Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Gabor Maté (on trauma & addiction)

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Dr. Gabor Maté (The Myth of Normal) is a physician and author. Gabor joins the Armchair Expert to discuss how most people exhibit addictive behaviors, how the mind is connected to physical health, and how human societies are like lab cultures. Gabor and Dax talk about why airports can be sources of anxiety, what happens to the body when someone goes through trauma, and why children have the expectation to be loved unconditionally. Gabor explains why it’s important to confront painful emotions, his pathway to wholeness, and that being aware of the truth is what actually liberates people.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by the Minister of Duluth. That's not your name, but it is today. It is today. Yeah, what are you the minister of? Do you think I'm a minister in a religious way?

Of course. Oh, wow. Yeah. Of my cult? Yes, which we'll all be members of soon. Beautiful guest today. Oh, man. Holy smokes.

I'm like embarrassed I wasn't already an enormous fan and devotee of Gabor Mate. He's an addiction specialist, a doctor, a psychiatrist, and a bestselling author. But beyond all those things, he has a spirit and a depth to his kind eyes that is absolutely infectious. I found myself in love with him like Phil Stutz. Yeah, he was incredible. And the way he moves around the world, seeing us all as equals was very admirable. Oh, he had a beautiful moment with you. I'll never forget it. Yeah, it was really special. For as long as I live, yeah. He has a new

book out now called The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. It's a beautiful book. I encourage everyone to read it. And I'm going to say you're welcome because here's Gabor Mate and he is special. Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand. We were made to help you and your friends find a place on a beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia. made to travel. The all-new Hyundai Kona electric SUV.

It charges fast and goes far. It's how we made it more one. He's an option expert. He's an object expert He's an object expert He's an object expert Well, Rob, you came bearing gifts. Those spreads from yesterday, that was in the fridge. Oh, okay. I'll take it. Have you been offered lots of drinks?

I'm good. I got my cup of tea here. Are you sure you don't want a coffee? I don't, actually. I'll take it. Have you been offered lots of drinks? I'm good. I got my cup of tea here. Are you sure you don't want a coffee? I don't. I'm off coffee. How long? Late May, I participated

in an ayahuasca ceremony. Uh-huh. There was a healer there who did this kind of scan and said, get off coffee for six weeks. So I did, but I haven't wanted

to go back to it. Wow. I've quit it a couple times, but you know, I'm a caffeine addict. I mean, I'm a hardcore. Well, I mean, you're an addict if it does you harm.

If you just enjoy it, there's no harm in it. Right? Don't you think that's sort of the definition? Yeah. There's a bunch we could throw in there. Secrecy. Oh, true. I'm not very secretive about my caffeine use.

I'm pretty out loud about it. As far as I know, you've been pretty open about your other stuff as well. Yes, yes, yes. There's nowhere to hide, really. Addict across the board, really. Sure, full blown. Dr. Gabor, nice to meet you. First of all, can I give you a pronunciation of my name?

Gabor. Gabor. Yeah. You know who screwed it up for me is the Gabor sisters, Zsa Zsa and Eva. Same name. Anyway, Hungarian is Gabor. And please drop the doctor a bit, okay? Okay, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

I have opinions about that. I'm glad to hear you say that. Why would you prefer to not go by doctor? It's a question of what kind of interaction do we want. I could call you Mr. Shepherd. No, thank you. Or you could call me Dr. Mate. Or we could both call each other by our first names.

But if we don't do that equally, then there's a lack of balance, which makes me uncomfortable. I like that. And let me just say, I am eternally grateful that we have doctors. So it's from no lack of not appreciating them. But I am suspicious of any title that immediately implies status.

Just as a baseline, it seems a little bizarre to me that we have titles that imply status and that someone of lower status has to acknowledge the higher status when communicating. I've been on panels with maybe three or four other people. Here's Joe and here's Monica or here's Josephine and here's Dr. Mate. And I'm thinking, what the hell? You'd almost assume then that maybe they were your patients. If you introduce this Joe. It also adds a pressure.

You have to be the doctor at all times. Yeah, it's a role, yeah. But you know what? A lot of my patients called me by my first name when I was in practice. Okay. Okay. So, yes, just to do a really brief, I think you say it most efficiently in the book, which is you've delivered babies and you've run a palliative care clinic. So I was in family practice for 22 years.

And for seven of those years, I was also the coordinator of Canada's largest in-hospital palliative care unit, looking after terminal people. When I left that, then I went to work in the downtown east side of Vancouver, which is North America's most concentrated and dire area of drug use, and more than anywhere else. So I had worked at a clinic there with people addicted to heroin, cocaine, caffeine, crystal meth, amphetamines of all kinds, you know, so it was an area of deep trauma and deep addiction. Yes. And you've written a ton about addiction and you're someone I heard about often. And it's funny, I've had some overlapping stuff, but yet we haven't had you yet. So I'm very excited to have you here. Obviously addiction interests me greatly. Your last book me greatly. Your last book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, that's very addiction-heavy in that book, yeah? Well, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts is all about addictions. It begins with the 920 side, where people are suffering from homelessness, mental illness, HIV, hepatitis C, and all the complications of injection drug use, not to mention the addiction itself. The point I'm really making in addiction is that you can't just confine addiction

to that particular drug ghetto, that addictions are revived throughout our society. And really, I had my own stuff on addictive behaviors and not to drugs, but other stuff. And sometimes people say, how can you compare it? Well, you can't. I was a middle class, well-renominated doctor and respected, and they were living in the streets. But when I would tell my patients with the severe heroin addictions about my own stuff, they'd just laugh and they'd say,

hey, doc, you're just like the rest of us, aren't you? Yes, yes. And my point is that we're all just like the rest of us. So that when we isolate those people and look down on them and punish them so severely, we're really denying a part of ourselves. Well, we serve a helpful service, which is our addiction by comparison seems so terrible that your addiction you can easily blow off. By comparison, relative to us, it could comfort you to know it could be worse. That's right.

The ostracization that those people experience is really our way of distancing ourselves. At least that's not me. That's right. The ostracization that those people experience is really our way of distancing ourselves. At least that's not me. That's right. Well, you won't like this compliment, but I'm going to applaud you because I've been around addicts for 20 years in recovery. We're not fucking easy. We are the biggest liars. We're the most manipulative. We're the most cunning.

The fact that you spent 12 years dealing with us in our addiction says a lot about your temperament and who you are. When I was in my addictive behaviors and it wasn't the drugs, I was just as manipulative. I lied to my wife. I ignored my kids. I even ignored my work sometimes.

I'm not saying it was all the same, but there's nothing about them that wasn't in me as well. Yeah, but we would agree as a caregiver, when you have a patient who's got appendicitis, let's say, and you go, what's happening? Where's the pain? You're getting some real details.

You can start building upon the information that you're receiving. But with us addicts, man, good luck finding out what's really happening. First of all, if people lie, it's only because they're scared of being judged and punished. Or ostracized, excommunicated. Exactly, yeah. And I also know one thing that, unfortunately, most of my profession doesn't seem to accept, which is that addiction always rooted in pain and trauma.

If you see that about people, in the realm of hunger ghosts, I discussed how one time one of my patients, who really liked me and respected me, stole my cell phone. Right, right. I turned my back for a minute and the cell phone was gone I shut the office for half an hour and then marched right to the hotel a few blocks away where he lived and knocked on his door and I said I want my cell phone back he says what do you mean I said listen I want my cell phone back

yeah he says I give it back to you tomorrow I said no I want it right now he said where it's at the pawn shop so we marched into the pawn shop on the corner a patient says to the pawn shop guy the guy whose cell phone it is here he is the pawn shop owner says why didn't you tell me it was stolen like this this is the first time he had no idea i had no idea like a lot of people are unloading their cell phones but then i asked the guy i said listen i know you like me. I know you feel that I have helped you. I know that you respect me.

Why do you steal my cell phone? He says, Doc, what am I going to do? I'm an addict. Yeah. It makes me think of the same we have in AA a lot, which is,

I'm the type of person that will steal your wallet and then help you look for it. We put these people in a situation where they're desperate to get their next hit. In Vancouver, we used to have a mayor who was quadriplegic, he had a skiing accident.

And he said, if wheelchairs were illegal, I'd be a criminal. And to the addict, that substance or that behavior is their support. It's the way they get along. So naturally, they're going to do everything they can. I expect that. So it's not that hard to deal with. Yeah. Well, that's lovely.

So your book that we are here to talk about is The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. You start off immediately with pointing out we are at the pinnacle of our obsession with wellness and health. It's reflected in our spending. We're spending more than we ever have. And by most metrics, we're at our most pandemic level of addiction, anxiety, depression, chronic illnesses. How could these two things be so opposite in our pursuit of them

and yet what we're getting back from it? Because maybe we're running in the wrong direction. So we're working very hard and expending a lot of sweat and energy and the muscle power, but we're heading in the wrong direction. We don't see the way to actual health. On the one hand, we have these miraculous achievements of modern medicine,

which are truly stupendous and mind-boggling. On the other hand, when it comes to chronic conditions of mind and body, the medical profession in which I'm trained has a very narrow perspective. So I'm suggesting that we're spending all this time, money, and energy because we're not looking in the right direction. Yeah, and in fact, it will be later, but in, I want to say, the second section of the book, we talk about this fundamental issue,

which is science only studies things that are measurable. Implicit in that is, how are we measuring happiness, health, mental well-being? Yeah, although I have to say, my knock on my own profession is not that we're too scientific, it's that we're not scientific enough. First of all, Western medicine separates the mind from the body. So if you come in with a physical problem, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or even with depression or an addiction,

mostly we're going to focus on the biological aspects of your problem and on the behaviors. But we're not going to look at sources because we separate the mind from the body and we separate the individual from the environment. This is just endemic in Western medicine and has been almost forever. Given that in real life, you can't separate the mind from the body. As soon as you have an emotion or a thought,

your body changes. And that happens 24-7, whether you're conscious of it or not. Number one. And number two, you can't separate the individual from the environment because we're all affected by each other and the culture that we live in. And there's a lot of science to prove that.

So my problem is not that we're scientific. It's that we exclude the science that points to the wholeness of everything. There's a lot of very elegant, detailed, irrefutable science. I quote some of it in the book. For this book, The Myth of Normal, I collected 25,000 articles, most of them scientific papers. 25,000?

Yeah. That took me a long time. You and your son, let's give your son a shout out. Daniel? Yeah, my brilliant son, Daniel, without whom I could not have written this book. And when it's time to read from the book, Daniel steps up and does a wonderful job.

Yeah, Daniel did the audio, which is a good thing. I couldn't have. But I think, oh, sorry. No, I just want to know what prompted you doing it with your son. Well, look, this is a huge project. And he's brilliant with words. I'm a good writer myself.

But for this one, I needed somebody to rein me in, to make sure that I was reader-friendly, to make sure that I wasn't getting too much on my high horse as an expert. It's beautifully written, highly readable, and the language is really beautiful. And it's very efficient. He's an award-winning lyricist. He has a way with words. So between him and I, we would bat it back and forth until we were both satisfied.

So this is not a project I could have done without him. This would be a dream of mine to work with either of my daughters on something professionally. They're a bit too young. We'll see. They're pretty sophisticated. Just going back to being affected by everything around us, you do a really clean and nice analogy, which is the lab culture. Will you talk about what a lab culture, how it functions? In a laboratory, when we're growing organisms, we call that culturing. A laboratory culture is in a Petri dish or container is a broth in which we are growing a certain organism, say a bacteria. And if those organisms are thriving and reproducing, well, we call that a healthy culture. But if all of a sudden large numbers started dying off or showing sign of pathology, we'd call that a toxic culture. You would intuitively know it's the broth they're

in. We know that it's the broth. And I'm saying it's the same thing with human beings. When you look at the rise of autoimmune disease, the rise in overdoses, deaths, the rise in childhood suicide, the number of kids being diagnosed with ADHD and so on, the number of people being medicated, something like 70% of the adult American population is at least on one medication, and 40% is on two. Well, we're talking about a toxic culture. Yes. So let's talk about toxic because you do a great job at always delineating the words you're using because so many of these are really zeitgeisty. They're pop culture-y. And I think it's really important that we differentiate maybe the way

you're using it. Even trauma, which we'll get into the different types of trauma, but there's a lot of catchphrases. But your definition of toxic culture, what would you include in that? As you point out immediately, we're not talking about toxins per se. No. Although if you look at the literature, there's a lot of toxins in the environment and a lot of junk in the food that a lot of people eat. So we could talk about toxins on that level. But here's what I mean.

Going back to that laboratory broth analogy, if the nutrients that were necessary for the health of those organisms were provided to them, that'd be healthy. But if their needs were not met, they would be ill or life would be unsustainable. Significant aspects of the culture that we live in don't meet people's needs.

By denying people their genuine needs and providing them with false and artificial needs that then we pursue, not knowing what we really need, that makes people sick. We evolved in a certain way. Human beings didn't just drop from the sky. Like all other creatures, we evolved over millions of years. Civilization as we know it is maybe 12,000 years old. Out of 250,000 years as a species. And millions of years as a genus. Yes, yes. And so that means that until the blink of an eye ago,

we lived under circumstances that are no longer available to us. Trying to understand human beings in this society and thinking that we're looking at normality is like looking at a zebra in a zoo. And how a zebra behaves in a zoo has nothing to do with their true nature. Hence the myth of normal, right? To us, and I think I've heard you compare it,

which we talk about all the time, is the fish in the water. So everyone that listens is pretty familiar with that. That comes up quite a bit. But it appears normal. It appears that it's a given, that this is how it would be. We inherited this.

But in so many ways, we're the bacteria in the culture, and we're really not getting the right stuff. You know, the confusion is perhaps understandable, but it's got some very significant consequences. So as a physician, I'm trained to understand that there's a normal range within which human life is possible. If your body temperature falls within that normal range,

you're going to be healthy. But if it's too low or too high, your life is at risk. Same with blood acidity. Certain pH, blood acidity measurement, you can sustain life. Outside of it, you can't. Blood pressure, same thing. In that realm, what is normal is also healthy and natural. So we make the assumption that what is normal is healthy and natural,

which in that sense is true, in that physiological sense. But then we conflate that with what we're used to. So in this society, a lot of the things that we're used to, and we call them normal, are neither healthy or natural. We assume we're within the range. Because that's all we see. And yet, it's neither healthy or natural. And as we were saying, you might look at the junkie and think,

oh, my thing's not that bad. We also live in a geopolitical world where I can look at other places, and I can actually think that, well, in fact, on the spectrum, we're doing pretty well because I can see over there that looks worse. And there's very few places we can point to that look better. I guess Scandinavia always comes up. You're just trying to evaluate your existence relative to maybe what other countries you're seeing on TV. We tend to idealize Scandinavia. If you look at it closely, it's not as bright as all that. I mean, there's certain features of their societies

that are worth emulating and considering. But there was an article just the other day that there's a huge rise in violence amongst youth in Sweden. Really? Yeah, yeah. I want to get into trauma, but I just really appreciated this anecdote you gave about flying home from a conference. The conference had gone well.

You were feeling very good. Good boy. You even used the term good boy. Flying home. I got upgraded to business. Life's good. You're expecting your wife's going to pick you up from the airport. And then when you land, you get a text from her.

It says what? This is when I was at the younger tender age of 72. 72. So when I was young and stupid. She texts me saying, I haven't told me yet. Do you still want me to come? And I fly into a rage. My mood immediately turns sour.

And I text her back, never mind. And I take a taxi home. And for a whole day, I barely look at her. Until she finally says, knock it off already. At which point, I knocked it off. But when I considered that, there's been a lot of that in my life. What was I upset about? My wife's an artist. A couple of her paintings are in the book.

When she's in her studio, there ain't no husband, nothing. There's no time either. You know, that flow state. She's in the opposite state you are, which is she is entirely present. Exactly. And you are now, as you say. In the past. What gets triggered in me is an old pain of abandonment, which goes back to being 11 months old and being given by my mother to a stranger in the street to save my life in wartime Budapest.

She's being ushered into a fenced-in ghetto. Under the circumstances that we're living under, I would not have survived more than a couple of days. And I was ill. So she gives me to a total stranger in the street, asks her to convey me to some relatives. And I don't see her for five or six weeks. And when I saw her again, she said,

you treated me like a complete stranger. You wouldn't even look at me for several days, which is a defensive technique on the part of the brain. I was so hurt when you abandoned me that I'll never open myself up again to that kind of vulnerability. I don't want to experience this again. No.

I have to protect myself. So on the one hand, I'm enraged. On the other hand, I'm withdrawing. Rather than saying, this really hurts me or disappoints me, I was listening. And you're pre-verbal, as you say. It's pre-verbal.

I have no recollection for this, but I have an emotional memory of it. And so when my wife doesn't show up, guess what gets triggered? I did it again. as you say. It's people who have no recollection for this, but have an emotional memory of it. And so when my wife doesn't show up, guess what gets triggered? I did it again. I let you in. I trusted you.

I leaned on you. I was vulnerable for you. And then you did exactly what I knew would happen. Yeah, exactly. And I react not like a 72-year-old physician and best-selling author. I react like an 11-month-old. It makes me really emotional to hear that that's your experience because I have that quite frequently.

And it's so outsized. It's so irrational. I intellectually know it doesn't matter. Most recently, we talked about it. It was like a situation with the TSA where it was an authority figure and they were making me do something very arbitrary and felt insane. And this is what the stepdads did. And all of a sudden, like, no, no, no, no, no.

I said no more to this ever. You know, and I'm getting into this state. My wife, like your wife, knows me and is trying to calm me down. It's like knowing about it intellectually doesn't do much for me in that situation. No, you have to really heal that trauma first. And you have to work at it. And when you go into that experience with TSA, it's not just that you're having certain thoughts.

Your whole body's in a totally different state. Yes. You know, your heart is racing. Your muscles are probably tense. Cortisol dump, adrenal dump. Exactly. Yeah. How do we overcome those things that are traumas we can hardly even understand if they're pre-verbal or when we're babies and stuff like we don't necessarily know And then other people can't be around it. I have things like that. They just happen as much as I can try to talk myself out of it. It takes over, but it gets in the way of relationships. Yeah. Given that we're creatures of relationship, by definition, as human beings.

And given that our early relationships really are the template for then how we approach later relationships. Like with my wife. They're the most likely to trigger us. This word being triggered, by the way, it's an interesting word because we always get trigger warning and don't trigger me. It sounds weak. Yeah, but actually, if you look at a trigger, it's the smallest part of the weapon. There's ammunition there, there's an explosive charge.

So when you get triggered or I get triggered, the really interesting thing is not what's the external thing that triggered me, but what's the explosive charge inside me and the ammunition that I haven't looked at yet. So those triggers can actually guide us to ourselves and to healing by understanding them. Number one. Number two, in terms of how to deal with them, this is where therapy comes in. This is where self-work comes in.

This is where reading comes in. But also, this is where we have to develop the capacity to be mindful enough to notice when these things are arising and not be seized by them. And that takes practice. Yeah. Yeah, the thing that's been most helpful for me is when I can accurately predict it'll happen. Right. So it's like I'm always pretty bad at the airport.

If I don't take the time before we leave, it goes, you're going to go there. They're going to tell you to do this thing that makes no sense to you. This is going to happen. A lot of people are going to ask for your picture. You're with your kids. You're not going to like that. All that's coming. At least my expectation is appropriate.

It's like when you have the expectation, she's picking you up and it flips on you. In AA, we say expectations are resentments under construction. The more I can prevent myself from having these expectations or having appropriate ones. Well, I mean, what you're describing is also what I'm sure that's familiar to you from the addiction world, to stay away from the places that trigger you, stay away from the friends that are drinking. Don't spend the night at crack houses.

Exactly. What is it about airports, by the way, for you? I would say there's three things. There's a timetable, and I always traveled with my mother, and it was always for work when we were younger. So you're under somebody else's agenda. There's some anxiety that I'm going to miss that flight. Some irrational fear of missing the flight, which I don't ever miss flights.

Really, it's the authority from somebody who's telling me to do things that I have determined in my arrogance are very arbitrary. And that is just very triggering from a new stepdad would arrive in the house. There'd be a whole new set of plans. This happened three times. Here's a new game plan. And none of it made sense yeah also my wife and i are recognizable and we have children and i don't want my children's experience in the airport to be getting photographed i remember reading once that didn't you suggest some kind of legislation about no paparazzi for kids or something you know there was legislation which we thought would never hold up

in the courts because of First Amendment. So we actually built a coalition and went to all of the photo houses and got them to agree to stop printing that. Because you said that we may be public, but our children are not. There's three guys in army fatigues in the front yard that jump out when we leave the driveway. Like my eight-month-old. They talk about trauma. Yeah. And I'm like, no, no, this is not acceptable.

You can't do this to my child. It's not their fault. I make Talk about trauma. Yeah. And I'm like, no, this is not acceptable. You can't do this to my child. It's not their fault. I make jokes on TV. Yeah. Regardless, what I loved about what you point out in your own experience with your wife is it takes you out of the present. Yeah. So one of the impacts of trauma is that you're actually living in the past, not in the present

moment. It's so difficult to be present. To be robbed of that is a real tragedy. Yeah, well, because as any spiritual teacher will tell you, all there is is the present moment. Yeah. So when we're not in it, where are we? Whose life are we living? I learned the best distinction from your book, which is, as you say, trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside of you.

And your analogy is a concussion from a car accident is the trauma. The accident is what happened. That's right. I feel like that's incredibly powerful to think about because one thing is unalterable history, right? We're not going to go back in time, erase my stepdads. But the trauma is in me currently. Yeah. That feels powerful.

If the trauma was that my grandparents died in Auschwitz, or that my mother gave me to a stranger when I was 11 months of age, it'll never not have happened. Right. There's something you can do about that. But if the trauma is what happened inside of me, as a result of all that, I came to believe that I have to justify my existence,

that I wasn't worthwhile as a human being, perhaps I wasn't lovable. If that's the wound, that's what trauma means, by the way. It means a wound. So if the wound is in my own self-relationship, if the wound is in essentially my rejection of myself or my need to prove myself to others all the time because I don't accept myself,

that I can heal like that. I don't mean like instantaneously, but I mean that's available for healing in the moment, whereas the past is not available until we have a time machine until we have a time machine yeah we do have a time machine we do yeah it's our minds that's true we can float off into the future or the past as somebody once said it's never too late to have a happy childhood oh i like that that feels empowering too which simply means that whatever happened then

doesn't have to define how you feel about yourself now. It often does, but it doesn't have to. It's all very tricky because it also creates some incredible attributes that you don't want to say goodbye to. Like? I would say for me, I see other people with trauma. I am of great comfort to other people with trauma. I can smell it the second I meet them.

So do you mean that gives you empathy and compassion? Yes, and an ability to connect. And I think I have, at least on the spectrum, a very low level of judgment of other people. Well, it's certainly true that working your way through trauma can open up those qualities in yourself. And I've learned a lot through my own trauma work on myself and with multiple others.

You even said the fact that you could relate to the addicts about your own compulsions is so helpful. Yeah. At the same time, it's not that we need trauma to give us compassion. Compassion and empathy are actually natural human qualities. That may seem like a strange thing to assert in a society that's based on greed and individualistic competition and acquisition and being bigger and better and more beautiful than everybody else. But actually, empathy and compassion are intrinsic to human beings and to other animals. That natural empathy and compassion gets trampled on and they get crushed and they get kind of submerged because of the trauma that happens to people. Now, when you work your way through trauma, you can get back

to that compassion and that empathy. But it's not that you needed the trauma to happens to people. Now, when you work your way through trauma, you can get back to that compassion and that empathy. But it's not that you needed the trauma to get you there. In fact, had you been treated in a way that respected you and your empathy and compassion as you were growing up, you would naturally have those qualities without the trauma. It's interesting, though, because if I'm just being dead honest with you, that all sounds wonderful. But yeah, another attribute would be like,

sure, I'm not enough. I'm not worthy of love or being picked. So I become hysterical so that I can entertain you and you'll love me. And that'll be my value proposition to you. Now that's rooted in a pretty dark place, but I also love the outcome of that. I love making people laugh. I understand. But maybe you would suggest, and maybe it is true that I would have been able to make people laugh anyways. I've studied comedians a bit. In this book, and maybe it is true, that I would have been able to make people laugh anyways. I've studied comedians a bit. In this book, I talk about Robin Williams.

Very tragic life. I worked with him right before all that. Beautiful, beautiful guy. Yeah, sensitive, incredibly talented. But also suffered a lot. In a previous book, I wrote about Gilda Radner. And both Robin and Gilda, they used their humor as children to get closer to their mothers. By making their mothers laugh, they could feel closer to them.

Now, why should a child have to work to be close to their mothers? That's deeply painful. The talent they would have had anyway. Okay. Well, that's the flip. Yeah, I'd have to embrace that. Comedians tend to be very sensitive. Oh, the worst.

When I say sensitive, I mean the word sincere, to feel, a Latin word. You just feel more. And some people are just genetically more sensitive. So you pick up on more stuff from the environment. Whether or not the suffering is necessary to bring that out, hard to say. Let me ask you this way. Your children, would you want them to suffer so they can learn all the stuff that you learned? No, absolutely not.

Why not? Well, A, I have an opinion of them that's much higher than me. So I believe they will be wonderful without that. Okay, but would you want to impose suffering on them in order to give them these qualities that you value in yourself? No, I wouldn't. What's weird is I don't have necessarily faith that I could have achieved this or come to this place without that.

But I do have the faith that they can. I don't mean to be intrusive here. Please be intrusive. I'm certainly intrusive. faith that they can. I don't mean to be intrusive here. Please be intrusive. I'm certainly intrusive. But then I would say that you still have a trauma-tinged view of yourself. You don't fully see yourself yet. I couldn't agree more. Because if you did, you'd see the same possibility and you celebrate the same capacities in yourself that you do in your daughters. I've tried to articulate this a couple of times on here and not done great at it, but yes, in fact, they are my gateway to that

healing. I'm trying to reverse project. If I think that way about them and they're half me, and I see little me in them, it's helping me find my way to that. I can totally relate. One of the impacts of trauma is, first of all, hard to be in the present moment. The second is we develop a negative view of ourselves. When, for example, the parents hurt you, it's not them you start hating, but yourself. There's a wonderful American black psychologist called Kenneth Hardy, who I quote in the book. And he talks about what he calls the assaulted sense of self.

And the assaulted sense of self is when you take on the view of the perpetrator, you make it your own view of yourself. So Malcolm X, the great black leader, trying to conk his hair so it wouldn't be curly. I was talking to Ken Hardy, who said he used to hate the shape of his lips. I myself used to hate myself for being Jewish in Hungary, or at least think less of myself. And so all kids, whether it's racialized trauma, whether it's just individual trauma, but you take on a view of yourself that the people who treat you not well have a view.

You develop this shame-based view of yourself. That's one of the essences of trauma, is you get disconnected from who you really are. Your caregivers are the ones that seem to know how this place works. Exactly. So if they've labeled you as defunct somehow, you're inclined to believe it because they know how everything else works. Or if they just don't meet your needs,

then you realize that your needs don't matter. I got a lot of admiration and remuneration for being a physician that was always there for my patients. Day or night, you know, I would take on all kinds of work just because people wanted me. But why?

Because I needed to be wanted. Yeah, yeah. Because I needed to be proved to myself that I was lovable and wantable. Now, had I known that I'm a worthwhile human being, I still would have served people. I still would have looked after them. But I wouldn't have ignored my own family.

I wouldn't have taken on more than was good for me. I would not have created depression for myself. I would have done it with boundaries. But the point is that anybody who, and that includes a lot of people, who has had any kind of traumatic experience or set of traumatic experiences that they're growing up. They'll develop to some degree or another a negative, deficient view of themselves. And then the world says, well, if you're successful and if you get this money.

You drive a Corvette. People admire you. If you have a beautiful partner, then you can prove that you're okay. And this whole culture works on that. Yeah, it's the fuel. Let's talk about capital T and little t trauma. Many people will think, I didn't have an incarcerated parent.

I didn't have food scarcity. I didn't have sexual abuse. There's some sentiment in the country that is, stop being a baby. Stop being self-indulgent. But I like how you lay out this little t trauma and that we have needs. Yeah.

Could you walk us through little t trauma because it's very relevant so you can hurt people in two ways one is by doing bad things to them that should never happen to them and you mentioned some of them a parent dying or being abused or racialized given to a stranger for seven weeks at 11 months old about six weeks actually so those are things that shouldn't happen to children not ideally but then there's another way you can hurt people not by doing bad things to them that you shouldn't have but by the things that shouldn't happen to children, not ideally. But then there's another way you can hurt people, not by doing bad things to them that you shouldn't have, but by the things that should have happened not happening.

So children are born with certain needs. Children are born, I was going to say, with certain expectations, but that's not even accurate. Children don't have conscious expectations. They're just born. But they themselves are expectations. And this is not my analogy, but I think it's a brilliant one. Our lungs don't expect oxygen.

They're an expectation for oxygen. They evolved in an oxygen-filled environment. If there's no oxygen in this environment, there'd be no lungs. We would not exist as creatures, not the way we are anyway. It wouldn't be us. It would be some other creature. So children are an expectation for unconditional loving acceptance. Right.

And you say these are non-cultural. They're dictated by evolution. Right. A baby rat, a baby monkey is an expectation for being nurtured and held and licked by the mother. A human infant is an expectation for unconditional loving attachment. They're an expectation that they don't have to work to make the relationship with their parents work. They don't have to be cute or funny or compliant. But just being themselves. Just being themselves.

That's an expectation. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. Sasha hated sand. The way it stuck to things for weeks. So when Maddie shared a surf trip on Expedia Trip Planner, he hesitated. Then he added a hotel with a cliffside pool to the plan. And they both spent the week in the water.

You were made to follow your whims. We were made to help find a place on the beach with a pool, and a waterfall, and a soaking tub and, of course, a great shower. Expedia. Made to travel. So I first came to Edward Jones with a great deal of trepidation. When I first met with my advisor and I really was feeling vulnerable about what I would have to share, I was, of course, pleasantly surprised to find that there was absolutely no judgment and a lot of support. And when it was time to get serious,

he really took my hand and helped me to do that. Edward Jones. We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils.

So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. Our brains are wired for all kinds of emotions, which exist for evolutionary reasons. Loving and caring is an evolutionally dictated set of emotional dynamics. Why? Because otherwise we don't survive.

It's that simple. Healthy anger is wired into our brain. Why? Because otherwise we don't know how to protect our boundaries. But then chronic anger. Well, that's something else. Yeah.

Healthy anger, we can talk about what that is later, but we have a need for that. Grief. Life is full of losses. We have to be able to go through a process where we come to terms with the loss and that's grief.

So the child has an expectation that they're able to experience and express and have it accepted all their emotions and have their emotions validated by adults. We also have finally a need for real spontaneous free play

in nature actually. That's how we evolved for God's sakes until blink of an eye ago when i say play i don't mean with internet games and cell phones i just mean spontaneous creative play with other playmates those are needs of children those are expectations you don't meet them those children are going to be wounded they're going to be hurt they're going to be limited in their capacities to one degree or another i I've had, I don't know how many, hundreds of conversations with people. Hey, I had a really happy childhood,

but I still became addicted. Give me two minutes. Well, you say someone without trauma is an outlier. Yeah, in this society, not because parents don't love their kids, not because they don't do their best, and not because they're not dedicated. Even difficult parents are doing their best.

That just happens to be their best because of their own traumas. But because of the stresses on the parenting environment have become so intolerable and they're becoming increasingly so that parents are just not able to provide those needs of their children and it's not a question of love because the child doesn't experience what the parent feels the child experiences how the parent is i mean the parent is stressed or depressed or short-tempered or absent because they need to make a living. In the United States,

25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, which is nothing less than a massive abandonment of children because that infant needs to be with the mom for months and months and months and months. If you look at other primates, we're the same way.

Now, that's not the mother's fault. That's an economic imperative imposed on the mother in a society of inequality and often racism. But it means that those children are not getting their needs met. Now, even in well-endowed middle-class families with two parents, the parents are very often stressed because of their own stuff that they haven't resolved yet. You know, I pass on my stresses and traumas to my kids.

Not because I meant to, just because I couldn't help it. I didn't know any better. Now, trauma is a spectrum. It's not a matter of dramatizing anything. When you said, you know, don't be a baby, I say to them, look, do you want to be real or do you not want to be real? Do you want to see how things are

or do you want to deny how things are? These people who talk about don't be such a baby, very often they're denying their own pain. That's where they're coming from. Yeah. There's a hard example we could give now. It's much later in the book, but I found it really fascinating. And that is this chapter about Trump and Hillary Clinton. Yeah. And you've had Hillary on your program. I have. Yes. I adored her. I had so much fun interacting with her. We got kind of a playful side of her.

It was Zoom, which is such a bummer. I wish we could have had her in person, but she was great. You point out that for the supporters, those two seem diametrically opposed. But in fact, they have some similarities. One of them is they both track in the upper quintile of cold-heartedness. Which is not my assertion. That was based on a study. What were the metrics?

Well, there's some clues, right? And this is his point about the myth of normal, which is on the night of her nomination, they play a video and it's well-produced. It's actually narrated by the voice of God, Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman. And the things that she's proud to share are that her father said, don't whine, don't complain. Do what you're supposed to do.

Do it to the best of your ability. Spank the kids excessively. Mom said there's no rooms for cowards in this house when she was being bullied. So here's what happened. There's a conservative columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks, whose political views I totally disagree with, but who I find very insightful and rather a deep thinker. There's insightful thinkers on both sides. Oh, yeah, sure. Brooks pointed out that what Trump and Hillary Clinton shared was a denial of vulnerability.

At this Democratic convention, right after her nomination, they played a video about her life narrated by Morgan Freeman, in which Hillary talks about how her mother taught her resilience. And she gives the following example. And as I'm telling you this, Dax, Monica, do you have kids? I don't. Okay, well, Dax, as I'm telling you this anecdote,

think about your own children in that situation, okay? So she's four years old. Neighborhood kids are bullying her. And she runs into the mother's home for protection. And the mom says, there's no room for cards in this house. Now you get out there and deal with those kids. And this is presented by Hillary

as a wonderful example of resilience building parenting. Millions of people are watching this. All the press is watching. Nobody comments. Now, if one of your kids ran into the house, four years old, would you say to them, get out of here? There's no room for cowards in this house.

Well, here's where I'm going to add the very complicated analysis in that situation. I do believe if you grew up like I did, what you may tell yourself is if you don't learn to stand up now, you're actually going to experience much more suffering for the rest of your minimally childhood. So the parent definitely believes, God, I got to give them this skill or they're going to suffer endlessly at the hands of bullies because bullies are ever present. That may be true. And I'm not blaming the mother. She was doing her best. Right. My question is, what's the impact on a four-year-old? Now, a four-year-old kid who runs into the house is not a coward. She's a four-year-old kid. Any young creature

runs to the parent for protection. What she's being told is not that there's no room for cards in this house. There's no room for vulnerability in this house. No, you get out there and suck it up.

50 or 60 years later, she's running for the presidency. She develops pneumonia. What does she do with it? She's sucking it up. Right. She doesn't tell anybody. Ignoring it. Not even call the up. She doesn't tell anybody,

doesn't even call the doctor. She collapses in the street so that her sicker guy have to put into the car. She's not accepting her own vulnerability. That certainly makes her tough. That makes her put up with a lot of stuff and makes her very determined. But what was being celebrated here was the traumatization of a four-year-old. Yeah. And there's another way of making kids resilient. When a four-year-old runs to you, you don't tell them to go out there and not to be a coward. You say, oh, but that really hurts, doesn't it? It's so scary for you. Yeah, I would be so scared in that situation. You validate their emotions and then they develop confidence in themselves and they'll naturally stand up to the bullies.

I hate that story because I'm sure that did happen. But even if it didn't happen, she felt she had to do that because in this culture, we do elevate toughness, resilience, especially for women in leadership roles. I know. And the highest leadership role of all. She had to prove I'm like men. And men have to prove they're tough. So Trump's proving the same thing to his tyrant father.

Well, that's exactly the point that David Brooks makes. Is that the both of them deny vulnerability. You're right. Women have an uphill battle in that because we already believe that about men. They're already tough and he's already this. But if she doesn't show it, she's automatically weak.

We won't trust her to be exactly and i think what you're describing monica is what we may call sort of a patriarchy yeah a lot of people don't like to use that word if you don't see it as a conspiracy of some kind which it isn't but as a mindset then we're over emphasizing the so-called masculine qualities of toughness and individualism and I'll make it. I'm not vulnerable. I don't have emotions. I'm not a coward.

I'm not a coward. And when you look at veterans with PTSD, that's what they have to learn is that they're vulnerable and to have emotions is not to be weak. It's actually to be strong. So what you're saying about women in this culture and Hillary in particular, it's absolutely true. I totally understand why she would think of it that way. But I'm telling you, that denial of

our vulnerability is toxic, not just to women, but also to men. Yeah, everybody suffers from it. So I'm not criticizing her or her mother. I'm just saying here was an example of what any parent would tell you is a painful, traumatizing experience for a four year old being celebrated as wonderful parenting. I'm talking about the culture here. One of the points I make in this book is that suppression of vulnerability and emotions and so on is actually a risk factor for physical illness. Yeah, I want you to talk about breast cancer and the different correlations with breast cancer.

Yeah, so I talked earlier today about the need to experience our healthy anger, which is a boundary defense. You're in my space, get out. But let's say you grew up in a family where as a two-year-old, which is a boundary defense. You're in my space, get out. But let's say you grew up in a family where as a two-year-old, you throw a tantrum. Now, by the way,

if you're a parent, at some point or another, you're going to frustrate your kids. If you're a good parent, you will frustrate them because that two-year-old, they want a cookie before dinner. And you say, no cookie.

At least two times a day, you're going to tell them to brush their teeth. They're not going to like that. Exactly, yeah. What do you and I do when we don't get what we think our needs met? We get frustrated. So two-year-old gets frustrated. What does a two-year-old do?

They don't have emotional self-regulation at two years of age. That has to develop over time, which it will given the right circumstances. So they get angry. But then you give them the message, there's no place for anger in this house. That's not acceptable to me. Time out. So the child learns that to be acceptable to you, they have to suppress a part of themselves. I'm not saying we should indulge kids' demands or angers. I'm saying there's another way of dealing with them, not to

coerce them to suppress it, to be acceptable to us. But if you suppress your healthy anger, what is healthy anger? It's a boundary defense. It protects your boundaries. You're in my space, get out. That's healthy anger. Now here's the thing scientifically speaking, and this is what's both mind-blowing and frustrating, because the medical profession, despite all the science, doesn't recognize it. What is the immune system? It's a boundary defense. The job of the immune system is to keep out what is unhealthy and to let in what is healthy. That's also the job of our emotional system, is to allow in what is nurturing and healthy and loving and caring and welcome and to keep out what is not no they're not separate systems it's all one system the emotional system in our brains and our bodies is part and parcel of the same system that runs our nervous system, our guts, our immune system, and our hormone

apparatus. So when we're suppressing one part of ourselves, we're affecting all the other parts. So people that repress healthy anger, they're actually messing with their immune system. They don't know that, of course. The immune system then does one of two things. Just as the anger that you don't express turns against you in the form of depression. I know I'm ranting a bit here, but if you indulge me, what does it mean to depress something? Push it down.

Push it down. So we have this thing called depression, this disease called depression. We're actually pushing something down when we're depressed. What are we pushing down? Our emotions. Why are we pushing them down? Because in childhood we learned that the only way we're acceptable is if we push down our emotions. That's one of the roots of depression given the unity and there's a whole science that studies

the unity of the immune system the nervous system the hormonal apparatus and the emotional apparatus that science is called psychoneuroimmunology studies all the interconnections and the essential oneness so when you suppress your emotions especially out the anger you're actually suppressing your immune system and this has been shown in laboratory studies. Number one. Number two, so the immune system no longer recognizes cancer cells as other than myself and doesn't destroy them. All of us have malignant cells in our bodies because nature makes mistakes. But a healthy immune system will survey the scene, recognize the non-self cell and destroy it. so that's one of the things that can happen is that repression of emotion is present in a lot of people with malignancy and i've seen that over

and over again not only have i seen it other people have studied it just as the healthy anger that you suppress can turn against you in the form of self-loathing and self-criticism and self-hatred even the immune system can turn against you. And now you have autoimmune disease. Listen, this is where I want to get selfish with you and say, in addition to being an addict, I also have psoriatic arthritis, an autoimmune condition. And I think you see some connection there. In my view, and this is not theoretical, I've seen people heal significantly from autoimmune conditions. I described in something in the book, whether it's multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis or scleroderma or systemic lupus, people heal. If they heal their emotions, I'm not promising like a snake oil here. I'm not saying do this and you'll

be okay. It's a long, difficult process. Yesterday, I gave a talk at a conference in Winnipeg, Canada. This is over a thousand indigenous Canadians, all of whom have been through residential schools where they were emotionally, sexually abused and just atrocious history. A woman came up to me over a thousand indigenous Canadians, all of whom have been through residential schools, where they were emotionally, sexually abused, and just atrocious history. A woman came up to me and said, I used to have lupus, and I read your book when the body says no.

And I started saying no, and I started getting angry in a healthy way. My lupus is gone. I can show you on my computer an example of a woman whose face is full of a rash, her fingers are white like chalk because of lupus. She was told you'd be on medication for the rest of your life. Four years later, nothing wrong with her.

Fingers are pink as anything. Face, the rash is gone. No medications because she dealt with the emotional side of things. In terms of your psoriatic arthritis, let me ask you this question. If you just pondered for a moment, is that okay? Oh, I'd love to talk to you,

but yeah, I'm trying to exploit your free services right now. Okay. How easy have you found it in life to say no? I can say no pretty well. All your life you've been able to do that? To other people's demands, needs, and expectations? Well, I was molested at a young age.

Okay. And post that, I have had a modus operandi of I will die before I do anything I don't want to do. To a fault. How old were you when you were molested? I would guess eight. Who did you talk to about it?

I didn't talk to anybody until I was 17. A girl confided in me she had been raped and I felt obliged to, yeah. You got two adolescent girls? Eight and ten. I thought they were a bit older, okay. Yeah. Believe me, when I look at them and I go, wow, okay, at this point that already happened to you. Okay, this happened to you when you were eight, one of your daughters is eight.

If anybody even looked at her the wrong way, who would you want her to talk to? Well, me, of course. Actually, maybe mom. It'd probably be safer to tell mom. Okay, well, one of the parents at least. Yes, yes, yes. If something like that happened to them and they didn't talk to you or your wife, how would you understand that? It would obviously break my heart.

No, but I understand how you'd feel about it. But how would you explain it? I would have to assume they would have thought they were no longer worthy of our love if they had been tainted in this way. In other words, they had no trust. Oh, can I add though? I want to be thorough. They could also just be driven by shame. Yeah. But trusting that you'll

love them farther. That it's a safe place to feel that in front of sure, but that is a powerful force, though, when you have the immediate shame. But shame is interpersonal. What I'm saying, I can't dictate this to you, but I'm suggesting, by the age of eight, you learned how to suppress yourself. To me, it's all very clear now in retrospect.

Yes, I developed OCD around this time. I started doing things compulsively. You also suppressed who you really were. And I'm suggesting that that self-suppression, which is not your fault. It was how you adapted to the circumstances. I'm not even saying it's your mother's fault because she would have gone through a whole lot of stuff. Let me even ask you this. Let's say something like that happened to your daughter.

God forbid. Yeah. If the parents are tuned in, even if the child doesn't say anything, don't they pick up that something's going on? Yeah, so that's a hard reality to confront. Yes, that I am very attuned to what's going on. I picked them up from someone's house.

What's happening? Finally get out. Oh, they prayed at dinner. I felt really awkward because we don't know that thing. Like, yes, even as something as simple as she felt weird while they were praying, I could feel that. I have the bandwidth. So here's where it's multi-generational.

Your mom didn't have that kind of sensitivity. Why not? Because in her childhood, she had to learn to suppress herself. She was molested. Exactly. The whole family. So it's multi-generational. It's nobody's fault.

Right. Nobody's being blamed here. I'm just whole family. So it's multi-generational. It's nobody's fault. Right. Nobody's being blamed here. I'm just saying this is how it works. So it means that you were suppressing yourself. That self-suppression has everything to do, I say, with your arthritis. There's a path out of it, I believe. At least there's a possibility, which I've seen realized so often. And not only have I realized it, other people have witnessed it, researched it, written about it. So the mind-body unity is such that if we take that seriously, then if somebody comes in with, say, psoriatic arthritis, I work not just with the physical manifestations of the illness, give you the anti-inflammatories or the steroids or whatever you're getting, I also work with your mind and your emotions. Yeah. I think one of the stats in your book that is heartbreaking is that women with PTSD have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer.

Yeah. Which is a study that came out of Harvard about five years ago. That study alone should send every doctor running to figure out the mind-body connection. Because in the same study also showed that the milder the symptoms of PTSD, the less the risk of ovarian cancer. So they're proportionally related. That doesn't mean that PTSD, the less the risk of ovarian cancer. So they're proportionally related. That doesn't mean that PTSD is the only cause or even the cause. I'm saying that those painful emotions unresolved are a contributor. And they're one of the things that we can deal with. But as a medical system, we don't.

It's really heartbreaking that you experience those things and then the reward for it is a physical ailment down the road. Yeah, there's so many studies on that. Canadian study, men who were sexually abused, triple the rate of heart attacks, double the risk of cancer. This is regardless of whether they smoke or drink or not because trauma itself causes inflammation in the body. The science is so clear.

Yeah, let's celebrate the achievements of modern medicine, but let's combine it. Yeah. How do we reframe our definition of abnormal? I'd like to reframe it in terms of what are actually human needs and human qualities. And those conditions that don't support them, they're abnormal. And those that do are normal. So normal is no longer what we're used to or we're not used to,

but it's actually based on what is healthy and natural. In other words, I would put normal back into that triad of normal, therefore healthy and natural, or healthy and natural and therefore normal. That's how I would reframe it. Now, in our society, we tend to think of somebody, for example, with mental illness as abnormal. Look, I've been diagnosed with ADHD.

That was what my first book was about. I've had depression. Who am I to say that other people with mental illness are abnormal? We're all on the spectrum. So let's just recognize that. Some have suffered more some people have suffered less some people their manifestations of their suffering is more dramatic and more disabling than others but for god's sakes they're not different from the rest of us it's a degree yeah can you tell me how afflictions say like addiction are adaptations. You and I have both our addictive behaviors, Monica, have you?

Yeah, again, not drugs. Oh, so let me give you a definition of addiction, then you tell me. Okay. By the way, the word addiction comes from a Latin word for slavery. Oh, wow. Oh, wow, yeah. Well, isn't that accurate? Yeah.

Addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves but then suffers negative consequences in the long term and doesn't give up despite the negative consequences. So pleasure, craving, relief in the short term, harm in the long term, refusal or inability to give it up. That's what an addiction is. I didn't say anything about drugs. It could include drugs, obviously. Nicotine, caffeine, crystal meth, heroin, fentanyl, alcohol could also be sex, gambling, shopping, pornography, eating, fantasy, bulimia, internet gaming, work, power. I could go on and on and on. So, yes.

So, the issue is not. Absolutely. So, here's what I'm going to ask both of you guys now. Not what was wrong with the addiction, not even what the addiction was, but what did you get from it in the short term that you craved? So, Monica, what did you get? Validation. Can you say more about that? Feelings of being worthy.

Okay, thank you. Dax, what did your addictions give you? Relief. From? Pain. Yeah. Hence my mantra. Don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.

In my case, it's also validation, for example, and also a real sense of being alive. Yes. Temporary dopamine. An arousal junkie, yeah, yeah. Sense of being alive, sense of being worthy, pain relief, are the good things or bad things in themselves? Right things. Good things.

Essential. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The addiction wasn't your primary problem. Your addiction was an attempt to solve a problem. It's an adaptation. The real problem was your lack of worthiness or your belief in your lack of worthiness or your belief in your lack of worthiness which is a result of trauma the pain that you experienced you've already talked about

it dax is sourced in very painful experiences mine as well and i'm not telling on monica to school because we've talked about this a bunch on here what is really salient is yeah so mine involves like criminal activity hers is not but the result is just as strong. In fact, definitely as strong. Yeah, yeah. And maybe even more strong. That's the whole point. Yeah, being brown in the South and liking a boy

and having the boy say, I can't like you back because you're brown is like, well, that's a wrap on that. And some passed down abandonment stuff. This is my issue. I know that about myself, but it's like what we said earlier. It happens in here all the time and it continues to happen

where I don't feel like I should be here and I don't know how to stop it. The therapist on me wants to jump on this like a dog on a bone. I want you to. Attack, attack, sicker. Okay. But let's just conclude the point.

Your addictions, my addictions were adaptations. Adaptations to what? To emotional pain. Where is that pain sourced? In trauma. So addictions are not diseases that you inherit. They're not bad habits that you choose. They're desperate attempts to relieve suffering.

That's all they are. And the fact that your addictions were criminal, it's only because this society criminalizes certain addictions. I meant the inciting trauma to me. Yeah. You could try to evaluate as being more traumatic than that. I don't compare traumas. That was the point I was making is I would debunk that.

Yeah, even though yours is criminal, hers is just as devastating. Yes, exactly. So the result's the same. So, Monica, can I ask you a couple of questions? Yeah. First of all, you said that you don't feel like you belong. Is that the phrase you used?

I think I did say that, yeah. Freudian slip. So let me give you a bit of coaching, if I may. Yeah, please. I don't belong is not a feeling. Feelings are I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm sad, I'm angry. Those are feelings or emotions. What is I don't belong?

Opinion, a fact. Fear. It's an opinion. It's a point of view. Yeah. What do you feel when you believe that i don't belong opinion a fact fear it's an opinion it's a point of view yeah what do you feel when you believe that you don't belong uh unnecessary or that unnecessary is not a feeling right okay okay i guess sad but that seems basic what do you mean that seems it seems so obvious but it feels deeper than the word sad no no wait a minute no if you're willing to work with this, just stay with this belief that I don't belong here. Did you experience it

here today? Yes. Okay. Now just check in with your body. What do you feel when you have that belief, when that belief seizes hold of you? Physically, I feel hot. Okay. If this was on camera, when you said that, what would the audience have seen on your face just now when i said it yeah you probably don't know did i smile or laugh you smiled what's funny about it i want to smile again what's funny about it nothing okay so what you're already doing is you're distancing yourself from your feeling that's not a criticism just an observation for a good reason, you learned that I better not be with my feelings.

I better kind of minimize them. But let's go back to the question again. What do you feel when you believe that there's three of us here engaged in this, to me,

very deep and honest conversation and you don't belong? What do you actually feel in your body when you believe that? I would say hopeless. That's not a feeling. Oh, God. Hopeless is a belief that there's no hope. What do you feel when you believe that i would say hopeless that's not a feeling oh god hopeless is a belief that there's no hope what do you feel when you believe things are hopeless sad sadness

yeah now how does sadness show up in your body everything feels retreated and deflated kind of constriction yes in your chest and your belly and so on can you be with that emotion right now just for a moment is it okay that things are constricted can you just accept them and be with them what's it like when you're with them when you're not deflecting the minimizing it's uncomfortable and painful like it hurts there's pain there can you be with that pain i don't want to who the heck wants to yeah of course you don't want to. Who the heck wants to? Yeah. Of course you don't want to. I know. But can you be? Yeah. Okay. That's the way through is you actually have to allow yourself to have those emotions and to be with them because it's got nothing to do with being worthy or not worthy. It's got to do with these emotions that we don't know how to be with because as a child you weren't

given the support to experience all your emotions so you can actually work your way through it but your way through is through the body not just by talking about it you're gonna have to actually be with this stuff i'm not a buddhist teacher by any means but i'm talking basic you know but the buddha said you just gotta be with all this stuff and notice and then by the way who's the person that's noticing the pain and staying with it who's the person that's being honest about it me yeah is that person really not worthy no okay i love you buddy and by the way dax and i will both tell you that we've had the same stuff happening to us that's why i was a workaholic doctor to prove prove my worthiness. While you're talking to her, I can feel my own anxiety. My brain going, I need the perfect answer, which is all a part of the same symptom.

Yeah. What's the right, perfect answer? And then I got to be smarter than this, because that's another thing that people might like about me. You know, the machine's so well developed up there. This drive that we have to be this or that, number one, that's how we adapt. And that's how we abandon ourselves. And that's the third big effect of trauma is that we get disconnected from ourselves. And again, the toxicity of the culture resides in the fact that the culture then rewards those defense mechanisms. Like when you're smiling all the time, you're likable and you're pleasant to be with.

There was an article in The Guardian, British newspaper, maybe about 11 years ago now, by an Australian nurse who wrote a book on the five regrets of dying people. And I used to see this myself in palliative care. The biggest regret that people had

as they were dying untimely, usually of cancer, is that they weren't themselves. Hey, what a tragedy. That's the first thing people said. That's the biggest regret dying people had. They had other regrets.

They never gave it a shot. Because they tried too hard to be accepted by everybody else. Because it's life or death. We're a social priming. We know it's life or death. Exactly. And that's what I'm saying about the toxicity of the culture. It's valuing all the things that we develop to protect ourselves from our vulnerability.

Yeah. Oh. Stay tuned for more Armchair expert if you dare see yourself buying a home one day do future you a favor open a quest trade first home savings account and help that future come faster the fhsa is a tax-free account where all your investment gains are yours to keep and put towards your first home with quest trade you can open an FHSA online. No bank appointment needed. It's easy and only takes a few minutes.

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One pathway. Okay, a pathway to wholeness. A pathway, yeah. With many different things within that pathway. Would you mind telling me about the four A's and the five compassions? If I can remember them. Okay. Well, tell me about three of the of these and four of the compassions.

There's anger that we've talked about. So the necessity to set our boundaries. Not an automatic defensive way, by the way. And healthy anger is a boundary defense. So that if you invade my boundaries and I say, no, stay out, get out. And you get out, the anger is gone. It doesn't dwell. It doesn't linger.

It doesn't magnify itself. It doesn't become rage. Autonomy. An auto means the self. An automobile is a self-propelled mobile. So authenticity, being true to ourselves, which is what we've been talking about. You already did pretty good.

I got two of the four. Authenticity and autonomy, I think, those are two separate ones. Autonomy is that we're the authors of our lives. Again, the word author comes from self. We decide how our life's going to go. Now, within circumstances, we're not gods. We don't get to set the circumstances of our lives,

but we do get to decide how we respond to circumstances and what new circumstances we want to create for ourselves. So autonomy, anger, authenticity. You know what? I'm stumped. I forget the fourth. But now I would add a fifth one, which really was an omission on my part, which is awareness. In the little exercise But now I would add a fifth one, which really was an omission on my part, which is awareness.

In the little exercise, Monica, you and I just did, I just wanted you to be aware of what's inside your body. So being aware is really important. I'm going to kick myself later on. What kind of an author doesn't remember the fourth? We could call your son. Rob's going to look it up. Gobble will look it up. Acceptance. Acceptance. Thank you. That's a kind

of a Freudian thing, isn't it? Gobble couldn't remember acceptance. Because in my life, I've always resisted. You know, for recovery, acceptance is the answer to all of our problems. That's one of our many sayings. Well, and acceptance doesn't mean tolerance. It doesn't mean that you put up with everything. But you do accept that this is how it is now.

No point resenting reality. You know, I flew here from Winnipeg last night through Vancouver to LA. The flight from Vancouver to LA was delayed. In past years, speaking of airport neurosis, I would have got all upset. You know, why is this always happening to me? And no, I won't get enough sleep. And I have to talk to Dax and Monica in the morning.

No, I just accepted it. This is how it is. If I sleep an hour less, I sleep an hour less. Life on life's terms, we also say, right? That's a good way to put it. The fact of compassions, I do have a course called Compassion and Inquiry. We teach to therapists and counselors and doctors and so on. We've had over 3,000 students now in 80 countries. Wow. And the essence of the compassion there is five levels of compassion that I've distinguished.

The first one we've already talked about is this empathy that you have, this compassion that we have, that I say is intrinsic to human beings, unless it's knocked out of us or suppressed in us. I call that ordinary compassion. And when I say ordinary, I don't mean a pejorative or a put-down. I just mean it's just part of who we are. It just means I see you suffer and I feel bad that you suffer. I don't want you to suffer. And most people are capable of that, all across the spectrum of political opinion.

The second compassion is what I call the compassion of understanding. If you're addicted to drugs, it's not enough that I feel bad for you that you're suffering. I have to understand the source of your suffering. And so I have to look at what actually happened to you. Like I said before, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. If I don't understand your pain, I have to look at your life. So that's the compassion of understanding or if you want to be compassionate towards yourself rather than just accept this belief that i'm not worthy look at the sources of it so that's the compassion of understanding

the third we've already talked about which is that i call the compassion of recognition which is that i get that everything that's in you is also in me so that it's not like me as an expert sitting here fixing you. It's like two people talking very evenly. You know, I may know more about some things than you do. You may know more some things about than I do. Cars, I meant. But there's nothing in you that isn't in me, vice versa.

That's a compassion of recognition. Boy, if that one was prevalent in the society. Yeah, that kind of gets rid of the us them paradigm that's the whole point it gets rid of the other one of the worst myths that we have is that there's us and there's others and the fourth compassion is what i call the compassion of truth which is like for example monica and this exchange between you and i a few minutes ago you experienced pain but you experienced pain because that was the truth my intention was not to protect you from pain. But you experience pain because that was the truth. My intention was not to protect you from pain. Right.

My intention was to get you to recognize the truth. And Jesus, apart from everything else, he was a wonderful psychologist. And he said, you will know the truth and the truth will liberate you. He didn't say that the truth will liberate you. He said, you will know the truth and the truth will liberate you. So it's your knowledge of the truth that's liberating. And the truth is often painful. My job is not to protect people from pain, but to come to terms with it. So that's liberating. And the truth is often painful. My job is not to protect people from pain, but to come to terms with it. So that's what I call the compassionate truth. Not that we should inflict pain on people. That's not compassionate. But when the pain is already there, it's compassionate to look at it. And that's what I mean by the compassionate truth. The fifth level

of compassion that I've distinguished, and of course, there's many ways of looking at compassion. I'm just giving you my own schema. But the fifth one is what I call the compassion of possibility. You already talked about that. Because when you look at your children, you see not just their behaviors and their upsets or their cuteness. You see their capacities. You see their possibilities. You see their fullness. That's what I heard you bringing to your parenting. And so what if we could look at each other that way? What if we could look at each other and ourselves, not just based on I behaved this way, therefore I'm bad, or I look this way, or so on,

but what's the possibility in me for full humanity? I think we almost categorize people by their limitations. That's the whole point. Really, you're assessing the people in your life and going, I'm going to be aware of that limitation and that limitation. I got to safeguard myself from that. This person's prone to backstab me. Which, by the way, is because we look at ourselves that way.

Yeah, I can only see the others as good as I see myself. Yeah, so that compassion of possibility is seeing the fullness, the actual potential, which is actually in the present. Those are the five levels of compassion. That's beautiful. Yeah, it really is. I have really enjoyed this. Truly, this has been so lovely.

So have I. Thank you very much. I had no idea what to expect, but I've met two real human beings. So thank you very much. Thank you. Absolutely. The Myth of Normal,

Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Written by you and your son, Daniel. Again, I said it at the beginning, but I want to reemphasize it's just so beautifully written. Occasionally you come across these things that you're not expecting to read any nice prose, but like the emperor of all maladies. It just lands on you and you're like, how could this book

be so beautiful? It's about cancer. Isn't that funny? Because I feel the same way about that book. And I met the author, Siddhartha Mukherjee. Yes, we've interviewed him. Yeah. So book and I met the author Siddhartha Mukherjee yes we've interviewed him yeah so him and I met at a dinner in New York just a few months ago and I savor every word he writes I couldn't agree more and he presents

as a poet and he's written a new book called Song of the Cell yes that's what we interviewed him about beautiful book as well and kind of similar

to your Petri dish well such a pleasure meeting you and I hope everyone checks out The Myth of Normal it's a beautiful book. And I presume that you're going to be flying back to Canada.

And I can only hope your wife picks you up. Actually, my wife's out of town. So I'm going to save that humiliation. I'm flying back this afternoon. Can I briefly mention the next book my son and I are writing? Yes, of course. And by the way, I'm boasting, I know, but The Myth of Normal was 19 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list.

Congratulations. It's been on the Canadian bestsellers list for a whole year now, and it's been published in 34 countries. Oh my gosh. I'm very happy. You can imagine how happy I am about it. But the next book my son and I are writing, based on the workshop that we do, is called Hello Again, a fresh start for parents and their adult children. Oh, I like that. Two years before it comes out, but we're just starting to write it now based on what we've learned about our

dynamics, some negative, some positive, but all of them necessary. And then what we've learned about other people, that's the next project that we're embarking on. You remind me of two people we've interviewed. John Gottman, such a special experience, and I can feel his life force. And then Phil Stutz. I'm getting very much

Phil Stutz vibes. Do you know Phil Stutz? I'm getting very much Phil Stutz vibes. Do you know Phil Stutz? I don't know. Please watch that documentary on Netflix. The actor Jonah Hill. Oh, goes to the psychiatrist? He does a documentary

about his psychiatrist. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard about it. I just haven't had a chance to watch it yet. I really recommend it. I feel like there's also some Yuval Harari

because of like a whole synthesization with a word we can never say. I know you've had Yuval and I quote him in the book as well. Yeah. Well, you've had some great people. Oh, my God. We're so spoiled. I'm very honored to follow in their footsteps.

Well, and we are honored to have you. You've added to that lineage. So thank you so much. Great luck with the book. Everyone check out The Myth of Normal. Next up is the fact check. I don't even care about facts. I just want to get into your pants.

Hello. Good gold bracelet. Thank you. Do you think my watch would look better if my skin was browner? I think it looks better when I'm tanner. No, it looks good always. Okay, all right. Actually, it might look...

I don't think so. I think like when your skin's browner, it actually makes the gold pop. Like the gold looks richer. Interesting. But they need to do a study, I guess. I'll do one. She's going to do one. Well, this weekend I went shopping, of course.

Where at? Lots of places. Where you were like all about town? Yeah, shopping. Okay. Because I can't drink. Right, right, right. And you have a lot of estrogen, so maybe also there's like some nesting urges.

Yeah, let's say that. Yeah, that's positive. About the shirt I'm wearing now, it's a vintage shirt. It says Air Jordan. Ah, yeah, it's nice and thin too, right? So comfortable. It's so thin it feels like that's baby skin you know that's my preferred blend of cotton that you're wearing if you notice all my not to give them a shout out but why not velvet by graham and something sure

i love the blend thin yeah yeah thin. A little bit of see-through. Yeah. Opposite of pachydermis. We got to find out what the opposite of pachydermis is. In Latin. What is in Latin thin skin? Tenuis pellis. What?

Say again? Tenuis pellis. Tenuis pellis. Tenuis pellis. Tenuies Pellis. Tenuies Pellis. That's bad. That's like when we try to do a vendissement. The only nice thing about butchering Latin is you're free to do it because no one speaks it. It's true.

No one's going to get upset. It's really true. I wish I could speak it. Do you really? Yeah, I do. But you couldn't converse with anybody. But I know secrets. Right, right, right.

I guess it's almost like a secret language that's not a secret. Because if you and a friend knew it, you'd be the only people that knew it. I think Mindy knows it. No. She took it. Well, taking it and knowing it's a little different, right? Because I took Spanish and I do not know it. I took years of Spanish.

And I know me gusta montar a caballo rapido, which is not Spanish. I like to ride a horse fast. That's pretty good. Speaking of, I think we can say it now. We bought a horse. We did buy a horse. No, not the strike. Our show is available in Spanish.

Oh, my God. Yes, now. Well, can we now? Yeah, they put an article out today that I saw. Okay, holy smokes. What an experience for us to listen to that. That was- Last week.

So AI has translated- The robot. The robot has translated our voices into Spanish so that the Spanish speaking people can understand it better. Or at all. Or at all, depending if you don't speak English or not or understand English. And so it's cool because we'll reach an audience that we possibly wouldn't have been able to before.

Yes. We talked about this before, but we had to cut it out because we jumped the gun. We did. We didn't really read the fine print. We weren't supposed to talk about it yet. But we were overeager. First of all, it's mind-blowing because it sounds like we speak Spanish. I mean, clearly.

That's what it does. Yeah. But they got it wrong because the voice should have been this. Me gusta matar a caballo. Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa That should have been an AI's voice. But no, they did. They chose mine. Yep. And they chose yours. That's right.

And it's pretty good. It's pretty accurate. It is. I just, what's so weird, it's really weird to hear yourself with a command of a foreign language. Because there's cadence in there. Not that I'm speaking it and I understand, but there is this cadence that makes me think that is the real, I don't know.

And then some, we just like skipped through, obviously, because we don't know Spanish, but we heard, there's a few words, like ding, ding, ding. Oh my God, yeah.

It's like super fluent Spanish and then also the cadence change, right? So it's like, me gusta marcar ding, ding, ding. Yeah. Yes. It's really crazy.

Me llamo S. Dax Shepard. Yes. Like something weird happens. Yes. It's basically the reverse of when a newscaster slides into their Spanish accent when they pronounce Sepulveda or something. Yeah.

This is like the reverse. So I'm glad that it's like equal. Yeah. It's like why I don't like saying Neanderthal and orangutan. It feels like I'm appropriating or something. Appropriating the Germans. Yeah.

I'm excited to hear it. Well, in all the languages because we also have Italian and German coming our way. No, French and German. French and German. Yeah. I'm excited to hear it, well, in all the languages. Yeah. Because we also have Italian and German coming our way. No, French and German. French and German. Yes. So that'll be fun. French maybe will sound very attractive.

I know. I wonder. This might open up a whole new fan base for us. A whole new people sliding in. Yes. Could be. Could be. Do you think the French mind that stereotype that we think they sound sexy?

That's a good one. I know you're supposed to not like any stereotypes, even if they're positive. Well, yeah, because it's like the model minority. Model minority, I know. Okay. I don't know. Okay. You guys do sound sexy.

They do sound sexy. Maybe why we can say it is they do sound sexy, but they're not all sexy. Well, not all, no. You'd have to agree on a criteria, which would be impossible. But obviously, there are population differences and there's cultural differences. So we'd have to agree on what good sex is. And what do you think about the French? What are the qualities?

Take it out of the French. What are the qualities that make you excited to sleep with someone? Let's start with the fact, and this may not be a fact, but let's just start with French kissing. The notion that they, presumably they invented tongue play. I think that's made up. Well, yeah, it has to predate France. Yeah. But let's just say, I mean, they get French kissing as an invention.

Sure. That's passionate. That is. Yeah. But you don't have to be French to French kiss. In fact, most. You don't, but you got to assume if they're inventing this stuff. Oh, this is how the model minority could backfire.

Because if you're kissing a French person, you assume their French kissing is going to be so good. And then it probably isn't. It's just going to be like everyone else's. Not all French kissing is equal as anyone who's kissed a lot of people. Sometimes it's really spectacular and sometimes it's not. But again, that's where we get into the hard metric thing, because I've had debates with people like what they prefer. Some people prefer opposite French kissing. I do and vice versa. What do you mean? What do people like? I'm ready to get sloppy. Like, let's get fucking wild. Yeah.

That's not for everyone. But I've had girlfriends that were like that and like that. And then I've had some that I think were a little more, you know, buttoned up. They want to be more tame. Whatever. I don't want to use a pejorative. Well, tame. It doesn't have to be a pejorative.

Okay. I prefer someone tries to eat my face off. Sure. You know? And that's not for everyone. Yeah. Some prefer someone tries to eat my face off. Sure. You know? And that's not for everyone. Yeah. Some people would give that a two. Wow, we're going to potentially be saying this in French. Oh, I can't wait. That's where it gets weird is when we're talking about, I know, it's so weird.

It's layer upon layer. I know. Layer upon layer. And then you just at some point you just got to give it away and turn it over and like it's out of your hands and then you got to be an acceptant. Of course. I don't know how it's going to land at all in these countries. Yeah.

I mean, so we're doing this with Spotify, which is very cool. And they're doing it with a few of their shows. And they've asked, do you have any notes? And I was like, we can't have notes. We don't know this language. Right. But we did discover something very fascinating. Yeah.

And it kind of confirmed my hunch, which felt great, which is when I'm often when I'm watching a show that's in Spanish and it's translated in English, I have thought in my head, well, either they left some out or English is more efficient because often the person's talking for a long time and there's just like one sentence in English on the screen and I'm way ahead of it. Our episode once converted to Spanish grew by an hour. It was, it's extra long. Yeah. It was from two hours and 40 minutes to 311. 240 to 311? Yeah. Oh, that's not as drastic, but still like 15% slow. What if our German episode is like 40 minutes? Oh, my God.

But see, this is weird because in my head, Spanish is so fast. Well, it sounds to us like they're speaking speedily. I think AI is also putting pauses in there that are a little unnatural. You do? That are slowing it down. I'm going to time you. Okay. Saying your Spanish sentence. Okay. And then I'm going to time you. Okay. Saying your Spanish sentence. Okay. And then

I'm going to time you saying it in English. Okay. Okay. Ready? Hold on. Okay. Okay. Three, two, one, go. Me gusta montar un caballo rápido. Okay. Do you want to write that? Maybe Rob can jot that down. Well, no, because I want it to be a surprise. Oh, that makes sense. Ready? Three, two, one, go. I like to ride horses fast. Okay. Okay.

Well, the first one was 2.55. Okay. And the English was 1.66. But I do feel like you said the first one a little slow. Okay. That's probably fair i mean again what a subjective fucking speaking this is science yeah this is my good science but how about even this mayamo dax i'm dax right right but there's a lot of pageantry i think my name is dax is what you would say that right there is But you're learning proper Spanish.

Right. We don't know their slang. Like full sentence version. We don't. We really need Anna in here. And she's not here today. She's in Spain. Ding, ding, ding.

Oh, my God. She is. Google Translate says I'm Dax. It would be Soy Dax. Soy Dax. I'm Dax. Yeah. Same amount of syllables.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know but everyone's language is the best whatever language you speak that's the best this is not a uh yeah one's not better or people might think if it takes longer to talk in spanish that would be negative oh no but it's not but i think what we're all aspiring to is that laid-back lifestyle that mediterranean lifestyle okay well do you want to talk about your weekend? You did some fun stuff. I'm still a little tired from this weekend. I did something I never ever

do, which is I stayed up till like 2.30 in the morning. Whoa. It boggles my mind that I always stayed up till 2.30. Like 2.30 would have been an early night on the weekends for me for decades. Wow. Yeah. I went with Matt, Ryan, Charlie, DeCastro, Clay Cullen, and now I didn't go with them, but then met up with Riley Harper and God bod Dave Castillo for the Super Motocross at the Coliseum. So fun. And then we all thought, let me back up. The original plan, long before super motocross was in the mix, was we were going to watch the race live on Saturday night. Because normally the race is like at three in the morning on Sunday, wherever they're at in the world. And then we delay it and watch it at 10 a.m. Well, we had an opportunity to watch it

at 10 p.m. We're like, that's early enough. That'll take us to midnight. Okay. But then I remembered in my, well, I didn't remember. I saw on my calendar, oh boy, Super Motocross this weekend. And I've already committed. I've already got other people invited and whatnot. So then I extend the invite to the guys, the rest of the guys. We all go, starts at 6.30. I'm thinking, nine, we're out of there.

How long could it be? Right. Very wrong. It was well past 10 before it ended. Got home. Now it's... And we had to watch qualifying too. We can't just jump to the race. We got to watch qualifying.

The plan was to watch qualifying from nine to 10 and the race starts at 10. We'll be golden. Get home. Internet's out. Why is the internet out? I don't know. At 11.20 on Saturday night, the internet's out.

So I got a monkey with that for a long, long time. Hard reset. A ton of hard resets. Okay. Third hard reset, I'm like, when do we call this? Okay. So I got a monkey with that for a long, long time. Hard reset. A ton of hard resets. Third hard reset, I'm like, when do we call this? Okay. But then magically it came back on. I don't even know if it had anything to do with my hard resets.

And then we watched Quali and then by the time, it's fucking 1.45 a.m. I was fighting so hard not to fall asleep. I'm impressed. Are you? I wouldn't have been able to stay up. So, yeah, I was like fucking blinking my eyes and rearranging my body. I hate that feeling. I haven't had it since I was a kid trying to impress my brother that I could stay up really late watching things.

Anyways, that took us to 1.45 a.m. Wow. When they all left and then I went upstairs and now I was like, well, fuck it. I've blown Sunday. Let's just now go on the internet oh wow go on instagram and shit and stay up till 2 30 oh my god sleep so weird right because i i could barely stay awake at one but once we got to two now all of a sudden i had wide awake yeah and i had to force myself go night night wow but it was a very motorsports-heavy day. Really, really fun. Good. Totally fun.

And then, yeah, yesterday, Charlie had really wanted to go for a ride in Jethro's fancy McLaren that he's reviewing as a journalist, which he has. So they were going to go up to Angela's Crest, and so I went along in the Hellcat, and we had a little driving day. It was fun. Holly, did you stay? When we left, you were over? Yeah, because I had to go make my chicken. You made all, roasted a whole bird? Yep, I did.

I left at like five, I think. Okay, plenty of time to cook the bird? Well, I ate it at 10. Okay, it's kind of like the Formula One race. Yeah, yeah. I get myself into these pickles often. Yeah, is it because it takes longer than you anticipate The Formula One race. Yeah. Yeah. I get myself into these pickles often. Yeah. Is it because it takes longer than you anticipate?

Or you don't even do the math? I do do the math. I do think it takes longer than I think to prep and then to like cool and stuff. The things that aren't just the cooking. Right. I'm like, oh, I can prep it in in 15 minutes but really it's like 30 yeah yeah sometimes how'd it turn out beautiful it turned out really really well i do think i made an error which was speaking of efficiency yeah i thought i was

figuring out a hack i was supposed to take three cups of water and then add the extra marinade into the water and then, you know, mix that up. Then I was going to add that to the chicken halfway through with some grains. Okay. Okay. And instead, I was like, oh, the bag with the marinade. Uh-huh. I'll pour the three cups of water in there. Okay. And then like, you know, shake it all up. Shake, shake, shake.

Yeah. So I don't have to dirty a bowl. Okay, yeah. I think that was a mistake. Although I don't really understand why it was a mistake, but it was. It was way too much liquid. Even though it was technically mistake, but it was. It was way too much liquid. Even though it was technically the same amount of water, but I think maybe because I got to use all the marinade and

they assume if you're just scraping the rest in, you're not going to use it. I don't know what, I don't know. I'm also curious, how did you add the water while you're holding a bag? Because it doesn't have a defined rim, right? It's just a saggy. You're supposed to, you call it collar it. Okay. And so you roll the top. Over a mixing bowl? No, no.

You just like roll it down a little bit and it just stays a little more sturdy. It's a thicker bag then. Yeah. It's a Ziploc. Oh, zippy.

Yeah. Yeah. Very trusted. Yeah, very. The most. So. So it's too liquidy? It was a bit. I think I did too much water. Okay. Yeah. Very trusted. Yeah, very. The most. So, um. So it's too liquidy?

It was a bit. I think I did too much water. Okay. But. I don't think your bag technique could have affected that. You don't? I don't, no. Then I did it perfect.

Okay, great. What would you give it out of 10 taste-wise? Um, okay. I did one more bad thing. Uh-oh. I'm kind of afraid. Instead of microwave it, instead of bake it. I'm kind of afraid to So to microwave it instead of bake it? I'm kind of afraid to say this.

Oh, great. Because I think it might be really bad what I did. Oh, fun. So the chicken, I went to Lazy Acres, the new grocery store.

So fun. Isn't it fun? It's really fun. I loved it there. Yes. I hate the grocery store in general, but I did like it there.

It's life-affirming. Yeah. I got so excited when I first walked in because there's like a cafe. Yeah, you can eat there. So I got a matcha. Ooh. And I was so excited. The matcha could have been better.

Okay. But that's okay. No Maru. Grocery store. No Maru. Maru kind of ruins matcha everywhere else. I know. And this one was just really bad.

Okay. So, but I was still excited to carry it around while I was getting my groceries. Right. And I got a chicken.

Normally, I get my whole chicken from McCall's. And they've, have they moved now? I think it's over. Yeah. Which is

so heartbreaking. Really bad. Just to be clear, they didn't shut down. They just relocated to Atwater. But do you know what's going in there? A fucking coffee plant. Yeah.

I know. Another one? Yes. There's like six on that. We say that way until we're addicted to it. I know. Don't you dare. No, it's like a corporate.

It's like a Joe's coffee or something. Like another coffee bean. Kind of. For Starbucks. I don't remember the name. It's not one of those, but it is like a corporate coffee place. Okay. I'm very pissed.

Yeah. Anyway, I normally get McCall's and a lot of chickens keep the like chicken, giblets in a bag stuffed. Okay. McCall's does not do that. Okay. So I have not been used to that. Getting giblets with the chicken? In the chicken, okay?

And so I got this one from Lazy Acres, and I cooked the whole chicken. With the giblets in it? Yeah. Oh. I didn't know. Okay. And so when I was carving it, I was like, oh, fuck.

And then I didn't know if I had like plastic leeched and poisoned myself. Oh, because it was in a bag, but in the ass of the bird? Mm-hmm. Whoa. Do you think I did a really bad thing? Got leech, leeching. Not ethically, but. Not more.

Yeah, I don't think the bird. But I felt, I feel fine. Oh, great. Yeah, you're in a great mood. I ate it.

Yeah. Yeah, you eat a little bit of plastic. Probably when you drink all that lid. But also, it was in the inside of the. Cavity. The cavity.

Yeah. I can't imagine it leached up to the top where you were eating. Right, and don't you think if it was really bad. Not that I'm advising anyone to put like a fucking. Yeah, we didn't do that every time. What's that brand of toys that's very plasticky?

Lego? No. Well, that one is for sure. Those little rings and stuff. The plastic. It doesn't matter. Munchkin? Play, play, play pal.

Play pal. Play pen. Play pal. I know what you mean. Play school. Play school. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't be shoving any play school toys up there. No, I think that could be a common accident. If it was that bad, they'd have to label it huge. In biohazard colors. And they didn't. You're fine. I think it was fine. Yeah, one says fine.

I decided not. Did you say one says fine? No, one says fine. Oh, I also thought you said one said, like one article. I love't. I decided not. Did you say one says one? No, one says five. Oh, I also thought you said one said, like one article. Or 20. I decided not to Google it, so don't Google it. Because I don't really want to know. Okay.

If I've poisoned myself or not. Anywho. No, he just said that he Googled it and you didn't. No, he didn't Google it. Oh, he's just, that was his own. It's hard to know when it's your opinion or when it's the computer. Anywho, so I got a little freaked out by that, but I ate it. Good.

How much of a whole bird can you even eat? Can you eat half of it? No, I ate the breast and a little bit of another breast. What about the thigh? I didn't eat that yet. Okay. That's where I like to get that. I know, thighs are the best part.

But I'm trying to be like kind of healthy. Yeah, don't gobble them thighs up. I know. Thighs are the best part. But I'm trying to be like kind of healthy. Yeah. Don't gobble them thighs up. Dark meat. Dark. Really dark. That's where the good eating is. It is.

It is. Well, congrats on a well-done chicken that had some of the store components still in it, I guess. What if the receipt was in it? What if they said like, do you need a bag? And you said, no, just stuff it all in the chicken. You know what's funny also is I was embarrassed. And it's weird to be embarrassed by yourself. Yeah, right.

Like kind of for no reason. Like there wasn't anyone there. Oh, you actually in your apartment, you were embarrassed. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I have that. It's weird. I have a lot of moments like, oh my God, you're so stupid. But I had one yesterday, actually. Ding, ding, ding. Uh-huh. I have a lot of moments like, oh my god, you're so stupid. I had one yesterday,

actually. Ding, ding, ding. Uh-huh. I gotta figure out what ding is in Spanish. Because now I want to say ding, ding, ding in Spanish, make them Oh, and so it reverses? Something. Something will happen. Timbre. Timbre, timbre. Well, that does not have the same ring, ring, ring to it. And it's longer.

It's longer, yeah. I decided I'm gonna put a chandelier in. Yeah. There was a chandelier that needed to be installed. And there was an appointment. An electrician was coming over, I guess, today. Got it. But I was just looking.

It was just sitting there. And it was kind of calling me a coward. Yeah. It was taunting me. Yeah. And it's an old ass. It's like one of these antique fucking chandeliers, right? So it's not even wired up on its own.

So it's got like individual wires around all six things. So I'm like, hmm, I wonder if you daisy chain those or if you hook them directly, right? I start thinking about how those have to get hooked up. Then I go and I look online and I don't really get an answer. I just decide I know what I'm doing.

And I spent quite a good deal of time. And I got it all mounted up. Got light bulbs in it. Yeah. Also discovered that the base plate for it, because it's from the 40s, doesn't even match the standard hole now. So that was its own issue I was going to have to solve after I'd already hooked the whole thing up.

Flicked the breaker on, turned the light on. Nothing. Nothing. Nada. I'm like, turned the light, nothing. Nothing. Nada. I'm like, huh. That was a waste of time. Well, I was there for some of that because I came over to help Kristen do some Halloween decor.

Yeah. I think you saw it hanging. I did. I saw it not hanging and then I saw it hanging. That was pretty cool. And then you were sad because it didn't work out. Didn't function, yeah. And I felt bad because you were sad.

But I was like, take that as a win. You got it up there. That's a positive way, yeah. Also, you're just so different from me. There's just nothing, not even one tiny ounce of me that would have seen that on the floor and thought i should try to do that well are you sure because i'm sure you're sure i am so sure but things are like more simple than you think there's three wires coming out of the ceiling and i know which one's positive which one's the ground and right? So, and then it's just, it's A bolt.

Now, it turns out the plate inside was the wrong size plate. So, I had to run up to Home Depot and grab up. Yeah, all of a sudden. We were in the yard doing the decor and Lincoln was like, where's dad going? Because you got on the motorcycle. I was held back from, yeah. And Kristen said, oh, he's probably going to Home Depot. And she was like, but he's on the motorcycle.

How will he bring back the stuff? It was a good question. It was a good question. Yeah. You wrap a bag around your wrist is the answer. Right. And then as you hit 40, you realize the bag's taking on so much air, it's going to rip. And then you have to slow down.

Oh, God. And you're like, God damn it, why didn't I drive? Well, I know why, because I didn't want to move any cars. Oh, no. Okay, but I think it's cool that you wanted to give yourself. Give these things a shot. I do. Okay, well, thank you.

Because I'm like, who can I call? I'm not touching this. Let me position this as a broader question. Yeah. Well, no, you actually just demonstrated last night this isn't your opinion. Have you decided you have all the skills you're ever going to have and that's a wrap? No. Okay. Definitely not. Okay, great. They're just not going to be in the home improvement arena. I have to have a desire for the skill. Right. And I just don't. You know what it is for me? It's motivated by helplessness. I can't stand the notion that I can't figure something out without getting a third party

involved and then their schedule and this and that. It's really that. Yeah. That's what I find so interesting. I guess it depends on the thing, right? But if it's something like that, if it's a house project or something, I am not only happy to get a third party, I want to remove myself completely. I just want it done. And I don't even want to know. I don't want any questions. I just want it fully taken care of.

Because I have this armoire, where as you know, I have many armoires. Yeah, you know, I have many armoires. Yeah, you collect armoires. Yeah. One of the few collectors that lives in a women's apartment. And I have this one and a shelf broke a couple months ago. Okay.

And I stare at this every day and I think I could probably figure out how to fix this. It actually seems kind of easy. Yeah yeah yeah but I I'm not gonna you're not gonna do no I am gonna do it I'm not and now the other side has also fallen okay so now it's just like laying on my jeans the shelf oh that works and I think that also works yeah Yeah, so I'm leaving it. Let me ask you, does it have the pegs you put in the holes to hold the shelf up? It doesn't.

It has like just a thin- A thin layer of wood? Yeah. So easy for you. Yeah, you could just screw that right back in. But I don't see any screws. It's like, it looks like the whole thing just came off.

I think it was glued. Perhaps it was glued. Yeah. Yeah, you could also glue it, but I would put some screws in it. I think I threw it out. So I'd have to buy. Oh, you threw out the little pieces of wood that were holding it? Yeah, so I think I have to buy.

That's an interesting choice. What made you think to get rid of some of the pieces? I don't remember if I did that, but I don't see them anymore. So I think I must have done it. Maybe they're in next year jeans that's holding up the shelf. They could be. Yeah. Because ideally, I think you'd want those.

But also, I could cut you a thin slice of wood. I'm not adding a project to your plate. Okay. All right. But I'm just saying I'm fine with it resting on my jeans. And I go so far as I'm like, well, I guess this armoire is like done. Like I'm not going to bring this to the next house. Because of that shelf.

Now, if the shelf was working, you would bring it. Yeah. Then we got to get this fixed. I did leave out a piece. There's another motivation other than just not relying on someone else. I also know that for the life of that chandelier, probably every time I would ever turn it on for the rest of my life here in this house,

I would get a little jolt of satisfaction that I had mounted it. I get that. Because the things I have done around the different houses, I get way more satisfaction going forward. I get that. So it makes me like the things I have more if I've done them.

I feel that with cooking. Yeah. If you are, if it arrived in it. Yeah feel that with cooking. Yeah. If you have it arrived. Yeah, yeah. It's okay that we talked a long time about not facts because this is for Gabor. Oh, we can't correct Gabor. There's nothing. There's really nothing to correct.

Not one thing. Well, no. Really quick, did you finish your shopping story? Oh. You got that shirt. It's thin. We like that. No, I didn't. But what your shopping story? Oh. You got that shirt. It's thin. We like that. No, I didn't.

But what was I saying? Oh, yeah. We were talking about gold on brown versus white skin. There we go. Okay, because I went to this one store. I want this long-sleeved tee from there. Okay. I want it in gray.

All right. They were out of the gray. And he said, but do you want to try this one on for size? Because then I could order it. And it was a tan gold, kind of. Okay. I thought, ew, this is going to look so bad on me. Right.

But sure, I'll try it on for size. And then I put it on and I kind of liked it. Right, yes. I was surprised. But I thought it would blend in. Right. Like almost look nude on you. Yeah.

Right. But it looks. It kind of popped. Yeah. I bet. But I didn't buy it. This is like a known fact that yellows look better on people of color. Yeah.

I think yellow. Orange, yellow. Like I think if you put orange on a white person, you have the potential of pulling out some orange in them. Like their skin? Yeah, like all of a sudden you're like, wait, they're kind of orange looking. I didn't really notice that before. I don't even, I don't know, because Callie always has this hang up. Like, ever since we were young and we'd go shopping, which was our favorite thing to do.

Right. She would always rule out so many colors for herself. Right. Not complimentary to her. Yeah. But I'd be like, can you just try it? Yeah. And then she'd try it and I would think that looks good.

Right. And she didn't. She would write it off. Yeah. So it's hard to see yourself. It is. It is. I think that's the wrap up.

One thing I did want to just highlight, I thought was so interesting I hadn't heard before, is when he said the word addiction comes from the Latin word for slavery. Another reason to learn Latin. Oh, yeah. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah, full circle. Oh, my God.

Timbre, timbre, timbre. Timbre, timbre, timbre. I don't think we're allowed to do that. I don't think it's correct either. I think this is an onomatopoeia. It doesn't really translate. I bet it is ding-ding-ding. It just sounds weird.

The modern definition of addiction is a persistent compulsive use of substance known by the user to be harmful. The root word addict comes from the Latin word addictus, which means to devote, sacrifice, sell out, betray, or abandon. In the Roman law, an addiction referred to a person that became enslaved. I like thinking of it like that because it's, I think it helps maybe take a stigma off of, it just shows how little control and choice there is.

Do you think there's still a stigma? I think it's going down because of you. Well, I don't know about for me. I do think you've helped. But I don't know that I think there's much of a stigma. I think there's still a big stigma against like sex addiction. Yeah. I think there's still a big stigma against gambling addiction.

I don't think there's, I don't know that I think, I would agree that there's a big stigma anymore. I don't know that there's as much of a stigma, but I do still think a lot of people cannot understand it. Like they may recognize, oh, that's sad, as opposed to these are bad choices. Yeah. But I don't think unless you know someone, I don't think you can understand the lack

of choice in it. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Some people probably still think, oh, it's a willpower issue. And I have a lot of willpower and they don't. When I drink two beers, I know better than to drink 10 and blah, blah, blah. So I do think there's like having never experienced it, there's a lack of maybe understanding or empathy.

Yeah. But I just think there's too many, like, I don't think in the, in the twenties, you had titans of industry, sports heroes, acknowledging they've had addiction. For sure. There isn't a field, I think, of interest where someone that's kind of highly regarded and has demonstrated insane willpower yeah you know yeah i also think these days it would be pretty hard to not have encountered it in your life right in some way yeah i'm trying to think obviously there's versions of it too there's like the version where your kids are stealing from you and friends of the family.

And there's, I'm sure, embarrassment about that. I had an uncle that went down hard. Now, he's been sober like 30 years. But like at the height of the crack epidemic, very close family member. It was like the whole family was kind of shut down by this whole event. And I guess that was seen in a certain way. But was it seen as? For my family, it was seen with compassion. That's good. Yeah. And my dad, yeah, my dad was already sober. He was not for long, but he was a little sober. So it was at least introduced. Yeah. I think it helps

if, I mean, not I think, it always helps to have some sort of personal experience with anything. Yeah. Food addictions, it's not where substance abuse is in acceptance, but I also feel like it's gaining. I feel like a lot more people are openly talking about that now where it used to be like anyone who said they had it, it would be on the cover of People or something. Right.

Well, that's an Easter egg. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. Did you have any, I kind of thought when I was talking to him, I kind of want him as a therapist. Although I love my therapist, but did you have those thoughts too yeah i did he is very stutsy like you said and so that feels like that would be a cool relationship yeah like i don't know if i could put into words what happened but i can what i felt was oh this person is like insanely intuitive very andetic. I feel like he himself

has experienced so much that he can like see it in other people. Yeah. I really like him. Me too. I feel lucky we got to have him on. And that's that.

All right. Love you. Love you.