Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Dr Gabor Maté on The Mental Health Crisis: The Real Causes and Why Prince Harry Is No Different To The Rest of Us #362

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

For long-term listeners, Dr Gabor Maté needs little introduction. This episode will be his fourth appearance since we first met in 2018 and I cherish our meaningful, valuable conversations. Gabor is a fellow physician, renowned author, speaker and friend. His is one of the most important voices globally on health, trauma, stress, addiction, and childhood development.   Gabor believes that many of the physical and mental conditions doctors see can be traced back to our earliest experiences and subsequent environmental influences. In his most recent book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, he joins the dots between individual trauma and the pressures of modern-day living. We begin by discussing what’s behind the current mental health epidemic. In the UK, one in six people over the age of 16 report moderate to severe depression; eight million people have an anxiety disorder. The statistics are more startling in North America. It’s almost ‘normal’ to have some sort of mental health dysfunction. Gabor and I explore our current day mental health epidemic, discuss the causes and potential solutions. Gabor explains that the most important factor for good mental health throughout life is the parent-child relationship, especially in the early years. Children need parents and caregivers who are present and emotionally attuned. Sadly, these days, the stresses of modern life can prevent some parents from being able to provide these things, despite their best intentions. We discuss the various ingredients that all human brains need for healthy development, the critical need within all of us to be able to express our authentic selves, why blaming and shaming is unnecessary and unhelpful and the importance of being open and vulnerable. We also discuss, in depth, Gabor’s recent live interview with Prince Harry, which received a significant amount of negative press. As is often the case, parts of the interview were used out of context across mainstream and social media, and what in my view, was a thoughtful, enlightening exploration of mental health became widely misrepresented and misunderstood. This public criticism certainly took its toll on Gabor and he openly shares what he has personally learned by going through this experience. We also explore what Prince Harry’s story (and the polarising views that surround it) can potentially teach all of us, both individually and societally. This really was a special conversation. A conversation that, at its core, has a message of hope and optimism. It is only by recognising where we currently are, that we can move on and create a better future. Gabor and I discuss the practical steps we can all take in order to better our lives and heal. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.calm.com/livemore https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/362 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with us, but many of our dysfunctions, mental health conditions, challenges are the outcomes of traumas. That's not victimization or passing of responsibility. That is the seizing of responsibility. Because when I understand what happened, now it's my responsibility and my liberty to find the healing. Sometimes we will require medications to get us through a difficult time. That's all right. But the medications don't heal anything. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. This week in the UK is Mental Health Awareness Week. And in the UK at the moment, one in six people over the age of 16 report moderate to severe depression that does not include mild depression. 8 million people have

an anxiety disorder. These statistics are even more startling in North America, and it's becoming almost normal these days to have some level of mental health dysfunction. So what exactly is going on? Well, this is what today's guests and I do our very best to explore in this week's podcast. Dr. Gabor Maté is a fellow physician, best-selling author, and someone who I am fortunate to be able to call a friend. Now, if you are a long-time listener to my podcast, you may well have heard one or all of my previous three conversations with Gabor. If you have, I think you are going to hear a very different side to him in today's conversation.

And if you have never come across Gabor's work before, and this is your first time hearing him speak, I think you are in for a treat. In my opinion, Gabor is one of the most important and influential voices globally on health, trauma, stress, addiction, and childhood development. And he firmly believes that many of the physical and mental conditions we all struggle with can be traced back to our earliest childhood experiences and subsequent environmental influences. His most recent book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, joins the dots between individual trauma and the pressures of modern day living in a beautifully coherent and helpful way. Now in today's conversation,

we explore our current day mental health epidemic. What are the causes and what are the potential solutions? Gabbro explains that the most important factor for good mental health throughout life is the parent-child relationship, especially in the early years. And of course, for many of us, those early years are challenging, not least because of the stresses

and pressures of the modern world. Children need parents and caregivers who are present and emotionally attuned. Sadly these days, the stresses of modern life can prevent some parents from being able to provide these things despite their best intentions. We also discuss the various ingredients that all human brains need for healthy development, the critical need within all of us to be able to express our authentic selves, why blaming and shaming is unnecessary and unhelpful, and the importance of being open and vulnerable and the problems we face when we are unable to do so. We also discuss in depth Gabble's recent live interview with Prince Harry, which received

a significant amount of negative press. As is often the case, parts of the interview were used out of context across mainstream and social media. and what in my view was a thoughtful, enlightening exploration of mental health, became widely misrepresented and misunderstood. This public criticism certainly took its toll on Gabor, and he openly shares what he has personally learned by going through this experience. We also explore what Prince Harry's story and the polarising views that surround it can potentially teach all of us, both individually and societally. This really was a special conversation, a conversation which at its core has a message of hope and optimism. It's only by recognising where we currently are that we can move on and create

a better future. Yes, Gabor and I spend time outlining the problem and the various causes, but we also make sure to cover the practical steps we can all take in order to better our lives and heal. As always, I'm deeply grateful to Gabor for sharing his wisdom, his insights, and for being so honest. I hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation with Dr. Gabor Mate. I wanted to start off today talking about this mental health epidemic that we're living through. Latest statistics in the UK are these. One in six adults above the age of 16 report moderate to severe depressive symptoms. That's not mild, that's just moderate to severe. And over 8 million people in the UK experience an anxiety disorder at any one time.

From your perspective, what's going on? Well, and if I may add, the similar statistics, even more so, are evident in North America as well, where the rate of children's suicide is going up, with the number of kids being medicated, seriously medicated for all manner of conditions is going up, where 25% of women are on a psychoactive medication of some kind, where depression, anxiety are rising, where overdoses. In the United States last year, more people died of overdoses than in America's Vietnam. Iraq and Afghan wars put together almost twice as many in one year. So the mental health issue, and this is United States May is Mental Health Month, is an increasing burden on society and on individuals.

So it really means we have to rethink our perspective on mental health and mental illness. Because the traditional medical view has it that it's a biological problem in the brain, usually potentiated by genetics. But if that was the case, it wouldn't be rising like the way it is. Because genes don't change in a population over a short period of time. So we really have to look at broader social factors as they bear upon the individual. And the truth is that the individual cannot be separated from the environment. We're social creatures and the functioning of our brains and our physiology is very much affected by our context. And so the question we really have to be asking is what is happening in modern society

that is increasing the psychological burden on human beings? Your latest book is called The Myth of Normal. And I think that title is incredibly apt in relation to what we're talking about. We've got to a stage now in 2023 where it's almost normal to have some level of mental health dysfunction. So from your perspective, what exactly is going on in society that is so stigmatizing, that is so toxic for our physical mental and emotional well-being yes well for that we have to go back and ask the question what are the needs of human beings for healthy development and to what degree does our society or any society meet those needs and this begins already in uterus because we already know that stresses on pregnant women during the gestational period affect the brain development of infants in utero already.

So the more stress there is on a woman when they're pregnant, the greater the risk that child has for mental health problems later on. It starts that early. And then we have to look at childbirth practices themselves because the way nature set up childbirth, it wasn't just a matter of pushing a baby out of a womb. It was also a bonding experience. Chemically, a whole cocktail of hormones is released in the woman and the baby, oxytocin, endorphins, vasopressin, that help the bonding between mother and infant. Now, with the rising rates of intervention, unnecessary intervention, sometimes, as you and I know as physicians, obstetrical intervention is life-saving for mother and infant, and it's to be celebrated.

But when we have situations where here in my province of British Columbia, there's a 40% cesarean section rate, and this is generalizing across the industrialized world. Sometimes it's even higher. We're having a massive interference with the natural process. And then we have to ask, what are the essential needs of human children for healthy development? the essential needs of human children for healthy development. And they include a safe, secure attachment relationship with parents who are emotionally attuned and present for them, which is increasingly difficult for parents to provide in today's stress society. It includes the child not having to work to make the relationship work so the child can

be at rest in a relationship. work so the child can be at rest in a relationship. It includes the freedom of the child to experience and express all their emotions. The human brain is wired like all mammals are wired for certain emotions, including joy, playfulness, curiosity, grief, fear, anger. When parenting practices inhibit a child from experiencing all their emotions, that interferes with the child's brain development. And so take something like depression. Just a simple example. What does it mean to depress something? It means to push it down.

What gets pushed down in depression? It means to push it down. What gets pushed down in depression? Well, I've had depression, and what gets pushed down is your emotions. But why would somebody push down their emotions? Because they weren't allowed to express them, because the expression of emotion threatened their relationship with their parents. And a lot of parenting practices today encourage parents to force kids to suppress their emotions.

And so there's so much where our needs are not met. And the biggest factor I would say, Rangan, is the stress on parents. The economic, social stress on parents and the increasing social isolation. All of these bear upon the developing child. So much there to pick up on, Gabbo. I think in one of our previous conversations, I mentioned to you a case of a young lady who I saw in my first week in general practice who had symptoms consistent with depression. And it would have been very easy to diagnose her with depression, label her, and then put her on an antidepressant. But I won't retell that entire story, but over the course of four to six weeks, by seeing her every week, by listening to her compassionately,

non-judgmentally, in a way that she didn't have outside the consultation room, in a way that she didn't have outside the consultation room, her symptoms just started to resolve. And that really speaks to what you said about depression. We're depressing our feelings down. And I'm looking at that case now through that lens. I simply provided a safe space where she could start to undepress those feelings, elevate those feelings, get them out. And as if by magic, her symptoms started to get better. So yeah, I think that's a really nice way of thinking about depression. I just wanted to talk to you though about brain development. You mentioned there, you know, your central thesis behind your book, to me at least, is that the culture around us is making us sick, right? This is not really an individual issue. This is a societal and

environmental issue. So if we then look at various aspects of modern society, at least modern Western society, when mothers and parents are having children these days, it's often, it's later than it used to be. It's often mid, late 20s, maybe into 30s, maybe sometimes into early 40s. This often coincides with them trying to make their way in their careers. Two parents working, they've moved away from home, they don't have support around them. So they're actually trying to incubate a baby inside the womb at a very stressful time. Often they're pushing themselves to try and buy a house where they can have a little garden and have room for the little one. Society doesn't make it easy for us to have that calm, relaxed,

attentive environment for the woman when she's pregnant or for the children when they're born, does it? No. And I wonder, Rangan, when you were in medical school, when you were taught prenatal care, did anybody ever suggest to you that you pay attention to the emotional needs of the pregnant mother? I wasn't taught that either. And yet, as I've already mentioned, that's a huge influence. Now, let me quote to you an article from Harvard University, from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, which is the world's most prestigious child developmental study organization. The article appeared in a major medical journal, Pediatrics, in February 2012. And it talked about brain development.

And I'm going to quote it as best I can. It said that the architecture of the brain is constructed to an ongoing process that begins before birth, continues into adulthood, and establishes either a fragile or sturdy foundation for all the health and learning and behavior that follow. So the architecture of the brain is constructed to an ongoing process beginning before birth, continuing into adulthood. Which means that in any process of development, you have to have the right conditions

from before birth to adulthood. That's the first point. The second point is, the second sentence in that same article says that the most important influence on the development of the brain is the emotional mutuality in the relationship between parents and children, especially in the early childhood years. Now, lots of studies have

shown that when parents are busy, they're stressed, they're anxious, they're economically pressured, that interferes with their capacity to emotionally connect with their children. We're not blaming parents here. They're doing their best, but they're doing their best in an abnormal environment. Abnormal from the point of view of human development, because human creatures, we evolved in a communal context where parents had lots of support, lots of companionship, and kids were always surrounded by other kids and by adults who cared for them. That's how we evolved.

That's our need. Now, if you get a society that increasingly isolates and stress parents, that's going to impact the very circuitry of the child's brain. And that's going to affect the child's psychological functioning. So that we know from British studies, for that matter, that mothers who are depressed, their kids are more likely to have ADHD later on. Why? Because the parents' emotional states affect the brain development of the child and therefore the psychological development of the child as well. So what we cannot do is to separate the environment from the physiology of the brain.

So modern psychiatry, which really looks at mental health conditions, there's biological problems. The point they don't get and they ignore is that the brain's biology itself is affected by and shaped by the emotional and social context. And so when you have increasing isolation, parents who are stressed, struggling, as you say, without the community to support them anymore, with the loss of connection, of course you're going to get a lot of kids who are going to be mentally challenged and emotionally in trouble. Of course you are.

Given how important those formative years are, it would seem relatively urgent that we try and restructure elements of society to really prioritize those early years. So I know in America, I read a recent statistic that it's at 25% of women within two weeks of giving birth are back at work. I mean, if that is true, that's an absolutely incredible and actually very worrying statistic and really shows us what that society is valuing and putting first. I'm interested though, if we compare that to, let's say, Scandinavian countries where there's less financial inequality, as there may be, let's say, in America. There's, I think, nine months in some of these Scandinavian countries, nine months of paternal leave, same amount, if not longer, maternal leave. Clearly, as a society, we're

saying, or they're saying, oh, the first nine months are very, very important. So I'm interested, number one, do we see less rates of mental health problems in cultures like that? Perhaps we could address that first, and then I'll go on to the next point. Well, I wish I knew about Scandinavian statistics. There are significant mental health problems in the Scandinavian countries as well. But Finland, for example, is considered to be the happiest country in the world, according to a recent study. And they have very different approaches to child rearing and schooling and so on. In the Scandinavian countries, there is trauma.

It's not that they're without their problems but the don't they don't nearly have the rate of children being medicated the adults being medicated that north america does the um as best i know the uh 25 figure figure is accurate. Actually, I saw it in The Guardian based on an American report. The British anthropologist, the British-American anthropologist, Ashley Montague, talked about exterogestation. So there's interogestation, which is the child in the womb, but then exterogestation is the continuing of the gestational process outside the womb. Because the human child is the least mature, the least developed, the most dependent of any mammal.

And our brains are far less developed than, say, that of other mammals. A horse can run on the first day of life. We can't do that for a year and a half. Almost a horse can run on the first day of life. We can't do that for a year and a half, which means that the brain circuits that are in a horse are already present at birth in a human being don't come online for another year and a half. And so the gestational process needs to continue

for a longer period of time in human beings. Now, when mothers are forced to return to work at such a high rate for economic reasons, what that amounts to is a massive abandonment of children. Ashley Montague talked about, he wrote a book called Skin, the Human Significance of Touch. The importance for the biological, physiological, and mental development of the child to have skin-to-skin contact with the mother. Now, in our society, increasingly, that's less and less available. That actually has an impact on the child's sense of security and safety in the world.

No wonder we have rising rates of anxiety. Yeah. No wonder we are rising rates of anxiety. Yeah. Another element of culture I've really been reflecting on recently, Gabor, is about this idea of kids living with their parents. Now, it's really interesting. I'm from an Indian background. So I remember in the summers when I'd go to India and spend six weeks with my family,

you'd have joint families, extended families, three, four generations living in the same house. Now, I'm not saying everything was fantastic about that. There's pros and cons with everything in life. But I was chatting to my wife a few weeks ago saying, where did this idea come from that if you're still living with your parents at age 20 or 21, you're somehow a failure in life. It seems to be a very Western idea that I absorbed as a child that I think is there. You'll see social media posts, you'll see things online where if someone at 26 is still living at home, they're almost frowned upon in this society. And again, I've just been reflecting as to where did that come from? I'm not saying necessarily we shouldn't be promoting independence. We shouldn't

be encouraging people to, you know, once they've had their child rearing to move on with their adult lives with that strong degree of independence. But have you reflected on this? You know, where did this idea come from? And what do we see in tribes and more native cultures? Even at an early age, we try and push them towards independence. We think that we have to foster independence in the child by kind of pushing them away. And this enters into a lot of parenting practices. Now, actually, we forget something, which is that independence is nature's natural agenda. So if you look at bears, nature's agenda is that at some point the baby bear, the cub, grows up independent and goes off on their

own and no longer dependent on the mother. The mother doesn't have to push them towards independence. Nature does that. It's in the agenda of nature that we develop into independent creatures because at some point our parents will die you know and so each generation needs to find its own independence but it does so in a natural pace consistent with its own nature the way you actually foster independence in human children is by inviting dependence is by meaning because the human child is very dependent. If you meet the child's needs, we don't trust nature in a society is what it is.

If you meet the child's needs for dependence and belonging and connection and attachment, that child will automatically develop a sense of independence because it's in the child's nature to do so. Yeah. So we don't have to push it. On the contrary, it's not that we should coddle kids and kind of hobble them and, you know,

infantilize them. You just have to meet their genuine attachment needs, give them a sense of security. They will naturally move towards independence, exploration, finding their own way in the world. So this is another thing that in our society we totally miss. And then we push our kids out, be expectant to find their way. Older societies used to have rituals for inviting children into adulthood. These rituals would exist in virtually all traditional cultures.

We have lost those rituals. So we've lost a lot of the map that would guide people to be genuine human beings in our culture. Yeah. We're talking today about mental health, and I think that public figures can play a very important role, both from a point of view of raising awareness, but also from a point of view of highlighting that we all share a common humanity. who we are, what family we were born into. We're all susceptible to the same pressures with the same consequences on our physical and our mental health. Now, Prince Harry is, I think, one of the most prominent figures, certainly in the UK, talking about mental health, arguably globally. Until recently, I would say he was very much a well-loved figure by all. But by talking about mental health, that seems to have changed. And you had the opportunity to talk to Harry that was publicized to a lot of people around the world. I'm first of all interested, from talking to someone so prominent about their mental health, about their trauma, what did you learn?

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or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Having read Harry's book Spare, which really is a depiction of a child deeply traumatized, suffering adult mental health problems as a result of that, in fact, in childhood as well, from that trauma, and being made so wrong for it all in the media. The first thing I learned is just how, well, there's a lot of things I learned by reading Harry's book and talking with the man. And by the way, I have to tell you, I really liked him. Down to earth, sensitive, insightful, intelligent, well-meaning human being

who really wants to make a difference in the world. So I learned about him personally. I also learned what he's up against because in the aftermath of our conversation, I was just caught up in this gale of venom in a lot of the British press. And I was just astonished by the degree of poisonous commentary, poisonous attitudes. I just received a small portion of what he's been living with for so long

now. Now, I was aware of Prince Harry's and his brother's interest in mental health issues. Back in 2017 already, they had already started a foundation to talk about mental health issues because they were traumatized kids. Their mother died and they grew up in a family that was very dysfunctional, a loveless marriage. I mean, I could go on. This is public knowledge. And so these two young men started talking about mental health issues and their grandmother, the queen at some point, said, enough of this.

Go back and talk about, do your royal duties and forget these personal interests in mental health. This was publicly reported in the Sunday Times back in 2017. So he's had a commitment to talk on mental health. And I saw how that's much, that's resented in modern society because he's like the whistleblower. He's somebody who talked about his own pain, his own trauma and the impact of that. And he also talks about healing. And so what I saw was a human being who suffered, who recognizes that he grew up in incredible privilege,

but inside that royal gilded cage, he was never allowed to be himself. And he had this lifelong struggle to liberate himself from the expectations and programming that came with being a royal child. The message he got was, don't be yourself. He said this in so many words. So here's a man who's struggling to become himself. And how much opprobrium that attracts from a lot of people in the media and in society so the conversation was eye-opening for me and that here's this prince grew up one of the most wealthiest families in britain uh never mind wealthy also revered and historically elevated to this high status and he suffers like the rest of us. And he needs to

struggle with that suffering. He needs to make sense of it. He needs to try to find himself. He needs to liberate himself. So that's what the conversation is about. And to me, it was a very refreshing, very interesting conversation. Yeah, I mean, thank you for sharing that. It's interesting, and maybe we'll get to this later on in this conversation, how polarizing any conversation around Prince Harry is. And it's really interesting because, I don't know Prince Harry, I've seen him talk.

I've seen a lot of that interview you had with him. I've seen some of his other talks. So when I say I've seen his talks, I've seen the actual conversations, not what the media are reporting about the conversation or the commentary from a prominent media expert about it. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've heard it with my own ears. And as someone who spent over two decades interacting with patients, reading them, trying to pick up the messages behind their words, trying to read their body language to really get an impression of who is this person? What is really going on here? I got to say, the only thing I get from Prince Harry is somebody who is trying his best to come to terms with his past and then move on. I get the impression this is somebody who is

incredibly emotionally grounded. And I totally get the impression that this is someone who does not see himself as a victim, someone who's trying to empower himself. I mean, what's your perspective on what I've just said? Well, that's how I perceive it as well. Now, he's a young man, he's 38 years old, 39, is he? He makes mistakes, but I'm 79 and I make mistakes, he makes mistakes, but I'm 79 and I make mistakes, you know? And, but, but the overall arc of his life is precisely as you've as you've described it. And I do get the sense of a person who is very much committed to making the

difference in the world and to buy. And, and in terms of victimhood, like I got all these, I got a lot of followers on instagram you know and all these venomous notes but i'm unfollowing you because you talked to this ginger whiner you know and and and you got sucked in you know um into he's not a whiner but the british word is spelled w-h-i-n-g-e-r how do you how do you pronounce that winger whiner. The British word is spelled W-H-I-N-G-E-R. How do you pronounce that? Winger or whiner? What do you say?

Yeah, whiner, whinger. Yeah, ginger whinger, they call them. Yeah, okay. Well, first of all, let me tell you something. Redheaded people are more sensitive than others. That's a physiological fact. They often need more anesthesia when they have surgery, for example.

This is a well-known fact. So the more sensitive you are, the more you experience, the more deeply you experience, the more things hurt. That's his nature. And he told me that all his life he felt different from others. He's just more sensitive. But he's not a victim. He doesn't perceive himself as a victim, not a victim. He doesn't perceive himself as a victim, not in the least. That's the first question I asked him. And in fact, when we talk about trauma, which he experienced, certainly I have, and it's my work in the world, I don't talk about trauma as a way of victimizing people, but as a way of empowering them. And in Harry's own case, as in my own case, and a lot of other people,

when you understand how you've been traumatized, then you have the responsibility and the freedom to do something about it. So to recognize trauma. Now you can wrap yourself in this cloak of victim, when I was traumatized, I can't help it, this is the way I am. Most people I know are not like that. Most people want to understand what happened to them

as a way of empowering themselves to heal. And that's his particular trajectory as well. So he's not a victim. He doesn't see himself that way. I don't see him that way. And he is increasingly grounded. He's far happier now than he ever used to be, as he should be. And as far as his children, he's determined not to inflict on his children the kind of pain and emotional deprivation that he experienced in his childhood. And isn't that

just what all parents want, is not to make our kids hurt the way we were hurt? I mean, again, it's the universality, the ubiquitous humanity that shows up in his life experience, despite his incredibly special circumstances. That's what's so interesting. That's what's so interesting. If you look at that story, Harry's story from the outside, and you remove the royal family component, which of course for many people it's very hard to do. But of course, as clinicians, as physicians, Gabor, we always have to treat the people who come in front of us with compassion. It doesn't matter if they're a CEO or they're addicted to drugs or they're poor or they're rich. It makes no difference to a healthcare professional. We treat them all the same. So if you look at this as a human story and you remove the royal family element, we would be celebrating this saying,

wow, what strength to confront your past, to speak up about it, to try and move on, to try and not pass on your own trauma to your children. And so why do you think that is? Why, when you put the royal family envelope around this story, why does the narrative start to change? You know, I think it's, first of all, people want to idealize. They want to have these fantasy bonds with figures whose lives they find glamorous and more meaningful than their own. And they don't want that illusion shattered. I think that's a part of it. But I think there's a more general cause, which doesn't have to do with royalty. troubled woman who is in a loveless marriage, whose husband basically, who himself was, Charles himself was a bullied, sensitive child, emotionally deprived.

There was a story about Prince Charles, the current king, five years old. His mother, Queen Elizabeth, goes on a royal tour for several months. When she comes back, she greets him by shaking his hand. That's a deprivation. Ashley Montague talked about the need to be held. When Harry's mother dies, Diana, his father comes into his room early in the morning to tell him, doesn't hug the child.

Imagine telling a child that your mother just died and you don't hug the child. He spends a few minutes, touches the kid on the knee and says, it'll be okay and leaves. And Harry's left on his own. Now, take that out of the royal context. Would you not see that as an example of tragic deprivation, emotional deprivation?

And so, and here's one of the funny things about the British press. I quoted Ashley Montague and I said that Montague talks about the importance of cuddling and holding kids and skin-to-skin contact. And I said, even animals cuddle their kids. I mean, you tell a mother orangutan to ignore a child's emotional distress, you know, or a mother monkey or a mother cat, for that matter. I said, even animals hold their kids. The Sunday Times wrote that I said that the royal family treated their kids like animals. I said the opposite. I said they only wished they had treated them like animals,

cuddled them, and they needed to be held. So that's an example of severe deprivation. Not anybody's fault. It's multigenerational in that family. So when I asked Harry, well, where does that leave you? He says, it leaves me wanting to cuddle my kids and hold them all the time. Yeah. You know, cause he doesn't want to pass that pain on. What is so difficult for people to understand about that?

You know, it's because people have themselves hurt and they have trouble looking at the sources of their pain. So when Harry talks about the source of his pain in his family of origin, and again, this is not a blaming conversation. We pass on our stuff. I did to my kids without meaning to. So he was in the same position. And now he wants to liberate his own children

from that multi-generational transmission of essential emotional deprivation and trauma. He's vilified for it because he is speaking about what you're not supposed to talk about in the society, which is the emotional pain that suffuses so many families. Yeah.

I think that's the big sin here. If we take the macro and bring it right back to the micro, any individual who has become aware of some slightly toxic family dynamics, again, no blame there. I will admit there's been some toxic dynamics in my own family that since I became aware and started to address them and change them, initially, there was a bit of friction. But on the other side of that, it's a real, beautiful, authentic connection and interaction that comes from a place of wants, not a place of obligation. And I think there's a real opportunity there for all of us.

Can I interrupt you for a minute? Because you just gave me a thought. Can you imagine what an incredible gift to the world it would be? It's not going to happen. But what a gift to the world it would be if the royal family all said, yes, for all our privilege, we carry trauma. The trauma that was inflicted on a generation of men in our family,

in those public schools, with their bullying and their whippings and their cruel treatment of children. The suppression of women. If we look, we as a royal family are now willing to look at our traumas. And anybody who knows the history of that family knows that in every generation

there's been one difficult relationship after another, one divorce after another, one dysfunction after another. But we recognize the multigenerational trauma and we as a family want to heal it. And we're going to take that on as our task. And we encourage all of you in society to do the same thing. Can you imagine what a gift that would be to the world?

You say it's never going to happen. Why Dr. Mattei is so pessimistic? Why is it not going to happen? Because we're all of us too attached to social role and social expectation. And we allow that to trump our inner need for authenticity. So when somebody like Harry struggles all his life to be authentically himself, and that's really what his book is all about, of a human being wanting to be themselves at all costs. Most people are, a lot of people are not willing to take that on. And why not? Because people are afraid to look at their own pain. It's painful

to look at our pain. It's easier to lose ourselves in our roles and in our self-images and in our self-images and in our worldly activities. So there's a powerful weight of historical burden that's keeping that family pretty

close and not very open about their struggles. But you know, at least Harry and his brother did at some point initiate some conversation around this. And that was a step forward. It's so fascinating, this entire story and the way it blows up. It's interesting because I'm not really, in general, I'm not that interested in popular media.

I'm not interested in celebrity gossip. The stories that the media publish, I don't really read that stuff. I'm just not interested. But the Harry story has fascinated me incredibly, observing it from the outside. It strikes me as though a lot of people who have been through this process themselves, they've had to self-examine, maybe they've had therapy, whatever it might be. And they've recognized, you know, that very important first step. They've recognized, oh, there's an issue here. I'm being, I'm living in the present based upon my past, i.e. I'm not really living in the present. I'm still living in the past. And they go through the process of changing things or trying to change things, as hard as it might be, I sort of feel that people who know what that feels like can see very clearly the Harry story with what is going on.

And I feel that people who either have not been traumatized, I'm not sure how many people have not been traumatized in the modern world in which we live. But for people who maybe have been yet, as of yet at least, haven't acknowledged that or been aware of that, I think it's very easy to go, what are you talking about? This is victimhood. You should be keeping your dirty laundry to yourself. That's one of the things they'll say, Gabor, won't they? They will say, okay, fine, but why do this in public? I wonder what your perspective is having spoken to him. Well, I think people that were not traumatized at all, and I don't need too many of those,

that were not traumatized at all, and I don't need too many of those, but they would just have natural empathy. It's the people that were traumatized but are afraid to look at it. They're the ones who react so violently, I believe, which I think is a lot of people in this society. Now, he talks about it publicly. There is a point in our conversation where people sent in questions. And the very first question that came in, and I believe you have the clip of it, is how we do remove the stigma of mental illness.

Well, let's just play that clip because, Gabor, we do have that. Let's just play that now so people can see it. Okay. This is from Janet Joy from Brooklyn. From your experience, what do you think it will take to eliminate the stigma of mental illness? What will it take? More conversation. Yeah. More and more conversation. Less of us and them. I think we're all on the spectrum. Yes. And I think we slide up and down depending on what is happening in our life. Yeah. But I think the sooner we all accept that we're all on the spectrum

and that we all have our own stuff to deal with, the labelling is not helpful. It may be helpful for some people where it's like, ah, I've been diagnosed, now I know what it is. But again, it goes back to this whole thing of what has happened to you rather than what is wrong with you. Exactly. And therefore, the more we talk about it, the more people share

in your own environment, but also the more, you know, leaders, public figures, I also the more, you know, leaders, public figures, I think the more that we can all just acknowledge this and have conversations about it and know that the people who push back or fight against it, that is probably based in their own fear. Their own fear, yeah, their own trauma. So hopefully that answers that. Yeah, and I always say, along with what you said, is that the diagnoses are not explanations.

So Harry's answer is by talking about it publicly. So by showing the commonality of it, by showing the absolute humanity of it, by sharing it, by not leaving people alone with it, to think there's something terribly wrong with them. And by telling other people that these people that are diagnosable with this, that, and the other, they're ordinary human beings whose so-called mental illnesses are normal responses to abnormal circumstances. Something happened to them to push them in that direction.

So it's by talking about it. And in all my books, and you've been very open about your own stuff. And in all my books, I talk about my own dysfunctions and traumas and to the extent that I've worked them out or haven't worked them out. And I think Harry's absolutely right.

You move the stigma by talking about it, by owning it, by not making people feel isolated and deficient because they have mental health challenges. So that's the answer. I think... And by the way, sorry, can I make another comment here? Please. I think... And by the way, sorry, can I make another comment here? Please.

You know, I have to tell you, I've been sort of silent for weeks now after this interview and watch all this nonsense. So there was a British psychiatrist, very respectable tie and respectable collar and very respectable demeanor, who did this online critique of my interview with Harry. I'm not going to go into the whole thing. I only watched a few minutes. One of the things he criticized me for was looking at my watch. You're not supposed to look at your watch during a therapy session. Dear Sarah, I want to say to him, this wasn't the therapy session. It was a conversation. The reason I looked at my watch was because people were sending in questions and had to make sure there was enough time in our discussion to answer the questions.

So this question about how do we destigmatize, sir, psychiatrist, I was looking at my watch because I wanted to make sure that we had time to answer people's questions. Okay. So I'm talking about the, I'm venting a little bit. I, you know, I admit it. But, but, you know, this is the level of commentary that, that followed. Gabor, you're only human, right? I cannot imagine what it must have been like to get caught up in that whirlwind. In fact, I'll be honest with you. When I spoke to you on the phone while over Zoom a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about this, I was quite saddened afterwards. You looked worn out. You looked exhausted, physically and emotionally worn out. And I remember I said to my wife afterwards,

man, you know, Gabor is someone who's had such a huge impact on my life, my professional career, how I view the world. And to see him in his late seventies looking like that, when I know how vibrant and how energetic he is, it really did sadden me. Perhaps you could explain, you are someone who's done the work on yourself, right? So it will take a lot, I suspect these days, to trigger you. So what was it about the press, in your view, misrepresenting what had actually happened. What was it exactly that bothered you so much? Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes

in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health, and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now

journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal, and as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may

want to consider is the one that I outline in the three-question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely

fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. Well, you're touching on a key question. And first of all, thanks for your empathy and for noticing. a key question and first of all thanks for your empathy and for noticing i was in a troubled state afterwards i thought i was past it no this really was more than i had expected and it was also an opportunity for growth and insight and learning yeah everything that comes along in life that may be troubling or shows up as disturbing, there's a potential teaching in it. So I was in the aftermath of that interview

and the feedback, this tsunami of venom that came my way. I was troubled. And I did something, you know, do you know the book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, by Charlie McKeezy. A lot of beautiful wisdom in that book and the horse is the most grounded of those four friends and the horse is asked what's the most courageous thing you've ever said remember what the horse says no he says help

it's so hard for us to ask for help. So in the midst of that hurricane, you might say, that I was caught up in, in that whirlwind afterwards, and I was exactly the way you described me, I thought, well, what's going on here? I know better than this. But somehow I can't get a hold of it. So I called for help.

I phoned up a friend of mine, psychiatrist Dan Seagal, who's very well known and has done beautiful work. And I said, Dan, this is bigger than me. Can you help me? And he says, what is it about this whole thing that is so upsetting for you? And I thought about it for a moment.

I said, it's not being seen. I don't mind being criticized. If people disagree with me, critique me, that's just fine. But let them critique who I am and let them critique what I actually said, not their own distortions of it. And Dan said, given your early childhood, your infancy, where you were not seen as a human being, as a Jewish infant in Hungary, not being seen was life-threatening to you. And I said, yeah. That not being seen on such a massive scale,

being misrepresented, triggered some very deep anxieties. As soon as he said it, I said, yeah, this makes sense now. Yeah. You know, and so understanding the source of our dysfunction and our suffering is a big step towards, the Buddha said once,

that once you know the source of your suffering, you're on the way towards healing it. Yeah. And so that's what happened for me in retrospect, you know, I can be grateful for this whole experience because I learned something and you come and I came out of it, I believe stronger and more accepting of myself. And you know what, even with more compassion for all those critics, because I'm seeing where does it come from? Yeah. You know, it comes from their own pain, I believe. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that first of all. And I think there's

such a key lesson for all of us there, which really speaks to victimhood versus empowerment. You could have, and maybe you did for a short while, wallow in, you know, I've worked so hard, I've written an amazing book, it's now getting misrepresented, people are writing lies about me, or whatever story may have gone on in your head. And look, we're all human, so sometimes we fall into these kind of traps, and they are traps. But because of the work you've done and because you had the strength to call someone and say, hey, you know what? I'm struggling, man. Can you help me? You showed your strength through your vulnerability. Someone else was able to mirror for you. And once you realize that,

it's like, ah, I get it. I've had another opportunity to learn. I thought that was healed. Oh, wow. There's still somewhere to go. That's very empowering. And then that second point about looking at your critics with compassion. I love that. It's something I try very much to do in my own life. It's a very beautiful place to get to because it's a less judgmental place. It's a place of, if I was that person with their childhood, with their life experiences, I'd be acting in exactly the same way as them. And I think, Gabor, that really speaks to the whole Harry conversation. A lot of people will think, what's he moaning about? He's got as much money as he wants, or he certainly did. I don't know his current financial situation. He's got cars

to take him places. He can get tickets to everything. He doesn't have the stresses that we do. If I were him, I wouldn't be acting like that, which is a very judgmental place to be, because when you really understand, if you were that person, you would actually be doing exactly the same thing, because you would be them. You would have their experiences, you would have their trauma. But that brings up another part of that conversation, Gabor. I didn't see it all, but I've seen quite a lot of it. And there was a really profound part in it where you said to Prince Harry that your impression of his childhood was one of deprivation, but you weren't talking about physical deprivation. You were talking about emotional deprivation. Yeah. And so, by the way, just not to paint too romantic a picture of myself,

it's not that I walk around with a lot of compassion for my critics all the time. It's not that I walk around with a lot of compassion for my critics all the time. It's just sometimes I'm just enraged, you know. But at the same time, I can see the tightness and narrowness of their position does come out of trauma. I mean, that's my impression, you know. I wish I could feel compassionate towards such people all the time. The fact is, I'm a human being. I oscillate between, you know, compassion sometimes and hostility at other times.

That's just me, you know. The difference is that I recognize those oscillations inside myself, you know, and I see them as my own dynamic, not caused by somebody else. They don't cause me to be that way. It's my own responsibility how i am now in terms of the um suffering side of privilege well you know again what would anybody say about a

anybody's ever had a dog or a cat these are attachment based creatures they want you your dog wants to love you your dog wants to be loved by you they when you treat them with the lack of it

they suffer well how is that not the same true of human beings and it's not just same true of human beings? And it's not just a question of love that the parent feels, because, you know, I loved my kids, but that doesn't mean I treated them lovingly a lot of the time. In significant ways I didn't, because of my own stuff. So in the case of Harry, it's not that his parents didn't love him. I'm sure they did. But if you look at the adverse childhood experiences studies, the childhood adversities that are associated with adult mental health challenges, they include the death of a parent,

they include a rancorous divorce, and preceding that divorce, a marriage in which there's all kinds of stress, when the mother is often absent, when the father is emotionally distant. This is, again, this is deprivation. These are guaranteed. So when Harry, in his book, describes his various diagnoses of agoraphobia,

severe panic attacks, of post-traumatic stress, of episodes, not chronic, but some episodes of depression. And his occasional resort to substances to ease his mental suffering, such as alcohol or marijuana. These are normal responses to the kind of adversities that he experienced. So again, all these various diagnoses to which, as you know, I added one, but all these diagnoses, these are not abnormalities. Yeah.

These are normal responses to the kind of experiences that a sensitive child would have endured in that particular family. And again, I want to bring up the point I made earlier, which is if you remove the royal family envelope from this story, what did you just say? We've got a young boy who has many of the adverse childhood experiences, not just one, not just two, at least three. And I think in the conversation with Harry, you and Harry just had maybe six traumatic experiences, which if as clinicians or as compassionate human beings, we were looking at that, we go, wow, this is a kid who's had

a really difficult childhood. And of course, that trauma is going to play out in their adult life and their relationships, unless they do something about it. And for anyone else, we want to help them. We'd want to go, hey, listen, let me take your hand. Come look. Let me help you. I want to help you. And I think that's the side that's missing here. Again, there's a very human story here. He had to give up his authenticity as a child in order to attach, right? And you've spoken in your book, you've written about this, that, you know, the potential clash sometimes between authenticity and attachment. Whereas now he's reclaiming his authenticity, potentially at the expense of some of those attachments. That is something that many of us have to do as we go along that journey. Yes, it can be repaired in the future. It can be healed.

But that's kind of what he's doing, which is the same human story that many of us have to do when we embark upon this journey, isn't it? Well, you know, that's been my particular journey. It's probably been your particular journey. Certainly, that's the theme in his book, Spare, is how to become ourselves in the face of expectations, circumstance, pressure, and suffering, you know? And I quoted, you know, into you, I quoted the German poet, Rainer Mayer Wilke, who has got a beautiful passage where he says that every living creature in the world wants to be themselves. You know, and this is just in our nature. It's in our nature to want to be themselves, you know, and this is, this is just in our nature. It's in our nature

to want to be ourselves, whether it's a plant or an animal or human being. And that's, that's the struggle. And, and that also means that you're going to have to put up with people who don't want you to be yourself, who don't know how to be themselves in their own right. And they're uncomfortable with somebody struggling to be themselves in the face of all odds and circumstances. Now, again, he'll be the first to admit that he grew up with a lot of privilege and let's just not make this individual. I mean, in an interview I mentioned something I keep talking about all the time, that although we're talking about general human dynamics, the burden is not equally distributed. in societies, particularly in post-colonial societies like Canada and the UK and the United States, who are struggling a lot more.

In Canada, for example, indigenous people are much more likely to be diagnosed with mental health conditions, addictions, commit suicide, suffer sexual abuse. These are all the results, or physical illness for that matter. So an Indigenous woman in Canada, I often mention, has six times the rate of rheumatoid arthritis than that of other people. Indigenous people have three times the rate. Indigenous women, six times the rate. Now, these are, so there's powerful social factors here that make life much more burdensome for some people and let's not forget that and

harry himself told me that he's had a crash course in racism over the last few years so let's acknowledge first of all the general the human generality of what we're talking about but also recognize that the burden doesn't fall equally and from that point of view he was privileged and i might say probably so were you and so was i just you know to some degree in ways that other people are not yeah so it's both generally human and it's also unequally distributed. But to any one individual, like you said earlier, it doesn't matter where they come from. If they come to you or come to me for help, you treat them like individuals and you look at their own particular histories. I just want to add here that what we're talking about here, the impact of early experience on adult mental health,

is something that the British psychologist Richard Bentall, a member of the British Academy, said that the link between childhood adversity and adult health conditions is scientifically as well established, statistically as well established, is the link between smoking and lung cancer. And yet, the average physician, like you and I in our training, we never hear about this stuff. The average psychiatrist doesn't understand it. They don't get these links. So that, on the one hand, we have this, all the scientific literature

that makes perfect sense of Harry's story, that certain experiences will lead to certain mental health outcomes. And on the other hand, the average clinician doesn't have a clue about it. At least if they do, it's not due to their education. Like you and I, we've had to find it out through practice and our personal experience, which makes it such more of a challenge to do something about on the social level. Yeah. I want to talk about the second part of that clip from the conversation you had with Harry, and that's to do with labeling. So as we've said

before in previous discussions that we've had together, certainly one of my big frustrations with the way we practice medicine is that the end point is often the diagnosis. What can we do? Oh, we got the diagnosis. Okay, we can relax now. We got the diagnosis. Here's the treatment. And really medicine, the way, certainly for chronic illness, the way we're taught to medicine, the way, certainly for chronic illness, the way we're taught to practice, the way you were taught to practice, the way I was taught to practice, and I think very much is still happening in medical schools. It's the medicine of what, not the medicine of why. It's the medicine of symptomatology, not the medicine of etiology. And I think Harry very astutely mentions in that

conversation that labeling is not helpful. He said, labeling really is simply saying what is wrong with you rather than what has happened to you. And one of the other really controversial areas from, I say controversial, I don't think it was controversial if you see how you said it in the conversation. The way it's been reported has generated a lot of controversy in the public, in the media, and from some of your colleagues was to do with the labeling of ADD. So, Gabriela, I wonder if you could first speak to labeling, why it's not always as helpful as it might seem. And then perhaps you could clarify for all of us what you were trying to get at when you brought up ADD. I'm breathing a sigh of relief here at hearing your question because I have an opportunity now to actually clarify what I meant and how I see it.

Well, first of all, diagnoses don't explain anything. This is true for ADD or any mental health diagnosis. They describe something, but they don't explain it. There's a difference between description and explanation. So let's take me. I was diagnosed with ADD in my mid-50s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADD or ADHD and it became my first book scattered minds and I thought okay this explains something but actually it

doesn't explain anything because let's look at it it's kind of a tautology it's a circle Gabor's ADD how do we know because he has trouble paying attention he's easily distractible he has poor impulse control and there's difficulty being still why does Gabor have difficulty being still is distractibleible, tunes out a lot? Because he's got ADD. How do we know he's got ADD? Because it's distractible. You know, I haven't explained anything.

I just described it. Now, it may be helpful. And I found it helpful. Oh, yeah. Okay, here. Here's something I can relate to. But it doesn't explain anything. Now, the explanation is is what happened to you? So when I was an infant and

anybody who's heard me speak or read my books, Jewish infant, Nazi occupation, mother under the threat of death for a whole year, grandparents being killed in Auschwitz I lived under highly stressed circumstances as an infant now what does an infant do with that? I can't change the situation I can't escape it I tune out tuning out is a protection

it's a nature given adaptation is what it is but this is happening when my brain is developing. So my brain develops along those lines. And then 55 years later, I'm diagnosed with this so-called disease. It's not a disease. It's a normal response to abnormal circumstances. It's a coping mechanism.

Just like pushing down, depressing your feelings when you're not allowed to have them, is a coping mechanism that helps you survive in your family origin. Tuning out is another coping mechanism. Now, when I read Harry's book, he talks about his distractibility, his poor impulse control. He talks about the fact that he could never listen to a lecture, keep his mind on it, never read a book, find it difficult. And he was called stupid. And he was called naughty. He says, I didn't want to be naughty.

I wanted to be noble. But he was stigmatized as fickle, they called him. I imagine it's a British expression for stupid, thick headed. So I was saying to him, Harry, there's nothing wrong with you. Your distractibility and your poor impulse regulation, your difficulty listening to a lecture, these are normal responses. So I diagnosed him with a non-disease. And a lot of people got their knickers in a knot about that.

You know, while I'd read the book very carefully, I'd also talked with the man for an hour before we had the formal interview. So in saying to him, it takes one to know one, because believe me, I know the ADD mind from the inside out, literally, personally, and reading his history, I was just saying to him, all that stigma you received as a child, you didn't deserve it. You were not naughty and you were not stupid. You just had a mind that was reacting in a certain way to the stresses, especially given

your very sensitive nature. So that's what I was saying yeah thank you so much for clarifying and elaborating on that because unfortunately that interview isn't publicly available online for people to watch i i really wish it was because i feel that it would do a great service to mental health awareness and it would help people understand themselves and I think understand Prince Harry a lot better through that conversation. But nonetheless, it's not. Your book Scattered Minds is a fabulous read. And actually a very close friend of mine read that book about three years ago and realized through reading it that they had ADD and has taken steps in their own life to try and address it. But this is where labels, again, not to be too black or white, this is where

labels can be helpful, at least initially to know, oh, I'm not crazy. I'm not mad. There's nothing wrong with me. This is what I've got because of what happened when my brain was developing. Now that I know that, I'm empowered to do something about it rather than be a victim to this thing that just happened and there's nothing I can do. So I think that's really important. But I wonder if you could just clarify, Gabor, ADD, ADHD, these are terms that I think people have heard of. So could you just clarify what those two abbreviations are? And then what would critics of your work say about the way you view ADD? What would they say and how would you counteract that?

So the diagnosis simply means that you have these traits of distractibility, tuning out, poor attention skills. So your mind tends to be elsewhere a lot of the time. An unwilled kind of tuning out. Most people tune out sometimes, you know, but people, they tend to do it much more than the average person does. And it does interfere with the capacity to learn or to complete tasks and so on sometimes. So that's the attention part. The H part, which is sometimes present, sometimes isn't, it also means poor impulse regulation. So when something occurs, people tend to blurt things out and say things that they might tend to wonder a lot.

And sometimes when you talk to a person with ADD, they'll start talking about one thing and that one thing leads to something else. And if you don't stop them, an hour hour later they're still talking far away tangentially far away from the original point of the conversation um so that's the distractibility attention part pro-impulse regulation uh i've certainly had that in my life um uh and then the age part if it's, is the hyperactivity, difficulty sitting still, being uncomfortable, being bored easily, wanting to move and get away from things. Generally, when I go to public meetings, unless I'm the speaker, I tend to sit at the back so I can make a quick getaway in case I get bored. In a classroom, the very hyper kids, you can easily recognize them because they have trouble sitting still, you know, so they're the ones that are easily

diagnosed. Now, I'm saying that all these are normal responses to stresses on highly sensitive kids in early life. What the critics would say is that, number one, this is a genetic disorder. It runs in families. Therefore it's not a question of the environment. Secondly, it's biological. It has to do with lack of dopamine in the brain. And therefore when we give somebody medication that elevates dopamine levels, which is the incentive motivation chemical, they can not pay attention. Now, I've taken medication. It's true. It helped me. When I

wrote Scattered Minds, I was taking a stimulant. That helped me. What I say in response to the critics, though, is number one, just because something runs in families, it doesn't make it genetic. I mean, you're a medical doctor. I'm a medical doctor. If our kids became medical doctors, which there's no risk in my case of that happening, would that mean that the practice of medicine is a genetic disorder? You know, in other words, could be, but maybe it isn't. In other words, there's a way in which we pass on stuff that's environmental rather than genetic.

And my kids didn't experience stress the way I did. There was no war, but they grew up in a family of origin where there was a lot of conflict between the parents. Yeah. You know, and that had an impact on them. So we can pass on stuff, not genetically, but through these circumstances. As far as the biology is concerned, this is what the average psychiatrist doesn't understand. Because they're not taught it.

Yeah. That the biology of the brain is shaped by the emotional environment. So yes, there's biology involved. But that biology is not determined by genetics. What is genetic here is what I've said about Harry and a lot of other people. There are genes for sensitivity. So here's the shinny on genetics and mental health. For all the talk about depression and bipolar illness and schizophrenia and ADHD and being genetic,

there's no gene or group of genes that if you have them, you'll have a certain disease. There's no gene or group of genes that if you don't have them, you will not have that mental health condition. What there is, and every time they think they've discovered some gene for an illness, two years later, they have to retract it. What there is, it seems to be, this is as best I can understand the latest research, there's a large group of genes that the more of them you have, the more likely to have any number

of mental health conditions, but no specific one. What is being actually transmitted genetically is sensitivity. The more sensitivity genes you have, the more likely you'll be affected by the environment. So when there's dysfunction, trauma, stress in the environment,

you'll be more affected by somebody who's not as sensitive as you are genetically. That's what's genetic here. But the so-called diseases are not. The diseases themselves, as I keep pointing out, or what we call diseases, or so-called diseases, are adaptations.

The depression is an adaptation. The so-called personality disorder, not trusting people, it's an adaptation. The tuning out of ADHD, it's an adaptation on the part of sensitive children to stresses in their environment. Gabo, last time we spoke, we mentioned the unique pressures on women in society today. You've written a whole chapter on this in The Myth of Normal, how women are society's, I think, shock absorbers, I think is how you referred to them. And you drew the strong

connection between women's roles and the fact that 70 to 80% of autoimmune diseases are afflicted to women, right? So we've covered that. And I think it's really, really interesting. This is not really in relation to Harry. I want to broaden it out beyond Harry, because I think Harry had some quite unique pressures that most of us, 99.9% of the world's population will never know what sort of expectation there is to behave a certain way, to be a certain way, to perform a certain way when you're a prince, right? So I don't think that's maybe that relatable. But the point I'm trying to get to is there's unique pressures on women in society, but there's also unique toxic pressures on men. What do you see

as the key difference between what we're being asked to do? And is it biological or is it cultural? Well, deep question. Statistically, women are much more likely to be diagnosed with PTSD, double with anxiety and depression. They're the ones who tend to take psychiatric medications much more often than men do statistically and i don't think that has to do with any biological um determinant it has to do with what you just summarized which is that women tend to act as the emotional shock absorbers so very often there's a fascinating study out of Sweden.

They looked at prematurity, premature birth. If a woman had depression during pregnancy, I think in the first trimester or the second, that increased their chance of premature birth. Late premature birth. So 32 weeks or afterwards. But if the father had depression, that increased the chance of even earlier premature birth. Wow.

Now, how do we explain that? Because the woman absorbs the stresses of the husband. And that affects her physiology. So the reason women are more likely to be diagnosed, quite apart from the fact that being a woman in society, being a female child, really exposes you to trauma. Not that being a male protects you from it, but sexual abuse, which happens to men as well,

young boys as well, as we know, is more likely to happen to a young girl. And so trauma, that particular form of trauma, which is a significant risk factor for mental health conditions, depression, substance abuse, anxiety, and so on, happens to young girls more. And then there's the general role of women as shock absorbers. Now, men also suffer, just as you say. But the way that men are acculturated is to act out their stresses whereas women act them in. So that in the women, it has to be more internal.

The man will act out his suffering through substance use or through violence, through dominating a woman, through finding a woman to absorb his stresses. You know, there's this toxic masculinity.

When you talk to men with PTSD, soldiers who've been in battle and come back with severe symptoms, one of the things that inhibit their healing is the expectation that they should be tough and suck it up and not talk about their vulnerability. So that the expectation on men not to be vulnerable is a huge source of pressure and dysfunction

for men. And when they heal, these tough veterans who've had their friends killed, who themselves may have been injured, who've killed others, they soften up. They start finding their tears. They start finding their vulnerability that they've had to suppress all their lives. So that's how it works with men. And you know, Harry and I did talk about vulnerability. Vulnerability comes from the Latin word, vulnerare, to wound. And human beings are profoundly vulnerable from conception until death. We're all vulnerable, we can all be wounded.

But in our society, men are expected to stifle and hide and reject their vulnerability. Don't be a sissy. and reject their vulnerability. Don't be a sissy. We associate vulnerability with feminine qualities that we're supposed to disdain. And that's a big pressure on men. Thank you.

Gabor, just to finish off this conversation, I think there's just two points to try and address. In relation to what you've just said about the importance of vulnerability for men and women, but let's say particularly men in the context of what you've just said, you are actually someone who I think is a pretty phenomenal example of that. You share your vulnerability in every single one of your books. And actually, in our last conversation, the third conversation we had together on this podcast, you shared a story that when Daniel, one of your children was young, you mentioned and you shared openly how you slapped him across the face for something that you can now reflect on and see as

being very trivial. And what's really interesting is that when we put that out, it's amazing to see how triggering content like that can be for people. Now, some people are admiring you and going, wow, this is why I love Dr. Mate. He's sharing. He's not trying to present himself as being perfect, but other people are being very judgmental and saying, I can't believe he just admitted child abuse in public. This is not something to be celebrated. This is something he should be ashamed about, right? So again, we have a very polarized debate around you sharing something

that you're not looking for sympathy for. You're just trying to say, this is a matter of fact. This is what happened. This is what I did. This has been the consequence. So I think there's a wider point here, which is about blame. It relates to the Prince Harry conversation. It relates to even how we talk about the royal family. Your conversation with Prince Harry, what I've heard from what you've explained was

not about blaming his brother or his father or his uncle or his grandma, right? It was simply about saying what is. It was understanding that we're all playing at our trauma. We're all doing the best we can based upon what we've experienced. You mentioned Prince Charles now, King Charles, how he was brought up and how he was taught to show affection. So of course he's going to replay that. So I want to really just make sure we get across that we're trying to show affection. So of course he's going to replay that. So I want to really just make sure we get across that we're trying to be compassionate. We're not blaming anyone, but also for people, Gabbo, who hear what you're saying about, oh, if the mother's stressed during pregnancy, the child's more likely to be stressed. A lot of people go immediately to guilt and they

go, oh man, I was so stressed during my pregnancy. Oh, I did this to my child. So I wonder if you could wrap up those themes together and leave people on an inspiring note, if that's possible. Sure. Well, when we talk about the importance of pregnancy and early childhood, almost inevitably brings up a lot of remorse in a lot of parents. And there's no question about it. But it's not about blaming anybody because they all did their best. Yeah. When Prince Charles came into Harry's room and told him, your mother has died, touches him on the knee and says, it's going to be okay and leaves. He was doing his best. That was his best based on what happened to him as a child. There's nobody to be blamed here.

When I hit my son when he was three years old, I'm not proud of it. I have remorse about it, but it happened. And I have to understand what happened and why I did it. And I didn't do it deliberately. It just came upon me, you know. And it had consequences. And my son, Dan, and I just wrote this book together, The Myth of Normal, that you mentioned. And we're writing another book together called Hello Again, a fresh start for adult children and their parents.

Just yesterday, I arrived home from a hiking trip that I did with my two adult sons. So when I talk about this stuff, it's to say, first of all, don't blame yourself. You're not different from me. I'm not different from everybody else. We do our best, but our best sometimes can be very hurtful to the next generation because of our own unresolved stuff. And secondly, we can look this in the eye. We can actually deal with it.

And without shame, understand what happened. You can have remorse. But shame, making yourself wrong and thinking you're a terrible person, that's not helpful to anybody. And to all the parents who say, I passed on my stresses to your kids. You know, sometimes when I give talks, somebody will say, I'm afraid I screwed up my kids. And I say to all those people who think you screwed up my kids, I said, don't worry about it. Of course you did. You know, we all do. That's what happened. But if each generation, we can just heal a little bit or a lot, we'll pass on a lot less. And what I say to all parents is, what morning, who feel

guilty? I say to them, what morning did you wake up and decide to screw up your kids? Was it a Saturday afternoon that you made the decision to screw up your kids? Was it Monday morning? Were you 19 or 25 or 35 when you made that decision? People laugh. Nobody makes that decision to trouble or to hurt their kids. We just do. But it's not a guilt. It's not a fault.

It's not a deliberate act. It's just the unresolved impacts of our own trauma. And that can be healed. And the more as parents we heal, the more we heal our kids. And that healing is a lifelong process. And so that the fact that my sons and I just came back from this beautiful hiking trip in Utah, and that my son and I, they and I are writing two books together. That's an example of the healing that can happen.

Both each in ourselves and also in our relationships. So to go back to why I talk about all this stuff. Precisely the point is, if you recognize that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with us. recognize that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with us. But many of our dysfunctions, mental health conditions, challenges are the outcomes of traumas. That's not victimization or passing of responsibility. That is the seizing of responsibility. Because when I understand what happened, now it's my responsibility and my liberty to find the healing. So to me, it's an entirely positive message. And across all mental health conditions,

if we understand the wounding that's at the heart of them, we can heal that wound. Sometimes we will require medications to get us through a difficult time. That's all right. But the medications don't heal anything. The healing has to involve getting help, looking at yourself and understanding the wounding

and to realize that you're not that wound. And that wound can be healed at any time. That's my message. Thank you, Gabor. I think it's so powerful when someone as respected as yourself in this field shares things like that. I think it's great when people like Prince Harry share that you can get traumatized anywhere.

And this, it really speaks to honesty, helping people understand, because without the honesty and the self-awareness you're never going to change we're unconscious until we're not as Maya Angelou says once you know better you do better in response to what you just said about until we're not conscious remember Pinocchio Pinocchio is this puppet who wants to become a real boy. And as long as traumatic dynamics run our lives, we really are like puppets on a string.

We're being pulled by unconscious forces. And to recognize the trauma and to heal it is to liberate ourselves from those strings. You know what Pinocchio says at the end of the book when he becomes a real boy? He says, I was so foolish when I was a puppet.

Well, we're all so foolish when we're puppets and none of us have to be. Gabor, it's great that we can raise awareness of these issues, but what can people actually do to start healing themselves? Yeah. So this question very much came up in my conversation with Prince Harry and reading his book, but also, you know, doing my own work and observing there's certain principles or practices and some of them show up in his book so

therapy in other words just asking for help talking to somebody when that's available to you you know absolutely essential just when I needed help recently I reached out for help asking for help

a peer counselor a professional but somebody don't be alone with it. In other words, share it, talk about it. That's the first principle. Harry in his own book writes very beautifully about his experience of nature. Nature was very healing for him. Being outdoors in the Arctic or actually the Antarctic

or in Africa, my boys and I just came back from this week-long hiking trip in Utah. Incredible mountains and rocks and sunsets and sunrises. Nature is harmonizing. In our society, we're so alienated from nature. We have to get back into nature to heal. Harry talked about meditation being very important for him. Now, that's not easy for an ADD brain to do,

but, or for any brain to do. But, you know, recently I've been rededicating myself to awareness. So when I eat now, I was just reading a book by the Buddhist teacher, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who died over a year ago now.

Wonderful teacher of mindfulness. Eating mindfully, walking mindfully, being aware, really powerfully important for healing. Doesn't cost a penny. Relationships. In my own healing, my marriage relationship has been such a reality check. I know that's true for Harry as well. We talked about that a bit. He talks about it in his book. I know it's true for your marriage because you've talked a bit about,

you know, your relationship with your wife and she's the one that provides the reality principle, you know, brings you back to yourself and grounds you and calls you on your stuff. So I think relationship is really important for healing. Harry mentioned service to other people. In other words, living a life that isn't just for you. Isn't the life that isn't all about what can I acquire, attain and achieve and possess. But how do I give to others? People find that incredibly healing as well.

Spirituality, whatever that means for you, but the sense that we're part of something larger than just the individual isolated ego, that we are connected, that we belong, that we are part of a unity. That's incredibly healing. And I know Harry's had some of those experiences of recognition of unity and connection. Now, spirituality means different things to different people.

We actually have to, nobody can prescribe it to anybody else. But in the indigenous medicine wheel in North America, they talk about the four quadrants of health, health, which is mental, physical, social, and spiritual. So that's spirituality. And you come from a country where there's a lot of spiritual tradition and practice and wisdom. So that's an important part, whatever form that takes for you. And then Harry and I talked about psychedelics as well. We both had experiences with it.

He told me, how did he put it? He said that, I have this written down because I'm going to read his exact words. But he said that the psychedelics didn't simply allow me to escape reality for a while. They helped me redefine reality. And he got to see that there's more to him than just an individual isolated self. So for him, as in my own life, in my own clinical work as well,

and again, there was a lot of negative commentary about this in the British press who didn't know what the heck they were talking about. Psychedelics are not a panacea. They're not for everybody. They're not without their risks. But believe me, I've seen so many people undergo such profound healing with the help of psychedelic substances, whether it's natural plants like ayahuasca or mushrooms, or whether it's human-made substances like MDMA. I've seen incredible healing for mental health conditions because the psychedelics remove a kind of membrane between the conscious and the unconscious mind,

and they help you see what's underneath it. So in the right context, they can be very helpful as well. So these are some of the modalities of healing. Now, in terms of therapy, there's all kinds. There's internal family systems, the Dick Schwartz that I think you know very well. There's compassion inquiry, which is what I teach. There's sensory motor psychotherapy of Pact Ogden. There is Bessel van der Kolk's amazing work, Peter Levine's somatic experiencing. There's EMDR. There are many modalities,

none of which are taught in the average medical school. And yet all of which go way beyond the narrow view of mental illness. And they all affect, or they all address the fundamental traumatic conditions that give rise to mental illness or what we call mental illness. So lots of healing modalities out there, some of them freely available to us, some of them we have to seek out, but nobody needs to be stuck. Nobody needs to be stuck. Yeah, Gabo, thank you for sharing that. Throughout this conversation, we've both been

very mindful to talk about privilege and opportunity. And of course, someone like Prince Harry would no doubt have had the resources and access to some of the best therapists out there. Now, of course, you mentioned statistics from people in more deprived communities than, let's say, Prince Harry, certainly from a physical and materialistic viewpoint. For someone, because these conversations go all over the world, right? So there'll be somebody listening or watching to this right now who has resonated with a lot of this content and who is thinking, you know what, yeah, that's me. I'm being driven by patterns from my past. Trauma is driving so much of what I'm doing. I've just had a realization, but I've got no money. I can't access a therapist or whatever it might be, to that person, what would you say to them? Well, first of all, yes, that's a real dilemma. And I wish I had an easy answer for it. I do wish that healthcare providers systems like the that healthcare providers systems like the National Health Service in Britain

or the Canadian system understood the importance of psychological healing and did provide resources for it. Now, in fact, they're depriving resources rather than increasing them. But I do wish that systems understood that people need these kinds of services, number one. But that's a hope. It's not a reality.

I would say, look, yeah, but it's true. But there's lots of content online that is free. This conversation is online. It's going to be free. I'm sure, Rangan, that you've had people approach you or write to you saying that this podcast really changed my life. I don't mean this podcast with me. I mean some of your other podcasts, including perhaps some of them with me.

So you can gain a lot of insight and self-awareness by a lot of free content that's on the internet. There's the books that you've written, the books that I've written, that many other wonderful colleagues have written. They're available in libraries, published in many languages. People can read them. People can self-reflect. People can find peer counseling. People can join groups online or in person to find support. People can walk out in nature, they can meditate, they can, lots of free meditation instruction on the internet or available in wonderful books, including by the aforementioned Thich Nhat Hanh.

There's journaling, there's expressing your emotions through art if you have the talent or the interest. So there's a lot of things that people can do. You don't need to be. And talk to your friends. If you have good friends that can listen to you, just ask them to listen. Not to give you advice, not to correct you or direct you. But would you just listen to me and hear me?

Go back to the horse who said when he was asked what's the most courageous things you've ever said and he said help yeah and for all the um the toxicity in the modern world the culture society many of the things that you've written about we've spoken about well let's look at some of the benefits. As you say, information has never been more freely available. Yes, you're absolutely right. One of the drives for me to do this podcast is to help people. I understand that not everyone can get access to the best care. Even if you can get an appointment, maybe you don't have the funds to have enough. Even if you get to go and see the doctor, maybe you only get 10 minutes with them, which is clearly inadequate to get to the bottom of these. And so the reason I do

long form podcasting, not short 30, 40 minute conversations is because it's through hearing these experiences in a way that's not about us, but through hearing other people's stories, in a way that's not about us, but through hearing other people's stories, we connect. We connect in a way where the spotlight's not on us. If it's on us, sometimes it can be too intimidating. But in someone else, oh, wow, I recognize that in myself. Even that awareness, I think is healing. Many people say to me, Gabor, oh, I've got the awareness. Now what? I'm like, hold on a minute. Don't underestimate the power of awareness. Before you were aware, you weren't. That is more than 50% of the journey, simply knowing that there's work to do. So I just want to echo what you've said. Yes, it would be great if everyone had the resources to have access to therapy, a good therapist having said that. But at the same

time, if you don't, please try and take on that empowering mindset that says, I can do something about this. I can start somewhere. Absolutely. And I'll just finish with this anecdote from my own life. When I was working with this highly addicted population in Vancouver's downtown east side, who were heavily dependent on drugs of all kinds, and they had very difficult lives, all had suffered severe trauma. But I had my own addictive behaviors,

not with drugs, but with shopping and work. And sometimes I would tell my clients, you know, I behave addictively and I lie and I cheat and I hide and I'm ashamed of it. And of course, I wasn't comparing myself. Their lives were infinitely difficult. Mine was privileged, you know.

But there were certain dynamics that I shared with them. And they said to me, hey, doc, you're just like the rest of us, aren't you? And here's the point. We are all just like the rest of us. Whether we want to recognize it or not, we're all on the same boat. And if the question is, do we see that or do we not see it? But as human beings, people, we're all on the same boat. Gabor, I think your work has been incredible. The book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is just fantastic. And it's so good to see you looking refreshed and rejuvenated from your two or three days with your kids.

I'm sure that was wonderful. And I look forward to the next conversation we have together, hopefully in person, when you're in the UK later on in the year. Thank you for speaking with me again. Such a pleasure. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do take a moment to reflect and think about what you can start applying into your own life. And just a quick note, at the end of that conversation, Gabor and I touched briefly on psychedelics and their potential uses for mental health problems. Of course, please remember that in many countries, the use of psychedelics is currently

illegal. Although as you may be aware, many prestigious institutions like Imperial College in London and Johns Hopkins in America are conducting research on them in controlled settings. Now before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like

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