Know Thyself - E33 - Dr. Gabor Maté (LIVE): Healing Trauma in a Toxic Culture

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

When it comes to disease, mental illness, and addiction in our society, trauma is largely misunderstood and not discussed enough. In this live episode of the Know Thyself Podcast, we are joined by world-renowned author Dr. Gabor Maté, as he explains the myth of normal, and how to heal trauma in a toxic culture. He describes the origins of trauma and how memories of the past haunt our subconscious behaviors. Revealing how when we use our awareness and compassionate inquiry to heal these traumas, we unlock the gift of rediscovering our true nature.  The podcast is followed by a live Q&A from our audience, where Dr. Maté discusses the broken school system, ADHD as a coping mechanism, psychiatric medications, ayahuasca, and much more.   ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 2:40 What is Trauma  6:33 Little t VS Big T Trauma  10:08 Toxic Culture  18:18 Our True Nature  22:16 When We Abandon our True Selves 28:43 Breaking Unconscious Patterns 34:47 Survival Mechanisms  38:03 Observing the Origin of Trauma  42:36 Modalities for Making the Unconscious, Conscious 44:20 Trauma Disguised as a 'Winning' Personality 55:08 Parenthood - Stopping the Transfer of Trauma  58:42 A Broken School System  1:04:20 ADHD as a Coping Mechanism  1:12:18 Unresolved Anger  1:16:47 Psychiatric Medication  1:21:17 Healthy vs Toxic Habits  1:25:49 Keeping an Open Mind  1:30:20 Origin of Depression & Anxiety 1:34:06 Ayahuasca and Entities 1:38:53 Addressing Generational Trauma 1:46:55 Psychedelic Assisted Therapy  1:52:15 Neurosis in a Toxic Culture  1:58:16 Conclusion ___________   Dr. Gabor Maté   A renowned speaker, and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development. Rather than offering quick-fix solutions to these complex issues, Dr. Maté weaves together scientific research, case histories, and his own insights and experience to present a broad perspective that enlightens and empowers people to promote their own healing and that of those around them.   After 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, Dr. Maté worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in over thirty languages, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress; Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder; (with Dr. Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers; and his most recent book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. Gabor is also co-developer of a therapeutic approach, Compassionate Inquiry, now studied by hundreds of therapists, physicians, counselors, and others internationally.    Website: https://drgabormate.com Dr. Maté's Latest Book, The Myth of Normal: https://drgabormate.com/book/the-myth-of-normal/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabormatemd/   ___________   This live podcast was made possible by Still Life - which provides stillness tools and techniques to actively induce peace, meaning and clarity   For more information on their meditation app or in person events, visit: https://still.life or visit their Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/still.life/?hl=en   ___________   Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg   Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927     André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/   Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sean? Yeah. I'm going to be. Nice to meet you. I'm going to reach you. Thank you. People achieving all the successes that the society has to offer and being miserable. Human beings have certain needs. You deprive people of those needs. They're going to suffer. This society simply fails to provide for those needs of children. So it's toxic. A lot of people with ADHD or bipolar disorder or depression or addictions, very talented, creative, wonderful people. But that's not because of their condition. It's because of what underlies their condition. And what underlies their condition is the only thing that's genetic, which is sensitivity.

The average psychiatrist these days has no training in trauma. When somebody gets stabilized in psychedelic medications, that's when the work should begin. But the problem is that's when it ends. There's good news in all this. Healing is available. It's just inside all of us. The biggest work is the work that we do in ourselves. Well, there's your true self. Welcome.

Look at all these faces. So, so beautiful. When I look at all these faces, I think to myself, humanity is going to be all right. We got some shiny humans up in the building. Thank you so much. I have so much gratitude for everybody who shut up today. And the invitation before we begin is to listen with our whole being.

I think that oftentimes we can undervalue, the power of one insight, one nugget, what that can do to transform our lives. And if we can all be present in our bodies, listen with our hearts, who knows what can happen on the other side of that. So let's get things rolling. Welcome back to the Know Thyself podcast live, where I am very excited to create a series ongoing where we are going to be bringing elders and wisdom holders and community to have a live experience where we can allow community to ask questions. and bring conversations of awakening at a bigger and bigger scale. My guest today is somebody that I've admired and love his work for a long time.

He is a world-renowned speaker, bestselling author, and is an expert on various range of topics from addiction, stress, the childhood development. He is somebody that has written multiple best-selling books, such as when the body says no, scattered minds, and in the realm of hungry ghosts. He is somebody that has a profound understanding of what we're going to be diving into today, which is his new book called The Myth of Normal. It's trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture. And it's a very timely subject, I believe, for the planet right now and for everybody that's listening

because these messages of awakening and understanding holistically where we've gotten to as a species and the insight that this individual can bring today, I think, is just, it's very important and very timely. So without further ado, Dr. Gabramonte, thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for just sitting through all that. Well, it's been such a pleasure to have you here. And I would just love to lay some groundwork before we dive deep. And so to kind of start wide and then we can dive into laser into some of these different topics. Could you give a basic understanding of how you define trauma? Because that is a word that is used a lot in culture nowadays and can be misconstrued. So how do you define trauma?

And we can go from there. Sure. Well, let me say first of all what it isn't. Because as I've often said now, it's a word that's used too loosely. On one hand, it's not used enough, not nearly enough. Where it matters, it's not used at all. In medicine, it's not used at all. The average doctor doesn't get a single lecture on trauma, which is amazing. When you do all the research that's been shown to connect trauma and adult illness of mind and body, whether it's cancer or depression or addiction, so much research. But in the average medical school, doesn't hear a single lecture on trauma. Unbelievable but true. It's not used in law.

Everybody's sitting in death row in this country with traumatized children. All of them, without exception. An average lawyer does not get a single lecture on trauma, not one. In the schools, all the kids that are considered to be bullies or troubled kids or kids at ADHD or aggression. learning difficulties. It's all about trauma. And the average educator doesn't get a single lecture on trauma.

That's on the one hand. On the other hand, we used the word a bit too loosely. You know, like I went on a picnic on Sunday and it rained and I was traumatized. No, you weren't. You just rained on, you know. Or I went to a, I saw this movie last night and I was traumatized. No, you weren't. You were just upset.

Or somebody stood me up on a lot of you. the day then I was traumatized. No, you weren't. You were just disappointed. So trauma isn't stress, it isn't upset, isn't even pain. Trauma is a wound. In fact, that's what the word means. It comes from a weak word for wound. So trauma is a wound that you sustain, which then shows up later on in your life. Unhealed, it shows up in your physiology, it shows up in your thinking, in your relationships, you know, how you feel about it. yourself, you know, how you handle your emotions. So trauma basically is a wound and there's a good calling of mine in the room, Larry Heller, who himself has a particular therapeutic approach.

And he and I both agree that trauma is not what happens to you. It's not the terrible things that happen to you, such as, you know, obvious ones, such as abuse or neglect. It's the wound that you sustain inside. So trauma is not that somebody hits you on the head, it's the concussion with the long-term effect. So basically, trauma is a wound that shows up later on in life in all aspects of your existence. And there are degrees of it, the different, let me just say quickly also that you can wound people by two ways, young children, you can wound them two ways, you can do bad things to them. And that happens a lot, a lot more than we like to like to recognize, but you can also wound kids not by doing bad things to them, but by not giving

them their needs, not giving them what they need. So depriving somebody of their need is a way of hurting them. And human beings have certain emotional needs. So a lot of children, it's not that people do bad things to them, is that they don't know how to meet their needs. And those kids are wounded as well. So it's a wound. Amazing. And you also give a distinction between capital T, big T, little T trauma, because a lot of people are familiarized with the overt, big, cataclysmic events that happen in people's childhood or in life, but can you give that distinction? I think so. Well, the distinction really is how the trauma is sustained.

So the capital T are the ones easy to recognize. So there's a very famous, not famous enough, but very famous adverse childhood experiences studies, the AC studies that were done here in California. with 17,000 adults. And what they looked at is certain experiences in childhood, what they call adverse childhood experiences, and adult outcomes. So an adverse childhood experience was physical, sexual or emotional abuse,

that's three, neglect, a parent dying, a parent being jailed, a parent being mentally ill, parent being addicted, violence in the family, a divorce. 10. And you get a point for each. Now, the more points you accrue, the greater the outcome in adulthood. So, for example, with addiction, a male child with six of these, their risk of addiction doesn't go up sixfold. It goes up 46fold. So that these multiply each other. So these are the adverse childhood experience. It's very famous. not famous enough, I can talk about that, but famous. These are the big T traumas, things that you can identify.

More confusing and more difficult to reckon with, some people, including myself, called a small T trauma, which isn't the bad things that happened, but the good things that didn't happen that should have. So children are born with certain needs. Now, it's clear to you that, if I don't feed an infant, they're going to be hurt. I'm not doing anything to them, but I'm also not giving them what they need. You're in children and human infants,

human beings also have certain emotional needs and depriving them of those needs is traumatizing. So a child not getting the attention they need, the love they need, the acceptance they need, being seen, being heard, being given the freedom to experience all their emotions, whatever they happen to be. Certain other needs, if they're not met, they're also wounded. And that's what I call the small tea traumas. These little things that when you ask people, by the way, we can do this experiment in this room if there's anybody brave enough, I had this really happy childhood.

And then I, you know, but I still got addicted, but I still got addicted or I had autoimmune disease or I had depression or had malignancy or I had anxiety or I have ADHD. If I had a happy childhood, then I issue what I call the happy childhood challenge, which is give me three minutes. And we'll see her. So if there's anybody here, they had a really happy childhood. They want to find that just how miserable it really was. Feel free to volunteer.

It's always a learning experience. So anyway, that's the small tea of the needs not being met. Yeah, I think that's such a powerful distinction because oftentimes we're not aware of what we didn't get, like the nutrients we didn't get as a kid, but that ultimately contributes to the constitution that we develop. You give this interesting distinction because also like looking from the wide scope of things, there's the trauma we incur in our life, Big and Little T, and then also how the toxic culture in which we live, especially in modern society, very much so undermines the needs. and you give this distinction in the book, which, by the way, is a behemoth of a book, but I loved every page of it, all 500 of them. Yeah. Well, believe me, when we first finished the manuscript, it was double this length.

Wow. Yeah, I didn't know what not to say, you know? It's a lot to say. There's a lot to say about the ways in which culture has become toxic. And also the word toxic has become used so often. And so giving your definition of that, you know, the assumptions that we make about our human needs, because the assumptions that we make, you've given the, you know, in the book you shared that making assumptions about human beings in a toxic culture is like making an assumption about an elephant in a zoo, far divorced from its natural origins.

Right. And so if you could just explain, what are our actual true human needs and how does culture undermine them? Sure. So there's a podcaster and writer called Tom Hartman, his name is, and in one of his books, he said that a culture can be nurturing or toxic. The analogy, actually, for me, as a physician, comes from laboratory science. If you're in a laboratory, you're growing organisms, microorganisms, and you put them in a dish called a petri dish, and you give them a certain broth, and you're, intention is to have these organisms proliferate and grow properly. And if they do, then it's a nurturing culture. But if large numbers of them got sick or died off or didn't

reproduce or were dysfunctional, you'd say it's a toxic culture. So how to judge whether a culture is toxic or nutritious or nourishing is how are the organisms in that culture thriving Or how are they suffering? Now, if you look at this society, and I could go through the statistics, there's a lot of suffering. People, I mean, it's all this wealth, but I don't know if I have to prove it to you. There's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of pain.

There's a lot of people hurting each other, people hurting themselves, people being hurt, people achieving all the successes that the society has to offer and being miserable. despite the successes or perhaps because of the successes. So that's what makes it toxic for me. Now, if a culture meets the needs of the organisms, in other words, then it's an nutritious and nourishing culture. If it doesn't, it's a toxic one.

Human beings have certain needs, which are very different than the assumptions that are basic to corporate capitalism. Because the assumption in this system is that people are selfish, that they're greedy, that they're aggressive, that they're competitive, and that they're individualistically against their fellow human beings, and that's how you succeed. Well, human beings actually, if you look at from the point of human needs,

it's very different. How did we evolve as creatures? we evolved in for millions of years and hundreds of thousands of years and even our own species homo sapiens sapien we've been on the earth for 200,000 years for 95% of that time we lived in small band hunter-gatherer groups where we're together with our families the whole day with the Chris spent the whole time around the parents when people had to co-operated and order to survive, where wealth wasn't defined by what you achieved, by what you gave away, where collaboration was necessary. And this was not the case until a blink of an I have.

So in other words, our needs are our needs as defined by our evolution are for community, there for contact, therefore collaboration, therefore connection, which translates into giving and receiving love and giving and receiving care. Children are born with certain essential needs. I've mentioned some of them. They've been need to belong in an attachment relationship where they feel absolutely safe and secure. Inside that relationship, they have to be free from having to work,

which means the child shouldn't have to work to make their relationship work. They shouldn't have to be good, pretty, compliant, smart, they should just be. No work to be accepted. That's the second need. Rest from having to work to make their relationship work. The third essential need of the child is to be able to experience all their emotions, all their emotions.

Which means all the emotions that our brains are wired with by evolution, which include connection and love, place. faithfulness, curiosity, but they also include rage, anger, and grief, and fear. And children should have the freedom to experience all that without being told that such and such an emotion is not acceptable. And we have the need for free spontaneous play out in nature. That's a human need that we share with all other mammals. And play is much more important for brain development than school is. actually. I don't mean play with this, by the way. I mean spontaneous creative play. Okay, that's all the needs of children. As adults, we have the need for connection and belonging,

for meaning, and for purpose in our lives. These are needs. You deprive people of those needs, they're going to suffer. This overdose crisis in the United States, last year, over 100,000, people died of overdoses in the US? You know that more people died in one year of overdoses than American soldiers who died in the Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq wars put together? Why did these people die? If you actually look at, they've been called deaths of despair.

A lot of them were people that, where they used to be industry, there used to be a sense of community, meaningful connection, meaningful activity, Do to globalized corporate capitalism, all I got hollowed out. People lost their sense of community, the lens of belonging, and their sense of meaning and purpose. One of the responses to that is addiction. So that's how important these needs are. And this society simply fails to provide for those needs of children or for adults.

So it's toxic. that's that's not too heavy duty for you but that's my diagnosis that's um I mean in the book you give the plethora of examples in which culture is toxic and the various many industries

from food to social political systems to definitely the pharmaceutical industry and how the toxicity the toxic tentacles have reached into every corner of culture nowadays, before we dive deeper into that, I feel like it's important to get context as to where we're, where is home within ourselves? What is the true self without trauma? What is a true self without wounding? And because that's the place we're walking back towards. And so,

in your understanding what, what is that self like? What are the qualities of that essence so we can have a reference point of what we're walking towards? Well, let me give you an example. Well, actually, I'll give you two examples. One is I was on the Joe Rogan podcast back in September. It's the first time I met the guy. And he was telling me that he, and you probably know this, he was a martial arts champion, I think, in Pequando perhaps. Very aggressive.

Losing was Anna Thama to him. He just couldn't stand the idea of losing. He was aggressive. He was rough in his personal life. And whatever you think of him now in his positions and political opinions, he's gone through quite a transformation. And he's much more open about his emotions, much more willing to be vulnerable, not to be hostile.

And I just asked him, in which state did you feel more like yourself? And he says, in this one, well, what does that tell me? Or I can ask you, any of you, if you're like me, you've done plenty of things that are selfish and manipulative and aggressive perhaps. And you've also perhaps been at times kind and generous and openhearted. Now, if you ask yourself, when do you feel more ease inside yourself? When is your whole nervous system and all your viscera and your body more at home with itself? Or as opposed to tense and on edge? Is it when you've done something selfish and self-serving and greedy and grasping and mean?

Or is it when you've done something generous and giving and open-hearted? Well, most people will say, I feel more myself and more. myself and more it ease when I'm open. That tells you what the true nature is. So it's not a theoretical question. Just look at your own experience. When do you feel more like yourself? And there's your answer.

So, you know, all the spiritual teachers tell us from ancient Hindu times, you know, the Buddha and even before the Buddha, the Rishi's, you know, the true self, you know, the one that's aware and conscious and openhearted. loving and so on and all the spiritual teachings will tell you that but you don't have to go to the spiritual teachings just look at your own experience and by the way sorry why are you in here why are you here why do you want to hear this stuff I mean not that you shouldn't but why do you want to hear this stuff or who is it in you that wants to hear it or who is it in you that wants to contribute well there's your true self when we come into the world first

like we just are, we just are who we are, right? And then we pick up all this wounding and trauma. And on the process of developing as a child, we oftentimes forsake our true selves in the pursuit of safety, in our perceived safety at the time in unconscious ways that we can't, you know, rationalize it. Well, that's when the child has to work for safety. Right. If the safety is not there, then the child has to create it. And that's where you're heading, I think. Yeah. So, like, I would just love for you to dive into the process of how we kind of unconsciously abandon our true selves in the pursuit of safety as a child because that I think really informs us to see how we might still be doing it but then also while we've gotten to the place we have

individually and collectively yeah so in the book there's a chapter called authenticity versus attachment so attachment is just a need to belong I've talked about that the child needs to belong to caregivers who will look after them that That's clearly mammals or creatures of attachment. That dog is a creature of attachment. That dog wants to belong. That dog is definitely a creature of attachment. I live with it.

And even birds, you know, little birds, they don't survive without somebody looking after them. So attachment is just a drive that's instinctively and genetically programmed into us. We have to connect. We have to belong. And so attachment is a drive that pulls two bodies together for the sake of taking care of, or for the sake of being taken care of. Not negotiable. But we have another need, which is what I call authenticity.

And auto the self, auto means self, automobile. The other need to be ourselves. Now, on the most basic level, why do we even need to be ourselves? ourselves. What I mean by that is we have to be connected to our bodies and our emotions and to be able to heed their guidance. Why? Well, we evolved out there in nature. Just how long do you survive out there in nature? How long does any creature survive in nature if they're not connected to their gut feelings? Not very long. So we have this need for authenticity, being connected to ourselves, being able to heed our inner GPS, as it were. And we have this need to attach,

authenticity and attachment. By the way, let's just do a little test that I do with audiences. So just if you've had the following experience that at some point you had a strong gut feeling about something and you ignored it and you felt sorry afterwards, just raise your hand, okay? Everybody, right? You know the story you just told? You told the story of your childhood. Have you ever met a one-day-old baby that ignores their gut feelings?

Never. Something happened. And what happened is this. Yeah, you've got feelings, you have your authentic emotions. But at some point, you got the message, uh-uh. If you want to belong, you better give that up. It's that simple. Now, how does that work?

Well, to mention another famous Canadian, much more famous than I am, Jordan Peterson. Okay? So Jordan Peterson writes a book called 12 Rules for Life, in which millions of copies are in the world. And he advises that an angry child should be made to sit by themselves until, quote, they come back to normal.

Okay? So you got this angry two-year-old. Why is the two-year-old angry? Because you frustrated him. And if you're a good parent, you're going to frustrate your two-year-old. And I don't mean deliberately. I just mean when they want a cookie before dinner, you're not going to give them a cookie.

You're going to say, no, no cookie before dinner. Well, if he's a healthy two-year-old, they're going to throw a tantrum because they're frustrated. I want a cookie. But then you read Jordan Peters' book. And he says, an angry child should be made to sit by themselves so they come back to normal.

It's not normal for a kid to be angry. So the kid gets the message. If I'm going to experience my genuine self, I'm going to lose my attachment. Now guess what the kid's going to give up? The attachment or the authenticity. But only 100% of the time. It's the authenticity.

Because without the attachment, they can't live. But then, authenticity becomes a threat. So the kid becomes afraid of the true cells. Because if I'm being myself, they won't like me. They'll reject me. They'll even hurt me. I can give you a worse example. A kid who's being abused,

their natural reaction is to want to run away or to fight back. Can they afford to? What would happen if they did? so they have to push it down. They have to literally have to separate from themselves in order to survive. So this is where we, and then of course the culture rewards you. Oh, you're such a good kid. You're always compliant.

You're always so nice. You're always so pleasant. Come here. Let me pat you on the head. What a pretty little girl. Always pretty. You know. And in a ways we praise kids for pleasing us.

us. So the reward is the attachment. And we don't care about the child's inner experience. So then we give ourselves up just in order to be accepted. So it's that simple. And by the show of hands, you can see how widespread it is. It's just endemic. And then you grow up and you're 30 or 40 and your 50, saying, who the hell am I anyway? And whose life am I living? And why am I behaving in these ways. Yeah, that process of excavating and discovering why we are the way we are. Yeah. Why our neuroses are present, what our behavior is, is fascinating. And I want to dive a little bit deeper here because in the book, you share this story of this time where something happened between you and your wife. And you ended up giving her the silent treatment. Yeah. And it comes

back to this point where you said, even though, you know, you could say that you giving her the silent treatment was a reenactment, I guess, from behavior of trauma that you incurred, you know, being born during World War II. And there comes a point when the story is saying Hitler made me do it, won't cut it anymore. And so the question is, for whatever reason, whatever reason our neuroses are here, they're here, how do you, how do you suggest others take conscious responsibility for unconscious behavior? How can you accurately take conscious responsibility for something that you're unaware of, right?

Well, I've had plenty of that. And when you're caught up in the coils of unconscious behavior, you don't know that. You're just behaving. You may even think you know why you're behaving that way, you know, but you don't really. In my marriage, my default setting is withdrawal. I'm out of here, you know. I've been married 53 years. But when something goes wrong, I'm still thinking, am I in the right marriage?

You know? Maybe I should get out of here. That's my default setting. And there's reason for that in my early programming. When you're caught up in it, you don't know it. But you sure get the impact. At a certain point, you have to start asking yourself, why am I being? Not why am I behaving this way? That'll never yield any answers. Because why am I behaving this way? is not a question. It's an accusation. But if you say, well, hmm, why am I behaving this way?

Oh, well, obviously, there's something I'm not aware of. So what I'm saying here, Andre, is that quest or that process of inquiry, of doing that archaeology of the mind, of what's actually driving me, it usually starts because there's some impacts that keep recurring that just aren't working very well. You know, so that can show up in a form of relationship problems. They often do. And, you know, you can keep doing what you're doing and get into 300 different relationships

and still wonder, huh, why does this keep happening to me? You know, or you can start asking yourself, hmm, maybe I'm doing something here. Just maybe, you know. So usually it begins with some suffering. physical disease, autoimmune illness, malignancy, depression, anxiety, addiction, recurrent relationship issues, job failures. At a certain point, something twigs, but maybe I can take some responsibility here. Not blame, but responsibility. So that's where it begins. So first you don't know, Andre. you just see the impact.

But then the more you do the work, the more you actually start being aware of the pattern as it arises. So you can actually start notice. And you're a meditator. And one of the things people do in meditate, I don't know what type you do, but one of the things people do in some meditation is just to be aware of their minds,

of all the thoughts and emotions, impulses that arise, but to observe it impartially. So at a certain point you have to start looking at yourself. And usually we are dragged, quicking and screaming by our own suffering into that, into our inquiry. Yeah. And I love that invitation that you gave of when you become aware, oftentimes because of our conditioning, we want to become the prosecutor of our own experience instead of just becoming curious and saying, why is that there? And like, you spoke to, you bring that self-compassion to yourself and that like, it's okay.

and you can hold yourself in a way that maybe your parents or, you know, your friends never did. And in that place, we can then take that conscious responsibility of our experience and bring what's, as Young says, like make the unconscious conscious. Yeah, Larry, who was sitting right there and I and any therapist worth their salt will not work on behaviors or dysfunctional patterns. but are the internal dynamics that drive them, number one, and number two, help the person develop the inner safety where they can examine themselves without beating themselves up.

And so from that point of view, there's no part of us, the most hateful part, the parts most filled with hatred, the parts that are addicted, the parts that are even full of self-loading, they all deserve compassion. they all deserve to be held and understood. And they all came along for a reason. Even that self-loathing came along for a reason. Even that self-loathing part has a function.

It's not an enemy. I could go into what that function is. But this voice that keeps beating you up, I'm such a bad person, it actually came along to help you in the first place. Yeah, how? I'd be curious. Well, let's say a child is not getting an anisement, or worse, they're getting hurt. Now, the child can make two unconscious assumptions, only two.

One is, this is a terrible world, I'm all alone, everybody's against me, my parents don't know how to love me, or they're incompetent. We're talking about two or three, four-year-old child. five-year-old child, which I can assume there's something wrong with me. It's all my fault. And if I work hard enough, maybe I can fix it. And which is the safer assumption for it? Which is the one they can live with?

The one where they forsake their authenticity, like he spoke to earlier. Well, the one that says that maybe it's my fault and I can do something about it. If I work hard enough, maybe I can make myself loved. Maybe I can correct it. If I keep beating myself up hard enough, Maybe I can make myself okay. To assume that the world is that dangerous is just unbearable for the child.

So even that self-loathing comes along as a, it's also turning the anger towards the adults against yourself, which is a lot safer. It's not very safe to be angry with your parents all the time when you're two years old. I'm curious, when that happens and there's that self-loathing or anger that turns inwards, How do you advise people to move through that? How can they hold themselves? How can they work with that? So it doesn't rule them. There's a number of ways of work with it.

One is to talk to that part and say, what are you trying to do? Not what are you trying to do, but what are you trying to do? And that part will usually say, I'm just trying to make sure that he behaves or she behaves or they behave so that they will be accepted by

their environment. Basically, you make friends with that part. How I work with it, that's one way I work with it sometimes. Another way I work with it sometimes is just feel that part, feel that part, that loathing. Are you familiar with that all? Have you ever had that sense? Is it just an idea or does it have a bodily manifestation? Bodily manifestation. Yeah. Then I'll ask you to, is it okay if we just allow it to be here for now? Can you and I just be with it? So you actually learn to hold it rather than just to run away with it

from it. So there's a waste of working. Yeah. To invite it to the dinner table. Can invite them to the table? Yeah, invite them to be there. All the emotions. Yeah. So good. So good. How in this process of occurring these, you know, these traumatic experiences in our life, what is the differentiating factor? You said it's not what happens to us,

but what happens within us. What is the difference if like two siblings are raised in the same household and they're not? They're not. Okay. So there you go. You know, but like one is crippled by the experience in which they were raised. The other one, you know, thrives. So first of all, no two children have the same parents and no two children have the same family.

And no two children have the same set of experiences. And I've seen this even in identical twins brought up by their birth mother. They did not have the same mother. I delivered these kids myself. Well, the mother did, but I was there, you know. One of them came out five minutes earlier and was a pound or two bigger. The mother always had a sense of kind of guilt and anxiety about the second one, but somehow that the second twin kind of lost out in uterus,

was muscled aside by the bigger one. So she always had more concern and more worry in her voice and in her voice and in her look when she talked to or about that kid. With the bigger one, the first one, she was much more confident and robust. They didn't have the same mother. And so no two children, one of them is, no, in the average family, but without identical twins. One kid is born earlier or later.

The parents in a different relationship with each other. that might be more or less stressed. Their relationship might be better or worse. Their economic situation might be better or worse. Each child triggers something different than the parent. Not because the parent necessarily wants to favor one child over the other, just because they bring up different aspects of ourselves. So there's all kinds of reasons.

So I know two children have the same experiences. So there's no comparing experiences. So why does somebody come along is looking more dysfunctional than the other one? All kinds of reasons. And even in a family where some children are abused, not necessarily our children are abused. The perpetrator always knows who's vulnerable and who isn't.

So they're in families where there's abuse. There's sometimes tremendous breakdown amongst the adult children who simply cannot believe what the other is saying about the family. They had a totally different experience. And finally, temperament. Dida Winnicott, who is a British psychiatrist, he said that even if a mother could be the same mother

to all eight of her children, to all eight of her children, which she couldn't be, but even if she could be, they'd still have eight different mothers because they're born with different temperaments. So they experienced the mother. If you're more sensitive, you're going to have a different set of experiences. So there's no similarity of experience. Yeah.

Now, to present day, like, as adults, how important is it that we actually try to pinpoint what the experience was that led to something? Or is it just important to feel what is what's present and not necessarily know the story of how it happened? Well, if you go back to that point of view about trauma, that trauma is not what happened to you what happened inside you. Then it's what's happening inside you now. what matters. So what happened? This doesn't matter so much. It's what are you carrying now? I don't have a hell of a difficult time figuring out what happened to somebody after I spent 10 minutes in conversation because it shows up in how they talk about themselves and their narrative and how they hold their bodies, the choice of words they use, the tone of voice they speak,

the facial expression. So it's usually not that difficult to trace it. It's helpful to know, but it's not 100% crucial to know exactly what happened part. It's what am I carrying now. So like I alluded to earlier, Young saying that until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule you and you will call it fate. When we're at this point now where we can take responsibility for whatever is going on in our lives, whatever neuroses that we have, whatever unconscious behavior that we want to slide under the rug, but people keep reflecting back to us as, you know, that person's always

that kind of way. That's just how they are. It's not who they are. It's the, you know, it's what they've accumulated that's gotten them to that point. So what is the most effective way you found to make the unconscious conscious in that process? Like, are there certain modalities on the path to healing and wholeness? What has actually led to true transformation in what you've seen? This made it the toughest question you've asked me so far.

because I don't think there's any one simple answer. It's not that difficult to make the conscious conscious. You know, St. Paul said at one point that when you shine a light into the darkness, the darkness becomes light itself. Darkness is not an entity, and there's not just a thing as darkness, actually. There's such a thing as light.

There's light waves. But there's no darkness ways. Darkness is just the absence of light. So once you shine light on something, it becomes clear. So there's a whole lot of ways of shining light on the unconscious. Certainly meditation is one of them. Although I think by itself, it's got limitations.

Body work, because our bodies reflect our beliefs about ourselves, various forms of things. psychotherapy. Sometimes somebody will say a word to me and I just reflect the let me give an example. I was talking to somebody today who was telling me that they had this happy childhood and she said and all my my siblings said my father was really harsh but I didn't I knew how to charm him. Now, let me give you an... What do you make of that? Charming?

Who do we charm? There's snake charmers, right? What does it mean to charm a snake? It's to make them not dangerous. Make them behave. It's a way of taming danger. And we become charming. My friend Gordon-Eufeld is a brilliant child psychologist.

There's certain ways that children will adapt. So if you're not loved for who you are, then you'll become charming. And you'll tame the danger of not being loved by becoming charming. This person was telling me their child, that they didn't realize it. But as soon as I reflected it back to them, they got it. So sometimes all it takes is take a word that somebody utters.

Look at the meaning of it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I didn't, I wasn't loved for who I was. I had to charm my father into loving me. Yeah, like all those emotions that culturally we would deem positive, such as being charming or charismatic, oftentimes are actually a behavioral compensation due to a trauma, but because we think it's admirable or altruistic, it's accepted and something that we don't necessarily have to work with. So can you just speak to how even though, and especially, a lot of times in the entertainment industry, in the music industry, people that are big performers, these qualities are admired and put on the pedestal.

But underneath that, and we've seen it many times with comedians and actors like Robin Williams, where there is this persona that is accepted, but underneath there is so much deep grief and sadness. Well, I talk about Williams in the book, and he was a salient. By the way, I don't know any comedians that wasn't traumatized. I mean, I think she's part of a... Gilda Radner, I wrote about Gilda Radner. I mean, some of you are too young to remember her,

but she was a big star on Saturday Night Live when it first began. She died of ovarian cancer. And incidentally, there was a study that I mentioned in the book. Came out of Harvard three years ago. Women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer. And if that was the only study ever done,

that should have sent every doctor in North America trying to figure out what's the connection with the mind and body. And the milder the symptoms of PTSD, the less the risk of ovarian cancer. The Gilder Radner died of ovarian cancer. And she was a typical ovarian cancer personality. This is what she took on as a child. She suppressed her own needs, always to please others.

And she began to make jokes in order to feel closer to her mother. The only way she could feel close to her mom was to make her laugh. And same with Robin Williams. He began to make jokes in order to be closer to her. And he said at some point, isn't that a weird thing to try and make your mother laugh? No, it's not. It's not weird at all. not when that's if that's the only way you can get close to her it's absolutely the brilliant way

and these little and these incredible characters that he made up with his infinite talent for improvisation you know what they were they were the only friends he had as a kid that's why he made them up so i forget the question except to say that these talents that oh yeah and then And everybody celebrates them for their incredible talent and their charisma and not realizing that what they're celebrating is the defenses of a helpless child in the hands of an incredible talent. Let me give you a political example. If you read the book, you'll know this, but if you haven't, you won't.

What if I told you about a four-year-old girl who's a four-year-old girl who's a little? being bullied by neighborhood kids. And she runs into her house to seek protection from her mother. And the mother says, there is no room for cards in his house. Now, you get out and deal with it. What would you think of that? Would that be parenting that you'd like to celebrate, or would you think that's not what the kid needs?

This is Hillary Clinton. This is what's amazing about the story. Not that it happened, but that. that this story was told on public television, or I mean on national television, at the Democratic Convention where she was nominated for the presidency. And there was a documentary about her life

spoken by God himself, Morgan Freeman. And they told us story as an example of resilience building, strength, character building, parenting. And the message was, and this is why it became so strong and, you know, what's being described here is the traumatization of a four-year-old. You tell her mother orangutan or a mother bear to ignore the fear of their child if their child is being threatened.

The message is not that there's no room for cowards in this house because a four-year-old kid asking for protection is not a coward. She's a four-year-old. It's a natural instinct to run to your parent for parents. protection. Any animal will do that. The message is there's no room for your vulnerability in this house. You get there and suck it up. The outcome is that during the campaign, when the candidate, nine or 60s, gets pneumonia, do you remember what she did with it? Nothing. Didn't anybody until she collapsed with fever and dehydration in this.

street. Her security detail had to put it into the car because she learned to suck it up. And so when her husband was philandering around, she said, it's my fault. I didn't look after him. Typical trauma reaction. That a woman should go through that in this culture is totally understandable, because that's what women go through. That they should be celebrated on public television and nobody even comments on it that was being described here and celebrated here is the traumatization of a four-year-old. That's incredible. That's how toxic this culture is. Right. And the danger that it's become so normalized like you spoke to, that process is not natural, but it's become normal. It's become more than normal. It's become celebrated, like you said,

And we see this positively neurotic behavior in what people perceive. And it's become so accepted and widespread throughout Western culture. But Western culture affects the culture everywhere, the whole world. So as we begin to transition into community Q&A, because I'm fortunate enough to have you in the studio tomorrow and we can keep diving deep. But I really am excited to see what's alive within everybody here. you know, there is a such a depth to all the topics in which you can go here. And so let's just, let's kick it.

Let's kick it off. Do we have some mics kind of ready? And the invitation here is to feel free to bring it to any topic that is in alignment with what we're speaking to, but then also maybe on the fringes. And I'm so. The only I want to say before we go there is, this is heavy talk. and sometimes the heavy conversation, there's good news in all this. Healing is available.

It's just inside all of us. And I think that's both true on the difficult as it seems, it's certainly to an individual level. I've seen people in the worst kind of emotional and mental states, totally caught up in life-threatening addictions, transformed. You've all seen that. So I think it's possible both an individual and social love. So I don't want to leave this conversation with sort of a, we're doomed. We're not doomed.

That's the whole point that we're not doomed. But in order not to doom ourselves, we have to really look at that shadow side of ourselves. Yeah. And it's just a beautiful invitation and awareness that you shed in the beginning. It's not what happens to us. It's what happens within us. And that's good news because it's within us and we are within us. So that means that if there's a thorn in our shoe.

we can take it out. But first we have to hold it before we can let it go. And the various different healing modalities that, you know, you spouse in the last chapter of the book, through therapy, through psychedelics, the various many different modalities allow us to gain access and hold the thorn within us. And then we get in that process to let it go. So is there anything before we do jump into Q&A? No, no. I just wanted to make that point. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Great. I'm excited. All right, who's the brave soul who wants to jump first? Sorrel, since you're right here, and then we'll jump back here. Hello. Thank you for that. That was quite wonderful.

I appreciate it. There's a, I'm someone that's exploring the idea of becoming a mother. Yeah. And it's petrifying because I don't want to mess it up. Uh-huh. You will, don't worry about it. Yeah, that's the thing. Well, that's partly my question is no matter how much healing you have,

it seems like you're still going to mess it up. And also, what could it look like for a society to be as healed as possible and bring the next generations into the world? So when you say you're petrified, you're very scared, right? Here's how I'm interpreting it. I could be wrong. You tell me, okay? You're not petrified of the future.

You're petrified of the past. Stuff happened to you. I shouldn't have or stuff didn't. happened that should have. Would that be accurate? Yes. Yeah. And that's what you're afraid of transmitting and perpetrating on your children, right? Yes. No, I'm going to, do you mind tell me how old are you? 34. How old were you when your mother and father took on the job of getting to know themselves so as not to pass on their traumas to you? How old were you How old were you when they took that on?

In progress? I think they're starting to. My dad, no, my mom. How old were you when they started? I'm 34 and I feel like they may be starting now. Okay, you're 34 and they're starting now. What would it have meant for you? If you had mother asked the same question,

you just asked me before you were born. What would that have meant for you? Not being scared to exist in my household? Yeah. It would have meant everything, yeah? You've already given that gift to your unborn children. You've got nothing to worry about. You just keep doing it. Okay?

Now, a therapist once said to me that if your parents gave you this much shit and you give you kids this much, you've done a great job. But if you start asking those questions now, you're doing the work already, you read the right books, and there's not that many you need to read, just a couple. The myth of normal available now. Well, myth of normal, yeah, for sure.

There's a lot about that. But I could name some others by others, some by myself, some by others. You're going to be just fine. And one of the things you're going to have to do is to get to trust yourself and your own gut feelings and not taking the message of the culture as to what your kid needs. But I got no reason for your kids. Have one next week. It would be just fine.

All right. In process. Thank you. So good. All right. Who's next? BC in the back. And then we'll go do Asria after. If you can also stand and say your name, that'd be great. How's it going? Hi.

My mom's on the phone. Can you talk to her real quick about why I am the way I am? No, I'm kidding. Thank you so much. I appreciate all your wisdom. And I've screened wisdom of trauma. over 20 times and I really appreciate what you're doing. I'm curious, I work a lot with the public school system.

And if you sat down with them and were to give them some advice or some direction to take public schools, where would that start? And I hope that you are having those conversations and they're inviting you into that right now. But what is your process on that? Well, I do get invited to speak to teachers, at least in Canada, I do. I used to be a teacher myself. I used to be a high school teacher.

And then I decided that was way too stressful, so I went to medical school instead of that's my story. But I did. I taught high school for three years. Here's the thing. The schools have it all wrong. They're in the wrong business. They think they're in the business of teaching kids skills and facts. No.

And that's what they're trying to do. Now, if you look at it again, evolution, how did kids learn? They didn't learn sitting in classrooms. They learned by being out there in nature with the adults, through experience. And through play, the reason animals play is essential for healthy brain development. Now, how does the human brain develop? The average medical doctor never gets a single lesson on how the brain develops. Nor does the average teacher.

And I'm giving you the essence of it. And I'm quoting from an article from Harvard University, published in a major medical journal in 2012. The human develops through an ongoing process, I'm quoting, that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. So that's a process that begins prior to birth and continues into adulthood. Number one. Number two, the most important in interaction with the environment.

So it's the interaction of genes with the environment and experiences that shapes the brain. Not genes. It's the effect of experiences on the genes from in utero until adulthood. And that means that the schools should be in the business of developing healthy brains. Not in teaching who won this or that battle in the Civil War or, you know, any other particular fact or skill, but healthy brains. Because the chosen brains are developing until adulthood. And since it used to be the case that kids used to be with the nurturing adults the whole day, the schools have to be places of nurturing, not just of transmission of facts and abilities,

but nurturing, emotional nurturing. Now, if you look at what's the most important input that the environment has on the development of the brain? You know what it is? It's the quality of relationship with the nurturing adults. That's what shapes the circuit of the brain. The dopamine circuits, the cetotone circuits, the endorphine circuits, these are the essential brain chemicals, all shape by interactions with the nurturing adults.

In other words, the schools need to ask themselves, what conditions do children need for healthy brain development, and how can people provide them? That question doesn't even occur to them. So that's what I would say to them. Because then the children who play, who are naturally curious, they'll learn anything. They'll want to. That's their nature.

Look at a two-year-old. They're totally curious. So the job of the school should be the nurturing of healthy brain development through nurturing relationships, lots of play, lots of interaction, lots of spontaneity, lots of creativity. And those kids will know the facts really well. because they'll want to. That's the first part of the answer. The second part of the answer is,

I already alluded to, when you look at these kids with all these learning difficulties, behavior problems, so on. We use this phrase, we say about kids, they're acting out. They're acting out.

Now, when I say a kid is acting out, what do you imagine they're doing? They're being disruptive, they're doing a tantrum, they're being aggressive. I used to be an English teacher. That's not what acting out means. Acting on means you portraying behavior something you haven't got the language for.

So in a game of charades where you're not allowed to speak, what do you have to do? You have to act out. If I landed in a country where I didn't speak anybody's language and I was hungry, I'd have to... That's what kids are doing, they're acting out. But what are they acting out? They're acting out the emotional needs. And so the job of the schools is to be able to be... the schools is to be educated as to the emotional needs of children.

So when kids are acting out, they can respond to the need not to suppress the behavior. So those are the things that would tell teachers. So good. Hello, good evening. My name is Asria Becker. Thank you for being here. My question is, is there a connection between ADHD and dyslexia and trauma? And trauma?

And trauma. And second part of that question, Is ADHD a superpower that is just misunderstood? A superpower? Yeah. Well, I would highly recommend, the first book I wrote was ADHD. The Canadian title was Scattered Mines. The Americans published it with the words just the title,

Scattered. The American publisher didn't think the American public would understand the word minds. I think that's what I had. Fortunately, the book is coming out again in the States this month with the title Scattered Minds. I suggest you read it. OK? Now, the reason I wrote the book is I was diagnosed

with the condition myself in my 50s. But I never brought into the idea that this is a genetic disease. In fact, I didn't think it was either genetic, nor is it a disease. The tuning out, which is the harm of ADD, the absent mindiness, what is it actually? Why does nature give us the capacity to tune out? Well, it's really simple.

If I was to stress you right now, you know, make you really uncomfortable, you'd have healthy options. What would they be? Walk out? Or to tell me to back off? Fight or flight, right? But what if you didn't have those options?

Then what would you do? You wouldn't do anything. Your brain, one of the defenses your brain would adapt would be to tune out. So my personal history, some of you know it, I was a Jewish infant under the Nazis in Budapest, Hungary. You can imagine what my first year was like in terms of the emotional states of my mother,

whose parents had just been killed in Auschwitz. Her husband is away. She doesn't know if he's dead or alive, and we're under threat ourselves. That was my first year. A lot of stress. Could I escape or fight back? No. I tune out. But when am I tuning out? When my brain is developing. So tuning out gets

wired in as the default setting of my brain. Fifty years later, I'm diagnosed with the so-called disease. It's not a disease. It was a coping mechanism that originally served a purpose. Later on, it didn't. So yeah. Now, why are we seeing more? If anything is genetic, we shouldn't be seeing it increase, should we? Because, you're just genes don't change in a population. If all of a sudden in China, they're having ADHD where they never used to have it, there's a reason for it. If more and more kids are being diagnosed, and by the way, by some miraculous accident of fate,

which kids are getting more often diagnosed than medicated? Kids of color, kids who live in poverty. What a coincidence. What a coincidence. They just happen to be the most stressed kids. I'm not blaming parents here. Parents do their best. I did my best.

But when I was a parent, I hadn't asked that question yet. That's several that I'd asked. I passed, you know, so our home was a very stressful home. Our kids too now. They developed the same condition. So, yeah, I think ADHD is a response to stress. I think learning difficulties are very often

the impact of stress. in the utero even, because we already know that stress on the pregnant woman. Not to her fault. We're not blaming the parents here. No parent chooses to be stressed. That's a condition of living in this culture. Parents do their best. Parents really do their best. And it's not the question, do they love their kids? Do they, are they devoted? Sure they are. The question is how stressed they are. So depressed mothers, for example, they love their kids just as much as any other mother, but they can't, is that they can't attune with the child as well as a non-depressed mother.

Not their fault. The brain won't let them. Those kids are more likely to develop ADHD. And I think the same thing is true with learning difficulties. No. That answers that part of the question. And if that's not satisfactory, just ask again. The second question is business of superpowers, I don't go there.

Like there's this same Ton Hartman that I mentioned who talked about the talks because the Nurture Society, he developed this hunter-gatherer, hunter-farmor theory about ADHD, about the, you know, there's the hunters and there's the who have to be on the outside and move around. And then there's the farmers who have to get done to work and focus. And, you know, in the old, in olden times, those people with ADHD would be the hunters. But right now, there's no more hunting. So they're seen as having a problem.

but really it's a super priority that isn't next I don't go there I could live without losing things all the time I really could you know if I go on a speaking trip guarantee I'm gonna lose something you know I could lose without my room being a tornado aftermath I could live without forgetting things all the time you know and I don't personally particularly understand how being difficulty having difficulty standing still and paying attention makes you a great hunter. I just don't get it.

Now, what is true is a lot of people with ADHD or bipolar disorder or depression or addictions are very talented, creative, wonderful people. But that's not because of their condition. It's because of what underlies their condition. And what underlies their condition is the only thing that's genetic. which is sensitivity.

The more sensitive you are, the more spontaneous, the more creative, the more joyful you're going to be when the circumstances are right. But when things go wrong, you're going to hurt more even more. So let me give you an example.

I'm just going to, pardon me if I did nothing. If you give you my garrity for a minute, that's okay? What's your name? Sean? Yeah. I'm going to be nice to meet you. I'm going to reach you. Okay.

How much did that hurt you? Not at all. But imagine if there was a, your skin was bare and there was a burn there. So they just moved anything's close to the surface. If I'd have the same force, now what would you experience? Severe pain. Even though the external stimulus wasn't any greater, but the degree of pain that you'd experience would be far greater.

And so what is genetic here, I think, is that high degree sensitivity. That's what creates the superpowers, but it also what makes the kids more troubled when the environment isn't right for them. So that's how I see. And that's why so many comedians and artists and actors and creative people also have such problems because they're so sensitive. And the environment just didn't support them. Okay. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Mia.

And I'm curious, you're mentioning so many different responses, so many different ways of expressing what has happened to us and how we've been wounded from addiction to depression. And I'm curious specifically about anger. Anger, you're saying? Anger, yeah. Is there anything that you've noticed that particularly causes that as an adult reaction or that is the underlying wound that shows up and expresses as that when we grow older.

Are you talking about adult anger? Yes. And are you talking about anger that's destructive and eruptive and like a volcanic? Is that what you're talking about? Yes. Yes. There's such a thing is healthy anger, you know? Yeah, I think beyond that, like, quick fuses and ease to frustration and hot, fast anger that can go for.

from nothing to something quickly. Yeah, got it. I mentioned my friend, the psychologist Gordon Newfeld, and he's the main author of our book. I helped to write with him. It's called, hold on to your kids. It's a parenting book, okay?

I think it's really an important book. It's been published in 30 countries. And Gordon says, and Gordon, to my mind, is the world's most astute developmental psychologist, not as well known as he should be. And he says that frustration is the engine of aggression. So that person who erupts in aggression is frustrated, deeply frustrated.

When are we frustrated, when our needs are not met? So the angry adult was a frustrated child whose needs were not met. and who probably didn't have the freedom to express their anger as children, so they had to suppress it. So what happens with the pressure cooker? If you keep boiling the water, at some point, literally it blows its top.

That's what we call it. Or a volcano, when the pressure is enough, it blows its top. So somebody who's like that hasn't learned how to express their healthy anger, and how to process and hold their own emotions, and then something happens and it erupts. So it has to do with childhood frustration.

And again, my friend Larry, we both talk about people who have trouble regulating their emotions. It's perfectly healthy for a child to be angry. But as we mature, we were into regulate our emotions. So that if I'm noticing the anger arising within me, I'll notice it. The person that you're describing never notices it. It arises in them until they can't control it. It just blows their top. They blow their top.

So something happened to them that made them very frustrated and something happened to them that makes it difficult of them to regulate their own emotions. My concern would be that this may not be the case at all, but if you are in relationship with people like that, it's not your job to try and figure out what's going on with them. Your job is to look out to yourself. Like, it doesn't matter.

Not that it doesn't matter. But sometimes in a society, especially women, take on the role of understanding their partners, but at the risk of ignoring their own needs. I'm not going to go any further with that. That would be my concern. Anybody who asked that question, it's okay. It's one thing to understand it.

And if that person came to me, I know how to help them. The trouble is these people very often don't ask for help. It's the people in our lives who ask for help, but they tend not to. Sometimes they do, and when they do, that's great. So, yeah. Hi, I'm Angel. I have a question about psychiatric medication. Yeah.

So what I'm hearing you talk a lot about is how trauma will often inform a survival adaptation that then gets pathologized, maybe even into a psychiatric condition. And then I have two immediate family members who are medicated. Sometimes it's necessary. But the thing that I notice is it makes it very hard for them to access their own inner experience, which makes me think it's hard for them to actually heal the trauma that's underlying the conditions of the medication? Is there a process? Did you say medication?

Psychiatric medication. Psychiatric medication? Yes. Okay. I've taken them. Yeah. I don't take them anymore. I haven't had to take for a long time.

When I was writing this book, I made myself quite anxious and kind of freaked myself out. I've taken on too much. I can't do this. The world will finally see what a total failure I am, you know. And so I tried taking a bit of medication. All I got was side effects. I stopped it after two days. But decades ago, they helped me.

Antidepressants. They're overused. But my problem is not. So, you know, the average psychiatrist these days has no training in trauma. Zero. Certainly no training in my brain development. All the stuff about I said about relationships and childhood needs, they haven't got a clue about. What they see is somebody comes into a problem, you've got a brain disease.

Let's give you a biological agent to balance your brain. So if you've got depression, you must be lacking serotonin in your brain. Let's give you a medication SSRI to increase your serotonin levels. You know how much proof there is for the serotonin theory of depression? how much scientific proof there is for it this much none zero zilch nata nothing which doesn't mean they can't help but the theory that the depression is caused by lack of sotone and there's no proof for it and it's kind of like arguing like if you had social anxiety and you went to a party and you hit a glass of whiskey and all of a sudden you became friendly and sociable would that prove that you're

social anxiety is caused by a lack of whiskey in your brain. It's going to have that kind of argument, you know. So they prescribe far too quickly and far too often or for far too long. Some like 25% of women in this country or on some kind of psychiatric medication, 25%. So if you're going to use them, here's the analogy that I give. Let's say somebody's stuck in a mud. Let's say there's a road here that you want to walk on. You want to walk on this road, but you're stuck in.

in the mud right here. You lift one foot, the other one sink deeper into the mud. Properly used, the psychiatric medication can get you on dry land. This is where you want to go. When you get on dry land, you're not there, but at least you can walk. Properly used, psychiatric medications can do that. When somebody gets stabilized in psychiatric medication, that's when the work should begin. But the problem is, that's when it ends in the hands of more.

physicians. No. Do they always work? No. Can they cause side effects? Yes. Can they make somebody a bit numb so that they can't deal with their issues? They can do that as well. But if that's the case, that's up to the prescriber to correct the thing because you want them to, you want the person to be able to deal with their issues and to feel their emotions. And sometimes with medications, that's kind of taken away. Well, that's that's just one of those side effects you don't want. But you can deal with that as long as you're aware of it. But as long as you only aim is to get rid of some symptom

without looking at the causes, nothing ever happens. Garren Jones, Gabbert, thank you for just your gift. I've been fortunate enough to experience a lot of trauma physically from a child. And I overcame that through many days. different modalities and I turned it into triumph. But there's a part in me that there's like a repetitive pattern that continues to manifest in my life where I want to now continue to have that physical something. It's not like it was when it was a kid, so I'll go run 64 miles over a mountain just because.

And through that, I get a lot of downloads and insights. Am I perpetuating? the trauma as a kid because I'm doing something that I like that is really physical that kind of takes me into the same place but I use that energy to do something great. Does that make sense? Is there a downside? Is there a downside? I mean, it's difficult when I go through them. Yeah, no, but is there a downside afterwards?

No. Is it addictive? I'm addicted to getting downloads and insights, yes. Well, let me give you a definition. Let me give you a definition of addiction and tell me if it's addictive or not, okay? So addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure, but which causes harm, and they can't give it up. Oh, no, it doesn't cause harm at all.

Then there's nothing wrong with it. Then it's just something that you're doing to get yourself in a state where you have experiences that support you. That's all I'm seeing here. Okay. Because someone just like, you don't have to go through these hard things. I'm like... No, you don't. I have to do them.

Yeah. But you're choosing to do them, right? Yeah, I'm choosing to do them. Yeah. You're free to choose to do them. Yeah. You could not do them if you didn't want to. If I didn't want to.

Yeah. But what I noticed was when I don't do them, the insights aren't as vast. They don't come on as strong. Yeah, well, I think what happens. My guess is what happens is when you're doing, these are hard physical things that you do? Yeah. My guess is what happens. Or just extreme or hard or physical, yeah.

Yeah. Let me read you a quote, okay? This is somebody who did free diving. You know what free diving is? Yeah. You go deep without any oxygen. This one was a champion free diver, but she died doing it. Okay, but she said at some point, free diving is not only a sport.

It's a way to understand who you are. When we go down, we don't think. We understand we are whole. We are one with the world. When we think, we are separate. On the surface, it is natural to think, and we have many information inside. We need to reset sometime.

Free diving helps to do that. Is there anything about that resonate with you? When you're doing these difficult things, or you're more present. Way more present. Yeah, you're more with yourself. Yep. Okay.

Nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's wonderful. People meditate. People do psychedelics to get into those states. This is what you do. Naturally, the insights come because you're more present. The only question is, are you taking risks that might really hurt you? Not necessarily.

Well, then I got nothing to say except congratulations. Yeah. So good. And I just want a quick little follow up to that. Not to say that that, for example, would be a coping mechanism. But of course, a positive coping mechanism would be more beneficial than a negative one. For example, feeling sadness, going for a run is better than drinking a glass of whiskey. But if we continually go for runs because it's our coping mechanism, does it masquerade us discovering why we feel like we have to cope in the first place? Well, if we're doing it, if we're running to run away from ourselves. Right. But that's not what I'm hearing here. Right. Yeah.

I'm actually hearing somebody going closer to themselves. Nikki, I saw raise your hands for a while over here. Hi. I had to speak because I actually work in addiction treatment. Yeah. And so you're one of the people that I reference a lot when I do my group therapy with people. And just one of the biggest things I'll share with them is that what you say is not why the addiction. but why the pain.

So that's something that we talk about a lot in groups. But the one thing I wanted to ask you is something I notice with every person is just the biggest difference between someone getting better or someone growing out of that trauma cycle. It seems to be like an open-mindedness. You know, like when I'm talking to someone, I can tell if I'm talking to the part of them

that's preserving the way that they already see the world versus when I'm talking to someone who has completely over-examined. open mind, open slate. So I was curious because also some people diagnose people who aren't open-minded with certain personality disorders or they might say their borderline or whatever it might be. So I'm curious what allows a person to be open-minded versus another? What's your name?

Nikki. Nikki. You counsel these people? Yeah. Okay. When I ask you is this, when you're working with one of these people that you perceive is not open-minded, what happens for you? That's a good question.

That's why you have to. I think I notice it. Do you know, so I take note of it. Okay, what happens for you? Sorry? How do you feel? I think I get a little frustrated. You get frustrated.

No. It's a good point, you guys. It's a good point. No. If I was in this dialogue with you, but I got frustrated. Would you sense that? Yep.

How would you feel if... Probably shut down. You'd shut down. Whose mind is not open? Shit. I feel like I just got jujitsu flipped. So, now, this is not to make you wrong, naturally. It's just to make you aware of something.

No, you're hitting something. And let me ask you this question. When was the first time in your life? when it was frustrating for you that somebody important just didn't get it. Yeah? This is the way it comes from. It's got nothing to do with that client.

The client is just triggering something in you. So you work on that. Believe me, you'll meet many more open-minded people all of a sudden. Wow, I'm going to drop my microphone. I don't know. Bars. Thank you. You're welcome.

That was so good. I'm going to go sit in a corner and think. Wonderful. Yeah, we have time for a few more. Ben in the corner way back. By the way, let me just mention something. Again, self-serving. Larry, would you stand up for a minute? Yeah, this is my friend Larry Heller. Larry, what's the modality of the therapy that you teach? A neuroaffective relational model. Okay.

Okay. So, Larry and I would, and Larry teaches norm. I teach what's called compassionate inquiry. and both our approaches involve it's for therapists, it's for counselors, physicians, whoever. The biggest work is the work that we do in ourselves. That's why I went to you. I didn't go to the audio do with the open, you know, it's about you. Larry, would you want to say anything about that?

How it's about the therapist. It's not just about the client. One of the things that you talked about is the importance of the parent being attuned to the child. child's internal world and not just focusing on their behaviors. Well, that's the important thing in therapy, too, is not just focusing on cognitions and behaviors, for example, but really being able to focus on and attune to that client's inner world.

And the only way we can do that if we're also in connection with our own internal world, so it's that meeting on that level that is so significant. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being in. here. I had a question that kind of followed up on part of the topic of depression. How much do you think or do you think the disconnection that we have with our authentic selves or who we truly are or and the disconnection that we have with play contributes to depression or anxiety?

Okay. So what does the word, what does it mean to depress? something. De-played. Shut down. That's what depression is. Genetic disease. No, it isn't. Now, what gets pushed down in depression?

You? Emotions. Particularly anger, actually. But the problem is once you start pushing down emotions, you don't get to choose what you push down. Now, why would a kid push down their emotions? I already talked about it. about it. When the environment isn't ready to receive those emotions, let alone when it punishes it, but just if they don't receive it. So the child, in order to belong to

the attachment, pushes down their emotions. Now they lose connection with themselves. That's what depression is. Anxiety. We have circuits in our brain for fear. Is that a good thing or a bad thing. It's good. It's an essential thing. No creature in nature would survive without fear. Lack of safety. Safety isn't just the absence of a threat. Safety is also the presence of connection. So when an infant is left by themselves, they're going to be afraid. And they should be. then they start crying. And that should bring the parents running. By the way, indigenous people,

they never even put their kids down. They just don't. They carry them everywhere. In our society, parents are told to put the kid down and don't pick them up. It's a laboratory for raising anxious people. It's not to pick up their babies. Sleep train them.

Don't pick them up. You know, well, that natural fear then becomes chronic. now you've got anxiety. Nothing wrong with the fear, but if the fear is not responded to, it becomes anxiety. So both anxiety and depression have their sources in very simple dynamics, I think.

But then, of course, they become overwhelming states that make life so difficult for people. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. And anything about the disconnection with play and losing that. And they're both disconnections. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. I was wondering how you define self-actualization. Yeah. What's your definition of that word? Well, being in touch with the true self and being able to manifest that in the world, in my actions and in my reactions and in my relationships, what would you say? finding the most alive, unique, creative center of your being. Yeah.

And cultivating it. Okay. Well, we're close. What's up, bro? My name is Lucas Matt. I had to write this question down to articulate it. I'm aware that you've explored working with plant medicines and practices like Kundalini yoga over the years.

And my question is, I'm wondering if you find your work with clients, has revealed connections between trauma and entities. attachments or more energetic influences. I don't know if I can properly answer your question. I've done quite a bit of work with psychedelics, particularly, but not only ayahuasca. In my, in retreats that I facilitated, people have had entities visit them. They've had the mother ayahuasca come and talk to them, the Madre.

They've had anacondas and jaguars. and angels and autopuses and all manner of spirits. No entity has ever visited me, not even close. The mother has never spoken to me. No anacondas, no jaguars, no angels. Mostly just stomachache, you know, and some insights. So how do I understand those entities? The shamans that I work with, they see demons on people's shoulders during ceremony.

I'm looking at them. I don't see demons, but they see them. Now, I'm sort of a Western trained rationalist. So on one hand, I'm not ready to dismiss their experience as pure fabrication. On the other hand, I don't have any concept of demons and spirits or entities. So how do I reconcile it to? So I can only tell you how I make sense of this. But it's not necessarily the answer

because my shaman friends would tell me, come on, there are demons there. There's jaguars, there's angels. I would say that those images are manifestations of energies and deep inner experiences. And some people have minds that transform them into entities people have different minds. Some people see colors that others don't see.

And so I think everything that people see or experience their genuine manifestations on some inner dynamic that takes on a kind of dream-like quality. Like in a dream we'll see all kinds of things. Our mind will... In a dream, we'll have an emotional state, and then our minds will create a picture to account for that emotional state

or to be consistent with it. So I might dream, that Nazis are chasing me and therefore I'm afraid because the Nazis are chasing me. But that's not what's really happening. I'm not afraid because Nancy are chasing me. Nats are chasing me because I'm afraid. Because in a dream state, the parts of the brain, and the same in psychedelic experiences, by the way, same in a dream state, the parts of the brain, that whole childhood, emotional memory, get more blood supply, they get enlivened, and the conscious brain goes to sleep. And so what?

What happens is, let's say I experience a state of fear or a state of sexual arousal. In a state of fear, my mind will make up a story to explain the fear or give me a picture to explain the fear. In a state of sexual arousal, my mind will give me a beautiful woman. And then I'm turned on, but I'm not turned on because I'm seeing a beautiful woman. I'm seeing a beautiful woman because I'm turned on. And that's how I explain entities. Now, that's totally unsatisfactory to people that really see them and believe in them. And I'm not claiming to be right.

I'm only telling you what mine can make, what my own limited mind can make of it. I hope that answers you a question. Thank you for sharing. Yeah. Wonderful. And is there anything you want to share with your own ayahuasca ceremony with the Shepibo? I know it's a story. They can read the chapter in the book.

Yeah, yeah. It's a good one. get one. But once I went to Peru to lead a retreat and the shamans who didn't know anything about me fired me within a day for my own retreat. It's a great story. It's in chapter 31 of the book. There we go. Hello, Bryant. Thank you so much, both of you. First, what have you found to be the most effective question that you've asked someone to help them understand themselves? I don't know that I have an answer to that. But the most effective, The question I have usually is what's happening for you right now.

Yeah. Just what's happening for you right now. Now, because we're having an interaction, we're talking about something. So what's happening for you right now? Let me check you with your body. What's happening in your body right now? That, I think, is the key question. This is what's happening.

Not because it's not theoretical. Yeah. And it's so not narrative. It's just right here. So it's what's happening. right now that's that to me is the most important question that's amazing it kind of goes into my second question let's say that i have like anxiety or social pressure come into my body in this moment what's a tool that you use or teach to show people how to connect to their intuition and

self-regulate i think the most important thing in that state you're already are you aware that you're feeling this anxiety where that's what i would ask are you aware Do you have the capacity to notice that when the Buddha was teaching his monks, he didn't say that the monk never experiences anxiety. He never said that the monk never experiences anger. What he said was when the monk has anxiety, he says, in me there's anxiety. When there's anger in me, the monk says, in me there is anger. In me there's lust.

So do you have the. capacity to be aware. That's what I'm asking. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I'm asking with you, do you have that capacity to be aware? Yes. Okay. Who has that?

Who's the one that's got the capacity? Well, right now the question, because it's guiding my awareness to understand something about myself. Well, so if you have the capacity to be aware of the anxiety, then my suggestion is pay attention to the anxiety. Yeah. Be with it. Hold it.

the insight will come. So just the other day I spoke with Tara Braque, probably some of you know her work. Tara Brock is a meditation, Buddhist meditation teacher, wonderful, internationally known. She's written a book called Radical Compassion. That's one of her books.

And she talks about something called Rain. Rain is the method that she's helped to develop. R-A-I-N. Recognize, allow, investigate, nurture. So in that state, if you recognize that there's anger, that's the recognition part. Oh, sorry, anxiety. Yeah.

I recognize there's anxiety to me right now. And allow, I'm not going to fight it, I'm not going to try and get rid of it, I'm not going to turn on the television or get him a cell phone or take a drug or eat something. I'm going to allow it. That's the A part. Investigators, what is this about? Well, first of all, what's like, what does it feel like in my body? Oh, it's butterflies in my belly, tension in my chest, you know, constriction in my throat.

Pay attention to it, allow it all, investigate it. And then nurture that little anxious part, which incidentally is just a childhood memory. Because as an adult, you got nothing to be anxious about. You might have concerns and fears that are legitimate, but that's not the same as anxiety. So how to deal with it? How to allow that insight, which is what you're asking to arise? Hang out with the emotion. Rain it.

Recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. And then the insights will come. Okay? Beautiful. Thank you so much. One more is super important to me. I notice there is a huge significance on someone's individual trauma of what they've personally been through in this lifetime. Yeah.

Can you talk about the importance of community, family, institutional, historical, spiritual trauma as well? Well, trauma is always multi-generational. Now, I pass it on to my kids, as I mentioned. They didn't grow up in Nazi Germany or Nazi-Hungary or Nazi-occupied Hungary, but they didn't grow up in Nazi-occupied Hungary, but they grew up with a father who was a workaholic trying to prove. Can you imagine why I might have learned as an infant to try and justify my existence? And that shows up as a workaholic physician who is admired by the world. I got all these strokes. I get more money, I got more admiration and respect. People want me. It's very addictive. And my own kids get neglected. It's always

multi-generation. Almost always multigencial. And we can see. that in colonized communities, indigenous population in North America and Canada. Oh boy, 50% of the women in Canada are indigenous. They make of 5% of the population. So it's always multi-generational and it's never just about the individual. It's hardly ever about no. Some populations are then continue to be traumatized. Like in this society, this is not not a, America is not a society of equality of opportunity, nor is it a society of equality of trauma. Some racial groups, ethnic groups, economic groups are traumatized far more ongoingly by the structures built into this society. I mean, I don't have to tell you that.

Yeah, no, you're answering it perfectly. Healing can't just be an individual thing. You know, this is why there's activism, there's advocacy. You know, there is organizing. There has to be some response to the traumatizing forces in this culture. Yes. That isn't just individual. It's never going to work on individual level.

But at the same time, you meet people who, my God, I recently had contact with a couple of guys in a death row in Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas, severely traumatized children. They're facing the death penalty now. You know, they're sitting in this death row, solitary cell for the last 25, 22 years. And they've transformed themselves. They're present.

They're loving. They're full of compassion. They've taken responsibility for what they've done. And the state still wants to murder them for what they did when they were traumatized 18 years old. But I'm saying that when I think of my own troubles sometimes and start to react to the most minor irritations, then these guys on death row and they become these avatars of compassion. And they are. They truly are.

It's amazing what people are capable of. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Amazing. I think we have time for one, possibly two more. Will Sato over here and then we'll hit you and we'll be good. Hello, my name is Sarah. I'm really curious about your approach with modern-day psychotherapy.

I'm a therapist, and I'm really interested in decolonizing the idea of how healing has been perceived by the field for a long time, which is not a holistic approach, basically. And so from a recovery or healing-oriented point of view, where decolonizing the space in a lot of ways, psychedelics are being introduced. And we're seeing a lot of various ways that it's being practiced, right? So I'm curious about your approach with regards to what traditional psychotherapy deems as malpractice or re-traumatizing or so on, so forth.

what can you tell people who are spaceholders in this space and are conscious of not reintroducing trauma in a lot of ways, but can introduce more healing. Yeah. There's this modality that's based on my work. It's called Compassionate Inquiry. And it's an online course for psychotherapists and doctors and whoever wants to take it. We've had 3,000 students in the last 3,000.

years in 80 countries. It's an online course. It starts three times a year. It's not for the faint-hearted. It's highly demanding. You're going to work like heck on yourself. And it's challenging, but it's also transformative. And we're not a fate of pain, we're not a fate of trauma. I never, I never worry about re-traumatizing somebody. I think the people who are afraid of it are people who haven't dealt with their own trauma. Now, is it the case that in the course of therapy, people will experience pain? Probably. Because all their lives have been running away from the pain.

And I distinguish a number of levels of compassion. And one level of compassion is the compassion of truth. Where my interest is not whether somebody feels pain or not, but whether they are ready to face the truth or not. The truth is painful sometimes. It's painful to somebody to all of a sudden feel the emptiness inside them where they should have been loved. It's painful for them to experience that their parents didn't accept them for who they were. So pain is going to come up in therapy.

But I'm not afraid of that. It doesn't not be traumatizing. The trauma is already there. They've been running away from it all their lives. That's why they're in your office. Now, if I were to use that person for my own purposes, for my ego enhancement, or worse, then I can be traumatizing. But to conscience therapy, conscious and conscientious therapy, you're never going to re-traumatize somebody. Some pain may come up that they weren't aware of, but that's not re-traumatizing.

I'm not rewounding them. I'm helping them recognize the wound that they've been carrying all their lives. I guess I'm more curious about psychedelic. use within the space of therapy? Psychedelic? Like psychedelic assisted therapy? And how there's a lot of... With psychedelics, I talked with a woman just this Monday who went to Peru and did an Ayoska experience

and she's a mother of three, single mom. She's got a business and she came back just discombobulated. The whole thing environment, no, she's going to be okay. She thought she was going crazy. She's not going crazy. What's actually happening? She asked the plant to help her understand her relationship with her mother, and the plant took her there. The plant took her to a state of infantile despair,

where she had no words for it even, because there was no words yet. Just dark terror, because her mother didn't know how to hold her. And she experienced what's called primitive agonative. It's the agony of the infant that's not held. So yes, that came up in the psychological experience. The problem was that the people she was working with didn't have the capacity to hold her in that space. So the problem wasn't the psychedelic.

The problem was the context. And that just reinforces the essentiality of context for psychedelic work. There's got to be a good, strong, holding environment. And she, the people that were working with are good people. working with her good people, but they just couldn't hold her terror and her pain. So she was left alone with it. So again, I'm not afraid of that, as long as I know that the context is a safe space

where somebody can help somebody understand their experience. Okay? Thank you. Hi, I'm Rief Karim. Hi, I was with Gabor. when he got fired on the Peru retreat. That was a very intense experience. My question is on the role of neuroticism

and neurosis in society, specifically in a toxic culture. And if you look at, obviously, we're all talking about mental health and people tend to look, especially because I come from the field, they tend to look at the black and white trends and statistics of, oh, well, this is going up and this is going down, or this is getting better, or this is getting worse. But I feel like under the surface in the role of just all of us in our human experience is this concept of not diagnosable, but somewhere slightly above that,

but in pain or suffering. And historically, it's been called neurosis or neuroticism or not quite meeting criteria for the threshold. In this toxic culture, how do you feel about the role of neuroticism growing such that people are more prone to having a lower threshold to traumatic experiences and to taking on more challenges in their life and more suffering, but not meeting criteria where mental health conditions would be alerted? Well, partly what I perceive you talking about is what I call the mythonormality, the myth of normal. Like we make this distinction between the diagnosable ones and the ones who are not diagnosable, but diagnosis are only like the tip of the iceberg.

And somebody has got enough constellation of traits and behaviors and dynamics that they can fit them into some kind of category, then we diagnose them. If they're not, then we don't. But I've never lived with anybody with a mental illness, so-called, whether it's addictions or borderline personality disorder, so-called. I say so-called. Or depression or anxiety. Where I didn't recognize at least some of that in myself.

The borderline traits, my withdrawal in my marriage, the depression, the anxiety, the addiction. I've had them all. And most people I know have some of that at least. And in this toxic culture, that's only what you expect. So I think it would be really healthy to not to throw out the diagnoses because they can be useful. But here's a distinction. The diagnosis don't explain anything.

They explain nothing. They describe something. It's useful to describe things as long as we don't convince. confuse a description with an explanation. If I said that this entity here is green with certain shaped leaves and so on, I would describe it, but I haven't talked to its essence at all. I haven't explained it at all. I've said that I've been diagnosed with ADHD.

So Gabor is ADHD. How do we know? Because he tunes out and he tends to be restless. Why does he tune out and tend to be restless? he's got ADHD. How do we know that he's got ADHD? Because he tunes out and tends to be restless. Why does he tune out and tends to him? Because he's got ADHD. Reef has got depression. How do we know that reef has depression? Because his mood is low and he's not sleeping well and he's a social. Why is his mood low, he's not sleeping well and is a social? Because he's got depression. How do we know this is a

depression? They don't explain a thing. So they're not going to explain the thing. So they're described. describe things. And the explanations have to do with that person's life in a certain culture. And these so-called abnormalities are actually normal responses to an abnormal situation. So the borderline neurosis is a normal response of a human being who, when they were young, they couldn't trust anybody. So they tend not to touch. trust. They tend to withdraw very quickly. They tend to react. They tend to idealize. These are normal responses to what happened to them. So I know if I'm asking the question, what I'm saying is if we got rid of this idea of pathology and recognize, first of all,

just how ubiquitous is all this, how we all share it and why wouldn't we living in this culture? Number one and number two, that the diagnoses are helpful descriptions. but then on explanations. And that we're all on the, you know, we talk about somebody on the spectrum, but the whole hell isn't on the spectrum. Life is a spectrum. We're all on a spectrum of something or other, you know.

So I'm not so keen on using the word neurosis. That's the word that they used in the late 19th century, early 20th. It's, I see just people is responding to life. I don't have that answers the question, but that's what comes up for me. So good. Everything is just a wealth of wisdom. I just, my cup is full. I'm so grateful for our time together and for, I'm just so grateful that you were able to come down

and to continue this friendship. And thank you for everybody that's come out today within community. Is there any message that you want to leave? everybody here who are creators in some way, they're using their creativity through music, through podcasts, through film, through media. Is there any words that you want to leave with empowering how we can infuse these messages in the discussion that we've had today in our form of expression? No, I think people, I mean, my guess is the Zen of Creativity and spontaneity and independent thought in this room that people will, but they just alleviate

with a story, which is from one of the chapters, and it's about Robin Williams, actually. There is this, was it Goodwill Hunting with Matt Damon? And actually, Williams plays a role of a therapist. And Damon is this very troubled, aggressive character. But inside him, he's just yearning to be loved. And at some point, Robin Williams' character, he just, I think he looks at him and holds him and says, it's not your fault.

And Damon just, the Damon character just collapses into tears, you know. So there's one message, it's not your fault, okay? People got to get that. Stop the blaming of others and, in ourselves, and just,

it's not anybody's fault. It's just how it is, when society is functioning in a certain way. That's all. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Kat. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Last little thing, Gabour. Last little thing. Just for the audience. Thank you, everybody that's been tuning in.

If you haven't already checked out the myth of normal, it's available everywhere now. So much wisdom in this. Again, Gabr, thank you so much. And until next time, be well.