Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - Healthy Anger & Saying No with Gabor Maté

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Chelsea is joined by Gabor Maté to talk about the power of the mind-body connection, why ADHD is a natural response to childhood trauma, and why not saying ‘no’ can be toxic for your health.  Then: A meditator finds she can’t quite shut the world off when she tries to quiet her mind.  A mom of two kicks her husband out when she discovers he’s cheating.  And the importance of healthy anger in processing trauma is revealed. * Need some advice from Chelsea? Email us at [e-mail] * Executive Producer Catherine Law Edited & Engineered by Brad Dickert * * * * * The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees.  This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all.  Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Bell. Connection is everything. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. each week we're connecting the dots between books the internet and pop culture with your favorite writers book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions yeah i'm obsessed i'm obsessed listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hi katherine oh hello chelsea hi i'm just frying myself in my orca it's so hot here it's so hot i'm just trying to figure out where i'm going to go next because i might have to leave before my next guests get here it's too hot oh no well were your first guests fun at least yeah no everyone's

been fun we've had a lot of good laughs we've had a lot of good you know everything's legal in spain mushrooms lsd even cocaine is legal in spain cocaine's legal in canada now i just found out i'm like cocaine every time you think cocaine is out of style it makes some sort of comeback i mean i was like wait this is like a thing again now and i feel like it's happening all over again Although now I'm too afraid to try it because of all the additives. Well, in America, that's a thing. Fentanyl in London, everyone was doing blow. I was like, what?

I was like, people are still doing cocaine here? I mean, not everybody, but a good portion of people. I was like, what about fentanyl? They're like, we don't have that problem here. I'm like, oh, really? You don't have fentanyl here? Only America has that problem because we have people like Ron DeSantis and Trump to deal with.

So we need the fentanyl. I was going to ask, you've spent a lot of family time this summer. Do you get sick of being around family? after a certain amount of time. Yeah, I get sick of everybody. I mean, I just like to, I mean, it's better. You know, like post-therapy, now I know I'm just better at modulating my moods

and not freaking out or losing my shit. Like, I don't really do that anymore, luckily. I mean, I don't want to write it off completely because watch, it'll happen tonight. But I'm pretty good about that. And when I want to be alone, I'm just pretty obvious about it. I just remove myself from a situation. And I just read that book, Lessons in Chemistry.

I keep trying to stop reading books so I can just focus on writing my book but then I'm like fuck I love reading so much and I feel like every time you read something you gain something for writing but when I don't have time if I'm over people I just go and read my book the thing that annoys me the most

is when you are reading a book and someone starts talking to you it's like wait what do you think I'm doing what does this fucking look like I'm reading I'm busy I'm looking at something else that happens to me quite often And I won't say who it is, but it's definitely the person who lives with me. It's like, hey, do you want to have a conversation right now?

We got that. We got that. Loud and clear. I went and got this MRI called like Pranuva or something, which is like a body MRI to like detect any early like tumors or anything. It's supposed to be like a pre-detection. But once you do it, you open yourself up to everything because everyone has nodules or growths or like little things. But my doctor was like, oh, I see something in like your L5, L6. I was like, what's that? He's like, your neck. And I'm like, really? He goes, yeah,

something's off in your neck. I have to order you a spinal MRI and see how bad it is, if it's something that we need to look at or whatever. And as soon as he said that, my neck hasn't stopped killing me. Oh, no. That is a thing, though. I was like, well, it's psychosomatic. Yeah. I mean, I'm like, oh, fuck. Now my neck is killing me. No. Okay. So I have to tell you, I've never talked about this with you before, I don't think, but my therapist I go to is a somatic pain therapist. And I found her about a year ago or a year and a half ago now maybe because I was having terrible pain in my feet. I had been having like really

bad plantar fasciitis for like six years. And I had had these painful episodes where I just had this like terrible pelvic pain and they would come and go and I didn't know what was setting them off. And so I started seeing the somatic pain therapist after several symptoms told me, like, maybe this isn't a physical pain. Maybe this is something else. Like, I would move around my body. Some days my left knee would hurt. Some days my right knee would hurt, which if it's structural, that's not going to happen, right? So I can't tell you the difference that this therapy has made in my life. I no longer have any foot pain. Instead of feeling pain when I wake up in the morning when I set my feet on the ground, I feel like, oh, I might need to stretch a little

bit. It has helped me totally reframe all of my pain. My pain events, when they do happen, they're very, very mild and I can sort of like breathe through them and meditate through them, which is something that like surgery did not fix. But yeah, it's a lot about people pleasing, a lot about stress and this therapy, which really I kept thinking like, what's it going to be like? Are they going to give me special meditations that are going to fix all these things? Because it's specifically about pain. But it's just really normal therapy where they kind of help you figure out all your pain stuff and how to fix your stress stuff so that the pain goes away or is much reduced or you have a different relationship to it. So, yeah, that's something I haven't talked about on this before.

Interesting. Interesting. A somatic therapist. Yes. So somatic is body. Uh-huh. And the thing about somatic pain, like we used to call it psychosomatic pain, but it is real pain. It's like you're really feeling this pain, but it's sort of your brain misinterpreting signals from your body that it thinks are pain.

But they're really just sort of like warning signals of like, maybe you're too tired, maybe you're this. I had a couple friends who had really bad back pain, and they had sort of done similar therapies, and they like don't have back pain anymore. Like, my one girlfriend says, you know, when I start to have, like, a twinge in my back and I feel some, like, a throw my back out coming on, I know that I need to, like, sit and rest and journal, you know? Oh, and journal? And journal and, like, get her stress and stuff out. So I went to the L.A. Pain Psychology Center, and they helped me tremendously. I can't journal. No.

I just, I can't hand write stuff. My hands hurt always. If I write a card, a birthday card, my hand hurts for an hour after. Oh, I would argue that you write many journals. They just get published as books. Well, I type those. I can type. I have no problem typing, but I can't handwriting.

I'm like, oh, that's why I'm scared to put out another book because I don't want to do that. I know I can't sign those books again. So many books you have to sign when you have a book. Like hundreds, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like your hand. You get carpal tunnel. Totally.

I mean, when I go on book tours and like do book signings, I literally go in after and put my hand in an ice bucket. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I've got to learn how to sign with my toes. Or something, or like a stamp. Or Bernice needs to fucking chip in. She's so lazy. Oh my gosh, her little paws. Oh, Bernice is my lover.

Okay, our next guest is a very well-known Canadian physician and author. He has written the books When the Body Says No, Scattered Minds, and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. He's also written a book called Hold On to Your Kids. And his most recent book, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 19 weeks, is called The Myth of Normal. Please welcome Gabor Maté. Hello.

Oh, hello, doctor. Good morning. Well, good afternoon-ish. Nice to meet you. I'm Chelsea. Yeah, nice to meet you. My name is Gabor, and I wish you'd drop the doctor stuff, okay? I'm so used to everyone calling me a doctor, so I was just projecting.

And you know Catherine, my co-host. Hi. Hi there. Hi. I can call you doctor if you want. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, whatever. It's very nice to speak with you. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

I'm very much looking forward to asking you some questions and having you help some of our callers with their life advice and life questions. Well, if I can do it, I'll try. So your new book, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list, is called The Myth of Normal. And your book before that was also a huge success. And it is called When the Body Says No, which has been brought up on our podcast multiple times.

So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the relationship between trauma and ADHD and how ADD and ADHD differentiate with their relationship to trauma. If you could speak to that a little bit. I'm very curious. Sure. Well, that's actually my first book, which I wrote when I was in my mid-50s and just diagnosed freshly with attention deficit hyperactive disorder. And that book is called Scattered Minds. Now, the characteristics of this condition are that people have trouble staying focused. They tend to tune out, kind of absent-minded a lot.

So they tend to lose things, forget things, mix up appointments, this kind of stuff, miss parts of conversations. They tend to have poor impulse control. So when they want to do something, even if they know it's not so good for them, they tend to do it. So people, they slip very easily into addictions. and the hyperactive part is some of them have trouble sitting still they're restless they have to move all the time you can see their feet tapping on the floor their thumbs fidgeting on the table you know that's the hyperactive part so now the usual medical view of it which I don't agree with is that this is a genetic brain disorder that's passed on from one generation

to the next now I was diagnosed with it so were two of my kids and I don't think it's either a disease of the brain nor do i think it's genetic so what is it actually and this is where life experience comes into it tuning out is an actual capacity of the human brain as an example if i were to stress you right now by being rude inappropriate aggressive you'd have some healthy options you could just hang up on me say heck with you or you could fight back and tell me gabo you don't have the right to talk to me that way what if you couldn't either escape or fight back. Then how would you handle it? I tell you how you'd handle it. When there's a lot of stress and a person is helpless, the brain tunes out as a defense mechanism. If this happens early in life,

if the parents are stressed because their relationship troubles or because their own unresolved trauma or because of economic stress or racialist stress or whatever stress, the child is very sensitive. The infant is very sensitive to the parent's emotional states. when the parent is stressed the child is stressed when the infant and the young child is stressed there's not much they can do about it they tune out there's a defense mechanism they don't do deliberately and when are they doing this when their brain is developing so how the human brain develops is an interaction with the environment and if you look at the studies of human brain development the biggest influence on neurochemicals the circuitry the networks of the brain is the

emotional relationship with the adults if that relationship is stressed not because the parents don't love their kids it's not because they're not trying to do their best because they themselves are stressed the child is stressed in other words what happens is that the tuning gets wired into the brain and then 10 years later or 50 years later in my case the person is diagnosed with the so-called brain disease that they inherited now what happened to me was i was a jewish infant under the nazis in hungary in the second world war i don't have to go into it here but you can imagine how stressed it was how stressed my mother was how did i deal with that stress i tune out and this is when my brain is developing now my own kids grew up in canada in a loving home but with

a father who was a workaholic add driven personality and when i was at home i was very often in a bad mood and since i hate to tell you guys this but we always marry somebody at the same level of trauma that we're at it means i met and married a woman who was as traumatized as i was not in the same way but to the same degree so now we have two traumatized parents two young people who haven't worked out their traumas acting it out on each other in a form of family conflict and her kids live in a stressed environment, so they tune out. So, yeah, what was passed on here is not the ADD. What was passed on was the stress and the trauma, which is multigenerational.

You've talked quite a bit about those things that we develop as children as coping mechanisms, ADHD being one of them. I know that's my situation as well. But how we take those into adulthood in ways that don't serve us. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Well, so first of all, the tuning out, which is a coping mechanism, gets wired into the brain. So it does become a matter of brain physiology, but the problem didn't start in the brain. It started with how the environment acted on the brain.

It's difficult in adult life to be in relationship with somebody who's got ADHD because the poor attention span, the poor impulse control. Sometimes my wife would say, you're not listening to me, you know, thinking I was not doing it deliberately. But actually, what would actually happen is that especially when the emotional environment gets a bit heavy, I tend to tune out. Can I ask you a question? When you say tune out, when you're talking about that, are you talking about disassociation or is that a separate category? Yeah. Well, disassociation simply means disconnecting from the present moment. So same thing.

There are degrees of it. So I would say that ADHD is a milder form of dissociation. And it's not all the time. When you're very interested in something, when you're motivated, oh, you can pay perfect attention. So probably it's also a matter of motivation, emotional safety, comfort, and so on. But the point is, if you came to me as a parent with a kid with ADHD, what would you rather hear? Sir or madam, you've got this kid with this genetic brain disease, or you've got a kid who probably grew up in a stressed environment. not your fault you did your best but if you provide the right environment that kid can

develop new brain circuits and can grow in very healthy ways so the second message was more responsibility on the parent not guilt but responsibility but at the same time if you're a parent which would you rather hear yeah and that's very hopeful you know for people to be able to know that they can change their behavior if they put the work towards it and the effort needed. What do you think the contribution of social media and all of that has on ADD and ADHD? Well, first of all, let me say something about the contribution of social culture in general, because if you look at what's happening with bad diagnosis, or I should say any other childhood diagnosis, childhood depression, childhood anxiety, self-cutting, bulimia, anorexia,

childhood suicides, these numbers are going up and up and up and up and up here in North America. Now, if these were genetic disorders, why would they be going up? Genes don't change in a population over 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 or 50 years. So if the numbers are going up, there's something happening in the culture. Now, what's happening in the culture is that people are much more isolated and much more stressed than they used to be. And parents are much more isolated and stressed than they used to be. Both parents are even together, but there's a high divorce rate and there's a high rate of depression amongst adults. and that's affecting the children so what i'm saying is that the reason we're seeing more and

more of these childhood disorders is not because of any genetic epidemic but because the conditions under which human beings develop and thrive are less and less available and that's really the essential motif of my most recent book the myth of normal the subtitle is the myth of normal trauma illness and healing in a toxic culture and i'm basically saying we're living in a toxic culture now now social media comes into it how first of all one of the essential needs of children is free play spontaneous play out there in nature as soon as you introduce screens into the kid's life that's over with because these things these devices not only are they highly addictive they're designed to be addictive they're called neural marketing they design and to hook in the

brains of young kids and if you look at the brains of children who are allowed on social media they don't look normal circuits that involve thinking and emotional regulation are attenuated or not well developed as a result of screen use number one number two there's the addiction addictive thing you take a kid on social media if you're a parent and you get addicted to social media Yeah. You try and get them to stop it. I worked with drug addicts. One of my books is on addiction and I worked with some of the most severe drug addicts in North America, actually, trying to separate a child who was hooked on their social media from their devices. It's like trying to get a severely opiate dependent individual off their heroin. They hate you.

They attack you. They fight back. They're hostile. They're really upset. Why? Because they're addicted and they're responding like any addicted person to the threatened deprivation of the addictive preference thirdly a lot of parents use social media as a way of babysitting their kids now i don't blame them for it parenting was never meant to be as difficult and as isolated and as stressed as it is in this culture but the result is that people are no longer relating to adults in their lives how we evolved as human beings is we lived in small tribes but the adults for all around us, the whole day. No kid can spend the whole day relating to each other,

which means they lose respect for the adults because we tend to get our orientation and our guidance from the people that we're connecting with. When kids are connecting with other kids most of the time, they can care less what the adults think. And they start getting obstreperous and resistant. And the adults say, what's wrong with these kids? Nothing's wrong with the kids.

What's wrong with the kids is that the healthy relationship with adults has been so weakened in this culture that kids are influencing each other. I mean, look at all the child influences out there. Immature creatures. I don't mean that as a pejorative. I just mean objectively they're immature. They haven't matured yet. And they're influencing millions of their peers. I mean, that's a frightening phenomenon. Yeah. But with what you said earlier, I mean, you can retrain that neural circuitry, right? You can create new habits at any time, almost. I mean, unless you have some other inhibiting factor. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not a

hopeless situation if you address the situation and try to limit the addictive behavior of children on their devices. I mean, I saw my friend's four-year-old son throw an iPad at her face when she tried to take it away from him. And I thought, oh my God, that's an addict. That's like taking away. Yeah. So it is very disturbing. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. behind every night spent making the kids lunches there's a lot of suspense will they finally eat the veggies will the pesto survive the first bite will the lunchbox come home empty half full or come home at all and will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed

for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters,

then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. I know you discuss in your books, all of your books,

the mind-body connection. So when you're talking about retraining the neural circuitry, how does the body fall in step with that? Again, if you look at how we evolved as human creatures, They didn't evolve in cities and pavements and isolated apartments. We evolved out there in nature, living with other human beings in small groups and traveling with them and hunting with them and collecting food with them. But there was a real sense of community. And in Canada, as in the United States, indigenous people suffer the most in terms of addictions and suicides and autoimmune diseases and domestic violence.

Why? Because of what was done to them. In Canada and in some parts of the United States, there were these state-enforced, church-run residential schools where if an Indigenous child, as much as spoke their own tribe or language, they had a pin stuck to their tongue to discourage them from speaking their own language. Whether they were sexually abused, physically abused, they often died, starved, beaten. As a result of all that multi-generational trauma, these people have a lot of addictions, a lot of mental health issues, a lot of physical health issues. So I'm often asked to go to these communities and help with their healing process. So that's one reason I go there. They have such wisdom. their traditional wisdom is so much more holistic and connected and they see themselves not as isolated individuals but as part of a universe really very much in their bodies in their natural

states and in their gut feelings connected to their gut feelings now one of the things that happens in trauma is that people get disconnected from their gut feelings have you ever met a one day old baby not connected to their gut feelings so something happened something happened that disconnected from your body and what happened was that at some point you learned that to be accepted by your environment you kind of had to disconnect from yourself now that also means that healing also happens to the body and so that when you're ignoring your gut feelings you're ignoring your body. That's what you're doing. So when I teach people healing modalities, it has very much to do with reconnecting with the body, actually being aware of what's in your body, what's in your

throat, what's in your belly, what's happening in your chest, how are your muscles feeling? So reconnecting with the body, because the brain and the mind can't be separated, when you're present with your body, you're present with your brain as well. And you've said when a no comes up for you, it's begging to be said. And if you don't say no, that the body will do it for you in the form of illness. Can you expand on that a little bit? sure well you guys live and we're in la or where okay let's say i you live in la and we're friends and i fly into la and katherine i call you up and i say hey can we go for coffee but you don't want to because you've just been up all night tending a sick friend or a sick dog or a sick child i don't know or maybe you just don't feel like it period you know but you don't say no what's going to be

impact on you if you don't say no if you're in that state you don't say no you have coffee with me what's going to be impact on you i can already feel that feeling in my stomach i mean i do that all the time i do things i don't feel like doing all the time what is the impact on you i mean i don't know specifically but i definitely it's so hard because that's life you know so many no it isn't that's life as you've created it okay now and you don't say no will you agree that you're more likely to be tired. Oh yeah. Yes. Irritable. More likely to be irritable, stressed, more likely to have difficulty sleeping or, you know, there's going to be some impact. Not only that, you're going to be more resentful as well. Now, all those states are body states. When you don't know how to

say no, and we can talk about why people have such trouble saying no, I totally understand what you're saying, but it tells me a certain history. When you don't know how to say no, and the body sends to these messages like whatever feeling in your belly or the fatigue and you don't pay attention it might end up saying no in a big way and when i've studied chronic illness like autoimmune diseases rheumatoid arthritis multiple sclerosis colitis Crohn's disease chronic fatigue fibromyalgia chronic psoriasis eczema asthma i could go on typical of the people that develop those conditions is they don't know how to say no so they take on too much stress why because they're afraid of disappointing the other person and they think it's their responsibility to make

other people happy and never to let anybody down and while it's good to be kind it's dangerous to be kind only to others and not to yourself right now i'm not blaming anybody these patterns develop in childhood it meant that as a child you were discouraged from saying no because you're taught to be nice and pleasant and compliant and and appeasing people and pleasing people or maybe your parents were so stressed maybe they were alcoholics or maybe they were fighting or maybe they were economically overwhelmed and you kind of took on the responsibility of making them feel better by meeting their needs and forgetting your own so this is not how life has to be it's the way a lot of children in this society are programmed now if you ask the question and i have a chapter

on. It's in the myth of normal. Why is it that women have 80% of autoimmune disease? Why is it of the two major genders in this culture? Which is the one that's acculturated and programmed into pleasing other people, ignoring their own needs, repressing their healthy anger so they always should be nice? It's women. Not to disappoint others and take responsibility of other people's feelings. It's women. And that's why women have more autoimmune disease because the mind the body being inseparable scientifically when your emotions and your psychic apparatus in your brain by psychic i mean the emotional apparatus in your brain is connected to your immune system to your guts to your heart to your lungs to your nervous system when things are

disturbed in your emotional apparatus they're going to be disturbed in your immune apparatus as well i mean you don't know how to say no which is a boundary defense your immune system gets confused as well. Now, that may sound radical to a lot of people who are not familiar with what I'm talking about. Certainly, most of my fellow physicians wouldn't know what the heck I was talking about. That's not their fault. And it's not because I'm not talking science. I am talking science. It's just that the science of mind-body unity is still not taught in most medical schools. The doctors learned purely the physiological part of things, but not the unity of mind and body. Right, which is a much more holistic approach to everything. What do you think the correlation is? Well, I think I know the answer to this, but between trauma, losing a family member. My brother died when we were young, and my sister was diagnosed with lupus two and a half years later, and my mother was diagnosed with cancer two and a half years later, exactly at the same times. And that's when we started to learn more about what trauma does and how it can cause disease. Can you speak to that a little bit?

first of all it's striking how many families are similar to yours where a whole lot of supposedly unrelated diseases show up but not they're not unrelated if you understand that trauma is at the basis of them and that's the point i keep making in the book the myth of normal but on my computer i had prepared this i could show you a photograph of a young woman who i met four years ago in Britain. Her face was covered with this red rash, a butterfly looking rash, and her fingers were white as chalk. She had lupus and her fingers were white because they'd been deprived of blood supply because these arteries had narrowed. She came to a lecture I gave in London four years ago on when the body says no and the connection between stress, trauma, and autoimmune disease

like lupuses. I could show the photographs now. Her face is totally normal looking. Her fingers are pink as anything she's got no disease and she's on no medication why because she learned how to say no she learned how to start looking after herself she learned to stand up for herself not to live her life to please other people but to get to know her real self that she got disconnected from long ago and childhood and she's healthy as anything and it's not an unusual story so what happened in your family is your sister i bet is one of these personalities that took on the emotional needs of others and ignored her own probably didn't know how to express anger in any kind of a healthy way probably had no idea how to say no probably that goes back to your childhoods

and your sister's childhood where she took on a certain role in the family probably there was a lot of stress in your family of origin and you guys were small so all these different diseases are manifestations of trauma and disconnection from the self. Yeah, I would say the two people in my family, my mother and my sister, had the quietest, the biggest people pleasers in our family. I certainly haven't been a people pleaser for a long time, even though I still continue to do things I don't feel like doing. But yes. And how scientifically is that measured? Is there a measure for something like that? Because as you're saying, it's kind of almost nascent in medicine for most doctors to even take the mind-body

connection seriously. So how does one measure that? Well, Chelsea, that's what's so weird, is that none of these ideas are new. Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist who first described multiple sclerosis, said that this disease is caused by stress. A great Canadian-American British physician, Sir William Osler, said the same thing about rheumatoid arthritis in 1890. In 1939, there was a very famous lecture given at Harvard University by a doctor who is still revered at Harvard. And this lecture was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, where he said that emotional factors are as important in the causation of illness as physical ones, and they have to be at least as important in treatment. And this article was published in JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, in 1940. And to this day, even though he remembers his name, they don't remember what he taught.

They don't teach what he taught. Now, in the decades since this famous physician at Harvard made that statement, we've had 80 years of research showing that it's not that the emotional system in the brain is connected to the nervous system or to the immune system. They're not connected. They're the same system. like people who tend to look after people with Alzheimer's, who tend to be women, by the way, the caregivers, their chromosomes suffer. Their immune system is diminished. They're more likely to get colds. If they get a cold, it's going to last longer. If you wound them on the skin as a test, that wound will take longer to heal. So the emotional stress of caregiving

actually diminishes immunity. Okay. Well, on that note, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back, and we're going to take some callers. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month.

Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, Shut up. Don't say anything.

every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,

the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. And we're back. We're back. So our first caller today is Mina. Dear Chelsea, she says, A few years ago, my anxiety started taking a toll on my relationship and my physical health.

After hearing your experience with Dr. Dan, which is Chelsea's therapist, Dan Siegel. Oh, Dan is your therapist? Oh, yes, yes. We're good friends, aren't we? Oh, good. Good to know. As a matter of fact, about five weeks ago, I was going through a very difficult time, and guess who I called?

Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, perfect. Mina says, I have embarked on EMDR therapy for what my therapist calls complex trauma, and I've been facing things I never thought I would have to relive so that I can process them in a healthy way. That being said, I still really struggle with mind-body connection. Unless I engage four out of my five senses, I simply cannot shut my brain off. So essentially, unless I'm listening to exotic flute music while submerged in an ice bath with a eucalyptus leaf

under my nose, it's impossible for me to meditate. Do you have any suggestions on forms of meditation or other therapies that engage several senses at once or any other tactics? Just listening to something doesn't cut it for me. Thank you for everything, Mina. Hi, Mina. Hi, Chelsea. Hi.

Our special guest today is Gabor Mate. So I think you're going to be in good hands. Oh, are you so excited? Look at that face. Oh, shit. Yeah, I'm, yeah, wow. Okay, okay, yeah. Okay, well, hi.

Hi. Let me just go back to the original statement that the anxiety was hard on your relationship. Yeah. So I wrote this a couple of months ago. And since I have written through to Kelsey and Catherine, I've started EMDR. Yeah, I hear that. Which has been amazing and incredibly helpful. I've been in therapy for a while, but the EMDR has also been quite difficult, to be honest.

Yeah. What was difficult about it for you? Honestly, it resurfaced a lot of trauma that I had about 10 or 12 years ago that I had not, I mean, I knew was there, but it hadn't really come up for me until I sort of went in this deep dive. the first couple of times I did the reprocessing I didn't actually notice anything to be honest I sort of felt a bit like nothing was happening and then I did it a few more times and I felt extremely uncomfortable and I didn't sleep well and I started having very vivid dreams and a lot of anxiety all right and did you tell your therapist that yeah yeah she's she's aware and when you told your therapist what happened she said that it was completely

normal and part of the process and did you want to continue with that process i have continued yes is that because you wanted to continue with it yes can you check in with yourself right now so what's happening for you at the present moment a little bit of a pit in the base of my stomach tell me what that feels like is that okay if i ask you that yeah it's similar to actually it's similar to when i actually do emdr and my therapist asked asked me she goes how are you feeling after or during and i always say oh i have a bit of a like a little pit in my stomach and it feels really uncomfortable okay so there's a discomfort there yeah can you put your attention on that for a moment how familiar is it to you is it new

is it old very how far does it go back my whole life okay that means i have some difficult news for you okay yeah but it's intended to be helpful yeah your trauma didn't start 10 or 12 years ago no i know it goes way back yeah okay now but that's the first point okay in your therapy have you dealt with that long ago stuff or not we've done exercises where it's what's the strongest memory and what's the earliest memory and then when i go into the earliest memory i do the reprocessing so how far have you gone back like four years old four years old so it doesn't go back a long way yeah first of all what i'm hearing is you've had some traumas in childhood that you're still working on right now yeah that sometimes when you do ndr or even talk about it

but somebody like me it brings up these physical feelings that are so familiar to you yeah okay and that you know i agree with your therapist i mean that's going to happen the method i'd recommend for you and actually probably try to talk to you about this is uh dan siegel's wheel of awareness so you're familiar with that one i'm not no it's a very simple a very easy to learn mindful awareness technique but i think very effective because it allows you to identify your calm center even as you're having these experiences you're going to find that sort of grounded center in the middle of it all that'll help you get through it yeah so i get like intense panic really really intense panic and what happens when you get into panic i basically just

disassociate but what happens you hyperventilate the the shape i hyperventilate i get nauseous cold sweats. I can't see straight. It's a full, just full panic attack. Okay. Well, look, here's what I have to tell you. I cannot, in this short conversation, in the context of our podcast, really help you as much as I'd want to. I'd really have to spend time with you, be in your presence, talk about some of your stuff, have you experienced whatever you're going through, be there with you. And then I could tell you how I would help you. in this case, you're dealing with a tough problem, but sounds like you've got some good support. So that's the good news. You have good support professionally, and you have good support,

sounds like, personally. I cannot solve the problem for you in the short term. I wish I could. No, of course not. But I want to jump in and just say a couple of things to you. First of all, The Wheel of Awareness is a great reference. And this is Dan Siegel. He's got tons of books that he's written as well. It's basically... Wait, Chelsea, Dan's your therapist, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you guys are why I went into therapy. Oh, great. Love it. Love it. So it's basically your center and you are spokes on a wheel and everything that's coming out of you is kind of your wheel of awareness. Right. And it's almost like if you're a plane and you're flying over yourself, the center of your gravity, you're looking down like your emotions are this flying over. and this is your center. So anything that's happening within you, you can be an observer of

instead of being in reaction to it, right? You don't need to necessarily, because when you are having these panic attacks, I suspect it's because you're trying to escape the feeling that you're having, right? That pit in your stomach. Yeah. It's almost like anxiety about having anxiety. Exactly. So this is something that is going to be very helpful to you because it was very helpful to me. When you're having such a negative feeling or a feeling that is bringing you to a place that you don't want to recall, you have the power to sit with it instead of trying to push it away and saying, I don't want to think about this. I don't want to think about it. You take it in and feel it wholly. And that is the way for it to move through your body and

also your brain without sending you into a flurry and sending you into a panic attack. And it is a practice so you you get these feelings that scares me so much the idea of sitting with it i know but this is what's going to set you free from panic attacks but you know what you can also listen to dan guiding you through it so you're not actually as alone as you think you are yes there's one final thing i want to say to you there's nothing wrong with you okay you don't have a mental illness what you've got is a perfectly normal response to something abnormal that happened to you that's really comforting to hear because nobody's phrased it like that whatever the circumstances were whereas the four-year-old you first developed this anxiety there's two things

i can tell you you were being hurt and there was nobody there to listen to you to hear you and to hold you yeah and our brains you know what our brains have a circuit in it for panic we actually of a panic circuit because if an infant is left alone and they're in danger or they're lonely yeah they should panic and when they panic what do they do they scream for help and when they scream for help what should happen the adult should come running yeah in your case nobody came running exactly yeah you were being hurt and there was nobody there to help your panic is a perfectly normal human response to something abnormal that never should have happened. And if it did happen, you never should have been alone with it. So we had to just really rest in

the idea that there's nothing wrong with you, that it's uncomfortable, it's scary, but there's nothing wrong with you. That is really comforting to hear. And to give yourself the time to deal with those difficult emotions. I know it's like you just said, it sounds so scary, but if you sit with yourself, it's just a feeling and it will pass as long as, and as soon as you resist it, it persists, right? Like we know that as soon as you say, no, I don't want to feel this way. Then that's when you start to scramble. That's when you start to panic. If you allow it to sit with you and you sit there and let it work its way through your body, as scary as that may be, it most likely won't result in the way it has been

resulting for you that's what's so crazy is like there are times where i'll like let it sit through and i'll be like oh wow look at that it passed and i was totally fine and then there are other times where i'm like i'm gonna die from this feeling like that that overwhelming yeah and whenever you have that thought and whenever you have that tension in you what you're actually having is a memory of childhood yeah that's what's happening so you might want to remind yourself if you can I'm having a memory right now when I say memory I mean a body memory yeah and just to remember like I'm an adult and you're safe exactly yeah and you're safe yeah that's not happening to you anymore yeah yeah and try not to resist it like you know what I mean I know it's you don't

want it but when it comes to go okay try a different exercise try and bring it in and say okay because you've experienced it before and it will pass everything passes yeah and the more control you gain over it the more you minimize this happening to you there's a huge difference not only that you're an adult and you were a child then but then you had no opportunity to ask for help and now you do yeah so it'll never be as bad as it was then okay yeah well thank you thank you so so much seriously you're amazing you're welcome good luck to you thank you guys so much thanks take care take care bye bye bye i i love that advice you gave when um i had told chelsea beforehand i had done some work on somatic pain therapy and a lot of it was what's the feeling

you're feeling focusing on it and there is something wild about when you focus on the pain It feels different. It diminishes, whether that's emotional pain, whether that's physical pain. But I also think for Mina, the fact that she's having this anger and this anxiety come up that she's been repressing for so long, like that's the work being done. You know, it's messy and it's sticky and it affects those around us while we're going through it. But I think she's really well on her way to healing. look exactly that what i say to people often is you can have two kinds of pain you can have the pain of trying to escape into denial into addictions into addictions are all about escaping pain all of them or into relationships or into mindless watching television or whatever you can you can have and then have the consequences of those behaviors or eating or whatever you know or you can have the pain of discovering the truth you may not have a choice of whether you have pain or not it's a question of which pain are you gonna do you want

you want the pain that's going to help you grow or do you want the pain that's going to keep you stuck and one of the toxicity one of the poisonous aspects as far as i'm concerned of this culture it's it's so much about escaping pain rather than dealing with the sources of it it's funny when you talk about that mindlessly watching tv you know a lot of people don't think about that they think oh you're relaxing you're you know i've been i've done that so many times where i just it's such an escapism i mean it's just like any other addiction so yeah mindlessly watching tv isn't always mindlessly watching tv and when you actually look at the content of it so much of it is so bad for people. You know, like all the violence they watch, all the degraded relationships,

they're ingesting some really toxic stuff. Yeah. And they say, you know, our brains can't tell the difference between watching something violent on TV and when it's happening to us. You know, our brains aren't that evolved. We experience that stress from whatever we're watching on television. By the way, I'm not saying people should never watch TV, nor is it always bad to escape but if you're going to do it don't do it mindlessly right right like anything you know what i'm going to take half an hour an hour an hour i'm going to totally veg out so veg out consciously yeah yeah it's like eating right you got to eat mindfully my suv is worth more than ever time to upgrade there's never been a better time at plaza auto

group locations get top value for your trade and shop hundreds of new and pre-owned vehicles across 11 locations and if you can't come to us we'll come to you with best-in-class pricing unbeatable trade values and 70 years of trust it's easy to see why families choose the plaza auto group plaza auto group celebrating 70 years family owned and operated visit plaza auto group When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Well, Marion says, this is really a question about dealing with trauma as it's happening. I'm 41 and I have twin girls who are four and a son who's three, practically triplets. I just found out in February that my husband has had a girlfriend and I've begun the divorce process. He was my best friend, and even though things were hard sometimes, I was still so in

love with him. But cheating was my limit, and he knew it. I've been reading the book you so highly recommend, Letting Go, which is one we talk about a lot on the podcast here, and I'm applying the lessons in other areas of my life that I was holding onto too tightly, and I like the lightness that brings to me. But how can I get through a custody battle and still wish him well and send him love? Or must I let this horrible battle go? I understand how to let go of things that are in the rearview mirror, but how do you let go of something when it's something you can't let go of, that you're still in the middle of? Marion. Well, a bunch of things come up for me. First of all, most people when they're being lied to they get some sense that something is not quite right

this person who wrote this i would ask you first of all before you found out about the affair do you have any sense that maybe things were quite right with this guy is there some gut feeling that you ignored in yourself most of the time i asked that question i don't know what her answer would be but most of the time i asked that question people say yeah i had the gut feeling but i ignored it so the betrayal wasn't just a partner betraying you it's also you betraying yourself not that you meant to again i had to do with child conditioning and unfortunately this scenario i've seen too often that small kids come into the family and then the big kid can't stand it because mommy all of a sudden isn't available so he goes and has an affair

because men very often relate to women like surrogate mothers as well as partners so i don't know if that's happened here but here's the point you probably didn't pay attention not your fault it's your programming but now pay attention so when you say you want to send them love and so on why the hell do you want to do that i mean if love comes up for you if forgiveness to letting go genuinely come up for you i'm very happy for you you believe fear for it but don't force yourself don't put a trip on yourself this guy was dishonest with you when you had small children to look after when you most needed support when you most needed somebody to be there for you he decided that this is the moment that he's going to go and please his own desires

how do you feel about that i hope there's anger for you there that's the healthy response i'm not saying you should get stuck in the anger but if it's there for god's sakes don't ignore it and furthermore it's going to be a custody battle which is really tough on you and if it goes to the courts i tell you what's going to happen in the course his lawyer is going to try me make you look like an incompetent mother because that's what lawyers do now maybe it'll He'll be resolved amicably. Maybe there'll be mediation. I hope so.

But insofar as there's a custody battle, you really have to look after your own integrity, your own physical and emotional integrity. Look after your emotions. Don't make it your job to send him love and all that kind of stuff. If you get to that point, by all means,

but right now, put the attention on taking care of yourself and allowing yourself to feel whatever is there. Yeah, I would agree. I would say that that book, Letting Go by David Hawkins is good for, I mean, it's very hard to apply that book into a situation where you are actively in combat with somebody. I would echo everything that Gabor said, and especially sometimes you have to fight, you know what I mean? To get custody of your children or to do what's right in a situation. And while you're in it, I think the biggest gift you can give yourself is to look

at your behavior, you know, from a level of consciousness rather than being mired in your own behavior and your reactivity and understand when it's necessary for you to react or when it's not. And so just kind of, it's almost like you're watching over yourself, you know, to be very mindful of how you're using that energy and what the best use of your time within this argument and this divorce and this custody battle is. And then once it's over, then you can really work on forgiveness and sending love and I think that is a that's something that you cannot push and like fast forward you have to really wait until everything is resolved and you're in a position where it's in your past because it's not yet in your past and I think that book is really about

letting go of your past not the present necessarily of the past so while they're great tools don't pressure yourself into applying them in a situation like this because you need your wits about you And you got to feel your feelings while you're going through those hard things. Absolutely. You don't want to deny yourself what's happening to you right now or what's happening with you right now. But I wish you well in that. And I'm glad that you put your foot down and kicked him out of the house and are starting divorce proceedings because you don't deserve that. Okay. Well, that's our episode today. This is Serious Business with you, Gabor. Thank you for imparting us with your wisdom. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yes. I'll see you in Canada. Okay.

Okay. Take care. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Okay, guys.

We have added more shows to my Little Big Bitch Tour. I added another second show in Toronto. So I have two shows in Toronto now. December 7th, December 8th, December 9th, I'm in Ottawa. And two new shows on December 15th on a Friday. We're doing a 7.30 and 10 p.m. show with Kevin Hart and Friends. That's in Thackerville, Oklahoma. and all my other shows.

You can buy tickets at ChelseaHandler.com. I'm starting my tour back up on September 29th in New York City at The Beacon, which is sold out. But the next night, there are tickets available September 30th at The Beacon. So for all fall dates, you can go to ChelseaHandler.com for tickets and you'll see me. If you'd like advice from Chelsea,

shoot us an email at DearChelseaPodcast at gmail.com and be sure to include your phone number. Dear Chelsea is edited and engineered by Brad Dickert, executive producer, Catherine Law. And be sure to check out our merch at ChelseaHandler.com. out alive listen to the survivor files with elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality welcome home pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level

of discourse each week we're connecting the dots between books the internet and pop culture with your favorite writers book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts did you hear the new episode of the hey jonas podcast we are at d23 so we'll see who stops by the cast of frozen stopped by kristin bell josh gad and adina menzel i auditioned for frozen what for kristoff they said okay what are you going to be singing today i said i don't know that must have been why you didn't get it. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that. No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.