The School of Greatness - The Real Reason You Can't Stop Your Addiction | Dr. Gabor Maté

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Dr. Gabor Maté reveals a truth most people never hear: the abuse itself isn't always your deepest wound. He challenges everything you've been told about healing, explaining how the real trauma often comes from the people who should have protected you but couldn't. Through deeply personal stories including Lewis's own journey with sexual abuse, Gabor shows why shame keeps us trapped and how our nervous system's freeze response was actually protecting us all along. This isn't about blame or staying stuck in victimhood. You'll walk away understanding that healing means reconnecting with the parts of yourself you've been taught to hide, and that the suffering you've endured can actually become your greatest teacher.Gabor’s books:Scattered MindsWhen the Body Says NoHold On to Your KidsIn the Realm of Hungry GhostsThe Myth of NormalIn this episode you will:Discover why sexual abuse or bullying is often a secondary trauma and the real wound comes from not having emotional safety in your familyTransform your relationship with shame by understanding that freezing during trauma was your nervous system's brilliant survival mechanismBreak through the cultural genocide of authenticity by learning which childhood needs must be met for healthy developmentUncover why triggers aren't about the present moment and how to stop letting the past control your reactionsLearn what true healing actually means and recognize the signs that you're reconnecting with your authentic selfFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1849For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Jerry Wise – greatness.lnk.to/1747SCLewis Howes [SOLO]  – greatness.lnk.to/1819SCSadhguru – greatness.lnk.to/1800SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The things that are considered normal in society are not at all normal from the point of view of human life and human needs. The addictions that people develop are actually normal responses to an abnormal situation. Dr. Mate is a world-renowned physician, best-selling author, whose work dives deep into childhood development and the impact of trauma. Dr. Gabor Mate. You were the average neurologist with symptoms of a mess. Nobody's going to ask you about your trauma. It's a huge gap between the scientific evidence and how you practice medicine. Why do you think in our modern society with all the medical and scientific advances that there's so much suffering when we have more information and knowledge and tools than ever before?

Well, what I read about your stuff, what I see about your content is a lot of people are a loss based on trauma. And past traumas cause certain addictions or certain behaviors and routines that maybe are some healthy addiction. or unhealthy addictions, but it seems to be like a lot of unhealthy addictions. Well, I can interrupt right there. Yes, please. No just think it's 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 be an addiction, or it can be healthy. Like eating can be healthy, but it can be an addiction. The, I define addiction as any behavior,

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 a short term harm in the long term inability to give it up that's what an addiction is now if it's if you have a behavior that's ongoing but there's no negative consequences it's not an addiction it's a passion it's a pleasure it's a habit to healthy habit. It's a healthy habit. So for me, it's not an addiction. And also, a healthy habit of 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 healthy slavery. Interesting. So addiction, what is the root of addiction? The word? Yeah. So in Roman times, an addictist was somebody who was assigned to another the person to serve them because they owed the money and they couldn't pay it back an addictus yeah this was like a indentured slave who had to work off the debt so that's what the word actually comes from is slavery is a form of slavery so if you're addicted to something you're a slave to that craving absolutely absolutely you you have no choice you can a slave has no choice wow and 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 or my behaviors no when did you what was the main addiction that you were you know tied to and when did you learn yeah how to break free of that well So in my life, the main addictions have been to work. To work? Yeah.

Work hard, achieve. 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 develop that addiction. And that was the hardest, that's 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 $1,000 of the 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 described in my book, an addiction in the realm of hunger goes, I once left a woman in labor and hospital to go get a symphony. So that's an addiction. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's like the, now, the interesting about addiction is, is that the, 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 in 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, the, 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 they 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, 10, year, 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. they're this habit is exacting on their lives 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's to be a cool combination of factors and and it's very very individual also it also depends of course the degree of trauma 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 the

from talking to a thousand people put your hands up if according to my definition you've got an addiction virtually everybody in the room we'll put their hands up maybe there'll be two liars who but 998 but 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 had your behaviors if i asked you i don't care what it was two but if i asked you what did you get some type of relief you get some type of pleasure you get some type of yeah specifically what do you get from it 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 was it's just you know you get to 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 trapped yeah somebody's trapped exactly and i know in your book on toxic masculinity talk about being trapped in it. Trapped is the very word you use. Yes. 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 which 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 very 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. Wow. That was important. You're worthy of love. That was worthy of love, exactly, acceptance and all that. Now, that also came from each other 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 the 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're at one with the universe. They feel presence, they feel connected, yeah.

Exactly. So that can happen and does happen to some people. And just to choose, I'm not going to decide not to do this anymore. Well, they realize they don't need to because they're free. They fell free, interesting. Yeah, very rare. For most of us, people, beings that walk to 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 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, seeing, accepted, and helped, they get 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, in 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 really called. You're kicked out of the tribe. You're not accepted in the tribe.

And you're, you know, boys' group growing up. And so I feel like culturally there's a lot of pain with men and women, obviously, but that it seems to be it's 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 it's 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.

but not it's not healthy or 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 um or or even this mask of rigid masculinity that you try to adopt for a while until it's cracked for you right and even to win maybe to be the best needed to 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. Very, in the last like five, ten years. Yeah.

So these days, athletes will talk about their sexual abuse. This didn't happen until 10 years ago. Yeah. Really, and really more three to five years ago, right? 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 subtitle is toxic culture, and it's got so bad.

There's a Greek playwright that I quote in my book, he's Escalis, and he, one of his plays, he said that the way the gods created us, human beings, that we have to suffer suffer into 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 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. Right. So I think that's why.

You know, 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, though, 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, physical science, which is great. You know, I mean, if I needed a heart transplant, I'd be very grateful for modern medicine. or you know a broken bone or anything but we've forgotten something that human beings have always known and um for example um i write about this friend of mine his name is uh louis mel madrona

and he's an american physician he's Lakota background okay and he told me that and he's a and he's just like me he's full of respect for western medicine i was trained in it he was trained in And we also see what's missing. And he said that in his tradition, when somebody got sick, the whole community gathers and thanks to 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 we often when I speak to groups, I ask people if in the last five years you've been to a neurologist or an oncologist or a cardiologist or gastrointologist or a rheumatologist, any kind of an ologist, put your hand up. So people put the hands up. So keep your hands up. You have to 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 into modern science because we have tens of thousands of studies to show that you can't separate the mind from the body, tens of thongs of studies showing how emotions significantly

influence the onset of illness, how relationships do, you know? 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. something in you will sense the tension in me and we'll pick up on that and that'll affect the intuition the yeah and 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 now give you two examples yes but 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 stresses affect the physiology of the child's breathing the breathing that they narrow with the air twos they cause inflammation by the way how to treat asthma with stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol you know we know american black women the more experiences of racism then you have to endure degraded the risk for asthma really we know that men who were sexually abused in childhood the risk of heart disease triple I could go on. Women who suffer symptoms of PTSD severely,

their 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 point of view of indigenous wisdom, but modern science. So when you say, despite all this knowledge, I'm saying what's missing from the knowledge is wisdom.

It's the wisdom. And not just the wisdom. Even the science, 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, La Jean-Martin-S Charcot, in the 19th century. He said that it was a disease caused by a Greek. 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 a mess, nobody's going to ask you about your trauma.

Nobody's going to 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. Wow. 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? 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 Mosler. 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? 1980 or 90. Wow.

Yeah. He said this then. Since then, multiple dozens of studies showing 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 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. And if they learn how to deal

with those stresses, one woman told me that I have beautiful conversations with my rheumatoiditis. 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. 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 in a previous relationship that I was in, I was feeling a lot of chest pain and kind of tightness in my throat. And at one point, like I was starting to get like this, I love if it was a rash or some type of flare-up, like, below my belly button. And I was like, what is it? Like, I've 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, to have a disease? Like, what is this, you know? And 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 the 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 fireup 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 at that rush, I would have asked you. Not what are you eating? No, I wouldn't.

Well, that might have. I mean, 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 where else do you use? What else flares up? You know what flares up? Is 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, well, Lewis, what is your body saying no to that you're not saying no to? And that happens in two major areas.

Relationships and work, you know. Interesting. And so the body says the signals. And 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 find the root.

Which is that's okay. I mean, you don't want to 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 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 two. 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, now in this society, but there's all these toxins in the environment and junk in the food and all, who knows? Prostia, yeah. But what I know is that the emotions play a huge role and that that can have a impact on their illness.

And the other thing I've, I don't know what to. about you when you write books, but I write books as much for myself as for anybody other. 100%. Yeah. So I get to learn a lot when I'm writing. So one of the things I learned when I was writing the myth of normal was, even how we think about disease, like people say, I have eczema, or I have depression, or I have rheumatoiditis, or I have ADD.

Now, there's an assumption there, isn't there? assumption is, first of all, is that there's this thing called ADD, there's this thing called eczema, there's this thing called rheumatoiditis, 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. But to say that I have this disease makes the assumption that's disease got a separate life and nature of its own. It doesn't. What if we saw a 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. Right. But how important is the words we choose but it's but it's but if we if we if we 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 in fact there have been there's a friend of mine now a recent friend dr jeff rediger who says psychiatrist at harvard and last year wrote a book called cured the science of spontaneous healing that was the subconscious healing that was the

No. He studied people who were terminally ill, documentedly so. They had no prognosis whatsoever, and then they get better. So they were terminally ill, they were not supposed to survive? They're not supposed to survive. It's supposed to die in a few years or something? Or months or week. I've talked to such people myself. And they've cured their disease. There's a moment called a psychologist called Kelly Turner, who studied the same thing short, 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 refused medical treatment. Then all of a sudden 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. Yeah. They go into nature, the whole thing.

All those things are great. Yeah. And I think the, 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 issue is 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 bit too heated here and uh you're getting warm i just know and i don't physically so much i just notice i need to calm down a bit i don't want to i don't want to talk too fast no i like it you get this is exciting for me yeah well i just feel like this is the what you were just saying yeah emotional repression is a major cause of physical illness it may not be the only cause

there's other factors but what we uh you know suppress usually comes to the surface in some way is that correct that's the whole point 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.

Yeah. 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.

You weren't the guy then. Yeah. So your kids had 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 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, is that how they really live their lives because of their own traumas and because of the stresses in the society.

They actually discourage kids. Don't cry. Stop crying. Yeah. For most natural. Suck it up. Look. Don't do this. Don't do that, right? Well, well, you know, there's a very famous Canadian psychologist. I 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. Interesting. In other words, angry and a two-year-old is not normal. And we have to socialize it out of them.

Now, there's nothing more natural than an angry two-year-old. there's nothing more natural than that you know they get frustrated you know they want a cookie they get a cookie before they don't get what they want they want to cook you know 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 you teach or 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 tent or getting angry if you say time out and you're not going to 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 my life depends. So I can be authentic or I can be attached in a relationship, but I can't have both. Interesting. Because if I'm not authentic,

or if I'm authentic, then I'm going to be alone. I'm going to be on timeout or whatever. And to the child, the time what is life threatening because you might be alone forever right yeah his child doesn't know that you see yeah so basically you're threatening the child threatening the child with depriving them or the greatest need which is the connection with you yeah love yeah yeah the love yeah now but 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 right

the answer is the answer is when they're screaming to pick them up you're angry at that aren't you? You really wish you had that cookie. Yeah. Oh, I get it. You know, 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. I'll 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 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 peasants of the parent. If you look at indigenous people, they carry their kids everywhere. The kids are always with the parents. And the pilgrims, when they arrived in North America, they're 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, 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 is 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. Its nature is 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-legated aid, so they're watching you. You're not reactive and explosive, 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 right 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 a 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. Well, 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 we 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 affect the physical of the child. Oh man, my my cortisol almost been off the charts, but I was, yeah, all of us children, yeah. But it 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.

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 having to um the nervous system from 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 our children about how unhappy she was and she's talking to the infant saying please don't take this stressed 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 her relationship she wasn't happy because of the relationship 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 open one of the chapters. So already in the uterus, these stresses starts happening. A lot of evidence for that scientifically. Brain scans, blood's work, all kinds of stuff. Then there is 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 that two weeks that's how they experience it oh man even if they

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 it then doesn't support them to the pregnancy then it puts a lot and and only that we didn't grow up in individual isolated nuclear families did we we evolved in small band hunter 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 survive right 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 isolate some others in separate homes, where the communities and more and more, you know, there's lots of work done by sociologists and others in the States about how communities are breaking down. 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 and they're also expecting the the husband to you know work and also be at home as opposed to reaching out to peers or family or friends and exactly so it's it's a very unnatural culture and no wonder

so many kids are getting diagnosed and with ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder or depression you know there's 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.

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. Don't 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 symptoms out in the world right now, could you say? Yeah. So depression and anxiety are fast growing and their 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, an adult...

expectations yeah but we think there's something wrong with the kid instead of looking at the context of what makes the kids the environment yeah no are these diseases well you can talk about them as diseases to some degree and certainly you know 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 a photograph

is one of the yellow star that Jews had to wear. 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 in 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. And she had it in her body.

You're connected to her feeding 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 or 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. Wow. So I didn't see her for six weeks, five or six weeks. And you're one? I was one then. 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 turn out. I become absent-minded as an adaptive mechanism. A coping mechanism.

Exactly. 55 years later, I'm diagnosed with ADHD, which is character as 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 an environment,

I had to push my feelings down in order not to burden my mother. It 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 the 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. She works with mushrooms, and I've worked with psychedelics, and it's one of the things that I write about. 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 I'm but at the same time I'm experiencing myself as a one year old infant

oh my goodness and this therapist is 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 all of a sudden under the influence speaking up. 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 would 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 without words actually they just become ingrained and then we then we live our lives out of it until something happens like 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 you wakes you up and say okay why is this happening what is 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. Yeah. 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. I wouldn't go there. I would not compare your trauma with anybody else's. Well, we all have our unique traumas, right? Different experiences that we face.

Why is it so challenging for people to face it and start addressing it? I was telling you, you know, I've been doing pretty intensive therapy for about a year and a half now every two weeks. 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 make it. 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, you know, 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, you know, imperfection about them? Well, I think in your own work you've touched upon very accurately on the way it's so difficult for one thing if you if you just just the words that you just use peace and love and connection if you had played that to your 20 year old self how would he have responded uh he'd be like suck it up or

he'd been like what are you talking about you're fine like yeah yeah don't be a little wuss or you know just work harder you know yeah but where would that have come from just my entire conditioning growing up from sports and you know okay so that so does that's a house you know so that's one of the factors 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 that then there's the the fear it really is fearful. You know, nobody wants to have pain, you know, but that's called growing pains.

And the third factor is we all developed as 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 amalgam of childhood coping mechanisms and genuine qualities. Yeah, some good stuff. stuff, but then I'm also coping. Yeah, yeah. Because 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 were. There were about some guy whose name I forget, but who's sort of the champion, picking out 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?

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. He's going to make it in the world. And so we think that we are our 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, building this identity that, you know, and I talk about how the identity supported you to accomplishing certain things or protecting you from certain things by having this identity. Yeah.

But it's also not serving us to hold. hold on to that identity if we want the next level of peace and freedom exactly so it's 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 it's yeah i wouldn't even talk about killing i mean i in my healing chapters of this book i talk about let's make friends with it like for example um i have to by the way i have 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 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, 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 sexual guy but they don't want to 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? You know, in other words, it's not a matter of getting rid of these parts or these aspects of ourselves. It's the question of actually getting to know them,

and they all began as coping mechanisms. That man that you described in your book, I guarantee he's a highly traumatized human being. So when we start to ask, yourself this question that you're asking is what happened to you or when you know when did you feel not powerful or not lovable or not wanted and let's say we're able to someone watching or listening is able to assess themselves and actually be present really reflect on the painful moments of the past which a lot of

people aren't even willing to talk about it to themselves right that's right for 25 years I had a memory of being sexually abused and thought about it almost every day, like for a moment, you know, it would come, you know, at least weekly, maybe not every day, but it was like a memory, yeah, that's there, you know, but I never told anyone for 25 years because it was so shameful and I didn't want to be, you know, made fun of or all these things. And so someone's able to self-assess and say, okay, I had this pain, this trauma, I felt not powerful or whatever it might be, what's the next step for them once they start to journal about it and be aware of it? And they're like, I really want to,

heal you know what would be that next step in the process well I mean it's not that I can prescribe but sure where it should be for everybody and there's many different ways of working but one of the things I would address first of all is the shame like one of the impacts of trauma is shame because children are narcissists by nature when I say narcissist I don't mean in a pathological negative sense I mean they think it's all about them this is the world just revolves around me exactly so bad things are happening to me it must be a must be a bad person you know number one number two uh i didn't fight back i couldn't defend myself and i and i and and so that makes me weak

and you know and and so i'm ashamed of that now actually when you look at it the not not fighting back is nature's coping mechanism uh part of your nervous system just freezes because if you see fought back what would happen just depends on what age you are and no but but as a young child if you fight if I back on against the sexual abuser all right what would happen to you who knows I mean you could have been even worse and and were you in a position to run no no no I was trapped in a bathroom so the part of your nervous system that would have you fight or run away gets inactivated it's protecting yourself you're protecting yourself And the part of the nervous system that freezes you, just be still and you get through this.

Wait till it passes. Yeah. That takes over. So it's actually what you're ashamed about is actually the brilliance of your nervous system that protected you. But you're beating yourself up in retrospect saying I should have ran, I should have fought back, I should have done this. That's the first point. Man. The second point is, if I can ask you how old way, where you went?

this happened to you five and how long did it go on for it's probably 10 15 minutes yeah no but it was only one time one okay who did you speak to about it no one okay no you don't have kids yet no but if you did have a child five years old and this happened to who would you want them to speak to me yeah now if you found out that this happened to your child and your child never told you how would you explain that how would i explain it to you How would you explain to yourself why my child is not talking to me about this terrible thing that happened? I would explain it by saying it's something I'm not doing. I'm not creating a safe environment to allow this child to speak up.

And that was your primary trauma. Yeah. So the sexual abuse is the secondary trauma. As a matter of fact, the abuser, like you were bullied in school, you said, and the bullies can always sense the vulnerability. The bullies have like a weakness in your life. They have a laser, like. Here's an insecure, weak person, yeah. Which, by the way, speaks to their own trauma.

Right. But they have laser-like, like the physicians who abuse their patients, the spiritual leaders who do that to their followers. They see a weakness. They laser-like they sense it, and that's who they pick on. And the bullies do the same thing. Now, that weakness, as we call it, comes from not having the solid support and protection and confidence and security in your family of origin so that's the primary trauma

that's what that's the first thing that happened yeah i mean that's the case for sure so to answer your question then if somebody comes to me with those issues um well first of all if somebody realizes those things i'd say don't try to do this on your own it's so hard talk to somebody it's so hard Yeah. Well, look, people with addictions, at least they have the 12-step groups, where they can actually talk about it, and people ideally will not judge them. It's a safe space to... It's a space. Or you might have friends. Or you might reach out to a professional. Or you might have an intimate partner that relationship is close enough where you can actually share this, you know? But you have to bring it out of you.

By the way, that just reminds me, this is one of the ancient gospels written on the same time as the other gospels is the gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus says that what you shall bring out of you will save you. And what you don't bring out of yourself will doom you. He says something like that. Right, right. He was a supreme psychologist.

Wow. And so you've got to bring it out. Yeah, what you suppress becomes more depressed, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it's got to start with that somewhere. You've got to bring it out. And if someone has a What if they say well? It wasn't that big of a deal this thing that happened back in the day. I was a kid and it only happened a few times whether it's sexual abuse or Okay, someone's screaming at you or you were neglected or put in the corner, you know, I hear that all the time It wasn't that big of a deal. I hear that all the time. Yeah, we're coming

I shouldn't be that concerned about it. Yeah, yeah. It was five. Who cares? You know, it was like yeah, okay. what do we eat okay then that's a very simple way to answer that but why are we so messed up right now no no no no not at all if a five-year-old kid came to you and you were the uncle uncle louis this guy did such and such and such to me and i'm really scared and hurt would you say to them oh no big deal no think of all the other kids that worse things have happened to Would you say that? Why wouldn't you say that? Because I'd want to be there for my nephew and make sure he felt supported and seen him love. And it would be the impact if you did say that.

I feel like it'd probably affect him for a long time if that was a pattern of that was the response that he'd gotten. But you see, that's what you're saying to yourself. Right. When you say that it's no big deal, you're saying to the five-year-old that was hurt, it doesn't matter. In other words, there's no self-compassion there. Right. What you would never say to anybody else, you're saying to yourself. And one of the impacts of trauma is lack of self-compassion.

And again, if I may mention my book, The Myth of Normal. I talk about that, about this idea of self-compassion. And I see it all the time. And so when somebody says to me, no big deal, you know, I say, okay, take any other child in your position, plug them into that situation and tell them it's no big deal of course I wouldn't but people do they do say these things to their kids or to their right their nephews or nieces they're saying like ah you'll be all right you know and I think it's because they don't have the emotional courage to to handle the the wide range of emotions

because they probably suppress the emotions I mean that's the whole point right is that they're they're not they're not comfortable with the child's pain Someone crying, they're like, I can't handle it. They can't handle it. Yeah, yeah. You know, my daddy should be like, stop crying, you know, just stop. There was no, like, hugging and like, he had a lot of love and affection in other ways, but he couldn't handle the crying and the...

The emotions. Yeah, the emotions. Well, one of the... In the book, I talk about the essential needs of children, and one of them is that they're given their freedom to feel all their emotions, particularly sadness and grief and pain. joy and everything else but I don't know if you're comfortable talking about this but what do you know about your dad's childhood oh man yeah it was messed up too yeah yeah so this goes on from generation yeah yeah so and I feel like a lot of people

listening or watching this can relate and say you know I don't think anyone's like I had the perfect parents right there's some of them maybe said man I had a great childhood and my parents did amazing but I would say probably a majority of people had something where they didn't feel emotionally seen or accepted by their parents or some type of challenge. And they probably would all say, well, yeah, their parents, you know, had struggle from the war, or from this or from the depression, and their parents suffered. And it was all about survival. It wasn't about thriving.

Yeah. So how do we break, I guess, the generational trauma? Yeah. And not let it pass down to our children. So not being seen as a major source of trauma. just not being seen in general just not being seen for who you are not being accepted for your authentic self yeah yeah yeah expected to be different than who you actually are you know it's a major trauma for people in society and it's very common um and um how does someone who maybe is living

in a stressed environment whether it be their home or their city or their culture political you know whatever it might be they they're they are more suppressed than others How can they support themselves to getting out of a stressed environment so that they can be more of a baseline to have the ability to thrive and flourish emotionally? You know something as a privileged Caucasian identified male with economic freedom and I'm not in a position to say to somebody these are larger political questions. these people, society has to change, and people have to work to change society. It's a question of, at some point it becomes a question of advocacy and activism and, and joining with others, you know, I don't want to preach to somebody else. Sure. About that, you know, my job is to our extent is to support and help, but not to provide some kind of...

But if society, let's say society won't change for a period of time for these individuals for certain individuals who are feeling over stressed what can they do as an individual whether they get support externally or not what could they start to do anything else besides I mean we cover a lot that they can start to do and they get your they get your book that's for sure well again you know I'm not sure I can fully answer that but I can I can give examples so the New Yorker a couple years ago with an two or three years had an article about an american black man who was jailed for decades and kept

in solitary confinement for decades was this shock us in gore i don't know i'm sure remember the name it could be i interviewed this guy who yeah was in solitary confinement for decades but yeah well maybe the same man yeah wrote a best-selling book and was on oprah and might have been decent guy but go ahead all right well my point is that fair enough my point is that it didn't that it wasn't destroyed by it right he started to heal in the prison in a he found the inner strength somehow so that it's not for me to tell i i don't know if i could stand it for one day and never mind for four decades or three decades but but that just shows you that the strength the capacity to heal and to hold on to oneself and to find oneself

is actually inherent in all of us final question for you what's your definition of greatness You don't make it easy in a guy, do you? I've got to challenge you. It's a willingness to find your best qualities in to express them in the world. That's what I see is greatness. 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 episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally,

as well as ad free listening then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on apple podcasts share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on apple podcasts as well let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review i really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward and i want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved you are worthy and you matter and now it's time to go out there and do something great.