On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Gabor Maté: Why Your Trauma is Showing Up as Guilt, Fear, and Shame & How to Untrap Yourself from the Past

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Why does trauma manifest as guilt and shame? How do we untrap ourselves from the past? Today, we welcome back renowned speaker on addiction, stress, and childhood development, Dr. Gabor Maté. They dive into the core of human identity and explore the delicate balance between being yourself and seeking acceptance, discovering the liberating truth that authenticity is the ultimate path to self-discovery. Gain insights into the complexities of the human emotional landscape and learn how to navigate and process fear, a powerful force that often holds us captive.  Gabor talks about the top five regrets of dying people - a profound insight that serve as a compass, guiding us to live a life aligned with our deepest values and aspirations. He also talks about the intricacies of guilt and shares wisdom on how we can untrap ourselves from it, the universality of pain and trauma, the synergy between logic and creativity in problem-solving.  In this interview, you'll learn: How to live with fear and anxiety How to deal with deep-rooted trauma How to handle grief and pain How to improve your personal growth Together, let's explore the infinite possibilities that unfold when we awaken to our true potential and embrace a mindset of continuous growth. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 03:56 How Do You Heal a Broken Man? 07:34 Tell Me Who You Are 11:33 The Small Still Voice Within Us 13:19 Be Yourself or Be Accepted But not Both at the Same Time 17:10 What Are the Most Common Emotions We Feel Everyday?  20:26 How Can We Process and Heal From Fear 28:11 How Can You Help Someone Who Refused to Be Helped? 31:06 The Top Five Regrets of Dying People 36:09 How Do We Untrap Ourselves From Guilt? 43:03 There’s No Path Without Pain, So Choose Which Path to Take 46:53 Embrace Your Freedom Responsibly  48:46 There’s No Hierarchy in Pain and Trauma 51:07 What is Integrative Thinking? 59:27 The Book “Blessed with a Brain Tumor”  01:02:00 Can I Continue to Grow? 01:04:15 How Do Emotions Translate to Physical Reality? 01:13:13 If We Could Just Wake Up to Our Possibilities Episode Resources: Dr. Gabor Maté | Website Dr. Gabor Maté | Instagram Dr. Gabor Maté | Twitter Dr. Gabor Maté | YouTube Dr. Gabor Maté | Facebook The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Craig Ferguson goes in search of joy in talks with actors doctors stand-ups and scientists everyone is it love religion drugs money where do you find it Craig Ferguson in search of joy the celebrations the dances science poetry laughter and music of joy don't miss it joy with Craig Ferguson here and now on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast On Purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Lewis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real life stories behind their journeys

and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special

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you know what it is? That they weren't themselves. They spent their whole life trying to please others. That's a top regret. How do we fix broken people? Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier and more healed.

All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. The number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty.

Jay Shetty. The one, the. J Shetty. J Shetty. The one, the only, J Shetty. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that keep coming back every week to become happier, healthier and more healed. Now today's guest is someone that you absolutely adore, that you love,

that I admire so deeply. I feel honored whenever I'm in his presence. I'm a huge fan and follower of his work and I would also like to say that we've been developing a little bit of a friendship behind the scenes which I'm very grateful for as well. I'm speaking about the one and only Gabbo Matei who spent 20 years working in family practice and palliative care experience and worked for over a decade in Vancouver's downtown Eastside with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. Gabo is the best-selling author of five books, including the award-winning In the Realm of

Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction. Gabo is an internationally-renowned speaker, highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. And Gabor's latest book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, remains a bestseller globally and I highly recommend you get a copy. If you haven't already, if you have a copy, grab one for a friend and really, this would be my recommendation,

make it your book club pick for your local book club, for your online book club, make it a book that you discuss and share. Please welcome back to On Purpose, Gabbo Matei. Thank you for being here. I am fondly remembering not only the last interview we had, but the last time we were together in Vancouver when I saw you just before my show and we spent a few moments together and I genuinely look forward to seeing you whenever

I can. So thank you for doing this. Well, it's such a pleasure and I remember bicycling down to your hotel and I wasn't in a great state and we talked and that helped to ground me and then I think it was my idea that we should meditate together and we did and that was just so helpful for me. So it's just good to sit with you in any capacity. Now, well, I remember I walked away from last time's conversation, both times the first time we recorded and second time from that. And I always feel you create tiny, mini shifts in my mindset through very subtle points you make.

And it takes someone who's deeply studied their subject, not just theoretically, but practically, to be able to do that. So thank you, but let's dive straight in. I wanted to ask you this question. I've had the burning desire to ask you this question. So I read this quote the other day and it says, it's by Frederick Douglass.

And the quote goes, it is easier to build strong children than fix broken men. And my question was, how do we fix broken people? There's a wonderful song by Leonard Cohen called Come Heal or Come Healing. So it begins, O gather up to brokenness, bring it to me now, the fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow. And then he says at some point, and here's the answer to your question, O troubledness concealing an undivided love,

the heart beneath is teaching to the broken heart above. So, this poor at profit, poor at visionary, this thing we have two hearts, is the brokenness above and the undidied love that's below. That's underneath. He's saying, there's the broken heart above and then there's a heart beneath that teaching the broken heart. So that implied in that is that nobody's broken.

That underneath the brokenness, there's wholeness. So, and that's not only Leonard Cohen, any spiritual teachers you know will tell you the same thing. So it's not a matter of fixing anything broken. It's finding the wholeness that's underneath the brokenness. Now, Douglas is totally right. Studies have shown that if you get children who suffer for first three years and then things get okay for them, they do much worse than those children who are well treated and have a good life for three years. And then everything goes to pieces. The latter group do does much better because as Wordsworth says, the child is the father of the man. So that what happens early in life

shapes our worldview and our sense of ourselves. So yes, darkness is totally right, but ultimately when I look at people, whether they agree with me or don't, or whether they are suffering or not, or whether they even when they do terrible things, there's a wholeness, there's an undivided love underneath it, isn't there? There's a sure-right now in Los Angeles by somebody who's in a death row prison in Texas.

And his name's Obi, sentenced to death. And he's in death row, has been for the last 20 years, while these appeals wind their slow way through the courts. If he wins the appeal, the best thing he can hope for is life without parole. And he's in love with life. He's had a transformation. He's dealt with his addictions. He's dealt with his brokenness.

He learned meditation. He's dealt with his brokenness. He learned meditation. He's an artist. And some of his artists being shown in Los Angeles right now. Unfortunately, I can't go see it because it's only open certain days a week and I'm not here. But there's somebody who came from a totally broken childhood and found a kind of presence. If you saw him, you and I could only envy the kind of presence and at least to speak for myself, can't speak for you, the kind of presence and the kind of engagement that life that he's got in the death row prison.

Well, if that can be healed, if that brokenness, the wholeness can be discovered underneath, there's no be broken. Very well said. I would agree to at the core, at the root, at the essence, none of us are broken. Yeah. And our engagement with that which is broken and imperfect often rubs off on us. us. But what would you say are the most detrimental experiences that people have in those three years that end up creating horrific ripple effects long-term? Anything that makes them disconnect from themselves, from their two selves, from their gut feelings, from their connection to their bodies. Anything that deprives them of hope.

Now, I remember taking part in a retreat once, it's called an Enlightenment Intensive, where you do intensive spiritual work, I won't go into the details, but... Please go into the details. Well, it's dyads and two people at one time sitting across from each other in the meditation posture, putting a question to one another. First the question, one person asks, the other one listens, and then you search places for four times and then you get a different partner. And the question is, tell me who you are.

The original question comes from Ramana Maharshi, whose work I'm sure you know, one of these Indian Rishis and Gurus who just asked everybody, tell me who you are. And the idea is that by emptying your mind and saying whatever is in your head, clearing out the mental space, the direct experience of who you are will come to you. A direct experience, not a thought, not an emotion, but a direct experience. No, I never had the direct experience. And I was embittered at the end. And at the very last dyad, the person said, tell me who you are.

And I just started shaking. And my whole body was tingling. And instead of paying attention to that, I plunged into bitterness. And I said, is it my fault? They turned off the light in me. They killed the light in me so early. So I truly believed that the light in me had been killed by what had happened to me as an infant.

And for much of my life, even after I became a healer, and even after I became a healer that was respected by so many people, I thought I could help heal everybody else but I can't be healed myself. So to go back to your question, whatever early experience kills your faith in your own possibilities, that's what's so damaging. And for that, it could be evidence or experiences of severe abuse. It could also be very sensitive child who the world doesn't see for who they are, who the world doesn't permit to express themselves, so they shut off from themselves in order to be accepted by the world.

So any early experience that deprives you of yourself, and that happens to a lot of us. So trauma is a huge spectrum, but anything that breaks your connection to yourself and your genuine, not your false egoic belief in yourself, but your genuine belief in your wholeness, that'll do it. And that happens to a lot of us. I've always personally experienced it as the volume of my inner voice. Yes. So I found that at different points in my life, my inner voice was extremely loud and clear. And not only could I hear it clearly,

but the direction was clear. And then I've had moments in my life where as you're referencing disconnected from yourself. Yeah. That voice is extremely quiet, maybe even non-existent, or it's screaming out for help. It's... You mean the voice of yourself is very quiet? Correct. It can be.

Well, the Bible talks about the small still voice. They actually call it that, the small still voice. And it really takes attention to notice it because there's so much noise in the world and so much noise in her head. And there's all these other voices that are much louder. You know, the singer, Cheryl Crowe, she had breast cancer. And she said afterwards, and this could be, and I quote this in the myth of normal, it could be right out of my own work, but she doesn't know about me. She just came to this awareness because the disease started something and she said that she always used to be serving other people and trying to meet other people's emotional needs.

And the breast cancer, no, she's actually listening to herself. It's just there used to be these loud voices inside myself telling me that whatever I did wasn't right enough. She says, now I've still those voices. You know, so on the one hand the voices of self disregard and self-loathing or self-seduction are very loud and that true voice for most of us is just so quiet. So it takes a lot of attention to notice it. A lot of what you're saying, today we experience it as this idea of people pleasing, shape shifting, mediating, wanting to make peace often in our families, in our friend circle, all of which are can be good noble things, but often we find ourselves disconnected from ourselves,

trying to play these different roles. Not only does that seem to be stemming from a form of trauma, of being disconnected from yourself early on? What steps can one take to regain one's connection with oneself so that we're not running around shape-shifting people pleasing, but at the same time have genuine connections with others? In the book, we talk about this tension between authenticity and attachment and authenticity being connected to our two selves, our gut feelings, which is necessary.

Nature gave us gut feelings for a good reason, gave us emotions for a good reason. Attachment is a need to belong and if we can be authentic and belong, that's ideal. So if you can find relationships in which which can be our two selves and be accepted and loved That's ideal But a lot of our families of origin our parents just couldn't give that to us like they had their own limitations They couldn't see us or they had their own traumas like I did as a parent and so Kids then get the message that you can be yourself

Or you can be accepted but not both at the same time. At which point for sure survival's sake, we go with what we need to do to get accepted. And then we get that message reinforced in school and on the playground and with our peers and at our work. And at some point you start wondering who the heck are we anyway and whose life am I leading anyway. Well, how to get back to it?

Here's the question. Prior to your awakening and I'm sure that for your awakening was probably both a series of unique events but also it was a long-term process. For me, it was mostly process rather than distinct experiences. But say prior to Awakening, did you sometimes know that you're not being authentic? Because I sure did. I didn't know why I was choosing not to be authentic if I wasn't even choosing it. I just wasn't. But something me knew. Well here's the

question. Who inside us knows only that authentic self? That's always there. And so I say to people don't try and look for the authentic self. Just notice when you're not authentic. Just notice when you're not saying no. When there's a no that wants to be said. Just see where you're not saying yes. But there's a yes that wants to be said inside you. Notice the impact on you when you don't assert your true self. How do you feel afterwards? When you don't assert your true self, how do you feel afterwards? resentful ashamed or tired or whatever so notice the difficulty being authentic and

Ask yourself well, what is the belief that I'm carrying that if I'm authentic then what? So in other words Not all that noticing. What does that do? Who's the oneness noticing? It's the authentic self. So just by asking those questions, you're strengthening, you're empowering that authentic self. And just going back to that, the heart underneath is teaching the broken heart above.

Well, that wholeness is teaching the disconnection. It's always there. I find that in between those two hearts and in between those two layers, there's almost a layer of guilt and shame. So when we go against our authentic self, we do it because we're scared of whether we feel guilty

or we may feel shame or fear. And if we act authentically, we then sometimes feel guilt for acting that way because of how it impacts others or shame and fear. So walk me through the construction of fear and guilt and shame, which seem to be such. Like if you thought about the emotions we all experience most on a daily basis.

I mean, let me ask you that actually. What do you think, what are the emotions that you believe people are experiencing most often, most repetitively on a daily basis? I was gonna give you an easy answer to the shame, guilt, fear question, but then you throw a curveball the shame, guilt, fear question, but then you threw a curveball.

Sorry, I went off. I was following my authentic voice. No, no, no, no. No, I love curveballs. I just have to think about it. Yeah, please. So what are the emotions people experience most often? I think anger, rage, and resentment.

I think there's a lot more of that than we acknowledge. Now often unacknowledged, experienced but not acknowledged for fear of consequences. I think also love that we also enough are often afraid to acknowledge because it's so vulnerable and we might see if I want you to love me But I'm afraid to be vulnerable Then I may try to impress you Which may be the closest thing I can get So that you'll pay attention to me

You know so that emotions shame I think is very frequent for a lot of people That's has to do with trauma more than anything else. Fear is something that people experience a lot, much more than they can admit to themselves. Joy, people are not so afraid of it. Well, you know what? That might be. Joy has been very difficult for me in my life and I think some part of it, actually some part of me used to say, what right do I have to feel joy when there's so much suffering in the world? Now that's logically a good question, but it's a nonsensical question. Why? Because there is a lot of suffering in the world and there's a lot of joy in the world and one doesn't negate the other. So for me it was like,

And one doesn't negate the other. So for me, it was like, what right do I have to experience joy when my grandparents died in Auschwitz? I quote this in the myth of normal, my friend and colleague and teacher, Bessel Van der Kolk, psychiatrist who wrote the book, The Body Keeps the Score.

He said to me once, Gabo, you don't have to drag Auschwitz around with you all the time. Which means that you don't have to drag our shirts around with you all the time. Which means that you don't have to allow, not to forget about our shirts, but not to let that control your consciousness. Which means you do have the right to feel joy. You do have the right to be happy,

even as the world suffers. Not because the world suffers and not ignoring the suffering in the world, but there's no contradiction. Welcome to the Overcomfort Podcast with Jenna Colopez. Yup, that's me. You may know my late mom, Jenny Rivera, my queen. She's been my guiding light as I bring you a new season

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Listen to the Overcomfort podcast with Jenna Colopez as part of my Kuturan podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Listen to comeback stories. I'm Darren Waller. You may know me best as a tight end for the New York Giants. You may also know me for my story of overcoming addiction and alcoholism. You may have heard a few of my tracks as an artist or a producer. You may have seen the work that I've done through my foundation. And you may know my friend and co-host Donnie Starkins as well. He's a mindfulness teacher, a yoga instructor, a life coach, a man fully

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Let's dive into some of those emotions because, and I love how they were easy answers for you and then the curve ball, but I think as you said, fear is a repetitive daily emotion thought for so many people. Yeah a lack of safety Emotionally mentally physically on so many levels we feel unsafe. Yeah How does one process and heal? Through and with fear because it seems to be so consistent the way that fear shows up in most people's lives in the form of anxiety

See we are wired for fear there's a great consistent. The way that fear shows up in most people's lives is in the form of anxiety. See, we are wired for fear. There's a great nurse, psychologist, died a few years ago before his time, Dr. Panksepp, and he identified all these emotional circuits that we share with other mammals. And fear was one of them. We have a circuitry for fear. Good thing. We're not afraid we die out there in nature, you know But that can become anxiety So let me tell you a story. I want to show you this bracelet that I'm wearing. It's beautiful It is beautiful and I never thought

I'd ever be wearing a bracelet, but I was given this Just shortly after the time that I met you and this comes from a place called Haida Gwaii. And Haida Gwaii is islands in northern British Columbia where I live. They used to be known as, well they used to be known as Haida Gwaii. Then with the British colonization they became known as Queen Charlotte Island. That's really funny because I was speaking in London once, or actually a couple of months ago, to an audience of 2100 Britishers. And I said, does anybody in this audience know who the hell Queen Charlotte was? Nobody knew. No, I knew, yeah. Well, apparently she was some German princess who married King George, the Mad King George, who was King of England when

America became independent. Anyway, so the British came, they named it Queen Charlotte Islands. All of a sudden these indigenous people whose ancestors have been living there for something like 13,000 years. All of a sudden they were living on, not on Haida Goy anymore, which means land of the people, but they were living in Queen's Shotherland. So I was giving a trauma workshop there for Haida people. That's when they gave me this bracelet and the meaning of the carvings that means these words matter.

At the end of two days, almost at the very end of the trauma workshop for the Haida people, a woman in her 70s at least comes up and she said, I used to speak perfect Haida Until I was five years old And then I forgot my language And even when I've gone back to school as an adult to learn my native language The words don't stick in my brain and I said what happened to you Well, what happened to you? Well, what happened to her? She went to these residential schools, residential schools

over there. The Indian kids were forced to go, run by the churches mostly. And she dared speak her native language. And the teacher took a stick and beat her mercilessly in her body and her head and her limbs. Oh, native kids in my own lifetime is when I was a teenager in British Columbia,

a four-year-old Indian, they're not Indians, indigenous Canadian, first nation kid, spoke their own language, that have a pin stuck in her tongue. So, they literally, as I said to her, look, you're losing your language, because your organism protecting you. It was your fear system telling you that if you do that again, you might not survive.

Because she hated herself for it. She hated herself for the anxiety. She hated herself because I was so passive, she said. I said that passivity was your organism's only way to protect you. Because had you fought back, or had you asserted your right to speak your language, much worse would have happened to you. much worse what happened to you. So that fear protected her, but it translates into anxiety, where it's no longer fear of a specific thing, it's just fear of the world.

Now, the rate of anxiety, so we have a system for fear, and the greatest danger to a young child is the loss of relationship. Because without relationship, we can't survive. I mean, we're protect, we're defenseless, we're vulnerable, we're helpless. So the loss of protective adults is the biggest fear that the child has. In this society, a lot of parents can't be there for their kids the way they need to be, the way they want to be, because of the stresses, economic, social, racial, political, whatever they're going through, just the nature of the disconnected culture that we live in.

Parents are not there for their kids the way the children need to be. The fear becomes chronic anxiety that we're never safe. And now that becomes part of our sense of self. So what you say, but this lack of emotional safety, what it actually is, is that early childhood fear, because when a child is afraid, they will ask for help. But when repeatedly the help is not available, and the adults don't come because they're too busy, too stressed, too traumatized, too preoccupied, too downtrodden, or too propagandized by parenting experts to ignore their kids'

cries, the child gets the message that there's no safety. So that original fear that's meant to result in a cry for help now becomes chronic anxiety. So fear not dealt with gets ingrained as anxiety. It's normal but anything specific. It's just being in the world is a source of fear. Which it shouldn't be. It almost feels like as you were saying that what should result in a cry for help externally becomes a perpetual cry internally without a feeling of being able to help yourself. Exactly. You know that Beatles song, Help?

Yeah. Help I Need Somebody, not just anybody. And John Lennon sings. And he was a very traumatized child, as you know, whose father left him when he was a very traumatized child as you know whose father left him when he was born and whose mother abandoned him a few years later and Then he sings in his song when I was younger so much younger than today. I never needed anybody's helping anyway But now those days are gone. I'm not so self-assured. So I opened the door, you know, please help me No, that's not the way it was.

When he was younger so much younger than today he needed everybody's help in every way but because the help wasn't available he had to shut himself down and make himself sort of like a self-created self-sufficient person and only later on as they realized you know what actually do need help but he was never that person didn't need He just believed he didn't need help. Why did he believe that as an adaptation? Because the help wasn't there. So, so many of us. One of the biggest things that people are afraid to do is to ask for help. When I give workshops, and I myself is, my automatic reaction when somebody offers help. Oh, no, it's OK. I'm fine, even though the help would be very welcome.

Yeah. How do you find that? Because I feel so many people today have someone in their life who's closed off from help. Yeah, it might be your partner. It might be a child. It might be a parent. Yeah, we all have someone in our life who in our limited capacity, but a little bit of awakening,

we can notice that someone is really closed and won't receive help. How do you help someone who is rejecting help or not accepting that they may need it because of the position they've experienced based on what you just said. I myself used to believe I was one of these people. I actually used to believe, can you believe this? I used to believe that every be-us could be stressed but I couldn't be. I used to

feel like that too. I used to believe that I can help everybody but I don't need help myself. There used to be a time when I used to feel like doing that. How do you help somebody that? You help them by accepting them, that's how it is for them right now. And not trying to push your help on them. Because when you try and push help, you're just going to get resistance. So if you can handle it, you can be around them and be open but not insist or try and prove to them that they need help.

Life will teach them. When I meditate these days, I do the compassion meditation, which says, you know, that may I face and overcome all of life's inevitable setbacks and challenges and failures with patience, understanding, strength and determination. And may I rise above them with compassion and morality and integrity and wisdom and mindfulness. If we can stare on people compassionately without trying to prove to them that they need something that they don't believe they need,

then at some point, life will bring a challenge that may prove to them that, yeah, they need help. And if you're still around, open, then there will be a shot to you. If you try and convince them, bring them over, prove it to them, force it on them. And I believe I've done that. I've done it with my own family. I've done it with others. You just invite resistance. So the best way to help people is not to help unless the help is invited. And that's almost what most of us don't want to hear because we want to again, going back to our earlier point, we want to fix and solve and make everything nice and perfect right now. And I guess that is also a form of trauma. There's something there as to why we want that.

And when I write about people who are prone for chronic illness, it's often people like autoimmune disease, for example, it's often, and this is not just my own finding. Other researchers have found this as well, that there are people who tend to ignore their own emotional needs and are compulsively concerned with the emotional needs of others. And they tend to believe that in the myth or normal,

I quote an obituary. An obituary is really interesting to me because they often highlight as laudable Qualities the very things that I think contribute to the person's death. Let's talk about those. Yeah. There was a book written by an Australian nurse 12 years ago now called the top five regrets of dying people and She like I used to work in palliative care, working with dying people, as you mentioned in introduction. And for seven years, I was the medical coordinator of a big palliative care unit dying dying people at Vancouver Hospital. And this nurse also palliative care

health worker wrote this book, the top five, we get the top regrets of people who died before that time, you know what it is? That they weren't themselves. That they spent their whole life trying to please others. That's the top regret. Now, this obituary, you have to believe that I'm not making this up. This is a physician in Canada who died aged 72 of cancer. And the obituary says, Sidney and his mother had an incredibly special relationship,

a bond that was apparent in all aspects of their lives until her death. As a married man with young children, Sidney would have dinner with his parents every day. Then he would go home as his wife Roslyn and their three children waited for him with yet another dinner to eat and to enjoy. Not wanting to disappoint either woman in his life, Sydney kept eating two dinners a day for years until gradual weight gain began to raise suspicions. But this man suffered from two fatal beliefs and when I say fatal, I mean fatal. One is that he was responsible for other people's feel and the other is that he was never disappointed anybody.

Now, so many of us go through life like that. You know? No, actually, I'm not responsible for how you feel. I'm responsible for how I act, for how I speak, what I do and what I say. I'm not responsible for how you feel in response. When you were in Vancouver and you contacted me, and if I hadn't feel like seeing you, but I hadn't slept all night, say,

because I was up with some other duty or looking out to somebody, and if I had said yes and still come make you for coffee because I had fear of disappointing you and because I Didn't want you to feel disappointed. What would that have meant for me? What it meant for me more fatigue and probably I would have represented the hell area Even though I was pretending to be that you know, you know

Thank God even though I was pretending to be that, you know, you know. And you on the other hand, if I said no, if I was authentic and I said, look, Jay, I'm sorry, so glad you're in town, but I was up all night. You know, if he had felt hurt and perceived yourself as rejected by me, that's not on me. That's your interpretation of my behavior. Nothing to do with me. I just said what was true for me. So, but that fear of disappointment, had I been afraid to disappoint you because I don't want to lose your friendship and I don't want to lose your friendship. But if I believe that if I'm authentic, I'm gonna lose Jace's friendship, that's gonna keep me inauthentic. And you'll never know me. And even when you like me, there's still going to be a fear in me. What if you really knew me? So it doesn't even work. But we're so afraid of disappointing others.

And then one day I may feel we have an inauthentic friendship because I can notice that you're not being fully yourself. And then I can even feel that way. You can let me down even by trying to be everything I wanted you to be. That's what I find so fascinating in life, is that you can let someone down even after becoming everything you thought they wanted you to be. Well, exactly. Go back to the example of coffee. If I said to you, Jay, I'm sorry I can't do it today.

Which honors you more? If I believe that you're so weak and vulnerable that you can't handle a no, or if I honor you by telling the truth, which shows you more respect? Definitely there. So that I can be everything you want to be and still not honor you.

Yes, yeah. It's fascinating how we can be so opposite in our perceptions and viewpoints. And a big part of that comes also, we talked about fear, but I wanted to talk about guilt because. Oh yeah, guilt. Guilt.

What do you wanna say about guilt? No, well, I wanna hear from talk about guilt because... Yeah. Oh yeah, guilt. Guilt. What do you want to say about guilt? No, well, I want to hear from you about guilt, but when I think of guilt, I think it's such a strong driver for so many actions in the world today. It is. We're guilty of something in the past and therefore we do something strange in the future or the present the past and therefore we do something strange in the future or the present that we wouldn't have done. We feel guilty right now and that makes us say something that we don't mean or something that we... Exactly. How do we untrap ourselves from the trappings of guilt. Great, well let me tell you a story. So you know in the Bible, the Nailed Testament, Moses is a Hebrew boy born at a time when

the Pharaoh's soothsayers declared that some Hebrew male born around this time will rise up and challenge the Pharaoh. So they decide to kill all the Hebrew newborns by throwing them into the Nile River. But Moses' mother, rather than throws the boy into the river but in a rickshaw basket. And so Moses flows down the river and he gets plucked out of the water by the Pharaoh's daughter who adopts him. So this Hebrew infant is adopted into the royal court to be like a prince. That's why Walt Disney could make a film called Prince of Egypt. You know, all this happened just so Walt Disney could make a film. In any case, there's an extra biblical legend. It's not in the Bible, but it's an ancient legend. You think, what the heck is this guy talking about?

He just asked him about guilt and he's talking about guilt. No, I love this. This is my favorite type of answer. It's when I'm curious and I'm following because I don't know where you're going. Okay, great. But believe me, I'm going to come back to guilt. I believe it. I believe it, I trust you. So the legend is that Moses is a toddler and the Pharisees divine that he might be a danger, which eventually he proves to be. So they decide to put him to a test.

They put in front of him two sparkling objects. I don't know if you remember, but in the Bible, Moses is a speech impediment. And it's his brother Aaron who has to do the speaking for him. How does he get the speech impediment? Well the pharaohs would say or say well this boy needs to be examined and they decided to put him to a test and they put in front of him two sparkling objects. One of them is a royal diamond of Egypt and the other is a sparkling ember of glowing ember of coal. Egypt. And yet there is a sparking glowing ember of coal. Now if Moses reaches for the royal diamond, it means he's got oil ambition and he needs to be killed. So there's this little toddler delightedly looking at these two scintillating objects and his hand starts

moving towards the diamond. At which point standing behind him is Gabriel, Gabriel, which is the Hebrew version of my name, Gabor, by the way, and grabs his hand and takes it away from the diamond and puts it to the core. Now, Moses finishing the motion that kids will do picks up the core, puts it to his mouth and burns his lips. and that's how he develops a speech impairment. Now here's my question to you. Is the angel Moses his friend or enemy?

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. What happens when the person you idolize, the person you think you know best turns out to be someone else entirely. And in a world where everyone is trying to fix themselves, fix their minds, fix their bodies, what does it look like when we settle into the reality of what it might mean to be unfixed? And what if you were kidnapped by your own grandparents and left with an endless well of mysteries about yourself and those around you? These are just a few extraordinary puzzles

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But he hurt him. Had to hurt him to save his life. Right? He's a friend. Guilt is that kind of a friend. Okay. Guilt comes along in early childhood. Not because you did anything wrong, but because you sense that whatever you did displeased your parents and you can't afford to do that. So there needs to be an internal mechanism

that keeps you close to your parents. That says, for example, if you're authentic and you show your anger, you won't be accepted. There better be an internal mechanism to keep you on track. So guilt comes along as this friend that says, no, take your hand away from where you want to put it. You have to stifle your real desires. So guilt comes along to maintain a relationship. Not because you did anything wrong, because a two-year-old, three-year-old, they can't do anything wrong by definition.

That may do things that are not good and they need to be taught not to do it, but it's not wrong. There's no guilt there. There's no, I'm gonna do something evil here. So guilt is totally not appropriate. And there's ways of teaching children without guilt. But guilt comes along to keep you online.

No, is that your friend or your enemy? It's your friend. But it's hurting you. The problem with these early friends, and I call them, some people don't like this word, but I say call them stupid friends. The stupidity comes in the fact they don't realize that you're an adult.

You can make your own decisions now and look after yourself. You don't need to be controlled by their advice that was meant for a two year old. So that's where the, they're just not educable. So when I say to people these days, the most people who feel guilty when they act a little bit on their own behalf, I say to them, for God's sakes, have a party, celebrate. I've done something for myself. Call your friends, you know, have a

celebration that you were so quote unquoteunquote selfish like like like Cheryl Crow said All these voices are always told her that she has to ignore herself and serve others now. She doesn't listen to me more That's the guilt. So, you know recognize the guilt and say hello to it. Thank it now Is that such a thing as health remorse? Yeah Is that such a thing as health remorse? Yeah. If I promise to meet you for coffee and I don't show up because I find something more pleasurable to do, I should feel some remorse. So remorse is about specific... That's healthy remorse.

You know, if I break my word, if I hurt somebody or I... I should feel remorse. But that's not a long-term thing. It's not the chronic guilt that you're talking about. That's nothing in what happened a long time ago and now it limits me or controls me. It's a health remorse for some specific thing that's different from guilt. Guilt is this old friend that's a long odd lived here their usefulness and the challenges that we still treat it like a today friend exactly it's almost like we're so scared of Breaking that dependence as well. We are

Thinking well, I feel guilty that I'm not around, so I'll stay around this individual, this group of people, whatever it may be. But there's a part of me that wants to depend on them as well. And I don't wanna break free completely as well because I don't even know what that looks like. Like you're saying, like as an adult, you can take care of yourself, you can walk your own path,

but you're actually scared of doing that. Yeah. And so you accept the pain of guilt because it allows for dependence. Well, that's a good point that I often say to people, you're going to have pain one way or the other. Yes. Which pain would you like? Cause sometimes in life there's no pain for your options.

You can have the pain of suppressing yourself for the sake of being accepted or you can have the pain sometimes of being yourself and not being accepted. You can have pain one way or the other. Now I have my own bias that the pain of not being ourselves ultimately is by far the greater and more chronic pain and that the pain, the short-term pain of being ourselves brings liberation and genuine independence which means I can have genuinely independent the relationships with other people who are willing to accept me as independent you know but in a short term which pain do you want? Not, there's no pain free option.

Yeah, for sure that you reminded me of this beautiful idea that Tick-Nut Han shares that there's familiar pain and unfamiliar pain. And these are our two choices. And the challenge is we're so scared of unfamiliar pain that we would rather choose familiar pain and go through the same pain because we know how it's going to feel. And we think, oh, at least I'm aware, at least I am conscious of how bad it can get.

But hearing you speak, being independent or being dependent both has pain. being independent or being dependent both has pain. But the pain of dependence far outweighs the pain of independence. Well, just put a bit of a nuance in there. I mean, Tick Nodon also talked about inter-being, how we all inter-are. So in a certain sense, we do depend on each other, you know, and that's okay. The question is, do we depend on each other, you know, and that's okay. The question is, do we depend on each other authentically or inauthentically?

The fact that I'm independent doesn't mean that I'm not going to reach out for help or that I won't offer it. But it does mean that I will be honest with you and I won't pretend to be somebody else that I'm not so that you'll accept me. You know, so there's anything interesting word difference between two phrases that sound very familiar. One is called individualism and the other is called individuation. Now rugged individualism is I don't need anybody and I know it's me against the world and this is the North American capitalist ideal, you know Well, human beings never would have evolved had we been those rugged individualists

The rugged interviews wouldn't last more than one generation But individuated means That we can be ourselves truly ourselves In genuine relationship with others, not rugged individuals. I mean, the most boring people are rugged individuals, because they all look the same, you know. So you can be individuated and be truly yourself and still belong and still vulnerably desire human contact. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think there's a lot of rhetoric around,

well, don't care what anyone else thinks and it doesn't matter and you just do your own thing. And it's almost, that's almost a bitter response as well, because we do have to care what people think. If we lived in a world where you didn't care what anyone thought, it wouldn't be that healthy because we would do all sorts of obscene, horrific things. I'm intrigued, yeah, I'm intrigued. Yeah, I don't care what anybody thinks, but I do care what I do and how. I'm intrigued. Yeah, I'm intrigued. Yeah, I don't care anybody things

But I do care what I do and how it affects other people. Mm-hmm, you know, so there's another spiritual teacher Gunnarotana. He wrote a book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I've just been working through recently and He's talking about a higher morality that comes from being truly yourself and in touch And he says well you don't need rules anymore because it's like st. Augustine said Love and do what you will mm-hmm So if you actually love the world you don't have to give yourself rules Because that love will dictate mm-hmm how you like towards other people. I

Can't worry about what other people think look can't worry about what other people think. Look, if I were to what other people think, I would not have written any of my books because each of my books challenged the the reigning orthodoxy in in say medicine, you know, or whether it's our under tension deficit or stress and disease or addictions. And anytime I write a book, I'm saying something that I'm not saying that I invented it, but that I have come to understand and firmly believe and want to communicate, but I can't worry about what other people think. Or when I make a political statement,

I'm responsible for what I say, how I say it, but not what other people think about it. But that doesn't mean that I can ignore other people's experience. So as long as my intention is purely to speak the truth and I do so with integrity, I can't worry about what other people think. I can't.

But that doesn't mean I'm gonna go around just doing terrible things because I don't care what you think. As long as I'm convinced that what I do, if I've done that kind of inventory, and I haven't always, but if I do an inventory about, well, what is my intention here?

Is there a hierarchy of pain or hierarchy of trauma? What do you mean by hierarchy? I feel like people feel like, well, this trauma is worse than this trauma, and this trauma is better than this one. We often hear about that as a conversation. Is that accurate? So one could say so,

because if you look at a child who's sexually abused as opposed to a child whose parents just can't honor and accept and validate their emotions. Well, my God, you're talking about two different set of experiences so that there's certainly horrific things happen to some people, to wound them and other people suffer wounds in a very different way.

But the question is, is it useful to make that distinction? It's one thing to recognize it. But let's say, let's say you were my four-year-old. You come to me and you say, that I'm afraid of so-and-so. And I say, snap out of it. Only cards are afraid. And then get out of here and take care of yourself.

And then you went to your mom. And I said, I tried to talk to daddy, but you know, would it be helpful for your mother to say, or snap out of it? Think of all the kids that are being sexually abused. Think of all the starving kids. Think of all the kids that are being bombed. What are you complaining about?

Would that be helpful? No. So that it's not a helpful game to play. I don't compare people's traumas. Trauma simply means a wound and people are wounded in all kinds of ways. When I try to help people the least helpful thing I can do is to tell them that somebody else's trauma is much worse than mine. They're much worse than yours. So objectively, yes

practically, it's not a helpful distinction. People are wounded and you have to tend to the wound whatever it is You know, if you came to me with a cut on your arm and you asked me to stitch it up, it wouldn't be helpful for me to tell you that, oh, what are you worried about? There's people with broken arms out there or people with broken, you know. So no, it's not a helpful thing to engage in, even though there's truth in it. Yeah. What's really fascinating, every time I speak to you, girl boys, that there's such nuance, subtlety,

and there's a quote that I wanna share with you to get your thoughts on, I wanna bring it up here. Yeah. So this quote is from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Okay. Who famously wrote, the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind

at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise. Absolutely. So that's brilliant.

And what Fitzgerald is talking about there is what is called integrative intelligence. And integrative intelligence is when you can say on the one hand, on the other hand, both things can be true. And I need to somehow come to some conclusion about them without rejecting the one truth or the other. Now, little kids are totally incapable of integrative intelligence. So a three-year-old will either say, I hate you daddy or I love you daddy, but they can't say, I love you daddy, but I'm very angry with you, which is really what's going on It's either love or hate so integrative thinking is a capacity of intellectual and actually emotional maturation a lot of people completely incapable of it. It's one or the other you talk about the the deadness of the heart and the moral apathy and

all my life since I've been conscious of the horrors, including in beginning with the Holocaust, that nearly killed me and killed my grandparents, nearly killed my parents and I. When I became conscious of that at age 11, what happened was that my parents had a book on a high shelf they didn't want me to read and when I was 11 I climbed up on a chair and it was a book called the Scourge of the Swastika and it was about it was the first book about the Nancy Horrish and I saw photographs and I read the story and for years GA afterwards literally every day my head would be dizzy I'd spin how is this possible how is our heart not broken every day I'm asking you now

because I I'm wrestling with this question I'm as opposed I have an intellectual answer or more to the point maybe along the lines of which Gell says how can our heart be broken and not be broken at the same time? Because I think both are necessary. And I find everything all across the world that occurs, I feel like people's hearts are broken, but they break and ache for different things. And I think that that's why the words of Fitzgerald resonate so strongly with me. Because just to repeat those last two lines, one should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.

And you know, what you're saying, it's how I was trained in the monastery as well. The goal was always, how can you be a helper? How can you be a server? How can you be useful? How can you help heal? Like that's what you look for in moments of tragedy, whatever they may be. And I just think that not much unites us on the heart level is equals across the world. I don't think there's many things that we look to globally as the human race as we were once

referred to or called to that creates a sense of connectivity. And there's genuine fear that makes us feel, well, if my heart breaks for this, then what if what will happen to my heart? But the grief might be too much to bear? Yeah. Or not that. for this, then what if what will happen to my heart? But the grief might be too much to bear? Yeah, or not that. I mean more so that, well, if my heart breaks for this event, some part of it is, yes, there's too much to think about.

For sure, it's overwhelming. And then the other side is, well, if it breaks for this, then is it allowed to break for that as well? This idea of holding two opposing ideas seems to be such a need in the world, just generally. Even the belief of, I have to work on my health, but I'm happy I'm alive. These are two opposing ideas. We're not looking at it from, I'm unhealthy or I'm healthy well you know what's interesting there is that when I was working palliative care sometimes people would say to me and this is

amazing I don't recommend it but they'd say they'd be dying they actually be dying they'd have a couple of weeks left they say dog I don't explain this exactly but this disease is the best thing that have happened to me. I don't wish it on anybody but what were they talking about? Now there's a guy a quote in the myth of normal who wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor. Blessed with a brain tumor. A young Australian guy who was diagnosed with a brain tumor, did have surgery, did

accept treatment. He also had a spiritual transformation, has lived longer than his prognosis. I don't know what his current status is, but it were a book called Bless With The Brain Tumor. And by the way, he developed a brain tumor, they're exactly the same spot they used to point at, but then imaginary gun to shoot himself in the head when he was thinking of suicide. I said, what do you mean, blessed with the brain tumor? And he said, well, knowing that I'm going to die or that I might means that every moment is precious. He says, that means that when I'm talking to you or anybody else, I'm fully aware that this may be the last conversation we'll ever have.

That means that every moment is absolutely precious. I've never been so engaged with life. And that's what people meant. And so that even the disease that we're going to take their lives, they'd say, and why? Because the disease taught them to be authentic for the first time in their lives and they found out that was much more precious than anything else. No, that's not a bargain I'd recommend to anybody. Totally, yeah. I'm just telling you that I've witnessed it and it's quite astonishing how many

people do find authenticity to go back to our previous theme. They value that over anything else, over even longevity. Now most of us would probably run the other way. Again, I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying, I've seen it. Yeah, but it's always those opposing ideas, that feeling of I'm good and I want to be better. Yeah.

I'm a good husband or a good dad or a good mom or I'm a good whatever at the same time, I'm not good enough. Like, you know, whatever it may be, not that that's negative, but the idea of I know I can do more and I want to do more. So there's such a need for this dichotomy almost to be held. Well, is there? Well, the ability to hold those two opposing ideas is needed, right? Like, because you don't,

I don't wanna live in a world where I think, I'm perfectly healthy, everything's amazing, because then I may miss certain challenges. And I also don't wanna live in the other world of, oh my God, like everything's falling apart and I'm dying every second of the day. Like- But what if we just looked at it in a unitary way?

Then it's a matter of growth. That I'm not as fully grown as I might be. But there's nothing wrong. Yes. Yes. So, I'll be 80. Let me talk about. You said 80.

80, yeah. I know it's a big number. You're doing great. This is amazing. Well, do the numbers. I was born in 44. Yeah, yeah, yeah. forget. Yeah, I forget when I'm with you. Yeah. And with this expression, I've been thinking about this recently, this expression growing older. So we could just say being older or becoming older or getting older, but we say growing older.

Now, that's an interesting phrase, isn't it? Because actually, as we get older, we shrink. Now that's an interesting phrase, isn't it? Because actually as we get older, we shrink. So what are we talking about growing older? Well, because growth, being an emotional and spiritual process, that continues, that can continue forever. So for me, it's not a matter of I'm good, but I can be better.

It's a question of can I continue to grow? Not with this anything wrong now, but can I continue to grow? Which is really the essence of life. As long as there's life, there's growth, isn't there? And the growth may be at some point purely physical. At some point, physically, there might even be contraction, but spiritually and emotionally, they can always be growth. So it's rather than a dichotomy, it's more like a unitary process.

I do appreciate that, I do feel that. You just sparked something for me, you were giving this example, the story just told about how the gentleman, when he thought he was going to commit suicide, he would hold his almost like a gun to his head. And that's the place he developed the trauma. Yeah, the tumor. How does trauma intercept the body in that way? Like this, that feels such like a physical example of that. I can give you other examples.

Yeah. When I was working in palliative care, I was looking after a young woman, she was 38, with ALS, Amatrophic Lactyl Sclerosis, which is a disease in the nervous system. You basically get paralyzed. The muscles that, or the nerves that activate your muscles just die, they harden.

That's what's closest means so they they become rigid and they become unable to move this woman she was a dancer a beautiful woman and we talked a lot in her last weeks she told me that all her, she used to have this dream of being buried alive, boxed in, unable to breathe, unable to move. She was a dancer and she began to notice that on the dance floor, she couldn't execute the movements anymore. Something was wrong.

So she was diagnosed with ALS. And she went to the office of the ALS Society. And on the wall there was a poster that said, having ALS is like being buried alive. The cellist, Jack Dupree was a great classic, British classical cellist, died in her 40s. She was a big international rocket star in the classical music world. She died of MS, multiple sclerosis. She couldn't move anymore. By the time she was in the late 20s, she couldn't play a cello anymore.

When she was eight years old, she said to her sister, Hillary, don't tell her mommy this, but when I go up, I won't be able to move or walk. Now all of these people, these three people, the guy with the brain tumor, the woman with the ALS, Jack and the prey, they've been deeply traumatized and childhood. I'm not going to go into how, but they had been. That woman's dream that she couldn't move or walk was literally an expression of an emotional experience in her family of origin. In her deathbed, nobody came to see her from her family. She was all alone, like she had been all her life. She couldn't be

herself. She couldn't speak or move or get enough air to be herself. So that dream was metaphoric to start with, then became a physical reality. Now, how does the metaphor, how does the emotion, how does the trauma translate into physical reality? That has to do with the scientific little secret. Don't tell any doctors this, because they might not know what to do with it.

But, well, some of them don't. They're not taught in medical school. Mind and body are inseparable. Our emotions, our nervous system, our emotional system in our brains and our bodies, our nervous system, our hormonal apparatus and our immune system are actually one system. All serving survival and growth and reproduction. And so they're not separate. Even to say that they're connected, it's a bit false because it's one.

No, which means that what happens emotionally can have a significant impact on the nervous system, on the gut, on the heart, on the immune system, and on hormones. Just obviously. So without going into the mechanisms of how trauma affects, but trauma can affect genetic functioning, how chromosomes function, trauma can affect our immune system. Actually, for example, a study that I called Women with Severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer according to a Harvard study a few years ago. Well, that means that the severe emotions endured by the woman with PTSD

can declare themselves in a form of malignancy because they affect the immune system and the milder the symptoms the the less the risk of a variant cancer. So mind and body being one unit, obviously our emotional lives and emotional traumas and wounds can't show up in our physiology. Which is why autoimmune diseases are much more common amongst racialized women, both in Canada and the US, because they're hurt a lot more as women and as racialized women both in Canada and the US because they heard a lot more as women and as racialized people so it's just all one thing and Again, is that a new finding or is that something?

Or is that an ancient wisdom? And it's both. It's both modern science not taught in medical schools for reasons that are interesting but rather distressing. And it's ancient wisdom as well. It's all one. And with that approach, I mean, we can't minimize the number of steps and the uniqueness of those, but the hope is that people can work medically and mentally to be able to release that trauma. I have photographs on my on myself on my computer of a woman that I met five years ago. I gave it talk in London on this subject of mind, body, unity and how stress and trauma can lead to autoimmune disease and autoimmune diseases where the immune system attacks the

body itself and this woman sent me photographs a year ago. When I met her, she'd been diagnosed with autoimmune disease called systemic lupus, which has got a typical presentation of what's called a butterfly rash. So her face is red, like here, like the wings of a butterfly with the body of the butterfly as a red rash over and over. It's called a butterfly rash. It's typical of that disease and she sent me a picture of her fingers when

she was diagnosed. They were like yellow as wax because the blood supply had been constricted. She was told that you got this disease. We don't know what causes it. Can't cure it. Probably it'll get worse and you'll be on medication for us to your life. I could say these photographs, you can actually show them because she's given me permission. She sent me a picture a year ago, face totally beautiful, pink as anything, no rash, fingers are as pink as mine and yours. No medication, no treatment. She just dealt with the emotional part of it. All her life she had suppressed herself just along the lines I've been talking about.

She dealt with her trauma. She's become fully authentically and vigorously herself. The disease is gone. Doctors would say, or some doctors say, well, that's just an anecdote. Yeah, it's an anecdote. But it has to be a true anecdote. I pay attention to anecdotes.

Not only that, this has been studied systematically by others. And there are people who once they deal with the emotional side of things and take charge of their lives, they recover from diseases that are supposed to have been hopeless. And if you just look at the example of

Stephen Hawking, the great physicist, who was diagnosed with ALS at age 20, he lived another 55 years. Now the disease progressed, but he outlived his prognosis by a good half a century. Folks, I hate to tell you this, we doctors don't know everything. And especially, we don't fully understand,

I should say, as a profession, the wonders, workings of mind and body and the spirit and how they all interact. So when you look at the indigenous healing practices like the North American natives, they got this medicine wheel, the four quadrants, which is the physical and the mental, which means also the emotional and the social

and the spiritual, and those four quadrants have to be in balance for us to be healthy. Now they didn't have the science we do and they didn't have the amazing achievements of Western medicine which are truly miraculous but they did have a wisdom that if only we adopted and combined it with the incredible achievements of Western medicine boy what a health system we could possibly have. That's definitely And that's definitely the, what you're helping try and build for the future. And all of our platforms are dedicated to that. Hopefully we can get to a place

for that integrative holistic viewpoint. And there are more and more physicians practicing that way. You know, there are people, functional medicine and integrated medicine, not as holistic as I'd like them to be, but far more holistic than mainstream medicine. And these are medically trained physicians like I was. So there's not like some fly by night alternative weirdo or cult. I mean, these are just doctors who like myself at some point came to terms with the limitations of their education and needed to infuse some more ancient wisdom into how they practice

the arts of healing. Yeah, well, I'd love to end with, I'd love to hear from you what your wish, your prayer, your hope, however you'd like to word it for humanity is right now, today, at this time, if there's some words that come from your heart. If we could just wake up to our possibilities. You know the famous story of the Buddha where he's walking along the road and somebody sees him with his radiant face and confident gait and

he says, who are you a god and the bodhisattva is no one awake and if only we could be awake to our possibilities like in every conflict on a deepest human level it's so unnecessary we could actually be a human race together we could be we could be that we don't have to hurt ourselves. We don't have to hurt others. We don't have to take from them, demand from them. We could be. This is actually possible for all of us. And it's possible for all of us as individuals

and for all of us as creatures. Let's just wake up to our possibilities. It's beautiful. Gobo, thank you so much again for your time, your energy, your presence. And everyone who's been listening or watching at home, if you don't already, please do grab a copy of the book, Myth of Normal, because our first and second conversations were very different. And I guide you towards the book for the deeper resources, the step by step guide.

What I try and avoid doing in these interviews is minimizing the amount of work it takes or oversimplifying what Gabor's beautiful work does in his deep books because I believe he and everyone else would want you to take those steps. So I wish you all the best in your journey of trauma, illness and healing. And Gabor, I thank you for your work and your contributions today as well and forever to humanity. Well, it's always so peaceful to be with you and believe me these days I enjoy and always so peaceful. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Matei on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past. Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it? It grows where it's soft and green and vulnerable. The Street Stoic podcast is back. We are combining hip hop lyrics and quotes from some of the

greatest who ever grace a microphone. It's a line from Lauren Hill and she says, don't be a hard rock when you really are again. Along with ancient wisdom from some of the greatest philosophers of all time. Seneca, right? And he says, your mind will take shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impression. Listen to season two of the Street Stoke podcast on the iHeartRainew app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. What happens when the person you idolize turns out to be someone else entirely? And what if you were kidnapped by your own grandparents and left with an endless well of mysteries about yourself and those around you? These are just a few extraordinary puzzles we'll be exploring in our ninth season of Family Secrets. I hope you'll join me and my astonishing guests for this new season of Family Secrets

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.