The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 103 - Trauma Expert: How To Take Back Control Of Your Life: Gabor Mate

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

Are you free or do you just think that you are free? Are you in fact trapped by your past and every reaction you make shaped by your history? In this moment Dr Gabor Mate discusses how trauma can become a puppet master controlling every aspect of your life and even lead to addiction as a coping mechanism to avoid pain. To overcome this Dr Mate believes you must become aware of your trauma and make it your friend rather than your master, because the opposite of trauma is liberation. Listen to the full episode here - ⁠ https://g2ul0.app.link/mHAISevPAyb The conversation cards waitlist is now open, join now - ⁠http://bit.ly/3l7dhKG⁠ Gabor: https://www.instagram.com/gabormatemd/ Watch the episodes on YouTube - ⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. In the Diary of a CEO, we have hundreds of questions that have been left by our guests and we've put them on these cards. And on these cards, you have the question that's been left in the Diary of a CEO, the name of the person who wrote the question. And if you turn it over, there's a QR code. If you scan that code, you can see which guest answered the question and watch

the video of them answering it. Every time I've done this podcast and every time we've asked the kind of questions we ask here, I feel a tremendous sense of affinity to the guest. And our aim with these cards is that you can create that sense of connection through vulnerability at home with the people you love the most. And I have some good news for you as of today you can add your name to the waiting list to be the first in line to get your own set of conversation cards at theconversationcards.com that is theconversationcards.com most people they're living unaware of the puppet master of trauma that is driving their life that's a really good analogy the trauma really is like a puppet master behind the scenes

and the unconscious pulling your strings and you're not aware of it. You know, do you remember Pinocchio? Yeah. So you remember what Pinocchio says at the end where when he finally becomes a real boy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, how foolish I was when I was a puppet. And to the extent that we're being activated by these unconscious strings

that are traumas pulling behind the scenes, and we're acting in our lives and we think we're autonomous, free beings, but we're actually being controlled by something in the past that we haven't worked out. We're puppets. We're actually puppets. And there's not much freedom in that. There's no freedom in it at all.

So, I mean, I suppose the opposite of trauma, if you want to revisit that question, is liberation. Interesting. Liberation by reconnection. By reconnection, but the from the inexorable power of the unconscious which is like cutting the strings in a way kind of brings me to there's kind of two ways i want to go with that but the first question i have about about trauma and the puppet master analogy is do we ever do we ever really cut the strings or do we just kind of

learn to pull against them when they try and tell us to do something with more force than they're exerting in the opposite direction um that doesn't work very well pushing against it because they're still reactive you're still not in charge you're just in automatic resistance mode to something there's no freedom in that either you know so yeah um but awareness that you mentioned is huge because once you're aware that there's this see the thing about these strings may not fray right away but once you wear that ah this reaction of mine it's not about what's going on right now there's something all being activated here. That awareness alone weakens the, it slackens the strings a bit. They're no longer as taught.

They're no longer as automatically capable of pulling on you. So it does have to begin with awareness of them. Ultimately, if we realize that this puppet master is just a desperate little person trying to get you to survive the only way he she they knew how when you were small when they were small if you make friends with it but we relieve it of its duties say thanks very much but i can handle it now it eventually becomes our friend rather than sort of our master on that first step of just acknowledging just understanding that there is a puppet master they're controlling us and exactly which strings that puppet master is is pulling in our lives how does one go about awareness

the process of awareness is that I mean is it introspection keeping a diary therapy what is it well all that i mean all or any but even when you ask how you go about it what is the it well for you to say how to go about it you already must have some degree of awareness if you didn't you wouldn't even be asking the question so that's the very first step of realizing that there's something here to work on there's something here to work through it does not need to be the way it is

that already is the biggest step the Buddha said that to recognize the source of your suffering is the first step towards relieving the suffering and so as soon as you ask how you go about it you've already taken a huge step because a lot of people don't even know that there's an it they just think this is a reality that this is life so realizing that this it doesn't have to be the way it is that's already a huge step now beyond that yoga meditation um Nature, therapy of all kinds, body work of all kinds, like somatic experiencing or craniosacral treatments or even massage therapy.

It's incredible what can be revealed just through body work like that. Then all kinds of forms of therapy, the ones I teach, the ones other people teach, journaling, certain exercises in this book that we recommend, like just ask yourself where you have trouble saying no in life to things you don't really want to do and working that through on a regular basis. So there's lots of ways once you open the door.

You know, I have a chapter on psychedelics here which is again it's not like a panacea or for everyone but certainly it's a helpful modality for a lot of people so some people may actually benefit from taking pharmaceutical medications if their situation is dire enough but not as the final answer but as a way of getting respite that allowed them to go to work on real issues that caused them to be depressed or anxious or tuning out you know so any and all of these things a lot of people don't even want to open those doors though because they there's so much pain associated with maybe going back or revisiting an early experience that they just think it's better keep the doors shut yeah um

and get get to tomorrow that's true um to which i have two answers um one is it's true it's painful um because all the pain you didn't want to feel and you've been running away from through your compensatory behaviors like like your addictions are nothing but an attempt to escape from pain that's all they are that's all you know they're not a disease they're not a genetic whatever it is addictions are very simply an attempt to escape pain which create more pain but that's what they are and so we get addicted to work to sex to pornography to gambling to the internet to shopping to eating to power on that point i find it so fascinating when you mentioned in your previous book that you know you classified things like food yeah social media yeah shopping

yeah porn and work as types of addiction that was uh that in and of itself was a bit of a revelation for me because i never saw work as an addiction the minute you said it was and i kind of link it to you know heroin addiction which is providing a you know a certain psychological physiological um benefit to me yeah temporarily temporarily yeah of course it's a addiction of course work is an addiction of course i have that addiction well it can be an addiction yeah work can also be sacred it can also be fulfilling in a manifestation of your creative urges but it's so it's not the but it's strange to say not that i recommend it but it's possible even to use heroin in a non-addictive way i don't personally get it and I would never want to,

but the addiction is never in the behavior itself, it's in your relationship to the behavior. So if the particular activity gives you temporary relief or pleasure and therefore you crave it, but it causes harm in the long term and you can't give it up, you've got an addiction. And I don't care what the activity is. It could be drugs and all the other things that we mentioned. And it employs the same brain circuits, by the way.

The workaholic is after the same brain chemical that the cocaine addict is after. Dopamine. You know? And people can be even addicted to their own stress hormones like adrenaline. The so-called adrenaline junkies. There's such a thing, you know. So almost anything can be addictive if it serves the purpose of temporarily easing some distress

but causing harm in the long term. Is escapism the right word to use then for it? Because it doesn't sound as much like we're escaping rather than we are seeking something we're seeking relief from a certain mental state like like i just gave you a definition of addiction so think i don't know what addictions you've had or haven't or haven't besides you know but what did that do for you temporarily um it gave you something it made me feel like i was valid and i was pursuing a sense of accomplishment and validation a sense of worth worth yeah i was worthy

yeah no is that something that people need or not yes yeah that's a good thing but the real question is why did you ever get the idea that you didn't have the worth why did I get the idea that I didn't have the worth that's where trauma comes in because I was called the n-word when I was yeah

eight by a kid in school exactly and then I no one was good to me that day and because your mother screamed at your father yeah yeah yeah you know

and so all that together and so and that's emotionally painful like what's it feel like to be not to have a sense of worth that's painful and so that's emotionally painful. Like what's it feel like to be, not to have a sense of worth? That's painful.

And so that's why my mantra is don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. And if you want to understand why the pain, you have to look at that person's life. And what the benefit of the addiction is. That's something that you say in the previous book that I found, it's a flipping of narrative where you say we should be asking what the benefit of the addiction is well and like in your case yeah it gives me a sense of worth well okay I'll say to you if you come to me because you say like I'm broke or like it's causing some harm in my life it's keeping keeping me from intimate relationships it makes me stressed and

tired whatever it is it's the first thing I would ask you for you, of you, is what is it doing for you? And you say a sense of worth. And I'd say, you know what? You deserve to have a sense of worth. I totally understand why you'd want to engage in an activity that gives it to you. But given that it's causing you harm, let's look at why you don't have a sense of worth

and how else you might develop it that isn't harmful to you. But you start with what's right about it. What are you looking for? And what you're looking for is always valid.