselves from the trappings of guilt great well let me tell you a story so uh you know in the Bible the

the Old Testament Moses is um um a Hebrew boy born at a time when the pharaoh's um susers declare that some Hebrew male Bor on this time will rise up and challenge the Pharaoh so they decide to kill all the Hebrew newborns by throwing him into the Nile River but Moses's mother rather than throws the boy into the river but in a rer basket and so Moses floats down the river and he gets plucked out of the water by the pharaoh's daughter who adopts him so this Hebrew infant is um adopted into a Royal Court

treated like a prince MH that's why Walt Disney could make a film called Prince of Egypt you know all this happened just so Walt Disney could make a film do you in any case um there's a extra biblical Legend it's not in the Bible but it's an ancient legend and you think what the heck is this guy talking about I just asked him about guilt and he's talking about no I love this this is my favorite type of answer is when I'm curious and I'm following cuz I don't know you going okay great but believe

me I'm going to come back to I believe it I believe it I trust you so the legend is that Moses is a toddler and the Pharaoh susers Divine that he might be a danger which eventually he proves to be so they decid to put him to a test they put in front of him two sparkling object I don't know if you remember but in the Bible Moses is a speech impediment and it's his brother Aaron who has to do the speaking for him how does he get the speech impediment well the Pharaoh susers say

well this boy needs to be examined and they decide to put him to a test and they put in front of him two sparkling objects one of them is a royal Diamond of Egypt and the other is a sparkling Ember of glowing Ember of coal now if Moses reaches for the Royal Diamond it means he's got oyal ambition and he needs to be killed so there's this little toddler delightedly looking at these two scintillating objects and his hand starts moving moving towards the diamond at which point standing behind him isn't is Gabrielle Gabrielle which is

the Hebrew version of my name Gabor by the way and and grabs his hand and takes it away from the diamond and puts it to the coal now Moses finishing the motion that kids will do picks up the coal puts it to his mouth and burns his lips and that's how he develops the spee impediment now here's my question to you is the angel Moses's friend or enemy he's trying to be a friend but but he heard him mhm had to hurt him to save his life MH right to a friend MH guilt is that

kind of a friend okay guilt comes on in early childhood not because you did anything wrong but because you sense that whatever you did this pleased your parents and you can't afford to do that so there needs to be an internal mechanism that keeps you close to your parents that says for example if you're authentic and you're sure you're anger you won't be accepted there better be an internal mechanism to keep you on track so guilt comes along as this friend that says no take your hand away from where you want to put it you

have to stifle your real desires so guilt comes along to maintain a relation ship not cuz you did anything wrong cuz a 2-year-old three-year-old they can't do anything wrong by definition they may do things that are not good and they need to be taught not to do it but it's not wrong there's no guilt there there's no I'm going to do something evil here you know so guilt is totally not appropriate and there's ways of teaching children without guilt but guilt comes along to keep you in line now is that your friend your enemy it's

your friend but it's hurting you the problem with these early friends and I call them something people don't like this word but I say call them stupid friends the stupidity comes in the fact they don't realize that you're an adult you can make your own decisions now and look after yourself you don't need to be controlled by their advice that was meant for a 2-year-old so that's where they they're just not educable so when I say to people these days now most people who feel guilty when they act a little bit on their own behalf

I say to them for God's sakes have a party celebrate I've done something for myself call your friends you know have a celebration that you were so quote unquote selfish like like like Cheryl Crow said all these voices that always told her that she has to ignore herself and serve others now she doesn't listen to them anymore that's the guilt so you know recognize the guilt say hello to it thank it no is there such a thing as health remorse yeah if I promise to meet you for coffee and I don't show up because I

find something more pleasurable to do I should feel some remorse so remorse is about specif that's healthy remorse you know if I break my word if I hurt somebody or I un you know I should feel remorse but that's not a long-term thing mhm it's not the chronic guilt that you're talking about mhm that's nothing what would happen a long time ago and now it limits me or controls me it's a health remorse for some specific thing that's different from guilt guilt is this old friend that's long outlived their usefulness and the challenges that we

still treat it like a today friend exactly it's almost like we're so scared of breaking that dependence as well we are thinking well I feel guilty that I'm not around so I'll stay around this individual this group of people whatever it may be but there's a part of me that wants to depend on them as well and I don't want to break free completely as well because yeah I don't even know what that looks like like you're saying like as an adult you can take care of yourself you can walk your own path but you're

actually scared of doing that yeah and so you accept the pain of guilt yeah because it allows for dependence well that's a good point and I often say to people you're going to have pain one way to the other yes which pain would you like cuz sometimes in life there's no pain-free options mhm you can have the pain of suppressing yourself for the sake of being accepted or you can have the pain sometimes of being yourself and not being accepted MH you can have pain one way the other MH now I have my own bias

that the pain of not being ourselves ultimately is by far the greater and more chronic pain and that the pain the short-term pain of being ourselves brings Liberation and genuine Independence which means I can have genuinely independent relationships with other people who are willing to accept me as independent MH you know but in the short term which pain do you want not there's no painfree option you know yeah for sure that you reminded me of this beautiful idea that tikn notan shares that there's familiar pain and unfamiliar pain and these are our two choices and

the challenge is we're so scared of unfamiliar pain yeah that we would rather choose familiar pain yeah and go through the same pain because we know how it's going to feel exactly and we think at least I'm aware at least I am conscious of how bad it can get exactly but hearing you speak being independent or being dependent both has pain yeah and but the pain of dependence far outweighs the pain of Independence well just put a bit of a Nuance in there ultimately I mean I mean Taran also talk about inter beinging how we

all inter are so in a certain sense we do depend on each other you know and that's okay the question is do we depend on each other authentically or inauthentically the fact that I'm independent doesn't mean that I'm not going to reach out for help mhm or that I won't offer it mhm but it does mean that I will be honest with you and I won't pretend to be somebody else that I'm not so that you'll accept meh you know so there's anything interesting word difference between two phrases that sound very familiar one is called

individualism and the other is called individuation now red individualism is I don't need anybody and I you know it's me against the world and this is the North American capitalist ideal you know well human beings never would have evolved had we been those rugged individualists MH the rugged individualist wouldn't last more than one generation mhm but individuated means that we can be ourselves truly ourselves in genuine relationship with others not rugged individual ual MH I mean the most boring people are rugged individuals cuz they all look the same you know so so you can be

um individuated and be truly yourself and still belong and still vulnerably desire human contact you know yeah I I can agree more I think there's a lot of rhetoric around we don't care what anyone else thinks and it doesn't matter and you just do your own thing and it's almost that's almost a bitter response as well because we do have to care what people think if we lived in a world where you didn't care what anyone thought yeah it wouldn't be that healthy because we would do all sorts of obscene horrific things i' TR a

different I'm intrigued yeah I'm intrigued yeah I don't care what anybody thinks but I do care what I do and how it affects other people mhm you know so there's another uh spiritual teacher gunar Rana he wrote a book called uh mindfulness in plain English which I've just been working through recently and um he's talking about a higher morality that comes from being true to yourselves and in touch and he says well you don't need rules anymore because it's like St Augustine said um love and do what you will mhm so if you actually love

the world you don't have to give yourself rules because that love will dictate mhm how you act towards other people I can't worry about what other people think look if I worried about what other people think I would not have written any of my books because each of my books challenge the the reigning Orthodoxy in in say medicine you know or whether it's or under attention deficit or stress and disease or addictions and every time I write a book I'm saying something that I'm not saying that I invented it but that I have come to

understand and fervently U believe and want to communicate but I worry about what other people think mhm or when I make a political statement I'm responsible for what I say how I say it but not what other people think about it but I but that doesn't mean that I can that I ignore other people's experience MH so as long as my intention is purely to speak a truth and I do so with Integrity I can't worry about what other people think I I can't but that doesn't mean I'm going to go around just doing terrible

things cuz I don't care about what you think as as long as I'm convinced that what I do if I if I've done that kind of inventory and I haven't always but if I do an inventory about well what is my intention here is there a hierarchy of pain or hierarchy of trauma what do you mean by hierarchy I feel like people feel like well this trauma is worse than this trauma and this trauma is better than this one we often hear about that as a conversation is that accurate so one could say so uh

CU if you look at a child who say sexually abused as opposed to a child whose parents just can't honor and accept and and invalidate their emotions well my God you're talking about two different set of experiences so that there certainly horrific things happen to some people to wound them and other people suffer wounds in a very different way but the question is is it useful to make that distinction it's one thing to recognize it but let's say let's say you my four-year-old you come to me and you say uh that I'm afraid of so

and so and I say snap out of it only cards are afraid and to get out of here take care of yourself and then you went to your mom and said I tried to talk to Daddy but you know would it be helpful for your mother to say oh snap out of it think of all the kids that are being sexually abused think of all the starving kids think all the kids that are being bombed what are you complaining about would that be helpful no so that it's not a helpful game to play I don't

compare people's traumas uh trauma simply means a wound and people are wounded in all kinds of ways when I try to help people the least helpful thing I can do is to tell them that somebody else's trauma is much worse than mine or much worse than yours so objectively yes practically it's not a helpful distinction M uh people are wounded and you have to tend to the wound whatever it is you know if you came to me with a cut on your arm and you asked me to stitch it up it wouldn't be helpful for

me to tell you that oh what are you worried about there's people would broken arms out there or people with broken you know so no it's not a helpful thing to engage in even though there's truth in it yeah what's really fascinating every time I speak to you g boy is that there's such Nuance subtlety and there's a quote that I want to share with you to get your thoughts on I want to bring it up here yeah so this quote is from F Scott Fitzgerald okay who famously wrote the test of a First Rate

intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function one should for example be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise absolutely so that's brilliant and what F Gerald is talking about there is what is called integrative intelligence and integrative intelligence is when you can say on the one hand on the other hand both things can be true and uh I need to somehow come to some conclusion about them with without rejecting the one truth or the

other now little kids are totally incapable of Integrative intelligence so a three year-old will either say I hate you daddy or I love you Daddy but they can't say I love you Daddy but I'm very angry with you which is really what's going on it's either love or hate so integrative thinking is a capacity of intellectual and actually emotional maturation a lot of people are completely incapable of it it's one or the other you talked about the the deadness of the heart mhm and the moral apathy and all my life since I've been um conscious

of the horrors including and beginning with the Holocaust that nearly killed me and killed my grandparents nearly killed my parents and I but when I became conscious of that at age 11 what happened was that my parents had a book on a high shelf they didn't want me to read and when I was 11 I climbed up on a chair and it was a book called The Scourge of the swastika and it was about it was the first book about the Nazi Horrors and I saw photographs and I read the story and for years J

afterwards literally every day my head would be dizzy I'd spin how is this possible how is our heart not broken every day I'm asking you now cuz I I'm I'm wrestling with this question I suppose I have an intellectual answer or more to the point maybe along the lines of what Shel says how can our heart be broken and not be broken at the same time because I think both are necessary yeah and and I find everything all across the world that occurs I feel like people's hearts are broken but they break and ache for

different things M and I think that that's why the words of Fitzgerald resonate so strongly with me yeah because just to repeat those last two lines one should for example be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise and you know what you're saying it's how I was trained in the monastery as well the goal was always how can you be a helper how can you be a server how can you be useful how can you help heal like that's what you look for in moments of tragedy whatever they

may be mhm and I just think that not much unites us on the Heart level is equals across the world I don't think there's many things that we look to globally as the human race as we were once referred to or called to that creates a sense of connectivity and there's genuine fear that makes us feel well if my break my heart breaks for this then what if what will happen to my heart but the grief might be too much to bear yeah or or not not that I mean more so that well if my

heart breaks for this event some part of it is yes there's too much to think about for sure it's overwhelming yeah and then the other side is well if it breaks for this then is it allowed to break for that as well you know this idea of holding two opposing ideas seems to be such a need in the world like just generally like even the belief of I have to work on my health but I'm happy I'm alive like these are two opposing ideas like we're not looking at it from I'm unhealthy or I'm healthy

well you know what's interesting there is that when I was working in paliative care sometimes people would say to me and this is amazing I don't recommend it but they'd say they'd be dying they actually be dying they'd have a couple of weeks left they say Doc I don't to explain this exactly but this disease is the best thing that ever happened to me I don't wish it on anybody but what were they talking about now there's a guy who quote in the myth normal um who wrote a book called blessed with the brain tumor

blessed with a brain tumor young Australian guy who was diagnosed with a brain tumor um did have surgery did accept treatment he also had a spiritual transformation has lived longer than his prognosis I don't know what his current status is but were a book called blessed with a brain tumor and by the way he developed a brain tumor exactly the same spot that he used to point at with an imaginary gun to shoot himself in the head when he was thinking of suicide I said what do you mean with the brain tumor and he said

well knowing that I'm going to die or that I might means that every moment is precious he says that means that when I'm talking to you or anybody else I'm fully aware that this may be the last conversation we'll ever have that means that every moment is absolutely precious I've never been so engaged with life and that's what people meant and so that even the disease that world is going to take their lives they they'd say and why because the disease taught them to be authentic for the first time in their lives and they found

out that was much more precious M than anything else now that's not a bargain I recommend to anybody totally yeah I'm just telling you that I've witnessed it m and it's quite astonishing MH how when people do find authenticity to go back to our previous theme they value that over anything else over even longevity mhm now most of us would probably run the other way mhm again I'm not recommending it yeah I'm just saying I've seen it yeah but it's always those opposing ideas that feeling of I'm good and I want to be better yeah

I'm a good husband or a good dad or a good mom or I'm a good whatever at the same time I'm not good enough like I you know whatever it may be not that that's negative but the idea of I I I know I can do more and I want to do more so there's such a need for this dichotomy almost to be held well is there well the ability to hold those two opposing ideas is needed right like because you don't I don't want to live in a world where I think I'm perfectly healthy

everything's amazing because then I may miss certain challenges and I also don't want to live in the other world of oh my God like everything's falling apart and I'm dying every second of the day like but what if we just looked at it in a unitary way then it's a matter of growth mhm that I'm not as fully grown as I might be mhm but there's nothing wrong yes you you know so you know I'm I'll be 80 you know and we talk about you said 80 80 yeah yeah I know it's a big number

you're doing great this amazing well do the numbers I was born in 44 yeah yeah I always forget I forget when I'm with you yeah and mean there's this expression I've been thinking about this recently this expression growing older mhm so we we could just say being older or becoming older or getting older but we say growing older now that's an interesting phrase isn't it cuz actually as we get older we shrink mhm so what are we talking about growing older well because growth being an emotional spiritual process that continues that can continue forever so

for me it's not a matter of I'm good but I can be better it's a question of can I continue to grow not whe there's anything wrong now but can I continue to grow m which is really the um essence of life as long as there's life there's growth isn't there you know and uh the growth may be at some point purely physical at some point physically there might even be contraction but spiritually and emotionally there can always be growth so it's rather than a dichotomy it's more like a unitary process mhm I I I

I do appreciate that I do feel that what is you just sparked something for me you were giving this example the story just told about how the gentleman when he thought he was going to commit suicide he would hold his almost like a gun to his head yeah and that's the place he developed the trauma yeah the tumor how does trauma intercept the body in that way like this that feels such like a physical example of that I can give you other examples yeah when I was working in paliative care I was looking after a

young woman she was 38 with ALS amyotrophic lateral sclerosis which is a disease in the nervous system you basically get paralyzed the the muscles that or the nerves that activate your muscles you just die they Harden that's what sclerosis means so they they become rigid and they become unable to move this woman she was a dancer beautiful woman and we talked a lot in her life last weeks she told me that all her life she used to have this dream of being buried alive boxstein unable to breath unable to move she was a dancer and

she began to notice that on the Dance Floor she couldn't execute the movements anymore something was wrong so she was diagnosed with ALS and she went to the office of the alas society and on the wall there was a poster that said having ALS is like being buried alive wow the chist jacn dpre was a great classic British classical chist died in her 40s she was a big International rocket M star in the classical music world she died of Ms multiple sclerosis she couldn't move anymore by that by the time she was in her L

20s she couldn't play a cello anymore when she was 8 years old she sat her s sister Hillary don't tell her mommy this but when I go up I won't be able to move or walk now all of these people these three people the guy with the brain tumor the woman with the ls Jaclyn deay they've been deeply traumatized and sheltered I'm not going to go into how but they had been that woman's dream that she couldn't move her walk was literally an expression of her emotional experience in her family of orgin in her deathbed

nobody came to see her MH from her family she was all alone like she had been all her life she couldn't be herself she couldn't speak or move or get enough air to be herself so that that dream was metaphoric to start with then became a physical reality MH now how does the metaphor how does the or how does the emotion how does the trauma translate into physical reality that has to do with the scientific little secret don't tell any doctors this cuz they they might not know what to do with it but well some

of them don't they're not taught in medical school mind and body are inseparable mhm our emotions our nervous system our emotional system in our brains and our bodies Our nervous system our hormonal apparatus and our immune system are actually one system mhm uh all serving survival and growth and reproduction and so they're not separate even to say that they're connected is a bit false because it's one yes yes no which means that what happens emotionally can have a significant impact on the nervous system on the gut on the heart on the on immune system and

on a hormones just obviously MH so without going into the mechanisms of how trauma affects but trauma can affect genetic functioning our chromosomes function trauma can affect our immune system actually for example study that I quote women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer according to a Harvard study a few years ago well but that means that the severe emotions um endured by the woman with PTSD can declare themselves in a form of malignancy because they affect the immune system MH and uh the M of the symptoms the less the

risk of aan cancer so mind and body being one unit that obviously our emotional lives and emotional traumas and wounds can show up in our physiology which is why autoimmune diseases are much more common amongst racialized women both in Canada and the US CU they hurt a lot more as women and as racialized people so it it's just all one thing and uh again is that a new finding or is that something or is that an ancient wisdom mhm and it's both it's both modern science not taught in medical schools for reasons that are interesting

but rather distressing and it's ancient wisdom as well MH it's all one and with that approach I mean we can't minimize the number of steps and the uniqueness of those but the hope is that people can work medically and mentally to be able to release that trauma I have photographs on my um on my cell phone and on my computer of a woman that I met uh five years ago I gave a talk in London on this subject of Mind Body unity and how stress and Trauma can lead to autoimmune disease and autoimmune disease is

where the immune system attacks the body itself and this woman sent me photographs a year ago now when I met her she'd been diagnosed with autoimmune disease called systemic lupus which has got a typical presentation of what's called a butterfly rash so her face is red like he like the wings of a butterfly with the body of the butterfly as a red rash over it's called a butterfly rash it's typical of that disease and she sent me a picture of her fingers when she was diagnosed they were like yellow as wax because the blood supply

had been constricted she was told that you got this disease we don't know what causes it can't cure it probably get worse and you'll be on medication for the rest of your life I could say these photographs you could actually show them because she's given me permission she sent me pictures a year ago face totally beautiful pink as anything no rash fingers are as Pink as mine and yours no medication no treatment she just dealt with the emotional part of it all her life she had suppressed herself just along the lines I've been talking about

she dealt with her trauma she's become fully authentically and vigorously herself the disease is gone doctors would say some doctors say well that's just an anecdote yeah it's an anecdote as but has to be a true anecdote I pay attention to anecdotes not only that this has been studied systematically by others and there are people who once they deal with the emotional side of things and take charge of their lives they recover from diseases that are supposed to have been hopeless and if you just look at the example of um Step Hawking the great physicist

who was diagnosed with ALS at age 20 he lived another 55 years mhm now the disease progressed but he outlived his prognosis by good half a century MH folks I hate to tell you this we doctors don't know everything and especially we don't fully understand I should say as a profession the wondrous workings of mind and body and the spirit and how they all interact so when you look at the indigenous healing practices like the North American natives that got this medicine wheel four cordr which is you know the the physical and the mental which

means also the emotional and the social and the spiritual and those four coords have to be in balance for us to be healthy mhm no they didn't have the science we do and they didn't have the amazing achievements of Western medicine which are truly miraculous MH but they did have a wisdom that if only we adopted and combined it with the incredible achievements of Western medicine boy what a health system we could possibly have you and that's definitely the yeah what you're helping try and build for the future M and and all of our platforms

are dedicated to that hopefully we can get to a place for that integrative holistic view point and there are more and more Physicians practicing that way you know there are um people functional medicine and integrated medicine not as holistic as i' like them to be but far more holistic than mainstream medicine and these are medically trained Physicians like I was so there's not like some Fly by Night alternative weird or cult I mean these are just do who like myself at some point came to terms with the limitations of their education and needed to infuse

some more ancient wisdom into how they practice the Arts of healing gabo I'd love to end with uh I'd love to hear from you what your wish your prayer your hope however you'd like to word it for Humanity is right now today at this time if there's some words that come from your heart if you could just wake up to our possibilities you know that you know the famous story of the Buddha where he's walking along the road and somebody sees him with his radiant face and confident gate and he says who are you a

God and the Buddha says no I'm awake and if only we could be awake to our possibilities like in every conflict on the deepest human level it's so unnecessary we could actually be a human race together we could be we could be that we don't have to hurt ourselves we don't have to hurt others we don't have to take from them demand from them we could be this is actually possible for all of us and it's possible for all of us as individuals and for all of us as as as creatures let's just wake up

to our possibilities it's beautiful gab thank you so much again for your time your energy your presence and every who's been listening or watching at home if you don't already please do grab a copy of the book uh myth of normal because our first and second conversations were very different and I guide you towards the book for the deeper resources the step by step guide It's I what I try and avoid doing in these interviews is minimizing the amount of work it takes or oversimplifying what gab's beautiful work does in his deep books because I

believe he and everyone else would want you to take those steps so I I wish you all the best in your journey of trauma illness and healing and uh Gabor I thank you for your work and your contributions today as well and forever to humanity well it's always so um peaceful to be with you and uh believe me these days I I enjoy an oasis of Peace so thank you so much thank you so much thank you thank you if you love this episode you'll love my interview with Dr gabo mate on understanding your trauma

and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable so a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick does it it goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable