The School of Greatness - Take Command of Your Addiction, Heal Your Trauma & Shatter Your Vices w/ Dr. Gabor Maté EP 1303

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

A renowned speaker and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress, and childhood development. Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection, and Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It. Be sure to check out Gabor's new book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture, that goes on sale 9/13/22!In this episode you will learn,Why there’s no such thing as a healthy addiction.The difference between disciplining and nourishing your child.Why tapping into root causes is so beneficial to healing trauma.And much more!For more, go to lewishowes.com/1303Can You Make Money and Also Be Spiritual? w/ Jay Shetty: https://link.chtbl.com/1298-podWhy Emotional Agility Is The Most Important Skill You Need To Know w/ Susan David: https://link.chtbl.com/1297-podA MASTERCLASS On How To HEAL Your Mind & Overcome Negative Thoughts: https://link.chtbl.com/1290-pod

It's not a matter of getting rid of these parts or these aspects of ourselves, it's a question of actually getting to know them. And they all began as coping mechanisms. Really it's when the past starts to loosen its hold over your present. If trauma is a loss of connection to self, then healing is a reconnection. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-ath pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. In this episode, we discuss topics that include sexual abuse and trauma that might be triggering to some audiences. Please be advised. What I read about your stuff, what I see about your content, is a lot of people are lost based on trauma. And past traumas cause certain addictions or certain behaviors and routines that maybe are some healthy addictions or unhealthy addictions, but it seems to be like a lot of unhealthy addictions. Can I interrupt right there? Yes, please. No such thing as a healthy addiction.

No such thing. If it's healthy, it's not an addiction. If it's an addiction, it's not healthy. There are passions, there are habits that are healthy, but they're not addictions. Like working out. Yeah, well, that can healthy, but they're not addictions. Like working out. Yeah, well, that can be an addiction, or it can be healthy. Like eating can be healthy, but it can be an addiction. I define addiction as any behavior in which a person finds temporary pleasure or relief

and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and cannot give it up. So if you're suffering negative consequences, so it's craving, relief, pleasure in the short term, harm in the long term, inability to give it up, that's what an addiction is. Now, if you have a behavior that's ongoing,

but it has no negative consequences, it's not an addiction, it's a passion, it's a pleasure consequences it's not an addiction it's a passion it's a pleasure it's a habit it's a healthy habit it's a healthy habit so for me it's not an addiction and also a healthy habit a person if it no longer works for them they can give it up so for me there's no healthy addiction there's no healthy addiction in fact the word addiction comes from a word for slavery so there's no there's no healthy slavery interesting so addiction what is the root of addiction the the word yeah so the in roman times um an addictus was somebody who was assigned to another person to serve them because they owed them money and they couldn't pay it back. An addictus. The addictus was like a indentured slave who had to work off the debt. So that's what the word actually comes from is a form of slavery. So if you're

addicted to something you are a slave to that craving. Absolutely. You have no choice. A slave has no choice. Wow. They have no free will, essentially. Yeah. And I've had my own addictive behaviors and nothing like the patients that I worked with. But insofar as I had them, literally, even though I was a well-paid, middle-class, successful doctor, I was not exercising any free choice. Really? Over all my behaviors, no.

When did you, what was the main addiction that you were, you know, tied to? And when did you learn how to break free of that? Well, so in my life, the main addictions have been to work. To work. Yeah. Work hard, achieve, succeed. More and more patience, more and more success, more and more. More and more is the essence of addiction. It's always more and more. And there's a reason why I developed that addiction. And that was the

hardest one to give up. Then I was addicted for a long time to shopping for classical compact discs and when I say addicted I mean I would spend thousands of dollars a day on CDs? Yeah. Really? Yeah really and I would lie to my wife about it and I would neglect my patients and as soon as I left the store thinking now

I'm complete, my collection is full, half an hour later I had to run back. And as I describe in my book, An Addiction in the Realm of Hunger Ghosts, I once left a woman in labor in a hospital to go get a symphony. So that's an addiction. Really?

Yeah, yeah. And it's like the... Now, the interesting thing about addiction is that I wasn't using substances. You weren't smoking or drinking or drugs. But I was looking for a chemical hit. Dopamine. Dopamine, yeah.

So I was on a dopamine fiend, you might say, and I get it through those particular behaviors. And so that's what my addiction was. How did I give it up? Well, it took a long time. Really? Yeah, a lot of struggle, a lot of, you know, and finally I just realized that the cost was greater than the,

in fact, you know, in fact, if I started listening now to all the CDs that I have at home and did nothing but listen for the rest of my life. You wouldn't finish. I probably wouldn't finish. Wow. So how long would you say, when did you realize, okay, this is an addiction? This is an unhealthy.

I realized it long before I gave it up. Like years, decades? Years. Years. Yeah, years. How long does it normally take for someone when they realize this is unhealthy, this thing I'm doing, this addiction is not good for me, until they actually give it up? Is there any data on that?

I couldn't answer that one. I think it's a highly variable and individual issue. It has to do with what resources they have to heal. It has to do with what support they have. It has to do with what cost this have it has to do with what cost their this habit is exacting on their lives um it has to do also with some belief that there's a part of us that's actually healthy and we can get in touch with that you know there has to be a cool combination of factors and it's very very individual also it also depends of course the degree of trauma a person suffered and and addictions are always about like you've heard

my definition of addiction and i'm sure if i asked you like if i asked from talking to a thousand people put your hands up if according to my definition you get an addiction virtually everybody in the room will put their hands up maybe there'll be two liars who all right but 998 and then I asked them not what was wrong with the addiction but what was right about it what did you get from it so if I asked you that so you've had your behaviors if I asked you I don't care what it was to but if I asked you what did you get from it well we get some type of relief you get some type of pleasure you get some type of yeah yes specifically what do you get from it what do you get from it what did it give you

temporarily whatever it was i don't even care what it's just you know you get it you escape okay escape right yeah you're not thinking about the pain or the shame or the insecurity so who needs to escape me no but i mean what kind of person needs to escape oh a scared person scared person somebody who's imprisoned isn't it somebody's not free trapped yeah somebody's trapped no but I mean what kind of person needs to escape oh a scared person scared person somebody who's imprisoned isn't it somebody who's not free trapped

yeah somebody's trapped exactly and I know in your book on toxic masculinity you talk about being trapped trapped is the very word you use yes

and I felt trapped most of my childhood that's the whole point so what I'm saying is that addiction is never a choice and it's not

some kind of genetic disease that is told nonsense. What it actually is, is an attempt to solve a problem in your life. In your case, you were trying to solve the problem of being trapped, which is based on your childhood trauma, which you publicly talk about. In my case, the workaholism was about trying to prove to myself that I was that I had the right to exist well that was important you're worthy of love that is worthy of love exactly acceptance and I know that also came from a child or experience so addiction is

never like either a disease as such you can behave like a disease but it isn't a disease as such. It's also not a choice anybody makes. It's actually an attempt to solve a deep life problem that was imposed on that person by trauma in every case. Wow. Is it possible for someone to heal a deep wound on their own, a trauma from decades past they've had an addiction to trying to escape from? Is it possible to do it on your own or is it really take support someone someone's a team what's your thoughts on that well I think very rarely it is possible for an individual maybe they have some deep spiritual experience maybe they're out there in nature and all of a sudden they they're at one with the

universe they feel presence they feel connected yeah exactly so that can happen it does happen to some people and they just to choose i'm going to decide not to do this anymore they realize they don't need to because they're free they feel free interesting yeah very rare very rare for most of us people beings that walk this earth it takes a lot of self-awareness it takes a lot of support connection guidance so I'd say if you're listening and you've got one of these issues where you're addicted to something in the way that Lewis and I are just talking about, don't wait for that miraculous moment. Get the help because you have a much better chance that way. Yeah. So what would you say is the root cause of all addiction then? Is it feeling a wound? Is it feeling trapped by something that's happened in the past? The being trapped itself is a sign of a wound. So the, in fact, the word trauma means

wound. The Greek origin of the word trauma is a wound. So children who are hurt, but they're not supported, seen, accepted, and helped, they get trapped in the wound. And being trapped in the wound and being trapped in the behaviors to escape the wound, that's how the trauma shows up in our lives. Interesting. And in our culture and our society. You know, I talk about this in my book as well, about how as a young boy growing up in the Midwest,

in Ohio, I didn't see examples of older men or athletes that I aspired to be like talking about their emotions or talking about healing or talking about, you know, I had a trauma talking about how to, you know, navigate the full range of emotions. It was more,

you just get made fun of if you cried, you get picked on and called, you know, things you don't want to be called. You're, you're kicked out of the tribe. You're not accepted in the tribe and you're you know boys group growing up yeah and so i feel like culturally there's a lot of pain with men and women obviously but that uh it seems to be is causing a lot of the stress in the world right now. It's just this cultural pain. Well, if I may be self-serving, my new book is called The Myth of Normal

Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. So just as you say, the trauma that people are experiencing massively isn't just personal to them. It's also a sign of a culture that's completely out of whack. And when I say out of whack, the reason I call the book The Myth of Normal is what I'm saying is that the things that are considered normal in society are not at all normal from the point of view of human life and human needs. It's not healthy. It's totally unhealthy so that the addictions and the diseases and the mental illnesses

that people develop are actually normal responses to an abnormal situation. So that whatever addiction you had, or even this mask of rigid masculinity that you try to adopt for a while until it's cracked for you. Right, needing to win, needing to be the best. But that was a normal response. To survive.

To survive, exactly. So that the abnormality wasn't in you, it was in the situation that you're in. That's what I mean by a toxic culture. Yeah. And I know, again, in your book, you talk about these public figures that all of a sudden you realize we're talking about their emotions. Yeah. But that's fairly new. In the last like five, ten years.

So these days athletes will talk about their sexual abuse. This didn't happen until ten years ago. Really? And really more three to five years ago, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so now there's, why do you feel like people are now starting to open up who are more public figures? Why do you think that's happening? Well, I think what's happened that the toxicity

of the culture, one of my subtitles is toxic culture, and it's got so bad. There's a Greek playwright that I quote in my book, he's Aeschylus, and he, one of his plays, he said that the way that God's created us human beings that we have to suffer suffering to truth and I think that the degree of suffering now most people I know who engage in a path of self-exploration and truth they didn't do it because all of a sudden they just

made a decision they just suffered so much so that so the suffering can actually wake you up and I think to answer your question, this society has got to the point where the suffering is so intense and so widespread that something had to crack open. So I think that's why it's got so bad that it couldn't be hidden anymore. Why do you think in our modern society with all the medical and scientific advances and all the knowledge out there that there's so much chronic pain, so much suffering when we have more information and knowledge and tools than ever before? Actually, we don't.

We have less. What we have is a lot more physiological and physical science, which is great. I mean, if I needed a heart transplant I'd be very grateful for modern medicine and or you know the broken bone or anything but we've forgotten something that human beings have always known and for example I write about this friend of mine his name is Louis Mel Madrona and he's an American physician he's Lakota background okay and he's an American physician. He's Lakota background.

Okay. And he told me that and he's just like me. He's full of respect for Western medicine. I was trained in it. He was trained in it. We also see what's missing.

And he said that in his tradition, when somebody gets sick, the whole community gathers and thanks the person and says, you're carrying some dysfunction in our whole culture, so your healing is our healing.

Wow. So they get that the individual represents the culture and the environment and the family and the community. Now Western medicine totally forgets that. We separate the mind from the body. So often when I speak to groups I ask people if if in the last five years you've been to a neurologist or an oncologist or a cardiologist or gastroenterologist or a rheumatologist any kind of anologist put your hand up so

people put their hands up so keep your hands up if they ask you about stress in your life trauma in your childhood relationships relationships exactly how you feel about your work how do you feel about yourself as a human being very few hands stay up and those questions which have to do with number one the unity of mind and body, which is only scientific fact, and the inseparableness of one human being from another. Western medicine completely ignores, which is contrary to science. It's not only contrary to ancient wisdom. It's also contrary to modern science,

because we have tens of thousands of studies to show that you can't separate the mind from the body. Tens of thousands of studies showing how emotions significantly influence the onset of illness, how relationships do. There's a wonderful psychiatrist here in L.A. You may know of him or him, Daniel Siegel. And Dan Siegel talks about what he calls interpersonal neurobiology which means that our brains are not separate in something in you will sense the tension in me and will pick up on that and that'll be intuition the yeah that'll change your brain and I take it a step further I talk about

interpersonal biology so that what happens to people physiologically is very affected. I'll give you two examples. Yes. Affected by their culture and their family. So we've known for decades that children whose parents are stressed are much more likely to have asthma. The parent's stresses affect the physiology of the child. The breathing. The breathing. They narrow the air tubes, they cause inflammation. By the way, how do we treat asthma with stress hormones? Adrenaline and cortisol. We know American black women, the more experience of

racism they have to endure, the greater the risk for asthma. Really? We know that men who are sexually abused in childhood, the risk of heart disease triples. I could go on. Women who suffer symptoms of PTSD severely, the risk of ovarian cancer doubles. Why? Because you can't separate the emotions from the body. It's one unit. Scientifically speaking, not just from the body. It's one unit, scientifically speaking,

not just from a point of view of indigenous wisdom, but modern science. So when I talk, when you say, despite all this knowledge, I'm saying what's missing from the knowledge... Is wisdom. ...is the wisdom. And not just the wisdom, even the science. Right. That's what's so ironic. So I'm a physician, and as doctors we always talk about evidence-based practice. And I say, my God, I only wish we had evidence-based practice. Let's look at the evidence.

Right. You know, what's the evidence for separating the mind from the body? But multiple sclerosis, this mysterious illness, the guy who first described multiple sclerosis was a French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot in the 19th century he said that it was a disease caused by grief and long-term worry since that there's been multiple studies showing the relationship of stress trauma and multiple sclerosis you were the average neurologist with symptoms of MS nobody's gonna ask you about your trauma nobody's gonna ask you about

your stress and why is that significant Because if you deal with the trauma and the stress, your multiple sclerosis can actually improve significantly. So there's a huge gap between the scientific evidence and how we practice medicine. And what we call scientific evidence-based practice is miraculous, it's amazing, but it's way too narrow. What about something like arthritis? What would you say that's connected to? Okay, that's been studied as well. So there was a great Canadian physician

who actually was one of the founding physicians at Johns Hopkins Medical School. His name is William Osler. He said in 1880 that rheumatoid arthritis is caused by long-term worry and stress. Long-term worry and stress. Yeah. Now, since then. In 1890?

1880 or 1890. Wow. Yeah. He said this then. Since then, multiple dozens of studies show a relationship between trauma, stress, and rheumatoid arthritis. Do you think the average rheumatologist knows anything about that? Wow. So that people go to, I know people in my book, The Myth of Normal.

I talk about people with MS or arthritis who once they start recognizing that the flare-ups of the disease actually manifest stresses in their lives if they learn how to deal with those stresses one woman told me that i have beautiful conversations with my rheumatoid arthritis he said she says it was my best teacher because when every time it shows up i know that i'm out of alignment with myself yes you're out of somewhere you need to have a conversation with yourself or get back in alignment It's interesting. I was telling you this before off-camera that and then a previous relationship that I was in Just feeling a lot of chest pain and kind of tightness in my throat. Yeah, and at one point Like I was starting to get like this

Love is a rash or some type of flare-up like in my like below my belly button Yeah, and I was like, what is it? I could never had some type of like eczema or skin condition or something. It was like this kind of bright red flare up. And I was like, do I have a disease? Like, what is this, you know? And it's fascinating because I was telling you,

like the moment after many, many months of therapy and starting to integrate the lessons of healing and really feel it internally, I started to feel this sense of peace inside of me for the first time. I didn't feel trapped for the first time in myself, in my heart and in my body. And almost overnight,

like this fire up was there for months. And I was like, oh, maybe I'm having, I had like allergy tests. And I was like, maybe it's peanuts. I don't know. All these different like foods that I'm eating. And I was like eliminating the foods and it was still there.

It was almost overnight when I felt the peace inside of me, the flare-ups went away and they haven't come back. And I was like. So if you had come to me with that rush, I would have asked you. Not what are you eating?

No, I wouldn't. Well, I might have. I mean, those are good questions. But I also would have asked you. Not what are you eating? No, I wouldn't. Well, I might have. Those are good questions. But I also would have asked you, what is your body saying no to? It's rejecting. That you're not saying no to. Oh, my gosh. You know, now, a flare-up, if you take that word flare-up,

which is what you use. Yeah, it's inflammation, right? Something's inflamed. Okay, right. But what else do you use? What else flares up? You know what word flare up, which is what you used. Yeah. It's inflammation, right? Something's inflamed. Okay. Right. But what else do you use? What else flares up? You know what flares up? It's rage, anger.

But you had anger that you weren't expressing. Right. Hence, your body flares up. Yes. We know that suppressed emotions cause inflammation. So had you come to me, not had you come to me when I was out of medical school because I wouldn't know anything about this nobody teaches you this stuff but if you come to me more recently I would have asked

you all those what is your body saying no to that you're not saying no to and and that happens in two major areas relationships and and and and work you know interesting and so the body says the signals we can learn from it and now the problem is that you go to the average physician they're not going to ask those things they're just going to try and collude with you to try and get rid of the symptom not that you know you know. Not by the root. Which is, that's okay. I mean, you don't wanna sit there with a rash, it's fine. But also, let's look at the source of it.

Yes. And the source is always assumed to be something physical. Maybe they'll think of food. Maybe they'll think of some toxin. They will not think of your emotions. Even though the mind and body are inseparable how much stronger do you think the emotional weight or trauma is than physical uh toxins you know in terms of affecting the body i can't make that assessment because i don't know what

study would even compare the truth i don't I don't want to speak off the cuff. But what I can tell you is that the emotions are really primary in most chronic conditions. And if you deal with them, not in this society where there's all these toxins in the environment and junk in the food, who knows? Prostate, yeah. environment and junk in the food and all this, who knows, but, but, uh, what I know is that the emotions play a huge role and that that can have an impact on their illness. And the other thing I've, I don't know about you when you write books, but I

write books as much for myself as for anybody else. A hundred percent. Yeah. So show is for me. Yeah, exactly. So I get to learn a lot when i'm yes writing so one of the things i learned when i was writing the myth of normal was even how we think about disease like you people say i have eczema or i have depression or i have rheumatoid arthritis

or i have add now there's an assumption there, isn't there? The assumption is, first of all, is that there's this thing called ADD. There's this thing called eczema. There's this thing called rheumatoid arthritis. Or there's this thing called depression. Then there's an eye. And the eye has that thing. But that thing has got its own separate, independent nature. And the I has that thing. But that thing has got its own separate, independent nature. But to say that I have this disease makes the assumption that this disease has got a separate life and nature of its own. It doesn't.

What if we saw disease of all kinds, mental or physical, or addiction, not as the things in themselves that have their own nature, but as processes that manifest our lives. And if I live my life differently, then I can have an impact on that process, so that process will change. That's exactly actually how it is. So for shorthand language,

I understand it's helpful to say I have depression. How important is the words we choose? But if we buy into that language, we're actually missing the point because you don't have it. There's no it that's separate from you. And that means that if you

change yourself, and in fact there's a friend of mine now, a recent friend, Dr. Jeff Rediger, who's a psychiatrist at harvard and last year wrote a book called cured the science of spontaneous healings that was the subtitle now he studied people who were terminally ill documentably so they had no prognosis whatsoever and then they get better so they were terminally ill they were terminally ill. They were not supposed to survive. They're not supposed to survive. They're supposed to die in a few years or something. Or months. Or weeks.

I've talked to such people myself. And they've cured their disease. There's a woman called, a psychologist called Kelly Turner who studied the same thing. She wrote a book called Radical Remission. So all three of us have looked at these people. They did it in a research kind of way. I just did it impressionistically, you know. But I do check out the histories with people's doctors. We all know people who are supposed to have two months to live or six months to live.

Either medical treatment has failed or they refuse medical treatment then also the disease goes away i think all three of us have found that what makes the biggest difference is that the person changes their relationship to themselves wow and there's always trauma in the background now jeff and kelly have documented people they go on diets, they take supplements, they start meditating. They go into nature. They go into nature, the whole thing. All those things are great. Yeah.

But I think Jeff and I agree, and I think Kelly would probably agree as well, that the biggest shift is in one's relationship with oneself. In other words, the life changes, the process changes. Now, I'm not promising everybody who's listening, you can cure yourself. I mean, you know, this is not snake oil. I'm just talking about the importance of recognizing the impact of emotions and one's relationship to oneself on one's physiology. That's what I'm talking about.

There's an external environment and then there's an internal environment, you know, our emotional environment that is connected to our, I'm assuming, our nervous system, our heart, our brain, the whole body and everything. And if our emotional environment is sick, then we're probably going to be physically sick as well. Well, that's what your story actually illustrates, isn't it?

As soon as you create an internal environment, your physical issues abate. By the way, speaking of, I just noticed I'm getting too excited here. This is my passion.

I mean, I just could go on about this forever, but I'm also noticing probably I'm getting a bit too heated here. You're getting warm. I don't know physically so much.

I just noticed I need to calm down a bit. I don't want to talk too fast. No, I like it. It's exciting for me. Well, I just feel like this is what you were just saying. Emotional repression is a major cause of physical illness. It may not be the only cause. There's other factors, but what we suppress usually comes to the surface in some way. Is that correct? That's the whole point. And most of us, I'll speak for myself, I wasn't taught, and I think most of us are not taught on how to express the emotional traumas, the emotional pains, fears, insecurities,

shames, guilt, where we're not taught the skills. It's one of the reasons why I started the School of Greatness, because I was like, I wish I would have learned these skills in school. You know, most people's parents are messed up in some way or have some issues, and they aren't taught this. And so we're, you know, I grew up in a household that was very stressful and chaotic, and there wasn't stability. So did my kids, by the way. Right.

And you're like the guy, right? But I wasn't the guy then did my kids, by the way. Right. And you're like the guy, right? But I wasn't the guy then. You weren't the guy then. Yeah. So your kids had some traumas that they had to face because of you and their parents. It's not even a matter of skills learning. It's deeper than that.

Because you don't have to teach any one day old baby how to express their emotions, do you? No. If they're sad, lonely, do you hear about it? If they're sad, lonely, do you hear about it? If they're hungry or uncomfortable, do you hear about it? Of course you do. There's nothing to teach. You have to allow it.

And you have to give space for it. And you have to hear it and respond to it. The problem with most parents is not that they don't teach their kids these skills. It's that the way they live their lives because of their own traumas and because of the stresses in their society, they actually discourage kids. Don't cry. Stop crying. Yeah, from what's natural.

Suck it up. Well, look. Don't do this. Don't do that, right? Well, you know, there's a very famous Canadian psychologist. I don't know if he's been on your program, but he says that an angry child should be made to sit by themselves until they come back to normal. In other words, anger in a two-year-old is not normal, and we have to socialize it out of them.

Interesting. Now, there's nothing more natural than an angry two-year-old. There's nothing more natural than an angry two-year-old. There's nothing more natural than an angry two-year-old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They get frustrated. Right. They want a cookie. They get a cookie before...

They don't get what they want. Yeah, they want a cookie before dinner. And if you're a good parent, you're not going to give them a cookie before dinner. Right. So... When does someone learn how to not express anger every 10 minutes, though? Well, here's the point. If that two year old then starts screaming or throwing a tantrum or getting angry, if you say time out and you're not gonna be with them, now you're

presenting a child with a tragic dilemma. I can have my authentic emotion or I can have my relationship with my parent on whom I left depends mmm so I can be authentic or I can be attached in a relationship but I can't have both interesting that shouldn't as if I'm not authentic or if I'm if I'm authentic then I'm gonna be alone exactly I'm gonna be on timeout or whatever and to the child at time what is life threatening because you might be alone forever right yeah this child doesn't know that you see yeah so basically you're threatening the child threatening the child with depriving them of the greatest need which is the connection with you yeah love yeah the love yeah now but this isn't

there a point though if you're 21 year old man now and you're you know screaming every 10 minutes because you don't get the cookie? But that's not the answer. The answer is when they're screaming. It's to pick them up. You're angry at Daddy, aren't you? You really wish you had that cookie. Yeah.

Oh, I get it. And then the child relaxes and the anger moves through them. And you know what they learn? That anger is just something that moves through you. You can let go of it. If you don't see the child, don't accept the child's emotion, they're going to have to repress it. They're going to have to stuff it.

What's another word for stuffing? It's pushing down. Trap it, yeah. Well, pushing down. What's another word for pushing down? Depressing. Where does depression come from? It's not this disease.

Depression comes from having had to push down your emotions. Literally, you had to push down your emotions. In other words, why did you have to push down your emotions? To stay connected to your parents. In other words, it was a coping mechanism. And what I'm saying is that a lot of illness, whether of the mind or the body or both comes from coping mechanisms there are normal coping mechanisms in response to an abnormal situation it's not normal for a

child to be banished from the presence of the parent if that you look at indigenous people they carry their kids everywhere. The kids are always with their parents. And the pilgrims, when they arrived in North America, they were very upset with how the natives reared their children. You know why? Because the indigenous people did not hit their kids. They didn't hit their kids. They didn't hit their kids.

And the Christians couldn't understand this. Why they didn't, you know't create obedience with them, right? Yeah, yeah. So what do they do? They nourish them. And when you nourish a child, see, nature has got a natural agenda, is that you should grow up to be a self-regulated adult in connection with yourself and with other people.

That's nature's agenda. It's like nature has an agenda for an acorn to become an oak tree. But an acorn doesn't spontaneously become an oak tree. It has to have the right conditions. So it's not a question of teaching the oak tree, the acorn to be an oak tree. Just give it the nourishment and the sunlight and the earth and irrigation that it needs. It's nature to become an oak tree. The nature of human beings is to become self-regulated, socially responsible creatures. That's how we evolved.

Given the right conditions, that will happen. So it's not a question of teaching all these things. Yeah, there's some teaching about mostly it's the question of meeting children's needs, giving them the right conditions, and then they will develop self-regulation they learn it because you're self-regulated so they're watching you you're not reactive and you're not screaming you know your eyes oh i'm angry okay i'm angry but you're not screaming at the kid you know so in a environment, these traits spontaneously evolve or develop in a human being. So our society is always about how do we teach these skills and no skills.

Well, teaching is important, but more important is the child's spontaneous growth given the right environment. And what I'm saying about this toxic culture, we don't give our kids the right environment. Yeah, I mean, you hear the number, the statistic that 50% of marriages turn into divorce these days. And also, probably, I think when I had Esther Perel on, I was like, how many of the 50% that are married are actually happy? It's a very small percentage, too.

So I've had a marriage that we've had a lot of unhappiness. We've been married 53 years now. 53? Yeah, we're very happy together. Now you are. But it took us a lot of work, a lot of commitment. But here's what I want to say. There's two ways you can tell if a marriage is unhappy.

One is you can ask the parents. The other is you can measure the cortisol level of the children. Oh, wow. Because the parents' stresses the cortisol level of the children. Oh, wow. Because the parent's stresses affect the physiology of the child. Oh, man, my cortisol must have been off the charts. All of us children, yeah. It probably would have been. And so in this society, and this is not the fault of individual parents,

like it begins in the uterus actually already stresses on the pregnant woman will affect the physiology of the child really yeah oh yeah no in this society so many pregnant women are so stressed in the states particularly you're talking about more emotional stress because there's physical stress of like the body's expanding and growing and aches and pains but the emotional stress i mean the emotional stress of like the body's expanding and growing and aches and pains, but the emotional stress. I mean, the emotional stress of having to perform on the job or being in a difficult relationship. In one of the chapters in the book I talk about, it begins with the diary of my wife

who was writing it when she was pregnant with one of her children about how unhappy she was. And she's talking to the infant saying please don't take this stress personally and she wrote that and I quoted it in in the myth of normal and she knew what I didn't know and no no she wasn't happy because of our relationship she wasn't happy because of the really she was unhappy because of what was going on in her relationship with me being a workaholic doctor not not being there not being available

emotionally or exactly exactly and even blaming her you know for how i was feeling you know wow so she's talking to this infant inside her and that's why i opened one of the chapters so already in the uterus these stresses starts happening a lot of evidence for that scientifically brain scans bloods work all kinds of stuff then there's labor which in our society is very often mechanical and emotionally very difficult and in the United States 25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth now that infant is meant to be with the mother for at least nine months I would say years but at least nine months that infant is abandoned at two weeks that's how they experience it even if they're

looked after by someone but the mother the infant needs the mother's body yeah that was my mom was working pretty probably pretty fast after each one of us were born you know had to go back to work and yeah yeah and I'm not blaming the women right they have no choice yes i'm saying but this society puts so stresses on women it then doesn't support them to the pregnancy then it puts a lot and only that we didn't grow up in individual uh isolated nuclear families did we we evolved in in small band hunter-gatherer groups where people supported each other, where children were with adults all day,

where adults collaborated. They had to, otherwise they wouldn't have survived. So that's where our nature actually evolved. So when you get this society which tells you that people are, by nature, selfish and aggressive and competitive which isolates mothers uh in in in in separate homes where the community is more and more you know there's lots of lots of work done by sociologists and others in the states about how communities are breaking down there There was that book, Bowling Alone, some years ago, 20 years ago now, about the breakdown of community so that people are not getting support.

And that means they're stressed. And the mothers are doing it all on their own. Exactly. Right. But they're also expecting the husband to work and also be at home as opposed to reaching out to peers or family or friends. Exactly. So it's a very unnatural culture.

And no wonder so many kids are getting diagnosed with ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder or depression. You know, there's an article in The New Yorker a few weeks ago, maybe a couple of months ago, also in The New York Times, I think, about the rising rate of childhood and adolescent suicides in the U.S. It's mysterious. It's not mysterious. These kids are no longer having their developmental needs met.

They feel alone and desperate and scared. And the drug use is on the rise and addiction and suicide. That's right. There's nothing mysterious about it. If you look at the cultural setting. It's only mysterious if we think we're dealing with isolated mental health issues

or isolated physiological issues. But when you see the connections, nothing mysterious. So what are the main, I guess, mental health... Are they diseases or are they not considered a disease? Like depression, ADD, ADHD. What are the main mental health, are they diseases or are they not considered a disease?

Like depression, ABD, ADHD, what are the main mental health symptoms out in the world right now, could you say? Yeah, so depression and anxiety are fast growing and they're major challenges. More and more kids are being diagnosed with ADHD. More and more kids are being diagnosed with something called oppositional defiant disorder, which- What is that? Opposition. That's when a kid is defiant and oppositional and goes against adult values

and adult expectations. But we think there's something wrong with the kid instead of looking at the context of what makes the kid different. The environment. Yeah. No. Are these diseases? Well, you can talk about them as diseases to some degree, and certainly I've had depression,

and I've taken medication for it in my 40s and it really made a difference for me you might call it a disease but actually that's a shallow way of looking at it because actually what does it go back to it goes back to being a one-year-old infant or being a three-month-old infant in the book the myth of normal the first chapter has a painting in it the painting is by my wife based on a photograph of me and my mother this is budapest hungary 1944 and i'm three months of age and my mother in the photograph is one the yellow star the jews had to. My father was away in forced labor. And within two months, her parents would be killed in Auschwitz.

That was my first year of life. Oh, my gosh. And the look on my face is full of terror. I was absorbing my mother's fear and my mother's anxiety. Because she had terror in her face and you're mimicking. She had it in her body. Your body. You're connected to her, feeding 10 times a day. Exactly. And you're mimicking and she had it in her body body you're connected to her

eating 10 times a day exactly and you're feeling the stress exactly there's probably now no calm in her there's no calm there and but she's already so stressed and she's just trying to make sure that we survive she's not there to really receive my feelings. And then when I'm a year old, 11 months old, she hands me to a complete stranger in the street to save my life because she didn't think where we're staying I would survive for a day and probably I wouldn't have. So I didn't see her for six weeks, five or six weeks. Oh, man.

And you were one? I was one then, yeah. Oh, my gosh. And now what could I do as a one-year-old? I could do two things. Or as an infant going through all that. First of all, how do I deal with all that stress? I tune out.

I tune out. I become absent-minded as an adaptive mechanism. A coping mechanism. Exactly. 55 years later, I'm diagnosed with ADHD, which is characterized by tuning out. Is it a disease? The heck it's a disease.

It started as a coping mechanism. I'm also diagnosed with depression. Why? Because in that environment, I had to push my feelings down in order not to burden my mother, who was already burdened enough. Create more peace and more, yeah.

So I took that on, so I pushed on my feelings. I depressed my feelings. Then I have this depression. So are they diseases? Well, you can talk about them that way, but I say they began as coping mechanisms. And I'll tell you another story. I'm 78 now, so six, seven years ago.

I'm in San Francisco with a therapist and I've taken mushrooms oh she works with mushrooms and I've I've worked with psychedelics and it's one of the things I write about and that but this time I'm the patient I'm the client and I'm lying there on the mat under the influence of the psilocybin and I know exactly who I am I'm 71 years old I'm a medical doctor I'm a writer I'm a speaker I'm married to such as you know my wife Ray this is a therapist so I'm not like hallucinating I know exactly where but at the same time I'm experiencing myself as a one-year-old infant mmm my goodness and this therapist in my mom is my mom and I

start crying and I say I'm so sorry I've made your life so difficult Wow that's my one-year-old self all of a sudden under the influence speaking up I took it on that early that I'm responsible now you talked about you my gosh in our conversation before you told me about who you were in this I took it on that early that I'm responsible. Now, you talked about... Oh, my gosh. In our conversation before, you told me about how you were in this relationship, and you couldn't leave it even long after you realized it wasn't right for you because you took on the responsibility

of how the other person would feel if you had, quote, let them down. I'm telling you, that's your one-year-old speaking, that you took responsibility for the suffering of your parents. Wow. And how you mustn't let anybody down because it's your responsibility. We take this stuff on so early without words actually.

They just become ingrained and then we live our lives out of it until something happens, as you did for you, your body rebelled. You have a breakdown until something happens, as you did for you. Your body rebelled. You have a breakdown or something happens, right? And you're like, you either keep breaking down or it wakes you up and say, okay, why is this happening? What is off?

What is out of alignment? What is, you know, where am I? Out of integrity, whatever it might be. Exactly. And I feel the challenge is I was like, I want to end this suffering. You know, I've repeated this pattern many times. I'm sick and tired of the suffering. I'll do whatever. You know, I think when you, for me, I was like, I've felt enough of this. I don't want it anymore. But it took so much courage to face these things for me. And I know other people have deeper traumas

or different traumas, and it just seems so challenging for people. I wouldn't go there. I would not compare your trauma to anybody else's. Well, we all have our unique traumas, right? Different experiences that we face. That's right. Why is it so challenging for people to face it

and start addressing it? I was telling you, I've been doing pretty intensive therapy for about a year and a half now, every two weeks. Yeah. Not because I feel like something's wrong with me anymore, that I'm stressed more, but because I want to maintain a level of peace. Yeah. And I want to continue to maintain peace.

Good for you. So once I realized and started healing, I didn't say, I'm good. Yeah. I was like, I want to go to the next level of peace, love, an environment of beauty inside of my emotions. But why is it so hard for so many people to face it and actually speak the shame, guilt, insecurity, imperfection about them?

Well, I think in your own work, you've touched upon very accurately on why it's so difficult. For one thing, if you just, just the words that you just used, peace and love and connection, if you had played that to your 20 year old self, how would he have responded? He'd be like, suck it up. Or he'd be like, what are you talking about? You're fine. Like, yeah, don't be a little wuss or you know just work harder you know yeah but where would that have come from i mean just my entire conditioning growing up from sports and

yeah you know okay so that's the house so that's one of the factors is the conditioning in this culture okay is the conditioning in this culture, okay? I also say it would have come from intense fear. Oh. Because if you'd actually, it's very fearful to look at all that pain inside oneself. It's terrifying.

Yeah, it's terrifying. So there's intense fear. So there's the conditioning, as you say, then there's the fear. It really is painful. Nobody wants to have pain, you know, but that's called growing pains. And the third factor is we all develop this personality. Now, the personality, we think that's us, but it's not us.

Right. The personality is the traits that we took on to survive our childhoods, along with some genuine traits. So the personality is kind of an, an amalgam of, of childhood coping mechanisms and genuine qualities. Yeah. Some good stuff, but then also coping. Yeah. Yeah.

Cause I remember I used to be like, I was a fun loving guy. I was like a kind generous, but then when there was a trigger, it was like, I was angry and, you know, defensive and guarded and things like that. Or you talk about the various masks, the sexual mask or the… Material mask. You know, the aggressive mask, you know. When I started reading a chapter on the sexual mask, you wrote about some guy whose name I forget,

but who's sort of the champion picking up women I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for one split second but what's that it's having to prove

to himself that he's lovable where's that come from you know so but we identify with it so we think we're the personality

I'm this sexually attractive guy or I'm this aggressive guy I'm this material guy who's gonna make make it in the world, you know? And so we think that we are a personality. So it comes from, I say, three sources. One is the conditioning.

The other is the fear for the pain. And thirdly, the identification with the personality. We think that's who we are and we don't know who would be without it. All of which is all based on trauma. Yeah, it's the identity, you know know building this identity that you know and i talk about how the identity supported you to accomplishing certain things right or protecting you from certain things by having this identity yeah but it's also not serving us to hold on to that identity if we want the next level of peace and freedom.

Exactly. But it's so hard to kill an identity. It's like you've had this thing for decades maybe, and you've got to let go of this thing. Yeah, I wouldn't even talk about killing. I mean, in my healing chapters of this book, I talk about let's make friends with it. Like, for example, by the way, I have to to be honest i said that i wouldn't be in this guy's shoes for a minute that's not true part of me was envying him right you know even here i'm 78 and married 53 years but i read about this guy who slept with all these women why couldn't i be

that guy you know i don't want to go there and i wouldn't i've long ago chosen not to, but there's still something that, who doesn't want to be wanted that much? Right. You know? Something with the ego or the desire, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, but if we didn't kill those parts, but made friends with them, if somebody came to me with that kind of pattern of I'm not a sexual guy, but they realize that it's not, they might feel high for a moment,

like any addict will. It's not fulfilling. It's not fulfilling. I wouldn't say kill that part of you. I'd say let's make friends with it. Let's find out what it's really trying to do for you. What it's trying to do for you is trying to make you feel wanted, making you feel valuable, making you feel desirable,

making you feel loved temporarily, making you feel powerful. What happened to you that you don't feel lovable, that you don't feel desirable, that you don't feel powerful? In other words, it's not a matter of getting rid of these parts or these aspects of ourselves. It's a question of actually getting to know them. And they all began as coping mechanisms. I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

This is actually part one of our interview and part two will be coming out a few weeks from now. So make sure to follow the show to stay updated. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show to stay updated. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure

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