The Tim Ferriss Show - #620: Dr. Gabor Maté — The Myth of Normal, Metabolizing Anger, Processing Trauma, and Finding the Still Voice Within

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Starting point is 00:04:06 Can I answer your personal question? No, I would have seen it, but I can't tell you that. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Today's guest is Dr. Gabor Mate. You can find him online at drgabormate.com. That's G-A-B-O-R-M-A-T-E.com. On Twitter, at drgabormate. On Instagram,

Starting point is 00:04:42 at gabormateMD. Dr. Mate is a renowned speaker and bestselling author. He's been on the podcast before, and it was a very popular episode. He is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics that include addiction, stress, and childhood development. Dr. Mate has written several bestselling books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, I highly recommend,le, 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. He has also co-authored Hold On to Your Kids, Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. His works have been published

Starting point is 00:05:20 internationally in nearly 30 languages. His new book is The Myth of Normal, subtitled Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Gabor, welcome back to the show. It's nice to see you. Tim, it's very nice to be back with you. I thought we would start with a little catch-up because we haven't connected in some time, and I would love to just hear how you are spending your time in the last, whether it's year or two. I know it's hard to normalize things, perhaps, pun intended, with the subject matter over COVID. But how are you allocating your time these days? Actually, COVID, if I may say so personally, did me a favor because I had this book to write.

Starting point is 00:06:03 And it was a much bigger project than I even had imagined. And I had all these travel commitments, which fortunately I had to cancel, which allowed me to stay at home and finish the book, which took me a year longer than I expected it. So the last three years have been pretty much dominated by book writing. And because of COVID, I've been doing a lot of teaching online, a lot of webinars. Now that I'm free again, I'm doing extensive traveling one more time. The most exciting thing that happened to me, if I can jump right into it. Jump right in. Three weeks ago, I participated in a plant ceremony with some Indigenous Canadians here in British Columbia. They invited me to come and help support their healing process.

Starting point is 00:06:49 And I'm telling you, Tim, it was a life-changing experience being with these Indigenous folks on their land. You may have heard the delegation of Canadian Indigenous leaders went to the Vatican where the Pope issued a very, to my mind, paltry apology for the suffering that had been inflicted on generations of Canadian native children in his residential schools, where they were tormented and sexually, physically abused, spiritually suppressed. They died in large numbers. Their bodies are just being discovered now. So working with these people, the suffering and the sorrow and the sadness and the pain is unfathomable.

Starting point is 00:07:31 But the dignity, the beauty, the connection to nature, the honoring of spirit, the welcome, the love, the resilience was also just absolutely humbling to behold. So I went there to help them, but I got helped more than I think I gave. It was a profound, profound experience. So I'm still glowing with it three or four weeks later. So that's what's foremost in my mind these days is how to embody and apply those teachings in my own life, but also in my work. Well, I would love to stay on that for a little bit, because you mentioned something that only recently came to my attention. I was actually in Newhawk tribe territory about six to eight weeks ago, and learned for the first time of these mass graves and much of the history that you're describing which is horrifying of course and the the ripple effects of that carry over well into today in the case of this particular

Starting point is 00:08:35 ceremony this medicine experience I know you have and for people listening if they don't have the context you have a lot of exposure and experience with use of different medicines, including but not limited to psychedelics. Within that, including but not limited to ayahuasca, for instance. In this particular case, was it sort of a syncretic blend of indigenous First Nations practices and then plants or otherwise that are used in other places? It was a plant that grows here locally. And even though there's no artifactual evidence of them having used this plant before, but when they used it, they said it's in their DNA. It feels so familiar to them. And it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't have used

Starting point is 00:09:25 it traditionally because they know every plant, every blade of grass, every leaf, every bud, every flower, the medicinal uses of everything. I mean, the connection to nature is beyond belief. So it's also beyond belief that they would not have known about the plant that we used, which grows on their land. And again, it felt so familiar to them. So for them, it wasn't a question of something foreign coming in. It was something very much aligned with their own experience. What I brought to it was sort of Western psychology and my capacity to ask the right questions and to delve into the traumatic imprints that they carry because of this tragic history. But it was very much in line with their own traditions. So a few follow-up questions related to that, and you can feel free, of course, as with all of my questions, to not answer those that you don't want to.

Starting point is 00:10:22 But in the case of the plant, is that something you can can describe more specifically or is that something that you prefer not to mention no it's mushroom so yeah you would have to imagine like you mentioned given the sheer density of sort of psilocybin mushrooms in that region that yeah they would have had experience almost yeah almost certainly it's like peyote and the western areas of the United States. How would they not know it, given that they know every other plant? What was your unfolding or the experience? Why do you think it was impactful for you personally? Well, first of all, the context.

Starting point is 00:10:57 Because I'm with people that are just so honest and so raw and so open and so welcoming. So that I've never felt more at home with any group of people, even though I never met any of them personally before. So there was that. That was the experience. And we all had to utter some words before the ceremony about what our intentions were. And I uttered two words, love and presence. Damn, I experienced them both. I experienced love for myself in a deep way, which was new for me, actually. I can't put it into words because it's not a concept. It's not an intellectual exercise. It was actually an experience, a full-body experience is what it was.

Starting point is 00:11:44 And yeah, I experienced presence. And you've had these experiences, they're ineffable. They're almost, you would take a poet, somebody with a much more poetic imagination than I have, to actually somewhat depict it in words. But I tell you, I came out of it. And then I sat on the porch outside. It was a beautiful sunny evening. We're looking at this beautiful mountain here in British Columbia. There were bison in the field below us. And of course, in the native experience or imagination, everything has a story.

Starting point is 00:12:19 So the mountain itself has a story. So I'm looking at this beautiful mountain and this bison and the sunset and nobody had to convince me that nature contains us all. Not at that moment, anyway. For people who have not heard any of your backstory, this firsthand experience of love that you mentioned is not being, let's just say, a common experience for you. Maybe it's worth just for a second rewinding, if you wouldn't mind just sharing a bit of why that is. In our first conversation, you had told the story, and perhaps you could just fill in some of the gaps of growing up in, or certainly being born in Hungary, having relatives perish in the

Starting point is 00:13:03 Holocaust. And then even after the deportation of Jews had stopped, Jews were still being persecuted. And if I recall correctly, murdered by sort of the fascists who were in power at that time. And you were handed off to, your mother handed you off to someone else because she wasn't sure if she would survive. Is that, am I remembering that correctly? Well, let me tell you a story around this. So sometimes after I met you, I went to Peru to lead a retreat for medical people with the plant ayahuasca. When I say I lead the retreat, I don't lead the ceremonies. I don't hand out the brew. I help people formulate intentions

Starting point is 00:13:44 beforehand and integrate experiences afterwards. But these people, 23 people, came from all over the world, health professionals, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, to work with me in this jungle setting with native healers. So I did the work the first day, it went really well. Then we had the ceremony the first night. Now my experience with ceremonies is that everybody else has deep ceremonies and I don't. Because I have this very thick skull and just nothing gets through. You know, that's my little self-myth, you know. So, these Shipibo native maestros and maestras, shamans, sit down in front of me in turn.

Starting point is 00:14:23 And each of them chants to everybody so there were 24 of us each of them gets chanted to six times in turn by each of these maestros maestros they sit down in front of me and i say okay do your worst you know and very little happened for me next morning they sent a delegation to me they, we can't have you in ceremony because you have such a dark, dense energy in you that this is affecting everybody else. In our Icaros, our chance can't penetrate your darkness. Furthermore, they said, we can't even have you working with your people during the day because you'll still be affecting them. So they fired me for my own ceremony, for my own retreat, literally.

Starting point is 00:15:07 They had no idea. They were not impressed with the fact that I've written books or published in how many languages or any of that. They don't know my reputation. They're just known as this guy from the north, this doctor. And they said, here's what happened to you. We think you've worked with so many traumatized people that you've absorbed their traumas

Starting point is 00:15:25 and you haven't cleared it out of yourself and furthermore they said we think when you were very small you had a big scare and you haven't got over it yet the first chapter opens with a painting that my wife did of me as an infant this is from a photograph

Starting point is 00:15:40 looking at a camera with absolute terror in my face. And a pediatrician who came to see me when I was separated from my mother at a year age, she said she'd never seen such terror in the eyes of a human being as she saw in my little eyes. Now, these shamans picked that up like that. And what they said was,

Starting point is 00:16:02 we're going to assign one of you to work with you alone, because we want to heal you. So I had five private ceremonies with a shaman all to me, and it ended beautifully. But when you talk about that early scare that I had, these people picked up on it instantaneously. And this maestro chanted to me over five nights, three or four hours, five hours. And by God, he cleared so much out of me, I couldn't even believe it at the end. Do you think at some point we will be able to, and I'm not saying this needs to happen, certainly it doesn't for the therapeutic effects to be seen. Do you think the kind of rationalist, physicalist, Western scientific perspective will find some type of explanation for what

Starting point is 00:16:54 you're describing? If we assume for the time being that something is in fact happening, it's not purely placebo effect. I mean, even if it is, that's something. But do you think there will be a point at any juncture in the near future where we'll have some explanatory capabilities? What's frustrating for me, not just for me, by the way, is that we have so much science already to explain such experiences and many more amazing healing experiences. We actually have the Western science to prove it or to explain it. And what's frustrating is what's been called the science-practice gap, where on the one hand we have the science, but the science hasn't penetrated the medical practice consciousness.

Starting point is 00:17:41 So there's a gap between not only Western medicine and traditional understandings, but there's even a gap between Western science and Western medical practice in so many ways. So in terms of my own experience, there are certain traumatic imprints that are ingrained in the emotional circuits of my brain, in the very basic survival mechanisms of my brain, in my lower parts of my brain. And these are neurological circuits embedded with a certain kind of experience and a certain kind of belief and a certain kind of reactive pattern. So the belief that I'm impenetrable and everybody else can heal, but I can lead other people to healing, but I can't get there myself, that itself is an imprint

Starting point is 00:18:32 of trauma. Because an infant or a small child being traumatized, they think it's going to go on forever. And then that experience of being in the moment and not seeing the end of it then becomes a belief. So then I take that belief into the ceremony. And I sit there and I'm saying, do your worst. You can't get through to this brain. In other words, I'm sabotaging my own experience. Not meaning to, but that's how I'm imprinted. Now these people don't buy my story.

Starting point is 00:19:05 They see through to the fear. In fact, they even intuit the experience that it must have been a very early scare that I had. So this guy just holds me like a father, and he loves me, and he chants to me, and it's almost sometimes like a lullaby being sung to a baby. Well, guess what? A sense of safety arises in me.

Starting point is 00:19:30 And when the safety arises, my whole visceral body experience changes. My heart, my breathing, my intestines, my muscles. They're all in a different state. Much more receptive. And this goes on for five nights. And by the end of it, I come out a different person. Now, when I say I come out a different person, believe me, I travel home and all of a sudden that different person becomes a memory. And I have to struggle again with a lot of the same old stuff. But I'm struggling with them from a much more informed perspective.

Starting point is 00:20:09 I know it's no longer my absolute reality, which is a huge difference. It's not that hard to understand, really. Because we know that the brain can develop new circuits and new ways of understanding in response to new experiences. Was that five nights, just so I understand, that was five consecutive nights of drinking each night yourself? Or were you not drinking on each night? Five nights over 10 days. So we had a ceremony and then we had a day of rest when I would just meditate and do my yoga and walk the jungle, the rainforest path, and read my spiritual books and contemplate,

Starting point is 00:20:47 and then back into ceremony. So yeah, it was a 10-day private retreat is what I ended up having. Sounds like everybody won in that situation. And let me tell you an interesting aftermath. So afterwards, the shamans told me that when they knew that 24 healers, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists are coming from the West, they thought we'd have an easy job because they said, we absorb a lot of trauma from other people as well, but we clear it out of ourselves. So we expected you would have done the same thing. And they said they've never worked with such a heavy bunch of people in their whole lives than these Western doctors. Because we work with all these traumatized people all the time, we don't even understand

Starting point is 00:21:31 trauma, let alone do we know how to clear it out of ourselves. So they had a big job on their hands, the shamans. And those people that participated had a huge experience. And when they went back to their work, so many of them, it changed completely. Do you think there will be a point, maybe you already can, where you can yourself do that self-care of clearing whatever you may absorb,

Starting point is 00:21:57 so to speak, by, say, patients in a clinical practice? I'm doing it now. I have to. What do you do? I do meditation practice. Actually, what I learned from one of my colleagues, Dr. Daniel Siegel, who's got this wheel of awareness that I'm practicing, I have a yoga practice that I do pretty much every day now.

Starting point is 00:22:18 Every day I go swimming. I swim 2K every day or do some other kind of workout. I pay a lot more attention to my own needs than I used to. The, not the meditation, but rather the yoga, is that still, I think last time we spoke this some time ago, so maybe it's changed, but sadguru-based, is it still that or is it something else? No, it's his yoga.

Starting point is 00:22:41 I don't want to particularly tie it to his particular personality with which I have some concerns. I just don't like hero worship or guru worship of any kind. But yeah, the yoga I learned through his course has been very helpful to me. So let's dive into the new book. You've written many books. You've certainly, I would imagine, thought of many possible books you've certainly, I would imagine, thought of many possible books you could write. Why spend multiple years on this one? Tim, I hadn't thought of multiple books that I could have written. This is the one that's been calling me and yelling at me for the last 10, 12 years, and literally took 10 years of research. In fact, very many times I thought I wasn't up for it. I thought this was too big.

Starting point is 00:23:25 I thought this time, there's an expression of a Hungarian, a Hungarian which goes, having struck your axe into a very big tree. You know, like, this time you've taken on too much. You know? And many times, believe me, I even had the contract for the book five, six years ago, and I gave the money back. I said, I can't do it. It's too much for me.

Starting point is 00:23:48 But it just kept calling me and calling me and calling me. And then one day, it just woke up and said, OK, I'm here. You got to do it. And that's when the new title came to me. And that's when I started working on it again. And so here it is. But so it's been a calling. It's really been calling me.

Starting point is 00:24:04 I can't put it in any other way. Nothing's really been calling me. I can't put it in another way. Nothing else has been calling me. This has been calling me. How does that show up for you? Is it like insomnia, that it's ideas that are coming to your mind? How does that calling, I'd just love to know how that actually shows up or manifests for you. Excitement? Yeah, I want to do this.

Starting point is 00:24:28 There's a visceral knowledge that there's something right about this. When I say there's something right about it, I don't mean that I'm correct about everything I say. I just mean right for me, that this is what I need to do. When I see a newspaper article or I see a new book title, right away, oh yeah, this speaks to us. I've got to read that article. I have to read that book. So the world keeps feeding me information that demands to be metabolized and synthesized and written and spoken and then over the last few years you know as we've seen crisis upon crisis it just occurs to me somebody's gonna write about how life in this system affects the health of human beings so it's visceral excitement it's ideas it's information that just keeps pouring at me like a lava flow and this just is

Starting point is 00:25:27 coupled with the fear that i'm not big enough to do this you know so it's a combination of a lot of things but even that fear that i'm not big enough to do this is a sign to me of the importance of what i'm talking about when i say the importance i don't mean to be grandiose i mean the importance to me. If it wasn't that important, I wouldn't be so afraid of it. That's what I mean. Maybe we can launch into a story. I have a few cues here, jumping off points in front of me.

Starting point is 00:26:00 And tell me if this makes any sense as a direction to go. And what I have in front of me is the story of how trauma can inflict and affect everyday life, story of landing in the airport. Would you like to grab that baton and run with it? Well, sure. And this relates to what you're asking me about before in terms of my early history. So this is when I was 72, six years ago. I'd been on a speaking trip to Philadelphia. I'd spoken on addiction, the link that I draw between childhood trauma and addiction. As you and I have talked about this, it was well received. On the way back, Air Canada bumps me up to first class, so I couldn't be more comfortable. I land at the airport. My wife is meant to pick me up, and I get a text as I land saying,

Starting point is 00:26:43 I haven't left home yet. Do you still want me to come? And from feeling very comfortable and very pleased with myself, if I can put it that way, I go into a rage. I just, and I text back, nevermind. And I take the taxi home. So imagine the indignity of having to take a taxi home you know and i arrive home now here's the deal my wife's an artist when she's in the studio painting everything else disappears i've only known this for over 50 years you see she has no bladder she has no husband she has no hunger it's just her and the art and that's what happened. So what am I so upset about?

Starting point is 00:27:27 When I come home, I don't even talk to her. I just grunt at her. I keep this up for a day, and she finally says, knock it off already. And as I say, it's a tribute to decades of progress that I could knock it off after 24 hours. Because in the past, I might have carried on for days like that. Now what's that all about? Well, my mother gave me to a stranger, as you mentioned earlier, and I didn't see her for five or six weeks when I was a year old. She did this to save my life. When I saw her again, I didn't even look at her for several days. And that's what small children do on separation because the brain says that I was so hurt when you abandoned

Starting point is 00:28:06 me that I'll never open myself up again to that kind of vulnerability. I won't even look at you. Now that imprint from a year old is what showed up when my wife said, I'm not picking you up, or at least I'll be late picking you up. All of a sudden, the woman on whom I'm relying for presence and support and love is unavailable. And what gets triggered is this childhood imprint of abandonment and rage and despair. And so this is how trauma shows up in our lives. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as that, but it shows up in our relationships and how we feel about ourselves, in how we interpret events, in how we react to things that happen, in our worldview. So trauma is this sort of invisible dynamic that shapes so much of how we live our lives but we tend not to be aware of it. And until we become aware of it, it can run our lives. It can run our

Starting point is 00:29:06 personal lives. It can also run our politics and our culture. Let me come back to the rage for a second, because I would love to get your advice or at least hear of some of your learnings over the last decades. Because I recall from our first conversation that in your 40s, you're a successful doctor, you're a driven workaholic, you had challenges in your marriage, your kids were, at least based on my notes, afraid of you at points because of your rages. What have you learned about rage and anger? How do you relate to it or metabolize it? And I ask as someone who has a long history of running on anger as maybe a corrosive fuel of sorts. So I would love to just hear you expand on that in any way that makes sense. Sure. So there was a great neuroscientist, his name was Yak Panksepp, P-A-N-K-S-E-P-P,

Starting point is 00:30:07 who tragically died a few years ago of cancer. And he distinguished a number of brain systems that we share with other mammals. They include care, he capitalized these, so C-A-R-E, care, then something he calls grief and panic, then fear, lust, seeking, play, and rage. These are all brain systems that we have. They're all necessary for mammalian life. They're all necessary. By rage he means the anger that arises when our boundaries are being transgressed. If I were to infringe on your boundaries, either physically or emotionally, the healthy response for you is to mount an anger response. No, get out. Stay away.

Starting point is 00:31:02 That's healthy. Healthy anger is in the moment it protects your boundaries and then it's gone it's not necessary anymore however if your boundaries were infringed as a child but you could not express it it doesn't disappear it gets suppressed it becomes almost like a volcano that's gurgling and bubbling inside you but it's had no expression now why did you suppress it because if you're being well you've been very public about this so i'm sure you'll allow me to mention it but you've some time after you and i talked you actually publicly acknowledged that you'd been sexually abused as a child i did now when that's happening to a small child the last thing

Starting point is 00:31:53 you can afford is to be angry because if you get rageful at the boundary invasion you're going to get hurt even more so suppressing that rage becomes a survival mechanism. Nothing wrong with it. It's the right thing to do. You don't do it, your brain will do it for you automatically as a way of preserving your life or your relative safety. But the rage doesn't go away.

Starting point is 00:32:17 What happens then later on as an adult, something triggers you and all of a sudden it just explodes out of you and you have no control over it. Now it's no longer a response, a healthy response to the present moment, but it's a response to the past. And just as my hurt and sense of abandonment and then rage was triggered by my wife not

Starting point is 00:32:41 picking me up at the airport, so a person's rage can be triggered by something relatively minor, but all of a sudden this lava flow just explodes out of you. And the difference between healthy anger, and by the way, suppressing healthy anger is also unhealthy for you. We can talk about that. But just as healthy anger expresses itself, does its job, and then it's gone, rage, such as I'm describing, such as the way I used to experience it and probably as used to experience it, the more it pass through you like the wind. But that isn't, in fact, what happens with me. And I know I'm not the only one. It actually magnifies and intensifies and extends this feeling. Exactly. Because it recruits more brain circuits into its service. So that's the difference between healthy anger on the one hand, which is an essential boundary defense. And by the way, so much parenting advice in this culture tells parents to force kids to suppress their anger. Really unhealthy advice. There's healthy anger, then there's that rage that you and I have both experienced. If you're going to punch a human being and there's a pillow to punch instead,

Starting point is 00:34:01 better to punch the pillow. No know, no question about that. But as a technique of dealing with it, no, that's not how you learn to process that rage because it needs to be processed. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Tommy John. Tommy John was founded in 2008 by married entrepreneurs Tom Patterson and Aaron Fujimoto to solve the problems men and women have with their underwear and other apparel. The end result, Tommy John, means no pinching, no bunching, no riding up, among many other things. In fact, Tommy John has dozens of comfort innovations that have led to more than 17 million pairs sold, and I have quite a few of my own. Here are a few of these features. An air mesh interior hammock pouch, fabric with four times the stretch of competing brands,

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Starting point is 00:35:30 guarantee. Shop Tommy John's Labor Day sale now at TommyJohn.com slash Tim and save 25% site-wide. Tommy John is T-O-M-M-Y-J-O-H-N. So TommyJohn.com slash Tim. Get 25% off site-wide at TommyJohn.com slash Tim. See the website for more details, and you can find the link in this episode's description. Offer ends September 11th. How do you approach the processing? What is a more effective prescription or one possible way? Well, if I was working with you, I would encourage you to fully experience the body experience of what's happening in your body. And you'll find that it's not just an idea in your head. It's something that dominates your visceral experience of yourself, your muscles, your breathing, your abdomen, your entire nervous system. And there's ways of just helping you experience it. Experience it by raising the

Starting point is 00:36:36 awareness of that somatic experience? Of being with it. Now that there's a wonderful Buddhist lineage spiritual teacher, meditation teacher called Tara Brach, who talks about RAIN. Recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. So you recognize, oh yeah, this is happening to me right now. Okay, I'm going to allow it. Not along in the sense of, I'm going to act it out on somebody else, but I'm going to allow it not along it in the sense of

Starting point is 00:37:05 I'm going to act it out on somebody else but I'm going to be with the experience and then investigate okay what is this video all about

Starting point is 00:37:13 and then nurture that little person that had to suppress all that rage it's a nutshell view of it but in other words there's ways of working

Starting point is 00:37:21 with it through the body that doesn't involve either suppressing it or acting it out, but in experiencing it. Yeah, I'll need to revisit Tara and Rain. She's been very helpful to me. I just want to give her credit where credit is due. And maybe I mentioned this in our first conversation as well. the radical acceptance as a book yeah as a title it turned me off but a friend of mine who is a very skeptical neuroscience phd or has a phd in neuroscience i should say who's generally averse to anything that even rhymes with woo woo read this book and recommended it to me and i found

Starting point is 00:38:01 it tremendously tremendously helpful and it may be time for me to revisit it. And she also tells this apocryphal story that is in some ways linked to this conversation that we're having. She tells this apocryphal story of a sage who says, there's only one question that really matters, and that is, what are you unwilling to feel? And I've also had therapists ask me, do you experience clean anger? And my instinctive answer is no, I don't. And I resist it because I view it as potentially destructive, especially the way that it can feed on itself and get amplified. And I'm not at risk of throwing a chair through a window or punching someone because i've become very good at suppression but it's not lost on me that there is a cost to be exacted when you do that i read radical acceptance recently as well that's why it's in my mind and

Starting point is 00:38:56 i'm also somebody that doesn't do acceptance or surrender very well so i resist those titles but I found it very helpful and very compassionate actually. And from my perspective, from the point of view of the therapy that I teach my students, no part of us, no aspect of us is bad. So that rage of yours, it came along for a good reason. And the suppression of the rage, that came along for a good reason as well. And so the more we can investigate this and understand it, the more we can make friends with all aspects of ourselves, which I think is the key to healing. By the way, radical acceptance doesn't mean radical tolerance. It doesn't mean that you put up with everything.

Starting point is 00:39:41 It just means that you accept that this is the way it is right now. Now, where do we go from here? It's not a question of, okay, I'm going to accept all the injustice and oppression and unfairness that's in the world. No, it's not about that at all. That's a really, really good clarification. And it's, at least as I recall the book, I should revisit it. It's very much focused also on self-acceptance, meaning acceptance of the parts of us that we have disowned, including the emotions that we're not willing to feel. Let me ask you about, and this is all related, I suppose everything's related at the end of the day, but what happens when one seemingly non-negotiable need is pitted against another?

Starting point is 00:40:20 So the example I want to ask you about specifically is attachment versus authenticity, right? So if I think about the reaction I had to my significant other this morning, which was similar to your taxi experience. On one hand, I wanted to be very direct in how I was feeling. And then I hesitated in expressing that, which would have come with a tone of anger almost certainly, because I wanted her acceptance and support, didn't want to hurt her. And so I felt this inner conflict of needs that I couldn't reconcile. And maybe that's not the best example, but I would love for you to sort of help me and the listeners explore this a bit. Because I can't imagine I'm the only one who experiences this type of thing. I don't know, but I wasn't there, and I don't know what happened.

Starting point is 00:41:13 But my guess is that you and I did this exercise once before that you very, I thought, rather bravely put on YouTube, where we went through a certain experience of yours or you haven't been upset. The lesson from that exercise and very often, or take my reaction at the airport, and I imagine perhaps your reaction this morning, and I can't say this for sure because I wasn't there, but very often we don't react to what happens. We react to an interpretation of what happens. Your partner did or didn't say or do something, and then you had a certain interpretation of that, and then you acted that interpretation. So I imagine that may have happened. So then you're in this dilemma. If I fully express who I feel, I'm going to maybe hurt her and hurt the relationship,

Starting point is 00:42:01 or hurt them and hurt the relationship. But if I don't, then I'm not being authentic. So what do I do? I mean, I think that's the dilemma that you're posing here. It goes back to very early in childhood, because we have these two needs that I've identified. One of them is for attachment. Attachment being our need for connection and closeness with another person for the sake of being taken care of or for the sake of taking care of the other. So when I talked about these brain circuits of Dr. Paxsepp, the care system is designed for you and I to take care of the vulnerable, our young, our very old ones, our sick ones. There's a system in our brain with its own brain chemicals and its own circuits that are designed to help us care for one another.

Starting point is 00:42:53 That's essential. No mammal would survive without that. We also have a system for what he calls grief and panic, and that's what we experience when we don't get that care. So we're wired to attach for the sake of survival and no creature is more dependent more vulnerable more immature than a human infant compared to any other animal so our dependence is absolute so a need to attach is absolute but we have another need as creatures and as human beings, which is to be authentic. Now, I don't mean any kind of new age who concept by this. I mean, knowing what we feel and being able to how to act on what we feel.

Starting point is 00:43:37 So, as you know, we evolved out there in nature. How long does any creature in nature survive if they don't know what their gut feelings are telling them? Not very long. Not very long. Authenticity, which comes from the word auto for self, knowing ourselves and manifesting ourselves is an also essential need.

Starting point is 00:44:01 That's fine. But what happens if a child experiences emotions that the environment says, uh-uh, we won't accept you with that? That can happen through abuse, but it can also happen through well-meaning parents who read the parenting advice of a lot of experts, including some that I think you've had on your program, who will tell you that when a kid is angry, they should be made to sit by themselves. Wait, let's name some names here. Who are we talking about? Jordan Peterson says that in his book, 12 Rules for Life. That an angry child should be made to sit by themselves until he says they come back to normal.

Starting point is 00:44:42 In other words, anger in a child is not normal. And the message to the child, but he's not the only one. And the message to the child is, you're not acceptable when you have that emotion. No, not the child is a dilemma. I can be authentic, but then they're going to exclude me. That's going to threaten my attachment relationship. Or I can suppress my authenticity and then i'll have the attachment now what do you think gets sacrificed 100 of the time

Starting point is 00:45:12 authenticity the authenticity gets sacrificed and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out who the heck we are that suppression of authenticity has severe mental and physical health implications, from autoimmune disease to malignancy to depression. Take, for example, something called depression. What does it mean to depress something? Literally, what does it mean? To push it down. Depression is not this inherited brain disease. It's a result of having to push oneself down, push down one's emotions as a child. Just to play devil's advocate here, I mean,

Starting point is 00:45:52 there can be, and there are, appear to be genetic markers that predispose someone. Again, it's not predetermination, but there is, it would seem, a genetic component. It's not purely in the absence of childhood events, something that does not occur, right? Would you say that is fair? I'm going to give you an argument on that one. I mean, having written this book, I've just reviewed the literature. Nobody's ever discovered a gene for any mental health condition. Nobody's ever discovered any group of genes that cause any mental health condition. Nobody's ever discovered any group of genes that cause any mental health condition. Nobody's discovered any group of genes that if you have them, you're going to get this disease. Nobody's discovered any group of genes that if you don't have them, you can't get this condition.

Starting point is 00:46:35 What people have discovered is there's a large group of genes that the more of them you have, the more likely you might have any number of mental health conditions from ADHD to depression to psychosis to whatever. But none of them code for the specific condition. So something is being inherited, yes. But what is being inherited? And you take animals or human beings with those same set of genes and you give them different environments, they'll turn out to be very different creatures. Some of them will be extremely functional if they were treated very well.

Starting point is 00:47:11 So what is being inherited then? Now, this is contrary to the medical mantra. I'm telling you the science, okay? What is being inherited are not diseases. What is being inherited is sensitivity. The more sensitive you are, and you and I talked about sensitivity the first time we met, but let's just illustrate it. If I tap myself on the shoulder right now, I don't know if I did this exercise last time,

Starting point is 00:47:34 I don't feel any pain at all, do I? But what if my shoulder was bare and there was a burn there, so my nerve endings were close to the surface which means I was thin-skinned and now I touch myself with the same force now what do I feel severe pain so sensitivity from the Latin word sincere just means to feel the more sensitive you are genetically the more you feel the more you feel when things go wrong the more pain you have the more pain you have the more you feel. The more you feel when things go wrong, the more pain you have. The more pain you have, the more you have to get defenses around that pain. And all mental health conditions reflect some defense against pain. In fact, so do many physical conditions. So what I'm saying is, yes, there's some genetic component here, but that's not a disease that's

Starting point is 00:48:23 being inherited. It's sensitivity and therefore disease that's being inherited. It's sensitivity and therefore vulnerability that's being inherited. From there on, it depends purely on the environment. Sure. And I think we're largely on the same page. The point I just wanted to make is that there are predispositions. It's not a binary transmission of a disease, although those may exist with things like Pompepey disease and so on if you have two recessive carriers but let me come back to attachment versus authenticity for one second because in the case of this child who's expressing say anger and if there are people who would take the stance of the prescriptive move is to put the child in the corner until they come back to their senses.

Starting point is 00:49:06 In that case, the child is going to choose attachment over authenticity and you condition the child to behave that way. How would you handle that situation? Because I suppose if I wanted to sort of stand in for some people listening and for myself, frankly, if you don't help a child to learn to regulate themselves in some fashion, you just end up with someone who can't function in society. Or if they're encouraged to kind of indulge is a strong word, but embrace every impulse that they have with a strong emotion, they'll probably in some way get exiled by their students and peers also. So how do you walk that tightrope? How do you suggest handling that type of circumstance? So I agree with you. The intent of good parenting or good child rearing is to help the development of self-regulation. Absolutely. The question is

Starting point is 00:50:02 how to get there. Right. No, it's not a question of everybody should behave exactly how they want to and hell with everybody else. It can't be that. That's permissiveness. That's not healthy parenting either. But it also depends what age we're talking about. Like, for example, a two-year-old, they want a cookie before dinner. Now, if you're doing your job as a parent, you're going to frustrate them. Because you're going to say no cookie before dinner. Now, what do we do as adults, as mature adults when we get frustrated? You know, if we're lucky, we know how to handle all frustration. But if you're like me, sometimes you'll start throwing a bit of a tantrum. So that's what a two-year-old will do. They'll

Starting point is 00:50:44 throw a tantrum. Nothing wrong with the two-year-old throwing a tantrum. So that's what a two-year-old will do. They'll throw a tantrum. Nothing wrong with a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. That's just what their brain is programmed to do when they're frustrated. So you say, oh, you're really angry, aren't you? You really want that cookie? Yeah. And you're really mad at daddy

Starting point is 00:50:58 because he won't give you the cookie? Yeah. That allows the child to move through the emotions and to know that emotions can come and go. How self-regulation happens is, as Dr. Dan Siegel points out, is that the immature circuits of the child's brain use the mature circuits of the adult's brain, of the nurturing adult's brain to help regulate it. So the way you help a child develop self-regulation is by being regulated yourself. So if you stay calm, you say, you're really angry, aren't you?

Starting point is 00:51:36 That'll help the child develop self-regulation because he's downloading your circuits. But if you respond with punishment or hostility and giving him the message that he's just not acceptable, you're just frustrating him even more. You might get compliant behavior, but you're going to get somebody whose rage is being suppressed. And we've already talked about that. And you're going to get somebody who's going to get depressed because they're pushing themselves down. A child who's understood and held and loved, they'll move through these emotions very quickly.

Starting point is 00:52:09 Very quickly. And that's how you learn self-regulation, is that these emotions can arise and they'll go and we don't have to be attached to them and we don't have to act them out. So self-regulation begins by the adult world being regulated and not reactive. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let's come back to the myth of normal. And if you look back at your many books, and maybe I'm just unique in this situation,

Starting point is 00:52:40 but I don't think I am. I'll explain what I mean. When I look back at each of my books, there are chapters or elements or messages that I wish I'd maybe emphasized more, or that I'm sad, get skipped over, or not given enough attention. In the new book, are there any chapters or concepts, anything at all that you really hope people do not miss? I know that's perhaps a strange way to phrase it, but I'll leave it there as a starting point. No, it's good. Thank you. It's almost like I felt I could just print the title of the title page, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, and just have people write their own books. Just have a bunch of empty pages.

Starting point is 00:53:35 So I think the message is reinforced through the whole book. What we think is normal in our society, from the point of view of human needs and human evolution is absolutely abnormal. And therefore, what we think of abnormalities in terms of illnesses and dysfunctions and diseases and so on, these are normal responses to abnormal circumstances. And the biggest loss you and I already talked about, this is a society that from the very beginning from in utero onwards puts stresses on human beings that they lose contact with themselves. And the essence of trauma is loss of contact with yourself, loss of connection to yourself. And that's reinforced through parenting practices. The parenting advice people get, you and I already talked about that, is reinforced in the school system, where it's all about competition and evaluation rather than relaxation and learning.

Starting point is 00:54:28 We're judged all the time by our externals, like how we look, what we achieve, how smart we are, how fast we are. We're not accepted for who we are with our flaws and our vulnerabilities. Society caters to those false needs so that, for God's sakes, people are botoxing themselves because they've learned that how they are is just not acceptable. People are on Facebook presenting a false image of themselves because they believe that how they are and who they are is not good enough. We're sold all these products and are manipulated into all these activities that are all attempts to fulfill some deep hunger in ourselves that is missing because we've lost our true selves. We are manipulated into buying products and eating foods that are actually toxically, addictively unhealthy.

Starting point is 00:55:30 And this happens with the full awareness, even none of the awareness, the employment of modern science as to how to get people hooked on cell phones or junk foods. Our politics reflects very traumatized people reaching the top, enacting policies that then create more trauma for large numbers of people. In other words, this is a society that, for all its wealth, scientific ingenuity, incredible progress in science and medicine, has fundamentally got disconnected from the essence of what it means to be human beings and we suffer there's an article in the new yorker about the alarming rise in childhood suicide the mysterious rise in child there's nothing mysterious about it kids are stressed because of the conditions of this culture. All the lonely people, as the Beatles sang, you know, all the lonely people.

Starting point is 00:56:28 The number of people lonely has doubled in the last 30 years. Britain has appointed a minister of loneliness. Loneliness kills. It's as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of causing illness or potentiating illness and death. There's so many ways in which this culture is abnormal and it's causing people to be not well. And so that message, that's the essential one that I hope people won't miss, but I kind of doubt that they will if they read the book. And the big the big message is tim is we don't have

Starting point is 00:57:05 to be that way it's not our true nature we've been sold a bill of goods about what human nature is human nature is not like that and precisely the reason there's so much dysfunction is because we've gone disconnected from our true nature we don't have to be we can find our way back we can embrace it and we'll be a lot healthier, both as a group and as individuals. So what you're saying reminds me of a quote. No doubt you've heard it many, maybe even used it many times. This is from Krishnamurti.

Starting point is 00:57:38 It's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Yeah. And my next question relates to what to do, because I have noticed for myself, for instance, if I'm off in the mountains and the rivers or the jungle by myself for a period of time, I come back, I feel better attuned, I feel much more at ease. There are all these positive effects, but it, at least in that form, is opting out of society. Now, maybe that's okay. But as I contemplate, part of my reason for asking about parenting and anger management or recognition and so on is

Starting point is 00:58:20 because I'm contemplating starting a family soon. And that's at least in the plans. And disappearing to the jungle for months at a time may or may not be compatible with that, at least in the early stages. So recognizing the problem, what are some of the things that people can do or what are questions they should be asking? How would you suggest they start looking at treatments or solutions? First of all, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the connection with nature. I do talk about a woman called Clara Hughes. Now, Clara Hughes was the first person to win medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. She's a Canadian and wonderful person. And after she retired from sports,

Starting point is 00:59:04 she became a public speaker and was just stressing herself fulfilling all these demands and then she decided to start walking so every year for six months of the year she just goes walks here she walks she's walked from i think northern canada to mexico and she reconnects herself you know wow obviously nobody can do that all the time claire doesn't have children so she can afford to to do that but that doesn't mean that the connection with nature needs to be dismissed so i would say for you if that's a powerful connection and a way for you to reconnect with yourself for god's sake keep doing it you might not do it for as long and as intensively as you

Starting point is 00:59:41 might before you had children but keep it up because it's an essential part of who you are. But beyond that, what keeps us disconnected from ourselves are the imprints of trauma. And I suggest ways of working that through. That's not the only way. I'm certainly not unique in offering pathways to wholeness, as I call it, that part of the book. But people need to realize to what

Starting point is 01:00:06 extent their tensions and their unhappiness and the dysfunctions, things that they don't like about themselves, they all came along for a reason. At some point, they had a function to play. Now they're no longer helpful. We can work them through. You got to get help, either through reading the right books, and or finding the right therapist, and or engaging in the right kind of spiritual practice or martial arts or something. But there's always a way to work it through. I can't emphasize enough the importance of communality, of connection. We're wired to connect. And in a society that teaches us that our nature is to be aggressive and competitive

Starting point is 01:00:52 and individualistic and even suspicious of others, that goes against our nature. So we have to work our way through those false beliefs and come back to who we really are, which are connected beings, really here to be both individuals, to both to be authentic and to be attached at the same time, so that there shouldn't be this tragic tension between attachment and authenticity. We can be both authentic and be connected. That's what we have to strive for, both as individuals and I think also as a culture.

Starting point is 01:01:27 When you think about wholeness and contending with these traumatic imprints, so you mentioned some, say, parenting approaches that you disagree with. Are there any approaches or recommendations that you think do more harm than good with respect to contending with trauma or moving towards wholeness? Yeah. Any parenting practice or educational practice that focuses on behavior rather than the child's underlying emotional dynamics is going to be harmful. Because what we want out of child rearing is that at the end of it, there should be an autonomous human being, respectful of themselves and of others, who can be authentic and connected at the same time. That's our goal. I don't think anybody would disagree that that's our goal for human beings. Now that's a natural developmental process as long as we provide the right conditions for it.

Starting point is 01:02:26 But nothing in nature develops in the wrong context. So, you know, I could have an acorn in my hand, and the nature of that acorn is to become an oak tree. But not if I leave it on my desk. It needs, you know, water and soil and sunlight and so on. A lot of parenting and educational practices focus not on the long-term goal and development, but on fixing the kid's behaviors in the short term. So we talk about kids are acting out. What do you do when a kid acts out? Well, look at this phrase acting out. What does it mean to act something out? When I say a kid is acting out, you will probably think

Starting point is 01:03:01 of a kid who's being oppositional or rude or disobedient or aggressive. But that's not what the phrase means. Acting out means to portray in behavior that which we haven't got the words to say in language. So in a game of charades, where you're not allowed to speak, what do you have to do? You have to act it out. If you landed in a country where nobody spoke your language and you had to portray hunger, you'd have to act it out. Kids are acting out their emotional needs. The question is, are we going to respond to the child or are we going to try and suppress the behavior? So much of what's taught as parenting advice is designed to manipulate or shape or

Starting point is 01:03:46 suppress kids' behaviors rather than understanding the child. And by the way, this is also true of adults as well. You know, as we look at human beings and we don't see what's really driving them, we just either approve or disapprove of how they're behaving, but we don't make much of an effort. The legal system specializes in not understanding why people behave the way they behave, just in suppressing it. Which is why in Canada, where indigenous people make up 5% of the population, they make up 30% of the jail population. And indigenous women make up 50% of the female jail population in this country.

Starting point is 01:04:27 It's an absolute scandal. Same in the US. The more oppressed you are, the more marginalized you are, the more you've been traumatized by history, and you know which groups those are in the United States, the more you're likely going to end up in jail. Because the legal system doesn't understand trauma. It doesn't understand human development. And it confuses punishment with rehabilitation. In terms of supporting healthy growth of human beings at any level, we need understanding of what's driving this behavior. And it's not a

Starting point is 01:05:05 question of allowing bad behavior or permitting it or encouraging it, but it's a question of what are we going to do about the phenomena of aggression or drug use or, in the case of children, rudeness or disobedience or anything else, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to try and just suppress the behavior? Then you end up where we are, with millions of people in jail, and lots of kids with learning difficulties and behavior problems and millions of kids being medicated. Or are we going to try and understand what's happening, what's driving it?

Starting point is 01:05:42 What are the social, cultural dynamics that are driving so much dysfunction. And it's not that hard to perceive. We have the science, we have the research, we're just not applying it. Let me hop in. There are a few things I want to mention that come to mind as you're speaking, and then I'll end it with a question. The first is on the acting out point, how I've heard stories from a number of friends, and I don't have kids, so anyone out there, don't look to me for parenting advice, but with respect to baby sign, teaching children sign language before they actually have the physiological capability of speaking, that you reduce the amount of acting out, sort of crying for attention, etc., when you enable

Starting point is 01:06:26 them even with a handful, literally, of basic sign language symbols, right? Hungry, thirsty, potty, or whatever it might be. So that makes sense to me. The second is, and I like the way you deconstruct that phrase, the second, as it relates to incarceration, there's a documentary I saw a long time ago called The Work. It's called The Work. It came out in 2017. At the very least, everybody should watch the trailer. We'll link to it in the show system. I say that as kind of in a monolithic sense, which might not be perfectly accurate, but within a prison in the United States. And it's absolutely mesmerizing and brutal to watch. And it highlights how difficult it is in the sense that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure intervening early. But let's look at the adult case. So coming back to this trauma imprint, if you were to take, say, a thousand people from the population kind of selected at random, and they all, as adults, pursued fixing their trauma, whatever they think of as that meaning,

Starting point is 01:07:38 are there any approaches or techniques or paths that you think are risky, damaging, ill-advised? Is there anything that you'd like to highlight in that department? Specifically in prisons in the U.S., there's a work that you mentioned sounds wonderful. I know a couple of other approaches. There's a film made about my work called The Wisdom of Trauma that actually people can watch online. And there's a scene in it, I'm not involved,

Starting point is 01:08:05 but there's a woman called Fritzie Horseman. She's wonderful, you might want to talk to her sometime. She works with these high-level offenders, and she's got this large number of people in this prison yard, standing in a circle, all men. And she says, if you were hit regularly as a child, take a step forward, everybody takes a step in. If your parents yelled at you a child, take a step forward. Everybody takes a step in. If your parents yelled at you a lot, take a step in. If you're abused, take a step in.

Starting point is 01:08:32 If you've witnessed violence in your family origin, take a step in. And the circle just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller as people keep stepping in to the circle. And so she does wonderful trauma work with prisoners. And the transformations are incredible that she witnesses and helps to facilitate. I know somebody else who works with something called the Prison Enneagram Project. You've probably heard of the Enneagram. I've never studied it. I have.

Starting point is 01:09:00 It's come up with a number of CEOs, Toby of Shopify and others who use the Enneagram. It'd be helpful if you wanted to just give a brief overview or explain what you introduced. So I've never studied it all that much. I don't have the patience for it really. But it's a... It's a personality typing system that allows you to look at potential interactions of different people with different typing. And you can look at the pros and cons of those interactions. And there's a lot more to it, but those are some of the basics.

Starting point is 01:09:33 Yeah, I think that's about right. And also each Enneagram type has got its potential values, but also its hazards. So I know somebody who's taken this work into prisons and they do Enneagram work, and I witnessed it. And these guys are killers. They've killed. It's hard to say this, and it's going to draw some maybe raised eyebrows or skepticism

Starting point is 01:09:58 from some of your listeners. These guys are the loveliest people in the world, and they're not pretending. They were sensitive kids, deeply traumatized. Nobody ever paid attention to them. Everybody hurt them. Very often, of course, minority status. Somebody hears them, allows them to work with,

Starting point is 01:10:16 I quote one of them in the book, actually. And he says, if I ever get out of here, all I ever want to do is help people love themselves. Because when I committed that crime, I was totally disconnected from myself. I didn't know who I was. I couldn't respect myself, he says, so I couldn't respect no one else either. And as I've learned to respect myself, I now respect all human beings. I witnessed him saying this. This is in San Quentin, actually. So the potential of rehabilitation and bringing people back

Starting point is 01:10:46 to their human selves is enormous given the right circumstances but we know how punitive and how traumatizing the prison experience is for a lot of people because we equate punishment and rehabilitation

Starting point is 01:11:01 it's not the same thing I'm not saying that we should allow murder or that we should encourage crime what i'm saying is if we apply the light of understanding to what drives people and we're actually interested in rehabilitating them so that the correctional system really becomes a system that corrects people rather than just punishes them we could do so much with what we already know. And you know what? It wouldn't cost more. It would cost less. For people interested, I just want to mention, I actually did some podcast interviews behind the line inside a maximum security prison in California at one point, a level four maximum security

Starting point is 01:11:43 prison, Kern Valley State Prison. So people can find that, 323, if they're interested in kind of getting a peek behind the lines. And I would agree with you. Were you surprised by anything? I was surprised by a lot because that is certainly not my native environment. I mean, on one hand, you had violent events on a constant basis, right? So there were real threats within the prison, you know, sort of riot gear and so

Starting point is 01:12:16 on had to be used. So you had tremendous potential for violence. And then you also had tremendous potential with the right help, with the right support and resources. I was there volunteering with a group teaching entrepreneurial skills because without qualifications or transferable skills to outside civilian life, then the recidivism rate, of is going to be very high also with felony or felonies on your record it complicates the entire situation so it's a very very problematic gnarly puzzle to solve taking people from inside the system to then outside the system and reintroducing them so that was the context within which i was there. But you were also able to have conversations with people who had done a tremendous job with support of rehabilitating themselves and really using introspection and cultivated self-awareness to turn their lives around, even within the confines of a maximum security prison.

Starting point is 01:13:26 In some cases, people who were not eligible for parole, right? People who were still turning their lives around despite the fact that most likely they would be restricted to life behind bars until they died. So everything about it was deeply impactful and actually participated in an exercise that's very similar to the one you described where people are stepping forward or stepping backward depending on the things they've experienced. And when you start layering all of the abuses and experiences these people have suffered through, I don't want to say it's inevitable, you know, coming back to the, maybe the genetic comparison. I think it's not inevitable that these people end up in jail, but it sets the conditions such that it is much more likely, especially if they're highly sensitive, as you mentioned. And it stuck with me. It was very emotional for me to witness,

Starting point is 01:14:22 honestly, because it also, I grew up on Long Island, you know, in family, kind of lower middle class with friends who came from some very tough households, you know, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of abuse, a lot of drugs. And some of my friends have not made it, you know, some have died of opiate overdoses and drunk driving accidents, et cetera, and other issues. And some are behind bars at this point also. And so it's also striking to me how with one or two different decisions, the trajectory of my life could have very easily gone in a direction that would have made it more likely that I would have ended up someplace very, very different. Let me ask you, if you could no longer write, you could no longer...

Starting point is 01:15:08 I'll stick with writing. No more writing, no more public speaking, but you are allowed to focus on clinical practice. And this comes to mind because of what this inmate you mentioned said about spending the rest of his life doing something. What type of clinical practice would you focus on i hope this rule against me speaking doesn't isn't enacted very soon because i got this multi-country trip lined up that i really look forward to but don't tell anybody okay but uh yeah but i'm not supposed to speak. That's accepted. Yeah, that's accepted.

Starting point is 01:15:45 Okay. But, you know, it would be much the same as I'm doing now, except more one-to-one. It would be that you come to me with an issue, and I would help you to see that there's nothing wrong with you, with you, with who you are. The stuff happened in your life at a time when you couldn't help it. And you made a kind of meaning out of that. Like I made the meaning that I couldn't be helped, I couldn't be healed. Or I made the meaning that I'm being abandoned. And you made a certain meaning out of that. And you've been living your life out of that meaning that you created at a time when you had no choice in the matter. And if you can get to be friends with all those aspects of you that at that time helped you survive,

Starting point is 01:16:31 but now are creating suffering for you and the people in your life, and if you can work your way back to getting to know yourself and accepting yourself, you'll be just fine. Whether your trauma shows up in the form of multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis or malignancy. And by the way, there's a lot of literature linking all these conditions to trauma. So I'm not just making this up. Or whether it shows up as rage or whether it shows up as depression or as ADHD or as anything else, whether it shows up in difficulty with intimacy, in problems forming relationships, no matter how your problems manifest, there's a reason why

Starting point is 01:17:15 they're there. Those reasons can be understood, dealt with, worked through, and you can find your way back to yourself. So that would be my clinical practice, almost no matter what people presented with. I say almost no matter what, because I don't be categorical about it. You're right. There are some diseases that are genetic. One runs in my family. It's called muscular dystrophy. If you have the gene, you're going to have the disease. My mother had it, my aunt had it, and they died with it. But that's very rare, very rare. For the most part, people were dealing with the impacts of life experience in a culture that undermines our connection to ourselves and to other people. And that's what we have to realize and correct.

Starting point is 01:18:00 Well, Gubwer, I know we could go and go and go and go. I mean, I feel like that's a powerful place to start to maybe come to a close, but I want to also open the floor to anything else that you might want to mention, anything you might want to add, or if apart from closing comments, you might have any requests of my audience or suggestions to the audience. Certainly, the new book is The Myth of Normal. I recommend people check it out. I've seen you through documentaries, but also in our interactions, in action, so to speak. And I really respect you as a clinician and a practitioner, right? Not just a theoretician. And so I wanted to say that publicly. I'm aware of how much you've rolled up your sleeves and worked with very difficult cases of addiction and trauma in some of the sort of highest density areas in North America,

Starting point is 01:19:01 certainly with respect to all of these intersecting health challenges. So I wanted to say that, but are there any other comments you'd like to add before we bring this to a close? I'll tell you personally that writing this book has been the biggest challenge of my life. At certain times, I didn't know if I would finish it or it would finish me first. Literally, I went through panic at certain times, I didn't know if I would finish it or it would finish me first. Literally, I went through panic at certain times. I even became so desperate then that I called a therapist and I had a therapy session once a week for several months in the middle of writing the book, which is a good thing. At least I was smart enough to reach out for help. It was hard because

Starting point is 01:19:42 I took on such a big subject, which is the whole of this culture and how that pertains to us as individuals and as groups. But what kept me going was this voice inside me that says, you know, I don't say you need to do this, but you're called to do this and you wouldn't be being true to yourself if you didn't fulfill the calling that voice in one version another it doesn't have to do with book writing or any other project like that but that voice of who we are and what we can be in this world that's inside all of us and there's such cacophony there's such noise generated by this culture. I mean, the radio, the TV, the internet is yelling at you 24-7. And we're being pulled away from ourselves

Starting point is 01:20:34 in so many ways. But the Bible talks about the small, still voice that's inside of us. And the noise around us generated by this culture makes that voice almost impossible to hear. But I'm sure you've had the experience yourself, and a lot of people have. It's in there. And if we can just listen to it. That was my biggest takeaway from writing this book is, and I'm so glad I did it. And in the end, I'm just so happy with what I've been able to set down on paper. But by the way, with the brilliant help of my son, Daniel, I couldn't have done this on my own. And if I can pitch forward a bit, the next book Daniel and I are writing is called Hello Again, A Fresh Start for Adult Children and Their Parents.

Starting point is 01:21:18 Maybe in a few years when that's done, that's a workshop that we do. And maybe in a few years, I can come back and talk to you again when that book comes out. But anyway. Let long and short of it is that the lesson that I derived is that it's not easy to listen to that voice, but it's A, essential, and B, so rewarding. And that voice is inside all of us. So I have to follow up because this is touching a nerve for me right now because I've been sort of sitting in the silence for about a year and a half now. I've not committed to any large projects. Do you have any advice for attuning to or sensitizing to picking out that small, still voice. I would love to maybe have a more acute ability to observe that. Not that I'm totally deaf, dumb, and blind, but do you have any recommendations?

Starting point is 01:22:18 I do. But are you willing for a bit of an experiment right now? Oh, man, here we go again. Okay, I may end up being the pinata, but I'll go with it. Yes, I'm open to it. It's just an experiment. It may or may not work,

Starting point is 01:22:32 and it's really okay if it doesn't. So there's no, I'm not going to feel like a failure if it doesn't work, and you won't be getting a failing grade if nothing comes up. It's just an experiment, right? Let's try it. So you say you've been kind of observing some degree of silence

Starting point is 01:22:48 and not committing to long-term projects. It's very wise because something inside you needs to work itself out and you're giving it space. So I'm just going to ask you to just be silent for a moment within yourself. Then I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to snap my fingers, ask a question. I'm going to snap my fingers. Just say the first thing that comes to your mind.

Starting point is 01:23:09 If anything does, and if nothing does, that's really okay. But whatever you do, don't try and think about it. Okay. So don't try and figure out the right answer. There's no right answer. Okay? But you're going to see if anything comes up or not. So I might ask two questions. Okay? So we're just going to see if anything comes up or not. So I might ask two questions. Okay, so just silence for a moment. Okay? You're paying attention to what's happening

Starting point is 01:23:33 inside you, your chest, your belly, your head, you know, you're just being present with yourself. I'm going to ask you, what's calling you? Animals. Animal communication. Okay. It's the first thing that comes up okay well i don't know what that means but i'm sure you do yeah okay great by the way animals have a lot to tell us don't they it's not true that i don't know what you know i know people that work with horses you know i don't know? It's not true that I don't know what you know. I know people that work with horses, you know, I don't know exactly what you mean, but I know there's a lot there. Okay. So if that comes up for you, then the second question would be, what's stopping you? You know, I think what's stopping me is I can pursue it. I am actually going to be pursuing

Starting point is 01:24:19 that in the next month, especially because I got a sort of a very promising lead involving uh some indigenous animal trackers okay so that's a whole separate story but i am unsure of how to because i'm sort of on the periphery of this interest, right? And the interest, I think, is very much an attraction to non-verbal forms of communication. So that could be humans, but I just find the kind of pure, unadulterated, naturally selected manifestation of that is seen so clearly in animals. And what about that appeals to you? There's something about that appeals to you. What's the appeal there for you in a word? In a word. Give me a second. I'll have to do a little search function for a word. You know what comes up for me? Purity.

Starting point is 01:25:23 I think for me, it would be very close i was going to say i mean it's cheating it's not a word but other means of knowing okay then knowing okay other means of knowing forget the other means it's knowing and you don't want that knowing happening through the intellect yeah i don't want it going through a bunch of filters and abstractions and concepts i think it just gets so clumsy yeah so look damn it sounds to me like you're got a beautiful calling and which is pure knowing and you even have a pathway that you've envisioned which is through animal communication i think you're on your way i don't think there's a big mystery here.

Starting point is 01:26:08 Well, you know, I'm going to borrow that confidence, if I may. I'll kind of fake it until I make it here with that. I'm excited. Thank you for doing the exercise, which, you know, hopefully people, maybe they had a chance to try themselves. I'm excited about it. I think there's part of me that is trying to force it into this maybe false construct of a job, if that makes any sense. And just bear with me as I try to walk through this. Like right now, I do the podcast. I love doing the podcast. It's basically they're interviews, but I'm also very self-indulgent with turning them into my own therapy sessions. So thanks for playing along. And there's a part of me that really enjoys a commitment to all consuming projects because I find it so much easier to say no to the noise and to the temptations and the shiny objects when I have a

Starting point is 01:27:00 clear focus that consumes much of my days or all of my days. And maybe it's just premature, but I've been trying to figure out, all right, well, how does this interest actually translate to something that I can spend that amount of time on? And the answer is not forthcoming. So I think for that reason, I've hesitated in taking the plunge. Well, if I may say, you're trying to bargain with your authenticity here. And it seems to me you're trying to justify it somehow. For me to be authentic and pursue this calling, I have to somehow translate it into some monetized or professionally acceptable or respectable endeavor. I don't imagine that financially you're constrained to do that.

Starting point is 01:27:43 Oh, no. Yeah. It's not the finances. It's more like, how do I make it something? I don't imagine that financially you're constrained to do that. Oh, no. Yeah. It's not the finances. It's more like, how do I make it something? I don't want it to be a disrespected hobby, if that makes sense. It's something I feel very drawn to respect. So I'm sorry to interrupt, but are you then worried what other people will think about it? No. No, I'm not. I'm not i'm not actually i'm worried that i

Starting point is 01:28:05 won't have enough to chew on for it to sustain me for a period of time i just won't have i won't be able to sink my teeth into it enough to spend what i would view as a critical mass of time to reach some point of expertise but no that that's all. It doesn't have anything to do with what other people think. Okay, great. So you want to be able to respect it enough inside yourself. But look, what's the worst case scenario here? See, it sounds to me when I hear you speak about it, and you said a few words, you said animal communication,

Starting point is 01:28:39 you said knowing, pure knowing, I would call it. To me, that's very inspiring that you'd be caught by that it really is from the outside just to tell you how i respond to it that's boy this guy's really got something here is what i'm thinking and what's the worst case scenario is that you take the next step with this indigenous possibility that you mentioned and you'll see won't you you know yeah right do you have to figure it out all in advance or can you just take the next step and trust the process yeah the answer is i can can trust the process you know i mean it makes me think of i can't remember who said it but uh you know they're like somebody described writing a novel as driving across the country

Starting point is 01:29:25 in the dark with only headlights to guide you you can get there, you can make it from one side to the other but you can only see 100 feet in front of you at any given point in time so I think I probably just need to sort of take take that

Starting point is 01:29:41 and run with it so thank you I'm going to be, I already have a couple of things on the calendar in the next take that and run with it. So thank you. Thank you. I will, I'm going to be, I already have a couple of things on the calendar in the next two months that I'm really excited about. So I think I just need to stop dipping my toe in the water and really get in.

Starting point is 01:29:56 I would say one final thing is that the mind that we develop as kids in response to trauma doesn't trust their authenticity very much, for a good reason, because authenticity will get us into trouble. So I would suggest that quite possibly some of this self-questioning and hesitation and the doubt around it is still a bit of an echo where you are programmed to question your authenticity, because what you're talking about sounds very authentic to me.

Starting point is 01:30:25 Yeah, it could be. That wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, I mean, I think that's as good a theory as any for me to recognize is valid at this point. So thanks for the encouragement. I appreciate it. I'm just reflecting what I'm seeing, that's all. Well, thank you for the reflection.

Starting point is 01:30:42 I look forward to learning how that goes for you one way the other actually yeah yeah me too me too well gabber thank you so much for the time it's nice to see you again and it has been it doesn't feel that long ago that we sat face to face in austin but it's been quite a while remarkably so and you've been busy i'm very excited about the new book and for people who would like to check it out, and I encourage they check it out, the new book is The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. drgabromate.com. And you can find Gabor on Twitter at drgabromate and then on Instagram, gabromatemd. And we've covered a lot of ground. And I really appreciate you being such an open book and also maybe helping me to turn a few pages in the process. So much appreciated. Thank you for making the time.

Starting point is 01:31:45 Thank you, Dan. It's a pleasure. Take care. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before

Starting point is 01:32:44 you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. ButcherBox makes it easy for you to get high quality, humanely raised meat that you can trust. They deliver delicious, 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef, free-range organic chicken, heritage breed pork, and wild-caught seafood directly to your door. For me, in the past few weeks, I've cooked a ton of their salmon, as well as two delicious barbecue rib racks in the oven.

Starting point is 01:33:21 Super simple. They were the most delicious pork ribs I've ever prepared. My freezer is full of ButcherBox. When you become a member, you're joining a community focused on doing what's better for all. That means caring about the lives of animals, the livelihoods of farmers, treating our planet with respect, and enjoying better meals together. ButcherBox partners with folks, small farmers included, who believe in going above and beyond when it comes to caring for animals, the environment, and sustainability. And none of their meat is ever given antibiotics or added hormones. So how does it work? It's pretty simple. You choose your box and your delivery frequency. They offer five boxes, four curated box options, as well as the popular custom box. So you get exactly what you and or your family love. Box options and delivery frequencies can be customized

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Starting point is 01:34:48 Claim this deal at butcherbox.com slash TIM or see the link in this episode's description. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. I've been asked this for years. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. So you can cover your bases. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. I've recommended it since the 4-Hour Body, which was god eons ago, 2010, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, you'll be hard pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #620: Dr. Gabor Maté — The Myth of Normal, Metabolizing Anger, Processing Trauma, and Finding the Still Voice Within

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #620: Dr. Gabor Maté — The Myth of Normal, Metabolizing Anger, Processing Trauma, and Finding the Still Voice Within

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