Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #106 Gabor Maté: Is Coronavirus Showing Us Who We Really Are?

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

Think back four or five weeks ago. How much of what you were engaged in then seems relatively trivial now? How much has the experience of coronavirus already clarified what your values really are? When you see people standing in the street, clapping for their healthcare workers; or Europeans on their balconies, serenading each other through lockdown, how does that make you feel? For this week’s podcast, I was honoured to welcome back Dr Gabor Maté, one of the most important voices globally on health, compassion and addiction, to discuss the life lessons that might emerge from this pandemic. This podcast contains tremendous insights on the value of sitting with our feelings; how we can avoid passing our anxieties on to our kids; as well as why some of us can be so judgemental of others during a crisis. Whilst we both fully endorse the medical advice on staying at home, we discuss the social and economic damage that is arising from this essential policy. What will the consequences of isolation be on our mental health? And afterwards – will we be so grateful to go back to our lives that we’ll forget the lessons we’ve learned? Or, could this challenge be the biggest opportunity for growth we’ve ever lived through, personally and as a society? Listen now to find out.  Show notes available at: https://drchatterjee.com/106 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I don't believe in timeouts in parenting in terms of punitive timeouts, but I certainly believe in a parent taking a timeout and saying, you know, I just noticed how tense I am. I need to go on a balcony and take a few breaths, or I need to sit and just think, or I just need to listen to a piece of music right now to calm my autonomic nervous system. You know?

So in other words, do something that we ordinarily don't do most of us in our lives, which is to allow ourselves to have our upset emotions and give them some space without acting them out on the people that are close to us.

So take that time and do check in and don't be ashamed to acknowledge your vulnerability and your upset. ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that

when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome back to episode 106 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. So how are you all doing at the moment? Well, before we crack on with today's show, I just wanted to share a lovely message that I received yesterday when somebody contacted me to share that they are doing virtual book clubs at the moment and the book that they have chosen is my second book, The Stress Solution. They've all downloaded the audiobook and are listening to a chapter every few days

and then meeting up over zoom to discuss and share their learnings now i'm sharing this in case it sparks an idea for you and your friends there are so many helpful audiobooks out there at the moment and if you are interested all of mine are also available in this format. And as this group have found out, the stress solution will really help you to understand what exactly stress is, why it affects us so much, why it makes us feel anxious, but most importantly, what we can practically do to alleviate it so that we can feel calm and in control. Now that's something that we are all looking for at the moment. Now, today's conversation is one that I have been really excited about releasing ever since I recorded it, and that is because my guest is the incredible Gabor Mate. Many of you I know are actively avoiding coronavirus-specific content at the moment,

but even if you are, I think this conversation will be highly relevant for you. Yes, there are some mentions of the current pandemic, but this conversation is so much more than just that. And in many ways, the theme of this conversation is universal and simply highlights what the external world can teach us about our own internal world. For me, Gabble is one of the most important voices globally right now. He talks a lot about addiction, but also about how our childhoods shape our adult lives and our behaviours. I can tell you that the first episode I released with Gabble on this podcast was episode 37. And at the time of release, I had never seen any one of my podcast

conversations being shared that much. It really did connect with so many different people. And if you've not listened to it yet, I highly recommend that you put it on your list. Now, at the heart of Gabble's approach is compassion, but he's not afraid to shy away from cold, hard truth. He tells it as he sees it, and he has many, many years of clinical experience to back up everything that he says. Now, I'm recording this introduction to the podcast on Tuesday, the 7th of April 2020, and I actually recorded the conversation with Gabor over Skype approximately two weeks ago. So before we start, I'd like you to think back to four or five weeks ago. How much of what you were preoccupied with and caught up in seems relatively trivial now? How much has the experience of coronavirus and

this global pandemic already clarified what your values really are. When you see people standing in the streets, clapping for their healthcare workers, or Europeans on their balconies serenading each other through lockdown, how does that make you feel? Well, a huge part of today's conversation is about what life lessons may emerge from this pandemic. There are tremendous insights in the podcast today about the value of sitting with our feelings and not just simply distracting ourselves from them with Netflix and social media. We also cover how we can avoid passing on our anxieties to our kids, as well as why some of us can be so judgmental of others during a crisis. as well as why some of us can be so judgmental of others during a crisis.

Now whilst we both fully endorse the medical advice on staying at home, we do discuss the social and economic damage that is arising from this essential policy. What will the consequences of isolation be on our mental health? We also try and unpick what may happen afterwards. What would we be so grateful to go back to our lives that we'll forget the lessons we've learned? Or could this challenge be the biggest opportunity for growth we've ever lived through, personally and as a society?

I always feel incredibly lucky and privileged any time I get to sit down and have a one-on-one conversation with this great man, I really think you are going to get a lot out of our conversation. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors who are essential in order for me to put out regular episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their support of my podcast. Now, Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I have come across

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something proactive for your health. Now, as you know, I do prefer that people get their nutrition from food, but I recognize that for some of us, this is not always possible. So if you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation.

So Gabor, welcome back to the podcast. Nice to be back. If at a distance. If at a distance. Yeah, last time we spoke, we were face to face, maybe a meter away in a studio in London. And now we are, what, thousands of miles away looking at each other over a screen through this amazing thing called technology. I recorded an extra sort of special podcast last weekend with someone called Judson Brewer, who is a psychiatrist and a behavioural neuroscientist.

And he was just saying where we talk about the virus and how contagious it is. He said, what's really interesting about the times in which we live is that we've got social media, we've got the internet. So we can, with the content we put out, we can sneeze on the brains of everyone all over the world. And I thought that was a really interesting analogy, how we talk about the virus being contagious but our thoughts and our actions and what that the panic and fear that we might put across to the people around us but also online that can

also be contagious as well can't it well um the um director of the World Health Organization, talked about an infodemic as well as a pandemic. And I've wondered maybe the same thing that you've wondered, which is that on the one hand, the media and the Internet has allowed information to be delivered to a lot of people instantaneously as necessary. And it's a good thing. But on the other hand, I also think that the constant engagement with the information about the virus has a viral significance of its own so that the panic and the fear is also spreading virally.

So I think that technology, I think, is showing both its potential potential for uh informational um deficiency and at the same time as a as a as a agent um as a carrier of a viral fear and i think that's happening yeah i think it is definitely happening um gabby before we get stuck into the meat of today's conversation, the conversation you had with me last time on this podcast had such a profound impact on people. I was recently asked on episode 100 of this podcast, what was the most impactful conversation I have had so far? And I've got to say it was hard because there were some great conversations, but I actually said the conversation I had with you probably had the most impact on me personally, you know, certainly compared to anything else, I think. And I think for people who are not familiar with you and are coming to you for the very first time through this conversation,

I think it's worth us just briefly summarizing what we covered last summer what your philosophy is and you know again I don't want to um you know reduce an hour and 40 minute conversation that we had last time down to this but fundamentally your belief isn't it that addiction uh comes down to our experiences in childhoods and you know when i say addiction a lot of people think oh it's about drug abuse or alcohol abuse but we're talking about something much broader than that about how how much of society is now addicted whether it's addicted to instagram or shopping or sex or drugs or alcohol or whatever it is uh is that a reasonable very very brief summary for people who are new to your work well that no okay and and the reason why not is is that it's a brief and reasonable

summary of an aspect of my work but but really right or wrong, and I believe right, my work was much better than that. I'm saying that not just addiction, whether to sex, drugs, rock and roll, or substances, but any kind of mental so-called pathology, but much of physical pathology can be traced to childhood experiences and how we cope with those experiences and what those experiences did to our physiology, to the functioning of our genes, and to the functioning of our emotional apparatus, which makes us behave in certain ways that either promote or protect us from illness

so what i'm saying is that a lot of what to be physicians see in clinical practice whether it's physical or mental health issues can be traced to um not exclusively because genetics always comes into it and other factors but that it can always be traced to early experiences in life. And not only early experiences in life, but also experiences throughout life. So that really the fundamental message, if I can sum it up as briefly as I possibly can, is that we're not separate physiological organisms. We're part of a much larger whole, which includes the entire family system, multi-generationally that we're born into, and the culture in which we grow up in and function in. And so that when it comes to individual disease,

it is narrow reductionism to biology to think that illness is only a physiological event in a separate individual when it really manifests an entire life in an entire context in an entire culture so really what i'm talking about is the unity of mind and body and the interconnection between the individual and the environment i think that's the shortest way i can sum it up. Yeah, for sure. And I didn't, you know, I probably could have phrased it a little bit better. And that was certainly one of the key aspects we discussed in our previous conversation, rather than a summary of your entire work.

And as you know, I'm a huge fan of, you know, your philosophy. And I think at the heart of your philosophy is compassion. And it's a real deep understanding of why people have ended up where they've ended up, why they behave in the way in which they behave. I think we're going to come into that because I think compassion is something that is really interesting to observe what's happening in society at the moment, when I think we are being quite judgmental. But we'll come to that a little bit later. I think what you just said there about our childhoods, and it's really interesting at the moment because many people are feeling that this is a very traumatic time for them. And you

use the word trauma a lot when talking about people's lives. And I think it's probably worth defining what you mean by trauma right at the start of this conversation. Sure. So trauma, I think, is much more widely experienced than the narrow medical definitions would allow for. Trauma is, really the word comes from a Greek word for wound so trauma is a wound

so when you think metaphorically of a wound what happens either it's raw and painful and every time you touch it you experience extreme pain or you develop scar tissue over it and the scar tissue is thick and hard and it doesn't have nerves

so it doesn't feel but it's also not very flexible and it does it has no capacity to grow so trauma is when there's a deep hurt so take the present uh covid viral crisis a lot of people are responding with extreme fear. Now, fear is a natural response to a threat, so there's nothing wrong with that as such, but the fear is not universal, and it's not shared by everyone to the same degree. Now, people that were hurt in childhood

and experienced assault on them, they have fear built into their nervous system and into their immune system, really, and into their whole physiology. When something happens later on in life that is a fearful connotation, that old fear gets triggered. In other words, a lot of the I'm not talking about the genuine concern and the genuine alarm. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about the genuine concern and the genuine alarm.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the panic that many people are experiencing. That is the triggering of childhood fear rather than just a response to what's happening in the present. So one of the impacts of trauma, of that wound of trauma, is that when things happen in the present, our response reflects some past experience. That's one of the aspects of trauma. The other aspect is we're just not as flexible in our responses. Our responses are more programmed rather than chosen by us consciously. Yeah, so with that in mind, and given that a lot of trauma happens in childhood, of course, it doesn't exclusively happen in childhood, but it obviously has a significant impact when it does happen in childhood.

all schools are closed. All non-essential work has been closed down. People are working from home. Often you have two parent families working from home and their kids are in the house at the same time. And there is this kind of, this cauldron now of emotion and stress and anxiety that probably didn't exist, at least not in the same way, just a few weeks back. And I think that's going to pose and bring up a lot of interesting feelings, a lot of interesting dynamics in relationships over the coming weeks and months. I think it's already happening. So if we just dive into childhood for a minute, how can we reduce or minimize the impact that this global pandemic is having on children both from a perspective of yes the virus or and and so far it looks as though children are uh seem to be minimally affected by the virus even though they can get it and pass it on very very quickly without

showing any symptoms but i'm talking about. And if their parents are stressed around them, and their parents are trying to work at home, but the kids are around and they want to see their parents and the parents, you know, without realising it are starting to put anxiety and stress on their kids, that could have implications for the rest of that child's life. So I don't want to alarm people. But what i'd love to do is have a conversation with you about what sorts of things should we be watching out for and what can parents do yeah well i don't know that um it's such a broad issue and and you know and it's so collective that i don't know that anything we'll say here will be adequate to the situation. But let me just come from my perspective.

First of all, what you said about these emotions, stresses didn't exist a few weeks before. Well, that's one possibility. The other possibility is that we've always carried these emotions and stresses. It's just that we were able to distract ourselves from it. and stresses it's just that we were able to distract ourselves from it so so one of the um because let's face it you know when i get to travel and like it so happens that right now i'm at home writing a book so this is not affecting my work situation but ordinarily i'll be traveling and speaking and and teaching and you know people would be grateful and i'd be engaged and so on well that's a great

way for me to separate myself from my own uh internal distress in other words you know the work itself can be a distraction and i think it's for a lot of us you know and so is it that those emotions weren't there before or is it just that now we have no distraction from them? We can't go out and have a drink. We can't join our friends at the football game. We can't go to the pub. We can't gather around the

water cooler at work, or whatever. So that's the one thing. And so from that point of view, I think it's an interesting time. And I think it's time for people to notice the emotions that arise for them and to really question well okay i have this emotion the crisis is new it's a novel virus and it's a novel situation but are these emotions really novel or do i kind of know them from the inside already? And to speak about myself, I've been saying for some time now that even though I'm not that personally

affected because I get to be at home anyway and I can go for walks and go for bicycle rides and so on, but there's a strange feeling in my chest and tummy. It's like there's something here that isn't usually there. And just this morning, I was thinking, well, is that really new? Or does this really go back to my infancy, perhaps, when there were very strange and threatening times in the world? Second World War, Eastern Europe, Jewish family.

And for the book that I'm writing right now, I'm actually just looking at prenatal stresses and how the stress on the mother translates into stress on the infant in the uterus, physiologically. And that mothers who are anxious prenatally, their children, their brain structure is different by the time they get to preschool, and their behavior

can be affected. So what I'm saying is I think a lot of us are programmed very early, and a lot of what's coming on right now is early programming. And that's different from the genuine response to an actual challenge that we're truly facing in the world. Yeah. So I think it's an opportunity for us to observe what's happening. So in terms of telling people what to do, what I'm suggesting here is let's be curious about our reactions. Let's really experience our bodies.

Like if you feel this tension in your chest, don't distract yourself. Actually pay attention to it and be curious about it and just sit with it. And if we can sit with our own fear, then we can sit with our children's fear. fear, then we can sit with our children's fear. If we try to push through it and pretend that it isn't there and just offer bland reassurances but at the same time we're roiled up inside ourselves, our kids can sense that. So I think the best thing we can do for our kids is to take care of ourselves.

Yeah, I mean, as always, just a wonderful answer. And, you know, something I've been thinking about a lot recently, and I actually spoke to Yoan Hari yesterday. Oh, yeah. And I was just saying to him that, for me, it feels as though our system is being stress tested at the moment. So, you know, very similar to what you said in the sense that are these emotions really new or in life, you know, very much like, I don't know, let's say you've got a right hamstring problem. and that only comes up when you run. But if you're walking around in your life and you're walking everywhere,

you never experienced that. So you think everything's fine. But when you start running, you realize, oh, my hamstring's hurting. It was always there, but the running has taken you to that threshold now where it's exposing itself. And very much, I think,

it's what you're saying is that these emotions were probably there in all of us, yet I love that whole idea about distraction. It's really something I sit with a lot over the last couple of years. It's thinking, why do we do certain behaviours? Why does somebody go to the pub and drink eight to ten pints of lager or drink a bottle of wine every night? And where does somebody else, for example, you know, scroll Instagram for three or four hours in the evening? And I can't get away from the thought that for many of us, whatever we choose, ultimately it's a distraction. It's a

distraction from sitting with ourselves and sitting with our own discomfort and maybe the opportunity now is if you want to take this opportunity instead of distract yourself with the news endless news cycles on what's going on which is obviously an easy thing to do i love what you're saying sit with it understand yourself understand is this a new feeling and i guess what you're fundamentally talking about gabordabor, is awareness. I'm talking about awareness, and we live in a culture globally, but certainly in North America and the UK that's so

intent on distraction. I mean, you go to a restaurant, there's loud music playing, and five TV screens on the wall all showing different programs. What's that all about? It's about distraction rather than just sitting there quietly and being with each other and ourselves.

And although we still have the internet and we still have the cell phones and we still have the television set, still the possibility of distraction have been diminished. Now, I think that for a lot of people, even watching all the news about the virus is a distraction rather than being with how it is for them. Because really, how much time a day do you have to spend reading about the virus to find out what's going on? Five minutes?

In five minutes, you can get the latest information. Now when you spend three hours a day, or four hours a day, or compulsively, and I've done that myself, because I'm not criticizing others, but you know, just reading, what does the Guardian say about the virus, what does the New York Times say about it,

what does this Canadian newspaper, or virus, what does the New York Times say about it, what does this Canadian newspaper or that, you know, what am I doing? I'm actually distracting myself from just how it is for me. And so that even reading about the virus can be a distraction from the feelings that the virus has triggered in us. Yeah. from the feelings that the virus has triggered in us. Yeah. It's interesting that the system being stress tested at the moment. So, you know, a lot of people said after our first conversation,

and I've seen on other YouTube videos that you've done, you know, well, that's great, but how do I deal with the trauma? How do I deal with it? And obviously that's in many ways a million dollar, because there are multiple modalities, I think. Certainly, from my view, you may have a different perspective that can help us process trauma once we become aware of it. But in this kind of situation, where certainly the volume on everything seems to be turned up to a max, people who already were feeling anxious are feeling more up to a max. People who already were feeling anxious are feeling more anxious than ever before. People who didn't realize or actually

thought that they didn't have a problem with anxiety are now feeling anxious. The process of dealing with that trauma can take time. It can take weeks, months, years sometimes. As I've shared before, I'm on my own process with that with with a system called internal family systems ifs which i found incredibly helpful for me in terms of my own personal happiness my relationship with my wife my relationship with my children my ability to be a good or what i hope is a good doctor. That has helped me no end and I realise now that I can look back on previous behaviours and look at the fact that you were distracting, you weren't happy, you were doing that to gain external validation to get whatever it was

because I couldn't sit with what was actually going on inside me. And so in this situation where families are rowing at the moment, you know, couples are spending more time with each other than ever before. You know, I think there's going to be some relationship issues that are brought to the surface for many people. There is going to be, you know, with children. I know this is happening because people have already reached out for help on this saying, look, I'm snapping at my children a lot. And I think there's an interesting problem here where if we snap at our children and they're already scared by this situation, let's say,

maybe they're watching the news. But then if the way we can help them is to be present with our own thoughts and present with our own feelings and sit with them, that's a long-term process. And I guess what I'm trying to get at, and I don't think there are some simple tips, but I'm wondering if a parent in that moment is feeling, why are the kids not letting me work? You know, I've got all this work to do and they want to snap what is this something they can do is it like taking a step having a deep breath you know going outside and then or is it is it simply explaining to the kids hey guys look i'm really stressed at the moment i know you guys just want to talk to me but i'm feeling really really stressed can i

have five ten minutes to myself i mean i don't know have you got any practical guidance in the moment well before i get to that two things one is i'm just struck or here we are um you trained as a as internal medicine specialist or as a specialist yeah internal medicine initially and then i moved to family medicine i remember that um so between all the years of training and practice that you know i've had three over three decades of medical practice and all the three years of training between you and i pretty just nothing in our training prepared us for this did it i and so here we are having this conversation trying to come up with some wisdom for people by just trying to people all the people that are listening to us ryan and i we weren't trained in this no nothing i mean our

experience we can bring to bear the experience and whatever wisdom we have gleaned from that but nothing in our training prepared us for this this is just bigger than all of us that's the first point but the second point is i'm struck by your phrase about how the system is being we're being stress tested now that that has a specific uh um connotation in in in medical language you put somebody who you suspect has heart disease or you want to rule out that they don't and you push them through a stress cardiogram You put them on a treadmill and you have them run and you do a cardiogram. How does the heart respond to the extra oxygen demand that you bring on? Well, that's what's happening to all of us people.

I liked your phrase about that. We're being tested now to see about our emotional oxygen supply. oxygen supply and so and so when we're at home snapping in our kids or or or being tense with ourselves or whatever happens with our spouses this is the stress test and and the the the stress cardigan cardigan will reveal which is walking to go back to your analogy of the hamstring, the stress cardiogram will reveal the real state of your heart, whereas just lying in bed will not. Or walking even slowly in the street will not, you know, unless you have a really severe heart disease. So yes, I really like that way of putting it, that the system is being

stress tested, and not just on individual, but also on a social level. Now, I haven't answered your question. I know it's easier for me to theorize than just to answer your question, but what actually to do. I think awareness, as you said, and if I notice that tension in me, I don't believe in timeouts in parenting in terms of punitive timeouts, but I certainly believe in a parent taking a timeout and saying, you know, I just noticed how tense I am. I need to go on the balcony and take a few breaths,

or I need to sit and just think, or I just need to listen to a piece of music right now to calm my autonomic nervous system you know so in other words do something that we ordinarily don't do most of us in our lives which is to allow ourselves to have our upset emotions and give them some space without acting them out on the people that are close to us. So take that time and do check in. And don't be ashamed to acknowledge your vulnerability and your upset. But don't make it your child's problem. Yeah.

I mean, look, we're recording this at 6pm UK time. So, you know, just to share an experience that just happened with me, like I've, you know, I'm a pretty optimistic guy. Generally speaking, I always think things are going to be okay. And I, on a personal level, you know, I'm not getting too panicky or anxious about what's going on in the world at the moment. I think I would have done in the past, but at the moment, I'm not. For whatever reason, I'm not. But what I am doing, and I'm super aware that as I express what's been going on with me, I've no doubt that you may dissect it out for me shortly and tell me what I really mean by it that you may dissect it out for me shortly and tell me what I really mean by it in a good way. But I have been putting a little bit of pressure on myself to communicate regularly with my followers in public. I was on BBC News two or three times last week, on the radio a few times. I really felt that at this moment when people are really feeling scared, I really wanted to go on and actually try and be a voice of calm and reason and share some

positivity. I've also put a lot of pressure on myself to put out lots of information on social media to try and help people, more podcasts to help people. And I realized today, I wasn't feeling great just a few hours ago I was feeling I actually said to my wife I said hey babe you know what I think I think I just need to chill out a little bit and actually just forget about doing all that for for half a day or one day it doesn't matter you know I need to just just be aware that this I don't need to put this much pressure on myself anyway the point I'm trying to get to is that my kids are at home at the moment and you know at about five o'clock you know because i'd be working most of the day they're like oh daddy daddy can we play outside and instead of snapping at them because i thought i've got

to check the skype connection is working i've got to check my microphones all this kind of stuff i just said hey darling listen i would love to play with you at the moment but you know i've got this podcast i'll be really looking forward to doing with Gabo Maté. And what I, you know, Gabo Maté. Well, hey dad,

go ahead. That's fantastic. Well, he did actually, I'm always going to say that, but he did actually say that. But, um,

I just explained it to him. I said, look, but I'll tell you what, if you fancy a game of table tennis for five, 10 minutes, that's going to really help daddy unwind a little bit because I've been feeling quite tense so if you want to do that that'll be great and you know what i've realized and that's just one incident but i found that when

i explain things to the kids and my son's nine but i do this for my daughter who's seven as well that is something i don't think i used to do five six years ago that's something i've learned yeah i've got to say my wife has been incredible here because she's always wanted to explain things and explain feelings to the to the kids and i think i very much learned from her there but you know what they get it and they're like yeah okay daddy cool i get it and it's it's i'm sharing that because a i want to but b maybe that's going to be of use to someone listening to this when they're in that situation i would just be honest with your kids because i think a lot of the time they prefer that than just you snapping at them and saying uh or not you i'm not trying to judge anyone else i'm saying me than snapping i'll be no no no you

know i've said i haven't got time i i think we're gonna have very two different two very different outcomes depending on how you interact with your kids in those moments well i think you shared a beautiful example first of all you didn't make the kid wrong for wanting to be with you or leave me alone i got work to do you said i'd love to spend time with you it's just such and such is happening and then you actually explained what it was like for you and not only that you offered them a possibility of actually helping you. Now, it's not that we should expect our kids to help us, but kids want responsibility. And when they're able to handle it, hey, if playing a game with you would help you calm down, isn't that great?

I must be a very important person. So, I mean, that's great. Going back before then, I'm sure that if you've done Dick Schwartz's internal family systems work, you can realize that when you put pressure on yourself, you'd probably say a part of you was putting pressure on you. And at some point, you might want to um if you haven't already inquire about that part well why is that part pressuring me and i'm sure you're going to find out i don't have to tell you do i well i mean have you done that inquiry i've i've been sitting with that like i've i've not got to the bottom of it but i've certainly observed that and i've been

you know, writing a few thoughts out and thinking, where is that coming from? And I'm sort of, which part of that is me? And I have a, again, I think I need to spend a bit more time sitting with my thoughts and not distracting myself with work and trying to help others when actually maybe it's time to sort of spend a bit more time helping myself. But, you know, I think I've got a pretty good idea of where this might come from in my early childhood in terms of what I perceived was important for me to do. So, yeah, I would love to spend a bit more time there. But, yes, I agree. It is a part of me.

It's not really me, is it? It's a part of me. So, a couple of things. One is I think a lot of us that go into medicine we have this messianic mission to save the world you know um now that's different from a conscious decision to help people yeah so i'm not talking about yes we're here to help people and it's a sacred task that we take on but but the pressure behind it sometimes that i gotta save the world and if and if i'm not doing enough then i'm not enough that's childhood trauma so in my case i mean i can pretty much guess what it was in your case but in my case case, it was having a very unhappy, depressed mother when I was very, very young

and it was my job to make her feel better. And if I didn't, I was not fulfilling my task. You know, so that pressure always comes from childhood programming. Number one, number two, I'm glad that you listen to your body. You know in my book, when the body says no, literally this is an example of it. Your body starts saying

no. No, this is too much. I think people need to listen to their bodies. Really what you're describing here is somebody who from childhood programming puts pressure on themselves. No, the pressure you put on yourself,

that's different from your genuine desire to communicate. That's different from your genuine desire to be there for people. It's different from your genuine assumption of responsibility because you created yourself as a healer, not just in the clinical individual sense but also in a larger sense and so people look to you and so you that's a natural process and it's good that's got nothing to do with pressure yeah that's just a choice you make i'm going to choose this i'm not going to choose this. I'll do this much. I won't do that. The pressure is always in childhood. So what you're describing here

is just what we're talking about, about trauma, is that there's something, some part of you that still believes that in order to validate your existence, you've got to put pressure on yourself to do more than your body can bear. And you recognize that. That's really what we're asking people to do is to just be aware of themselves. Just taking a quick break in the conversation to give a shout out to the sponsors of today's show. Is there something interfering with your happiness or is preventing you from achieving your goals? I know for me that getting regular therapy has really helped me both in my personal life

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There is a special offer of 10% off your first month for listeners of this podcast at betterhelp.com forward slash live more. For people who heard that and thought, okay, I now I'm thinking about certain situations, I can feel things, you know, like for me, when I'm'm feeling that pressure i get it in my upper right back i i know exactly where it is and for me it's become as i've become aware it's become my it's like a warning signal for me it's like ah you know there it is okay what's going on what's going on in life okay cool you you're putting you too much is going on bloody bloody but you know it's it's i think awareness is always key because many people i

think are walking around oblivious to what this what science their body is what signals the body is giving to them they're just sort of medicating it or drinking their way through or distracting their way to the point where they don't feel it but you know you mentioned before you feel something you felt something before this kind of was it an uneasy feeling in your chest or abdomen i think you said mostly the chest yeah the upper chest and for someone who's thinking okay i can do that what should they then do like there's a there's awareness there's observing it and then is there something they can do after that or is it is the main thing just to sit with it and be aware well um turn that question around if your child was feeling anxious what would you do

you would you know you you'd ask them what's going on you would say you'd talk softly you'd ask them what's going on you would say you'd talk softly, you'd treat them with compassion, you'd say hey look what are you feeling anxious about you'd try and help them wouldn't you yes and all that's based on first of all just being with them you wouldn't ignore them

you wouldn't just get on with your life and okay never mind. You're anxious, but I'm going to go. So it's that attention. I think that's the biggest part of it. And then the attention plays out in the ways that you just described, what's happening, what you feel anxious about.

But you'd hold them, you'd be with them, you'd accompany them. It's your presence. It's your them you'd be with them you'd accompany them it's your presence it's your capacity to be present with them that's the soothing influence on the child and then what you say is actually secondary you know what you would not do is talk them out of it ignore them make them wrong for it um give them advice that they didn't ask for. So just attending, I think, is really the answer itself. Because once you attend, and if you can attend to yourself, I mean, I teach this method called compassionate inquiry. And if you can just bring that compassion to yourself oh you got

this feeling here okay well let's just sit with it let's just notice it let's just allow it let's not say there's anything wrong with you let's not um try and talk you out of it let's not ignore it i believe that that process and then okay is this a familiar feeling? Have I experienced this before? Oh, yeah. You know, that attention, I think that's the healing part. Or the healing process. And you might have to do that three or four times a day. As you would with your child. Doesn't take a long time yeah if

the the big feeling that's coming up for me as we're having this conversation is that for some of us could this global situation for all the you know for all the the problems that are there with it. And of course, there's going to be, you know, rightfully people are concerned over the people who are going to get sick. And neither one of us is trying to minimize that, but just trying to look at the other side for a minute. For some of us, could this be the biggest opportunity for growth that we have ever lived through? You know, many of us have not stress tested the system.

Certainly, you know, I'm in my early 40s. I don't recall a time like this ever. I actually, before the strict self-isolation rules came in in the UK, about a week and a half ago, I went round to my elderly neighbour neighbor who's 91 who hadn't really seen for about six weeks and I I thought what you should really just go and check that she's okay her kids don't live nearby she's by herself there's all this kind of isolation so I went around um I nipped in checked everything was okay and I said to her hey look does any part of this remind you of the war yeah uh the World War? And she said,

no, not at all. I said, really? She goes, yeah, then for me, this is what she said to me. She said, then we have this sort of common enemy. We all came together, we congregated, we did things together. This feels like it's invisible and I don't know where the enemy is. And I found that really, really interesting as an idea that you know coming full circle to what i was saying it's this idea that we've never experienced anything like this before so if we look and if we pay attention we could maybe discover things about ourselves that we've never had the opportunity to observe in the past you know i was thinking about just before you talked about the war,

that's exactly the question that was coming up in my mind. And to go back to that person you mentioned, not only is the enemy invisible, you're compassionate and giving next to a neighbor who's bringing you groceries, might be carrying the enemy into your porch you know so that's really weird in that sense this is this is something new isn't it so I think that's too individually and I think it's also too socially

I mean it may be too early to talk about what we need to learn here or what some of the lessons are. But I mean, I can't help. I mean, I think systemically, and plus I'm writing a new book about, my new book is The Myth of Normal, Illness and Health in an Insane Culture. That's the book I'm working on right now. So I'm looking at the large cultural pictures. So you're speaking to me from the UK. Well, there's some questions that at some point will need to be asked, and maybe it's not the time just yet, but they occur to me.

To what degree does the cutbacks in the National Health Service, the cutbacks in the national health service, have they impaired your country's capacity to respond to the current crisis? And there's already been some questions and articles about that in the British press. I've seen that. To what degree does a society with huge divergences of wealth and power, high levels of inequality. We know from Sir Michael Marmot and other British researchers the health impacts of inequality.

And of course, it's the people with underlying health conditions who are most prone to fall victim to this disease. Well, that's not just a viral effect. That's also a social effect. So I won't say more about that now except to mention that your question about what can we learn here is applicable not just on an individual level but also on a social level. And I think it's very important that when we've dealt with the acute crisis

that those conversations really begin in earnest and very, very deeply. On the individual level, I think we're, well, I think certain things are becoming clear. One is, as I said in another conversation recently, isn't this just clarifying what our values really are, what's really important in life? clarifying what our values really are, what's really important in life. How much of what we were engaged in and thought was essential four weeks ago seems relatively trivial now compared to how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about each other, what communality that we have, how much solidarity we can experience and generate or receive,

how much love and compassion we can experience for ourselves and others aren't just on these just the most important things and doesn't it just? Warm your heart when you see these Videos from Italy with people serenading each other from their rooftops and their back. Yes, you know Yeah So so I rooftops and their balconies, you know? Yeah. So I think that's already emerging is what's really important to us. The other thing that's emerging is which goes along with the entire

conversation that we've been having is what are our internal resources that we can contact to get her through this? I mean, this really is training in a certain sense it's like heavy lifting heavy lifting makes your muscles stronger if you don't strain yourself too much and and so what internal resources can we muster look to and find um to help us deal with this current um threat to our well-being as individuals and as a society.

So I think there's powerful teachings here. We might be too close to it yet to know what the teachings will be, but we can do what you're doing already, which is to look upon this as a learning opportunity. And as we go through it, keep asking ourselves, okay, what is here to be learned? What is here to be learned? What can I learn today? Yeah.

You mentioned inequality. And we know all around the world, but certainly here in the UK, that depending on which postcode you live in, your health outcome, your lifespan could be up to 10 years lower. And it's to do with income and poverty and all kinds of other factors, which are probably the biggest determinant of health, actually. And it's interesting for me that when we talk about equality and inequality in that context, we can also look at it in a global context in the sense that we've been so individualistic as a society. On an individual level, it's all about me, you know,

can I earn what I need to earn and actually buy the house and get the job that I want, irrespective of what's going on around me. Countries have been doing that. We need to make sure we're the strongest and we've got our everything in order but hold on a minute now we've got this global problem it doesn't really matter whether you're a rich country or a poor country in the sense that that virus can still come and penetrate in and therefore it's like well is it possible for us to be individually well whether you talk about a person or a country, if all around us is unwell. And I don't think it is. Well, and that's another big lesson here, isn't it?

Because we live our lives, as you say, as if we could just avert our eyes from what's happening in the rest of the world. But if we're honest about it, and I may have said this before, world but if we're honest about it and i may have said this before but what what what if all of a sudden i told you that there's a preventable illness that kills 800 000 people in europe every year tens of thousands in the uk uh 15 000 here in canada 8 million around the world if i told you that there's such a preventable disease you'd say well yeah what is it and how here in Canada. 8 million around the world. If I told you that there's such a preventable disease, you'd say, well, yeah, what is it?

And how is it preventable? Why don't we prevent it? Well, there is such a disease. It's called air pollution. Air pollution kills that many people every year. The numbers that the coronavirus has claimed so far

is nowhere, I mean, nowhere near that. Which is not to say to minimize the viral threat, I mean, nowhere near that, which is not to say to minimize the viral threat, but it's to say that we do relive our lives, most of the time oblivious to reality. And this virus is waking us up to the fact that we all live in the same world, that what happens in one country affects what happens in another country.

Now we're aware of that, but that's true all the time. So perhaps we can come out of this with more awareness of that generally, not just at these sudden catastrophes. That's the first point. The second point is that all around the world there are many areas where there's illnesses that are rampant because of poverty, because of lack of health services, and lack of proper food and so on, that claim many, many, many lives.

It's just that here in the West, we're shielded from that. So we don't have to make ourselves aware. And then there's a third level, which is, to me, we're getting into the realms of evil. There are places in the world where illness is imposed because of war and intervention and occupation and exploitation. I'm thinking of a place like Gaza, which I've visited. I don't make a place like Gaza which I've visited and I'm making a political statement here except to say that in that small area there's all those hundreds

and tons of people cramped together and because of the political situation and the blockade which is largely supported by the West only 5% of the water is portable could we at least in these times lift those sanctions on those countries could at least in these times not lift the sanctions on Iran which is make it makes it hard for them to import medical equipment in other words could we be just at least, you know, I think the UN, some UN, maybe the Director General of the UN or the Secretary General called for an international ceasefire in areas of conflict. Let's just, until this virus is over, let's just not shoot each other.

But what if we called an international moratorium on anything that makes people suffer, that we're doing that makes other people suffer? So we can go back to your politics later if you want to, but just now, could we come together as a human race and just be kind? So, yeah, these are big questions. And I think the virus is impelling us to ask these questions and to remember these questions when the virus is gone. That's the key, isn't it? Let's remember this when we're through the acute phase of this. And one thing I'm doing myself and

i'm asking a lot of people to do who are asking me for advice is just write down a few of your thoughts every day like little things that you're now appreciative of and grateful for i did a post yesterday on my social media channels about five things that came at the top of my head that i just have maybe taken for granted in the past, but really, really value now. You know, going to a cafe to meet up with a friend. Now that I can't do it, I'm like, oh God, wouldn't that be amazing? Or I do something called park run on Saturdays

where you congregate in your local community and hundreds of you run together. I think, wow, just the ability to go and do that will be phenomenal. My elderly mother lives nearby, but she's meant to be self-isolating for 12 weeks. So just to give my 79-year-old mom a hug, like the small things that were available to me

three weeks ago, that I probably took for granted. And I think if we make a journal every day and write these things down, when this is all gone, when it's all over, we can look back and reflect and go, maybe that was something we should all try and do is write our own journal throughout this it's a way of sitting with ourself understanding ourself and also it's a way of not forgetting when it's all over was it samuel peeps that wrote the journal of the plague years i think so well it's a good it was, yeah. Why don't we all keep a journal of the plague days, you know,

or maybe plague weeks or, God forbid, plague months, although it looks like it. Yeah, that's a great idea. You know, someone who's listening to this, a few people think, yeah, that might be a good idea to do. Gabbo, you mentioned, like, let's be kind to one another. At least now let's lift sanctions and just do the right thing. And one thing that I've always been, well, I've always talked about it as something that I think is the most important skill for any human being, but also certainly any healthcare professional, is compassion, is ability to connect and really non-judgmentally look at that person in front of you. And it's really interesting to observe what's happening at the moment when it

comes to compassion. So you can, you know, there's people out there who, you know, let's say people who are not practicing social distancing, who are, you know, refusing to follow what the government have asked people to do and are getting together and congregating with their friends, or people who are perceived to be panic buying and therefore the supermarket shelves are now empty. It's really interesting that we can be quite judgmental about those other people who are behaving in that way um and it's something i've i've mentioned recently is that you know i think about i've thought about panic buying a lot recently and this idea that are people really panic buying i'm sure some people are but most

people are probably just buying a little bit more than they would have done in the past and therefore when they go to the shelf, the shelf's full, and the first person buys a little bit more, the second person buys a little bit more, then at some point there's going to be someone who empties that shelf. But all they were doing was buying a little bit more than they would normally do. And then someone will post a photo of that

on social media and go, God, who are these people who are panic buying? They should be ashamed of themselves. And I'm thinking, I'm not criticising people for for saying that i'm just observing that you know this situation i think has brought out the best in humanity but also sort of it's also exposing the worst as well as any stress test would do and is this i'm interested in your observations on the judgment that we can have on other people particularly at times like this well it's great to speak with you because every time you speak

my mind just starts generating thought bubbles start arising under the surface of my mind um first thing here in van Vancouver, there was a couple who go around cleaning out all the shelves of major stores of cleaning fluid. Or cleaning wipes. Then they sell them at a profit.

Who would do that? You know? Now there's two ways of asking who would do that one is who would do that as a judgment or curiosity oh well who actually would do that yeah and how insecure they must actually feel in the world and and how much they they must be cut off from their own communal sense of humanity. So what happened to them? These people that congregate and they ignore the recommendations,

where did they learn to distrust authority so much? Usually, that can be a trauma response as well. When early, there's a whole lot of ways to respond to trauma. But one way to respond is, I'm never going to trust authority again I'm just going to do whatever I want because the authority that I did trust in when I was an infant really let me down

so even we can look at these people compassionately as well and the other thing that came up for me is that there's such a thing as healthy shame so in writing my new book I'll be looking at aboriginal societies and what we call so-called primitive societies which is how we actually evolved in small band hunter-gatherer groups and we lived that way for

millions and hundreds of thousands of years that was our evolutionary niche when you look at them those societies that still carry those that way for millions and hundreds of thousands of years. That was our evolutionary niche. When you look at them, those societies that still carry those vestiges or those ways of life today, fewer and fewer, individual accumulation is seen as a weakness, as some kind of an illness. And if somebody, you know, they go hunting and some young guy shoots his, does his first kill, you know. Everybody criticizes him and they ritually will make small of it. Why?

Because they don't want anybody to get a big head. They want to say, okay, you're doing this for the community. You know, it's not malicious but they but but it's not about individual achievement and individual accumulation that wealth for them actually lies in communality so that in a lot of these cultures including here in the west coast of canada big celebrations would involve people giving away their wealth to others. And real wealth was in how other people regarded you and how you connected with them. So this crisis, again, shows how far we've come away from our roots.

And when you think of yourself or any of ourselves, when do we feel best? When we have gathered something to ourselves or when we've given it. You know? And most people will say, I feel so much better about myself, so much more peace, so much more joy

when I'm giving, not compulsively, but out of free choice. But that goes contrary to the way we're programmed in a society. So again, to go back to our theme of learning, this viral crisis is really maybe teaching us something about our true human nature. Yeah. Are you and your wife dealing with this in different ways? Well, we do go for a walk every day.

Yeah. I'm just going to run the fresh air. I'm spending much of my time at my computer writing my book. My wife's an artist, so she draws a lot. She's not painting. She's drawing a lot these days. But she's also doing crossword puzzles. She's just got a great way to just relax.

So she's doing what she needs to. But if you're asking me, are we dealing with it emotionally differently um and i guess let me just clarify the point of my question wasn't really to inquire um about you and her individually it was also more really the broader question do you feel and do you see that men and women of course there's going to be huge individual differences within that but broadly speaking do can we say that men and women tend to deal with these things in different ways are there some broad strokes that we can we can explain that with well there's a lot of work that's been done on the different emotional coping styles of men and women.

Women tend to be more in touch with their emotions in general. They tend to come more from the right side of the brain, which is more holistic and inclusive, whereas men tend to move towards the left side, which is more holistic and inclusive, whereas men tend to move towards the left side, which is more, this is not exclusive and it's not gender-based, but in general, more going through explanations and intellectual formulations and so on.

As to how that's showing up right now in the current viral situation that'll be an interesting study won't it yeah to look back later on and say well how did men and women differentially if there was a differential how did they differentially deal with what's going on i don't know that i have an answer to that right now i think another thing that would be really interesting to look at at some point in the future when the dust has settled is, you know, it's that sort of slight seesaw that I was mentioning to you before, this idea that, okay, all these measures that are being taken, these kind of frankly never been seen before measures by countries all around the world are to limit the spread of the virus so we're asking people to isolate well certainly physically isolate themselves from each other not go about their everyday lives not congregate with other human beings as social beings you know

in the uk at the moment we've been told we can go outside once a day to take exercise in the form of a walk cycle or run and we can also go to the shops once a week or take exercise in the form of a walk, cycle or run. And we can also go to the shops once a week or we've been encouraged to. I mean, this is pretty restrictive compared to what normal life used to feel like. But what I'm interested in is, are we going to look back and or it would be interesting to look back at some point in the future for all the lives we may hopefully save from getting you know severely affected by the virus then needing intensive care and all this kind of stuff on the flip side what sort of damage are we potentially going to do to society with this isolation, with this

anxiety? Because I feel, and I so hope I'm wrong on this, but I imagine that we may well see in a few months, you know, a litany of mental health issues and anxiety and depression and all kinds of things on the back of this. And then it's that whole acute versus chronic piece that we're not taking these chronic things like air pollution and mental health and all these things which kill millions of people each year seriously, but we are with the virus. And I think there's a really interesting thought experiment there is that, you know, will it have been worth it? I don't mean to sound, you know, I'm very conscious, I don't mean to sound as though I think we should be taking the measures to protect life, right? So I'm not saying we shouldn't be, but will we look back and

go, what, you know, was there an unexpected consequence of doing that? Well, I've had the same question come up in my mind. Let me tell you a quick story. Just before you called me, a friend of mine called me, another retired physician. She goes on her bicycle and she delivers what's called meals on wheels. So they take food to, it's a program here in Vancouver, they take food to shut-ins and old people and so on. And my friend Elaine, who's delivering the food, there's an elderly Hungarian lady who is among her clients. And they don't share a language at all. The woman does not speak English at all. And Elaine speaks no Hungarian.

And she called me just now now just before you called me because the woman wants her to come closer like she usually does but Elaine won't but because of the language barrier Elaine couldn't explain why I can't come close to you and the woman's getting more and more upset so she followed me and said

would you talk to her in Hungarian and explain and I did and this woman had never heard of the of the pandemic because she speaks no english and so the media elderly woman the the english language media which is what happens here means nothing to her she was unaware and so imagine the the bewilderment also the world changes and then even this person who brings you her food won't come near her you know so that's it's hitting a lot of people now the question that you're asking i think we're too close to it right now but it's occurred

it's occurred to me as well at one point do we decide that the social disruption and economic disruption and the anxiety is more than we can bear? And that how do you make the decision as to what's more important, saving lives now or a functioning society in the long term? undermine any anybody's um uh commitment to to participate fully in exact and to follow the directions and advice of the authorities i think this is a time where we just have to really do that yeah so do i and i want to you know just re-echo what you just said that it was really just a thought experiment rather than i've had to say we should do things differently well exactly and i've had the same thought. And I think that'll be one of those long-term questions that once we're looking back in retrospect,

we'll be able to engage with and maybe learn from. But I'm certainly an optimist in the sense that I think I really hope that we have been given such a jolt and so many have started to appreciate the little things in life that frankly most of us if not all of us certainly many of us took for granted in the past if we could hold on to that there could be something really beautiful on the other side of this potentially for society i certainly hope that's going to happen. I'm an optimist. I always have been. Are you an optimist?

Well, human beings have tremendous capacity for transformation and depth and spiritual and emotional growth. They also have tremendous capacity for denial and forgetting and distracting and going back to business as usual. I don't know how it's going to play out. I think it'll play out in both ways throughout society. Certainly on an individual level. I think on an individual level, there'll be a lot of people that will have learned a lot of valuable lessons here about what's important. On a social level, I don't know. In fact, I'm rather pessimistic, at least in the short term.

Look, in Britain, if I remember correctly, there's one study that I read, that I collected from my new book. Something like 10,000 people have died because of austerity in Britain. Would that be a startling statistic to you, or is that something that fits in with your awareness? Certainly, I've come across very similar statistics to that. I must say I haven't dug deep into them, so I don't know on what that is based,

but I certainly have heard that for sure. Yeah, so that's one piece of information that's resting on my computer somewhere. But we seem quite content to allow that. Yeah. And to persist in it. And that's a lot of people dying. A lot more people than I hope will die in Britain of this particular disease.

So will this teach us when other catastrophes have not? I don't know. And that comes to a whole social issue of you know, there's a social structure and there's a power structure

that is invested in being things in things being the way they have been. I don't know that that's going to change. And the question is, will people demand a change or are we going to just be so grateful and happy and joyful to go back to our lives that we'll forget about these larger questions? I'd rather think in the short term,

that's more likely, I think. It's a great point. And we've got things like Bill Gates's TED Talk from 2015, where he sort of said this was going to happen. Other people have done that. There's someone called David Sridhar, who I'm hopefully talking to soon, his professor of global health at um at university of edinburgh who's well worth following for people on twitter at the moment as of her thoughts on the pandemic and how we're

dealing with it it's really really interesting that a lot of people had been predicting this yet a lot of us a lot of certainly the uk didn't spend the millions probably the billions that were going to be necessary to be adequately equipped to deal with it whereas now we're going to have to spend trillions on the economic uh implications of it so even with that knowledge we weren't prepared to spend it's like that prevention versus cure piece right we we knew well the scientists knew but we still didn't do anything about it and now we're going to be paying way way more on the back end trying to fix something that potentially could have been sorted at the front end and the other the other yes and the other big big question that brings up

big question that brings up is is there something about our way of life and the way we relate to nature and the earth that somehow potentiates this kind of a crisis and i've already seen those arguments being made of the questions being raised that's another huge uh inquiry i think that would need to be held with whatever result but i think we need to look at it and so the real question again is are we going to remember the big questions when this is over and and are we going to be committed to um delving into those questions in the depth that they they require and deserve and um or or will we get naturally enough perhaps caught up in trying to catch up to what we've lost economically and in other ways? Yeah.

For me, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And just the opportunity to sit with you and just have a conversation is something I find incredibly stimulating and incredibly inspiring. I've said many times, I think your voice is one of the most important voices globally right now in terms of health, in terms of compassion, in terms of addiction. And I'm really excited that you're writing a new book. When is the new book coming out? Do we know yet or is it still too early to say? It's meant to come out next year. I have to confess I've been struggling with it.

As a matter of fact, you mentioned internal family systems. I actually called Dick Schwartz and had a conversation with him because I needed some help. Because a part of me was really just ready to be in panic about, did I at this time bite off more than I can chew? This book I'm writing, is it more than I can actually fulfill on and I find it a helpful conversation to get in touch with that panicky little inadequate part of mine you know so I think we all need help at this time you know and then yeah maybe a final message I think you and I would agree on and by the way it's also wonderful to speak with you I just really enjoy our conversation I just like the quality of

connection that experience when I'm talking with you but maybe one lesson we can all learn is let's just be vulnerable people and ask for help when we need it I think that's a wonderful place to finish this I really hope people found our sort of intellectual meandering sort of going from one place to another. We, you know, again, no preparation. It was more trying to catch up and see what we can, what we can share about what is currently going on. And I think, you know, accept that it's okay to feel the pressure and be vulnerable and need help that's quite a nice message to people

i think and i really want to just highlight what you said earlier just you know try not to distract yourself sit with what sit with your feelings take the opportunity um you know gabriel good luck with book writing um good luck with your walks around where you live and i very much hope you're in london for part of the book tour when it does come out, which I'm sure it will do. And I look forward to having a face-to-face conversation with you next time. So take care. Thank you.

Thank you, Rona. That concludes today's episode of the podcast. How did you find it? Did it make you think and reflect? I really hope you got a lot of value out of it. As Gabbo said at the end there, maybe one lesson we can all learn is just to be vulnerable and ask for help when we need it. As always, do think about one thing you can take from this podcast and put into practice in your own life. Will it be to try and sit in silence a little bit more

to really understand and get in tune with what you are feeling? As I mentioned in the conversation today, I think a daily journaling practice is so, so beneficial and helpful. And I really would encourage you guys to give it a go. Now, if you did enjoy today's show, please do take 30 seconds to go onto your podcast app

and give the show a review. It is so, so important. As the more reviews the show has, the more prominence it is given by providers like Apple. Now, I'm really keen for this content to reach as many people as possible. But to do that, I need your help. Of course, you can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels or simply tell your friends about the show in the good old-fashioned way now I really do appreciate your support the show notes page for this episode is drchastji.com forward slash 106, where I have linked to Gabble's website, his books, his social media channels, as well as some brilliant talks that he has done online. Please do let Gabble and I know what you thought of today's show on social media.

Having a supportive community is so, so important at the moment. And if you are looking for one one i can highly recommend my own private facebook community it is called dr chastity four pillar community tribe and it is a really supportive place to get inspiration motivation as well as new ideas and tips from other members it's also a great place to go and share what you are struggling with and get support from the community there are well over 10,000 engaged members in there so far. You can just head over to Facebook to get involved. Looking after your health has never been more important than right now. It will not only help you in the short

term, but it's also going to help you be more resilient to the challenges that we all face in the coming weeks and months. I know that it is hard to access books at the moment as shops are shut and Amazon have long delivery times but don't forget about audiobooks. All of my previous books are available in this format and you can download them immediately from providers like Amazon and Audible. A big thank you to Vedanta Chastity for producing this week's podcast and to Richard Hughes for audio engineering. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure that you have pressed subscribe

and I'll be back very shortly with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.