Podcrushed - Dr. Gabor Maté

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Renowned physician and author Dr. Gabor Mate visits the show this week to share gems about the myth of normal, forming vital intergenerational bonds, and the importance of compassion in healing trauma. Follow us on socials!TwitterInstagramTiktokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonada. Let me ask the three of you, when do you feel more at peace, more yourself, more satisfied when you've done something dishonest, manipulative, greedy, selfish, and aggressive, or when you've been open-hearted, kind, and generous? When do you feel the more at ease in your body? I think the second one. Yeah, that tells you the truth, never mind the studies. Of course, yeah.

Let's just learn to really listen to ourselves. This is Pod Crushed. The podcast that takes the sting out of rejection, one crushing middle school story at a time. And where guests share their teenage memories, both meaningful and mortifying. And we're your hosts. I'm Nava, a former middle school director. I'm Sophie, a former fifth grade teacher. And I'm Penn, a middle school dropout.

You know what I did last night, actually, for the first time ever, is I went on TikTok as a normal as a plebe and I and I was just like let's scroll you know as you do or swipe or scroll I discovered as I was trying to tell Domino my wife something that I didn't know how to say like

somebody you know on Twitter you say somebody tweeted at me or you say in Instagram like somebody added me but I realized that I didn't know how to say it I was like somebody TikTok to me that's not what you say is it tagged you say tagged I think you could say tagged or you know if they

stitched the video or duetid the video. Okay, right. So, but see, this is where I realize I don't even, I still don't. So you are an elder TikToker. Yeah, well, I'm a geriatric, uh, TikToker. There's a scene in Schitt's Creek where the dad, he's like, he can't do anything on social media and he's trying to get his motel on social media. And, uh, he makes these coasters that say, tweet us on Facebook. And that's you right now. Keep, keep trying. All right. Well, let's get to it. Uh, our guest today is Dr. Gabor Mate, the Hungarian-Canadian physician and best-selling author known for his expertise in a range of topics, including childhood development, trauma, addiction, and stress. If you're wondering why you recognize his name, you probably have just seen his name on books,

wherever you get your books. But it might be because he was mentioned in this very show a few episodes ago when our old pal Victoria Padretti just so happened to bring his most recent book, The Myth of Normal with her, to the studio. I remember season three, I think. You were reading a book that has now become very popular by Gabor Matae, who we're actually going to have on the show. No fucking way. Yeah, that's how I thought.

You shut up. Dr. Mata is brilliant, and we're thrilled to have him on the show today. Stick around, and we will be right back. Does anyone else ever get that nagging? feeling that their dog might be bored. And do you also feel like super guilty about it? Well, one way that I combat that feeling is I'm making meal time everything it can be for my little boy, Louie. Nom Nom does this with food that actually engages your pup senses with a mix of tantalizing smells, textures and ingredients. Nom Nom offers six recipes bursting with premium proteins,

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Spelled try n-o-m.com slash podcrushed. Hey, it's Lena Waith. Legacy Talk is my love letter to black storytellers, artists who've changed the game and paved the way for so many of us. This season, I'm sitting down with icons like Felicia Rashad, the Reddy Devine, Ava Du René, and more. We're talking about their journeys, their creative process, and the legacies they're building every single day. Come be a part of the conversation. Season two drops July 29. Listen to Legacy Talk wherever you get your podcast or watch us on YouTube. It is a real honor to have you here on Pod Crush. my wife and I have repeatedly used your book

Hold On to Your Kids as a touchstone for encouragement in our parenting because it's a world that makes parenting really difficult and I think all three of us here have been especially moved reading The Myth of Normal partly because I think it speaks to the deepest heart and soul of why we keep making this show in some ways we live in an age that that often confuses human nature with human culture

and adolescence or middle school is the first time we are introduced to the world and finally able to express our nature but we're subject to our culture so we're coming of age as protagonists in our own right something much closer to the adults we will be for the rest of our lives and in addition to the beauty that is coming of age

it's when we start to feel the full effects of our culture and its toxicities like without the protection of our parents that many had you know as children um some don't but of course many do and it's a time that's often characterized as uniquely traumatizing this this this period of coming of age so already i've mentioned two words that you as my understanding you begin the myth of normal by by redefining or defining in a way that makes both these words scientifically and spiritually resonant and that's toxic or toxicity and trauma so So I think maybe we could just start by, maybe even just with trauma.

How would you define trauma? So the problem with the word is, is that it has deep meaning, but the way it's used these days, it often makes it almost meaningless. People say things like, you know, I went to this movie last night and I was traumatized. No, you weren't. You just were upset. Or we had a picnic and it rained and it was traumatic. No, it wasn't.

It was just disappointing. So not every stress, not every difficult experience is traumatizing. Trauma is when you're wounded. Trauma actually means wound. That's the word origin from the Greek. And so trauma is where we're wounded by some life experience in a way that the wound then affects us going forward. So trauma is not actually what happens to us as such. So trauma is not that somebody bullied you or that you lost somebody very close to you

or that you were abused you went through a war those aren't the traumas those are traumatic those are what caused the trauma but the trauma is actually the wound that you sustain inside

that psychological wound that then affects you for the rest of your life so if you bullied a lot you will have a sense of yourself as weak and not worthy to be accepted by others

and not belonging the wound is not to bully the bullying, the wound is the belief that you have about yourself as a result. And that belief that I'm not worthy or that I don't belong or that I'm weak, that's going to affect you. Going forward, it's going to limit your capacities. It's going to constrain who you are in the world until you work fit through, until you actually get that you were wounded and this wound can heal.

It's going to constrain, you limit you, it's going to disconnect you from you. your true self. So trauma really is a disconnection because when you believe, you disconnect from your strength, your sense of power, your sense of belonging. Strength and power and sense of belonging are a natural part of who you are as a creature, as a human being. When you disconnect from that, you're traumatized. So trauma is a psychological wound that affects you for a long time afterwards what it seems like you've done in recent relatively recent i don't know that you've done this throughout your entire career you know at least in this later stage writing so many books and stuff but you talk a lot about your own trauma now at this point could you share about your early life

as a baby in nazi occupied hungry and and then i think specifically how you found this your mother's diary later in life which then confirmed and it sounds like magnified your work i'm just kind of interested in that yeah so the reason i do that is not because I want to keep talking about myself, but because people have such a hard time talking about these things. So that when I, as a physician, as an author, I talk about my own trauma. It's only to say to people, look, nothing to be ashamed of. These are experiences in one way another that we all go through, and the more open we are and the more clear we are, the more honest we are about them, the more we can help ourselves and other people. So that's why I talk about it. So in terms of my own

experience, which stamped much of the way that I functioned throughout my life, is that born in 70, nine years ago now almost, in Budapest Hungary in January 44, to Jewish parents, two months before the Nazis occupy Hungary, and the Germans by that time had massacred, exterminated much of the population of Eastern Europe and Slovakia, in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, and Germany, of course, and so on. Hungary is not occupied and it's now it's our turn. And in the space of three months, from the time I was two months of age,

to the time I was five months of age, they managed to kill half a million Jews, including my grandparents. And my mother and I were under constant threat ourselves of falling victim to that genocide. And you can imagine the stress and terror and grief and just misery that my mother, my father being away in forced labor was experiencing and so that as much as she loved me what

I was experiencing was a very stressed and fearful and paralyzed mother and infants download the emotions of their parents they can't help it not because the parents want them to just because they do so I downloaded those fears and a doctor who saw me when I was was a year old said that she had never seen such fear in the eyes of the human being as she saw in my and sending four years later at a shamanic retreat in Peru these shamans who knew nothing about my history didn't know who I was you know what were I'd been who what work did I didn't know world what work did I perform where I came from they looked at me during a ceremony and they And they said, we believe you had a big fear early in your life and you never got over here.

Wow. So that's what happened. And then when I was 11 months old, my mother, to save my life, handed me to a total stranger. And I didn't see her for five or six weeks. And when I did, I wouldn't even look at her because that's how baby functions is that rather being happy to see the mother, the baby is so hurt. basically the organism says to itself, I was so hurt when you abandoned me

that I'll never make myself so vulnerable again, which means that decades later when I'm married and I'm ever hurt or disappointed in my marriage partner, my wife, my immediate and automatic and default reaction is to withdraw and not even to look at her and just to close down. And that's pure defense against the hurt.

But that means that the loan that I sustained as a one-year-old now shows up decades later in my marriage and creates more problems. Because, of course, when I close down and withdraw, she gets more anxious. And, you know, so this is how it works. So the reason I do talk about my own history is just to show people how these early experiences can show up later on in life, not to anybody's fault, but because that's just how it is. And the more we can understand it, the more we can resolve it and heal it. I actually, Cabor, this morning got into a heated discussion with my family before, because they knew I was coming here. Everyone in the family was getting involved and we were discussing trauma and how this

word is thrown around. Yes. And I had one family member who was getting really upset at the use of the word trauma. I was saying I feel that everybody has experienced some trauma. everybody has sustained some wounds from, from childhood, from things that have been said to them. And she said, maybe, maybe I've experienced some trauma, but I would never speak about it. I would never even say that when there are other people who have suffered far greater than I have. And I'm wondering about that, I know in your book you talk about big T trauma and small T trauma,

and you do address that those two types of trauma can affect people in very different ways. But I wonder what you think about that, that sort of mindset. Like I can't even claim that I have some trauma because there are other people who have far greater trauma. So that person who said that is a certain understanding of trauma, which has to be big disastrous events. But I just said that's not what trauma is. Trauma is the wound that we sustain. That's the first point. Okay.

The second point is that person is expressing their own trauma through that particular statement. Because here's what I would ask them. Is there a gender pronoun I can use for that person? Yeah, you can say she. She, okay. If I was talking to her, I would ask her this. If a child came to her and said, I'm hurting, you know, I have pain, I'm wounded. Would you say to that child, oh, well, come on.

Think of all the people that are, all the children that are starving. Think of all the children that are being abused. Nothing that is happening to you. You're not being hurt. would she say that to the child? My guess is she would never do that because she's too compassionate but she's saying it to herself

which means that she's being compassionate to others but not to herself. That lack of self-compassion is a sign of trauma. Number one. Number two, did you say she was getting upset about it? Yeah. Ding, ding, ding.

If she's getting upset about it is because she's being triggered by something When you say, I'm saying somebody's being triggered, that means they carry some explosive charge inside themselves. The third T word. Yeah. So otherwise, she would disagree with you, but she wouldn't be upset. So the sign of upset itself is a sign of some trauma that she hasn't resolved yet. So I say she's denying her own pain by comparing herself to other people.

That's the sign of trauma. when you asked if she got upset I said yes because she did but I also got upset so I was thinking well what was it in my experience that made me feel upset well what kind of trauma of mine

was being triggered and I think it's that I've experienced some pain that hasn't been acknowledged and so when she is bringing up okay Sophie let me ask you what were you upset about I was upset that she would think that there's some trauma that is too small

to be heard by She said that, but what about that upset you? Well, she mentioned, you know, a breakup as an example. She said, that's not a big enough trauma to be upset about. And I think I took that personally because I do feel traumatized by at least one of my, at least one of my breakups. Well, first of all, traumatized is not a feeling. It's an opinion, okay? Feelings are I'm tired.

I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm angry. Those are feelings. But what is it about what she said? that made you upset. I get that you're upset, but I'm still asking you to define,

what is it about she said that upset you? You could have just disagreed. What were you feeling? So when inside the upset, what were your emotions? Because upset is just the word. What are the emotions you were having when she said that? I'm not sure. I think I felt.

I don't know, work this through with you. Do you want to work on this a bit? Sure, sure. I like this. Oh, yeah, I'm sweating. Cut it out and feel like we have to, But I don't want to impose a conversation on you. Are you open to the conversation?

I am. Yeah, I'm open to it. Okay, now, you said I felt I was wrong. Wrong? Is that what you said? Yeah. Okay, now, I'm wrong. It's not a feeling.

Feelings are, I'm tired, I'm sad, I'm hungry, I'm angry. I'm hungry. I'm angry. Those are feelings. I am wrong. It's not a feeling. It's an opinion. So I guess I felt angry.

Ah, you felt angry. By the way, you're not only angry. you're probably also hurt. Would that be accurate? Yeah. My sense is you perceived her as saying that your pain is not valid, it's not important. Yes, exactly. There's two things here.

That could be one reason that she said what she said. She's actually saying your pain is not valid, it's not important. Is that the only reason she might have said what she said? Are there any of the reasons where she might have said? I think there are plenty of other reasons why she might have said what she said. I think she does believe what she said, which is that her pain isn't as important. Yeah. In other words, she might not have been talking about you at all, right?

Yeah, she wasn't. I think she wasn't. Okay, notice what happened. You weren't upset by what happened. And the reason I'm doing this, because this is true for me, for Nava, for Penn, for everybody. She said what she said, and you got hurt and angry. But you didn't get hurt and angry by what she said. you got hurt and angry by your interpretation of what she said

which is that she's dismissing your experience so notice that of all the possibilities of explaining why she said what she said you chose the worst possible one okay that's the first point the second point is you didn't choose it it wasn't conscious mind automatically went there right it's not that you considered oh what did she say this she said this because she was talking about herself or she was giving a general opinion or no she was dismissing my experience it's not that you actually analyzed it and came to a choice it's that your mind automatically

went there right so why does and this is not about you this is about all of us why does her mind do that here's what i would ask you this sense of your pain not being seen and understood and validated How news is that for you? It goes way back. That's the trauma. Yeah. So something that happened much earlier in your life is not making upset in the present moment. That's the wound in this case that hasn't healed yet.

And then this poor person says what they say and all of a sudden, you know, you feel heard and angry about them and so on. What they said was only a reminder of the pain that you have. or not being seen and validated and heard. And that goes back to when you were very small. Because children have a need to be seen and heard and validated exactly the way they are, no matter what they're feeling. So this is where the small deed trauma comes in. Trauma doesn't have to be big, huge events.

Just a child not being seen, heard, and understood. That can be wounding to the child. That's the whole point. Okay, but thanks for participating in that. Thank you. I mean, it's hard. It's hard to label feet. feelings. It's hard to not, you know, jump five steps ahead and try to answer in the way that I think is

right. But thank you for doing that. That was helpful. Sophie, you've talked a lot about getting your husband, David, into therapy. I think, are you in a therapeutic program? Is that maybe what's emerging here? Yeah, you have recently started going to therapy. Okay, good, good, good. We'll get Nava in right behind you. We'll check in for season two. And we'll be right back. all right so um let's just let's just let's just real talk as they say for a second that's a little bit of an aged thing to say now that that that dates me doesn't it um but no real talk uh how important is your health to you know on like a one to 10 and i don't mean the in the sense of vanity i mean in the sense of like you want your day to go well right you want to be less stressed you don't want it as sick when you have responsibilities um i know myself i'm a householder i have uh i have two children and two more on the way a spouse a pet you know a job that sometimes has its demands so i really want to feel like when i'm not getting the sleep and i'm not getting nutrition when my eating's

down i want to know that i'm that i'm being held down some other way physically you know my family holds me down emotionally spiritually but i need something to hold me down physically right and so honestly i turned to symbiotica these these these these vitamins and these beautiful little packets that they taste delicious and I'm telling you even before I started doing ads for these guys it was a product that I I really really liked and enjoyed and could see the differences with the three that I use I use I use the what is it called liposomal vitamin C and it tastes delicious like really really good comes out in the packet you put it right in your mouth some people don't do that I do it I think it tastes great I use the liposomal glutathione as well in the

morning, really good for gut health. And although I don't need it, you know, anti-aging. And then I also use the magnesium L3 and 8, which is really good for, for, I think, mood and stress. I sometimes use it in the morning, sometimes use it at night. All three of these things taste incredible. Honestly, you don't even need to mix it with water. And yeah, I just couldn't recommend them highly enough. If you want to try them out, go to symbiotica.com slash podcrush for 20% off plus free shipping. That's Symbiotica. dot com slash podcrushed for 20% off plus free shipping. The first few weeks of school are in the books, and now's the time to keep that momentum going.

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and claim you're 50% off today. Don't miss out. Go to rosettastone.com slash podcrush and start learning today. Cabor, in your book, The Myth of Normal, you quote a psychiatrist, Van der Kolk, who says that all trauma is preverbal. And we had another therapist on the show who said, yeah, the earlier the experience,

the more impactful it is on your life. And that makes me wonder, you have access to your mother's journal which can give you some insight into those really early experiences. For people who might not have something like that, a tool like that, are there other ways to be able to access those memories or to understand those traumas? Yes, you and I have already done that. That's true.

I just rewind in about 10 minutes. I didn't ask you anything about what happened to you. I don't know your family history or your parents. but when we examined what got you upset we realized that it was an old wound of not being seen and heard and validated. So, in a sense, your reaction

to that person who said what they said was your memory. It's not a recollection. I don't recollect being given to my mother as a stranger. But the memory, the emotional memory, which is called implicit memory, which is not verbal,

and it's not episodic. Like I don't recall the episode because of one year of age that kind of memory doesn't even exist yet but the emotional memory gets stamped in your body and your nervous system and your brain

and so when you reacted with hurt and anger to that statement that was your memory that's called implicit memory so it's not that difficult for me to talk to somebody for a few minutes and hone in and right

exactly on what their wound was there's something that the two of you were just touching on i i went back into your into your book here and i'm looking at a quote so you you quote um psychologist rolo may and uh they say human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and in that pause to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight i kind of thought that was like one of the most profound things I can recall hearing because it sort of describes the one reason we have human will like freedom of will like there's almost nothing that we have control over we don't have control over how we feel actually we certainly don't have the ability to control the way other people

feel let alone what they do yeah so we only have in a way this freedom which is the capacity to pause between stimulus and response so i i love that and then you say a sentence later trauma robs us of that freedom so what is the process then what is what is a person doing when they are regaining that freedom or becoming free of trauma yeah so let's say person a says something and person b experiences anger and hurt okay when there's trauma there there's no pause between the stimulus which is the whatever person's a says and persons B reaction

if there's pause then impersonate says whatever they say doesn't matter outrageous or ridiculous or wrong it even may be there's some people notice oh

when they say that I have certain emotions that are rising I wonder what that's about I'm curious about I don't have to react with hostility or hurt. I can actually just pause and, oh, maybe they're not saying it to hurt me at all.

Maybe they're just saying it because that's what they believe. Maybe they're saying it because something in their life made them blind to something in themselves. That's a long process, but really the pause is only to notice my automatic reaction and not to be carried away by it. Trauma takes that away. I was just wondering that, let's say we have like a few 13-year-olds who are listening and they're going through something really challenging right now.

Are there steps that you can take, especially at kind of this earlier stage of life, that can allow that not to, like, crystallize into a trauma response? Yeah. Well, first of all I would say, don't make yourself wrong for what you're feeling. Don't tell you some stories that I shouldn't feel this way. You do feel that way.

And telling somebody not to feel the way they're feeling is to further hurt them. So don't hurt yourself, number one. Number two, be curious about why you feel that way. Not why am I feeling this way, but why am I fearing this way? So have some curiosity towards yourself. Number three, is there somebody in your life with whom you can discuss this? Probably not your parents. Well, if it's your parents, you're very fortunate and then do it.

But very often 13 years don't feel that safe with their parents. So unfortunately in this culture, that's just the reality of this culture we can talk about, why not? But they don't. Well, is there somebody in your life? Somebody who's mature enough to hear you and understand you. Is there an aunt, an uncle, a teacher, a counselor, anybody that you could speak to, don't make it personal, don't make yourself wrong for it. And don't try to carry the burden by yourself if you can possibly have it. Ask for help.

And then furthermore, get it out of yourself, journal. Do some art, express it somehow. But bring it out of yourself. So that's my advice. Thank you. I would love to talk about your thoughts on why in this culture 13-year-olds don't feel like they can talk to their parents. So to look at that, we have to understand how human beings evolved.

Our own species, Homo sapiens, has been around for 150,000,000 years. for most of that time until very recently we lived in small band hunter-gatherer groups 60 or 80 people who lived together and so on

the children were always with the adults there was no separation there were the parents the whole day not just their own parents but other adults who also acted like parents

indigenous groups before their culture was destroyed by colonialism were like that very communal kids were not hit and kids were not left to cry on their own. As soon as they were upset, they were picked up.

That connection of being held and heard and seen. That's what gives you the safety. Now, in our society, that communal grouping has been eroded, even the extended family. It hardly even exists anymore. People live far away from their grandparents and grandmothers, even in healthy families, you know? Number one.

Number two, their parents are very stressed and they're not emotionally present for their children. I wasn't, you know, I was a workaholic stressed physician. When parents are stressed, they cannot be as attuned as connected with the emotions of their children as they need to be. Not because they don't want to be, not because they don't love their kids.

They just can't be. And, you know, next, it's totally unnatural, but it's the way it is today. that most parents don't see most of their kids most of the day. Yes. They're strangers. You know, that's the next point. Another point which is very important is that the human brain requires,

demands, craves connection with somebody. That's called attachment. It means being close to somebody emotionally. We all need that. Now, when the parents are not around, his will connect to whoever is around. You don't want a duckling hatches from the egg and looks at the mother duck,

you know what that process is called? Imprinting. Imprinting, yeah, imprinting. You're right. It's imprinting. And imprinting means that the duckling says to himself, oh, this is the creature who's going to protect and nurture me, who's going to be my guide, and she's going to feed me,

take care of me, until I become an adult. That's called imprinting. What happens to a duckling when the mother's going to, the duck is not around when he hatches from an egg, who does it imprint on, do you know? I don't know. Anything that moves. That could be a dog or a horse or a mechanical toy.

But not the horse, not the dog, nor the toy are designed by nature to nurture that little duck link to adulthood. Now, our children, human children are the same. They need to connect with somebody for the sake of being protected and nurtured, but when the parents are not around, And there's a void there, there's an emptiness, the kid will connect to whoever's around, just like the duckling.

Now for most of our kids, most of the time who's around are other children. So kids become way too early connected to other kids. And when they do, that loosens the attachment to the parents. I'm not saying they shouldn't have friends, but the primary attachments should be to nurturing adults. When the primary attachment becomes to other kids, all of a sudden immature creatures are influencing each other.

And immature creatures cannot possibly guide each other towards maturity. Not because they don't want to, not because they're bad. They don't know how. They just can't. It's not their job. It's not the nature given job. In this culture, too many kids lose the connection with their parents too early. They connect instead with the peer group.

And then you get the addiction to the cell phone and Facebook, where you're always trying to connect with your peers. and you're desperate when you're not connected, and then you've lost the connection to the adults. When the adults lose the connection to their kids, the kids are going to be more resistant, less obedient, and their parents get upset. They try to become authoritarian and use force and coercion and punishment,

which makes the kids even more unsafe, and they disconnect even more. So by the time most of our kids in our culture become adolescents, they're profoundly not connected to the adults anymore, the way they need to be. Whereas in traditional cultures, what would happen is there'd be initiation ceremonies led by adults where kids were initiated into the adult culture,

such as the Jewish Phramitva, such as the Catholic confirmation, such as the initiation ceremonies, wilderness quests, spirit quests of indigenous cultures. Today, our kids are initiated into behaviors via our peer groups, And that means that very immature pop culture figures who are themselves very immature human beings. They have millions and hundreds of millions of followers.

I know. Like I'm trying not to look at Penn right now. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You actually don't know who I am, which is crazy. Immature people are now influencing other immature people. And that's the nature of our culture. That's so profound. Thank you. Yes, it was. Yes, it was.

And so thank you for that question now. And thank you for your answer. there's so many places to go with that but like what right now just right now for you gives you hope the three of us as as co-hosts we're we're very spiritual people so we have a lens that gives us faith and hope in humanity but but it but it doesn't resist the notion that the immediate future is quite dark and foreboding what gives you hope right now and what can you offer others in that sense so hope is not a word i often use um okay what do you use and i'll tell you why not because nothing wrong with the word but it refers to

the wish that something will happen in the future okay so i'm wondering what's happening now i'm interested what's happening now yeah what are the and what are the possibilities now so if you ask me what gives me a sense of possibility uh amongst other things it's young people like yourself asking the questions that you're asking it means that you're trying to understand something about the world and about the nature of your spiritual connection to the world and and and and human nature and the nature of our culture that gives me a sense of possibility and not only because you know only you don't just stand in for the three of yourselves you also stand in for many thousands of listeners who are also

to understand these questions otherwise they wouldn't be listening to you so that human curiosity that willingness to to transform that that courage to investigate the status quo. That's what gives me a sense of possibility. Can I say kind of in that context, what you just shared about kind of what we've lost in terms of a connection to our children.

So I have a 13-year-old and a 2-5-year-old. My toddler, we're really raising kind of doing everything we possibly can to sort of, it's kind of tragic, but it's like to falsely create or to forcibly create the environment you just described that we've sort of lost. We are doing everything we can to have that attachment.

I will tell you it is profoundly exhausting. It is unnaturally exhausting in our culture because of that lack of connection with others who have the same outlook. And what's so criminal is that there are so many people who by a function of their job, of their livelihood, don't see a way to spend this much time with their children. And as extreme as my job, as it points,

it does give me time to be with my children and we're doing everything we can. But I'm just kind of like amening what you said and even just, I don't know, maybe, I don't know how many parents are listening to this, but it's just to try and do some measure of what you described is so hard. Not only is it hard

It goes against the grain of this culture Right, you're met with nothing but resistance Because the culture tells you to get you get a cell phone Or iPad at age one or two The culture tells you to organize a lot of play dates for your kids You know, when actually what they need is adult contact The culture tells you to

Not to pick up your kid when they're crying So you won't spoil them The culture will tell you to punish your kid if they get upset and they acted out. So there's so many ways in which the culture, not only does the culture not support you, it actually subverts you as you

raise. It judges you intensely. Exactly. So it's very difficult. It's doable, but it takes a lot of conviction, a lot of commitment. And then immense sleep deprivation. And sleep, yeah, all that. Absolutely. I mean, when I became

a parent, I began to wonder, what the hell did I do with all the time I used to that. Yeah, I know. I think that all the time, all the time. I'm like, oh. Gabor, I want to take a bit of a, a bit of a left turn. I heard you say in a different conversation that you, because of this experience that your family has had, that one of the driving questions of your life has really been, why do

people suffer and why do people enjoy making other people suffer? And I just want to know what you've learned about that or what is. insights you've gleaned on both fronts because, of course, we all suffer and we all make other people suffer to some extent. So the reason I create suffering for myself is because I'm trying to run away from some pain that I don't know how to face. So I mentioned that I was a workaholic doctor. If I'm a workaholic doctor, I'm going to create suffering for myself and my children.

But that's because I didn't even know the pain that I was carrying of believing that I wasn't lovable and important. now I can prove that I'm lovable and important by being such this fine doctor to avail to everybody else so I'm running away, run away from the pain of this emotional loss and I create more pain

by running away from it so part of the reason we create pain for ourselves we're afraid to face the pain that's underneath it we don't even sometimes realize the pain is there why we create suffering for other people it's the same thing we're trying to run away from our own pain so I'm trying to make myself

say the bully the bully feels like a completely unimportant person why do you get important by making somebody else suffer and now you become the big person the strong one the powerful one why because you fundamentally

don't perceive yourself as powerful at all so you're imposing your lack of power on somebody else by being a bully to them is your way of compensating for your own pain so basically we create suffering for ourselves then for others out of pain that we haven't realized and haven't resolved and are afraid to face and if you look at for example violent criminals in every case there are severely abused traumatized children I'm not giving you that as an excuse. I'm just saying that's the reality of it. So

pain begets pain and you know the saying that's become almost like a cliche hurt people, hurt people. That's what happens. Every pain I've caused anybody else has always come out of the pain that I hadn't looked at for myself.

That doesn't mean I don't have a responsibility. I do have the responsibility to look at that pain and to deal with it. once I realize it. But most pain is generated unconsciously. Cabor, we are here partially to talk about your book, Myth of Normal. You say in the book that, I'm going to quote it,

you said, those features of daily life that appear to us now as normal are the ones crying out the loudest for our scrutiny. And I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit and maybe share what is the myth of normal. We kind of talked about it just now when we were talking about raising children, but if you could share any more. Sure. So in medical language, when I say something is normal, I mean that it's healthy and natural. So the normal, the example I always give is there's a normal range of temperature, body temperature, below which our health and life is threatened, above which your health and life are threatened.

But within that normal range, it's healthy and natural. natural. So normal means healthy and natural. Now we make the mistake of thinking that what we used to in this society, what seems to be the norm, is also healthy and natural. For example, it used to be the norm to hit kids, to spank them. Well, actually hitting kids is traumatic for a child. It has been shown by many studies. But it used to be the norm. But because everybody does it. Nobody notices that there's anything wrong with it. Or telling your parents not to pick up their crying child. That's very normal in this society. It's completely unhealthy and unnatural. As you're talking, I'm like, well, where can people go for good, reliable information then?

You know, is it our instincts? Is what we should do? Just, you know, read what we can and then rely on our instincts because I feel that there's studies to back up every, every opinion, right? There will be studies to back up the benefits of co-sleeping. There will be studies to back up the benefits of not the cried out method, but, you know, some version of that. Well, there's a better test than that. Okay. Ask any parent who's been told not to pick up their kids when they're crying, how do you feel

when you're not picking up your kid? Forget the studies. how do you feel you like you ache most friends will say my heart is breaking listen to your gut feelings one of the problems

in modern society is we've kind of talked people out of their own gut feelings because it's so disconnected from our nature so learn to listen to yourself never mind the studies I like that

can we just go a little bit more into that Because, you know, again, this is something that maybe we as people have explored personally, but like I'm thinking of our listeners, what can you maybe just unpack that or define that? What is it? Well, let's take another example then, just to make it perhaps a bit more clear. So we're told in this culture that human beings are by nature, selfish, grasping, greedy, individualistic, aggressive, and competitive. That's human nature.

Now, and when somebody does something, selfish or aggressive. What do we say? We say, oh, that's just human nature. When somebody does something kind and generous, do we say, oh, that's just human nature? We don't say that.

So we'll make a certain assumption. But let's test that on in reality. Let me ask the three of you. When do you feel more at peace, more yourself, more satisfied when you've done something dishonest, manipulative, greedy, selfish, and aggressive,

or when you've been open-hearted, kind, and generous? When do you feel the more it is in your body? I think the second one. Yeah. That tells you the truth. Never mind the studies. Of course, yeah. Let's just learn to really listen to ourselves.

Yeah. It's so true. And I think, you know, if it were human nature to be selfish and greedy, when someone else were selfish and greedy towards us, it wouldn't feel that bad. Like, the thing that feels good is, when someone is kind and you feel good, the other person feels good, so isn't that human nature to receive

and give back the thing that makes you feel good? Exactly. In fact, it feels to me like this assumption that we've made culturally is a reflection of how immature our culture is. Like earlier you were saying that in a way, it seems like we're letting the young raise the young and the blindly, like I'm generalizing kind of,

but I'm just connecting dots here. Don't forget pop stars ruining. That's right, pop stars ruining. let's just collapse the podcast now it's but no this this assumption that is so categorically made i i think in our in our culture like it seems like the most intelligent and mature assumption to make is that human beings tend towards selfishness and greed and sort of bloodlust but well that's you know it's perfectly true to say that intellectually and scientifically technologically reform and mature than we are

emotionally and spiritually. That's totally true. And somebody once said that basically when it comes to emotions we're like genius reptiles, you know? And there's a lot of truth

and that. But it's not exactly accidental because it does reflect the dominant interest. During COVID, the world's 30 billionaires gained multiple billions of dollars while everybody else lost.

So in other words, the system isn't totally just an accident. It serves some interests. You know, Elon Musk got a whole lot richer during COVID, not because he was any smarter or any more deserving, but just the nature of the system rewards those in power and those who are controlled the levers. So that, yes, that keeps us emotionally immature and spiritually backward, but it's not purely accidental either.

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of your rich having gone through what you and your close family members have gone through like what was your relationship to to your jewish identity how and when was it always spiritual and like how do you relate to that now to your sense of spiritual identity well so in terms of religion, I never, I never believed in God. I was too bright for that. Because when they said God is all knowing, all powerful, and all good, I said, oh yeah, then how come Oschwitz? If he's all good, how could he let's happen? If he's all powerful, why don't you stop it? If he knows everything, how come he, you know, this could have happened. So the idea of God that I was kind of sold, I knew better than to believe in.

But I was very angry when people talked about God. Now, why was there angry? You know what? Because I really wanted to believe in something greater than myself. And they gave me something that I could believe in. That's why I was so angry. Retrospectively, I didn't know it then, but I know it now. Not only didn't I believe, I was even angry at the idea of God.

Because I really wanted it to be true and couldn't, you know. As for Jewish identity, the American black psychologist Ken Hardy, Dr. Ken Hardy, whom I quote in the book, he talks about the assaulted sense of self is when the racialized person takes them a negative view of him or her or they that the racist has. So in Hungary, it was a shame to be Jewish. I was ashamed of being Jewish. You know, I grew up with a sense of shame around it. Because, you know, my nose looked different and I had a different religion and I didn't sell great christmas so that made me different and and deficient and inferior it wasn't true but that's

i took on this assaulted sense of self like when malcolm x talks about him desperately trying to make his curly hair straight because there's something wrong with the black curly hair no his hair his hair was red anyway but there was something wrong with the curliness of his hair he's talking about a self-rejection so racialized people often develop up the sense of self-rejection. I had to go out of that. I did, and I have. You know, at the same time, as I get older, I have more of a sense of spirituality in the sense of, we're not just our little evos, we're not just the little bodies. We do belong in that part and parcel of something much greater, and that's something greater has been recognized by Moses and Jesus and

Muhammad and Buddha and all kinds of Hindu avatars and saints and teachers and monks and individuals and ordinary people that were not just isolated little selves. I get more and more a sense of that. Nature, of course, is a huge context and we're part of nature and nature is a part of us. I'm beginning to realize that more and more as I get older. I wouldn't say that I have any kind of a discipline and spiritual practice. I'm just not disciplined enough for that. or at least maybe so far I haven't been. But there's this glimmerings of understanding and even knowledge on a certain level, but not yet the embodied experience of this wholeness, this oneness,

that spirituality uncovered and reveal. So I have another revelation yet put it that way. I know people who have. I totally believe them. I have glimpses, but I don't describe myself as any kind of spiritual expert or teacher or even a very advanced spiritual student. I don't. You speak a lot about indigenous cultures, and you seem to have practiced a lot with them

in various ways, sort of rituals and ceremonies. What do you feel is being tapped into there in a unique way? Well, I've been in ceremony with indigenous people here in Canada more than once. In fact, just two weeks ago, I was in a sweat lodge with them. Quite the amazing experience. Now, they have never lost that connection to nature. For all their suffering and the colonists, oppression, genocide that they've experienced, and all of racism that they continue to endure,

they've never lost that connection to the land, to nature, to the sun, the moon, the sky, and the stars, to every blade of grass. It's quite remarkable to be with them to witness that connection. in the sweat lodge when they bring in the rocks the hot rocks so much they pour the water that generates steam

they say you're bringing in the grandfathers the rocks are their grandfathers and it's true we came from the earth didn't we you know

from the point of view of science so being with them is very inspiring for me you're famous You're famous for saying that time does not heal all wounds, and I want to know, does anything heal wounds?

Well, I may be famous for saying it, but it didn't originate with me. Time by itself, the passage of time by itself doesn't heal, you can actually make things worse. It depends on circumstances. What heals wounds is compassion from other people and any compassion that we can generate for ourselves so that we can look at ourselves not to judge ourselves to make ourselves wrong to blame ourselves or to other people but to just to be curious I have this method called compassionate inquiry that I talk about in the book it's also a modality that I teach to others and the whole idea is to be really curious what's going on here and to be curious not like an inquisitor or investigative detector or prosecutor why did you do this and why do you think think you did this or what was that coming from what was causing it so i think what heals is compassion not time not by itself no it takes time but not in a passive sense but in an active sense beautiful if you could go back to your 12-year-old self if you could say anything what

What would you say? Well, I don't know that who I was as the 12-year-old would even understand what I would say to him at that age. But actually, interesting, you should pick that age because I was 12 years old when a Hungarian revolution broke out and we became refugees. And I was 13 and I arrived in North America. And that was tough on my parents because all of a sudden they had to make a living in a new language. So the family structure became re-elucent. And just when I most needed parental guidance and parental connection, they were just too busy and too stressed trying to make a life

in a different language, a different culture, a different economy, you know? So I really was bereft at that time. So you know what I would say to my 12-year-olds? I'd say, I don't want to scare you, I would say to him, but you're going to suffer a lot. I have a lot of pain yet. They don't even realize yet. But trust that inside you there's a wisdom, there's a healing capacity, there's a courage that are going to be there for you when you need them.

And that through your suffering, you're going to learn a lot. And through that learning, you'll be empowered to help other people. So believe in yourself and keep on going no matter how hard it is. That's what I would say to myself. Well, thanks to all three. It's been a great pleasure to spend time with you. Take care. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Today's listener's admitted story is about something very nearly traumatizing that happens to a young girl. It's called Nearly Taken.

All right, summer of 2009. I'm 12 years old about to start middle school in my hometown of Westchester, Pennsylvania. I spent most of that summer with my eight-year-old neighbor. Lily, who lived across the cul-de-sac from me, Lily and I both had blonde hair, and we liked to wear matching dresses. So one day, it was a hot summer day, Lily and I were playing in our cul-de-sac both dressed in floral prints.

A really old car drove up. I remember it vividly, the kind I'd only seen in movies until then. It was a goldish color, like unpolished jewelry. I stood there and watched as the car pulled up. I thought to myself, they must be turning around since our street is a dead end. And I still remember the squeaking of the brakes.

as the car stopped in front of us, and the window rolled down. I stood on my tippy toes, peering in, an old lady smiled back at me. She looked weird, though. I remember thinking she didn't look how my grandma did. She had nice teeth, and her hands weren't very wrinkled, and her face looked plastic. Now, I should say I also distinctly remember her entering the street from the left side of our cul-de-sac where there happens to be a big grocery store,

fittingly called Giant. You cannot miss it if you are coming from that side of the road. Okay, so I said very shyly, Hello. Then she said to me, do you know where the closest grocery store is?

She didn't sound like an old lady at all. Down the street and to the left, I replied. I'm not from around here. Can you get in and show me? I'll bring you right back. I grabbed Lily's arm. and said, I'm sorry, my mom is expecting us for lunch and ran back home as fast as I could, dragging Lily with me. I peered through our front porch window to see if the old lady was still

there or if she had already left, and I realized I was shaking, so hard. And Lily was just confused. She was too young to understand what was happening. I don't know why, but I didn't tell my mom what happened until years later when I was in college and Lily had moved away. To this day, I'm not sure who that was, but I think it was a man in disguise. I think Lily and I almost got kidnapped. You can pick up Gabour Matte's new book, The Myth of Normal,

anywhere you can find books, and you can follow him on Instagram at Gabormate MD, and on Twitter, Dr. Gabramate. Pod Crushed is hosted by Penn Badgeley, Navacavalin, and Sophie Ansari. Our executive producer is Nora Richie from Stitcher, Our lead producer editor and composer is David Ansari.

Our secondary editor is Sharaff and Twistle. This podcast is a 9th mode production. Be sure to subscribe to Podcrush. You can find us on Stitcher, the Serious XM app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. If you'd like to submit a middle school story, go to podcrush.com and give us every detail. And while you're online, be sure to follow us on socials. It's at Podcresh, spelled how it sounds. And our personals are at Phembadjli, at Nava, that's Nava with three ends, and at Scribble by Sophie.

And we're out. See you next week. And I should tell you something, my son who co-wrote the myth of normal with me, Daniel is a musical theater writer, and he's written a play called Middle School Mysteries. Oh, we have to check that out. Wow, if he wants to turn it into a TV show, please give him Penn's number. I would not recommend trying to turn anything into a show.

It's just so much more work than anybody wants. Thank you.