Dr. Gabor Maté
Appearances
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
And there's not much freedom in that. There's no freedom in it at all. So, I mean, I suppose the opposite of trauma, if you want to revisit that question, is liberation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
By reconnection, but liberation from the inexorable power of the unconscious.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
that doesn't work very well pushing against it because they're still reactive you're still not in charge you're just in automatic resistance mode to something there's no freedom in that either you know so yeah but awareness that you mentioned is huge because once you're aware that there's this see the thing about these things may not fray right away but once you're aware that ah
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
This reaction of mine, it's not about what's going on right now. There's something all being activated here. That awareness alone weakens the, it slackens the strings a bit. They're no longer as taught. They're no longer as automatically capable of pulling on you. So it does have to begin with awareness of them. Ultimately...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
If we realize that this puppet master is just a desperate little person trying to get you to survive, the only way he, she, they knew how when they were small, if you make friends with it, but we relieve it of its duties, saying thanks very much, but I can handle it now, it eventually becomes our friend rather than sort of our master.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
So when somebody says to you, don't be such a baby, it doesn't sound very pleasant, but there's some truth to it. It means that you're probably reacting according to the lines of some wound that you sustained as an infant. And now you're reacting as if that wound was happening all over again. This is what one of my friends in the trauma world, Peter Levine, calls the tyranny of the past.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Well, all that. I mean, all or any. But even when you ask how you go about it, what is the it? Well, for you to say how to go about it, you already must have some degree of awareness. If you didn't, you wouldn't even be asking the question. So that's the very first step of realizing that there's something here to work on. There's something here to work through.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
It does not need to be the way it is. That already is the biggest step. The Buddha said that to recognize the source of your suffering is the first step towards relieving the suffering. And so as soon as you ask how you go about it, you've already taken a huge step. Because a lot of people don't even know that there's an it. They just think this is a reality, that this is life.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
So realizing that this it doesn't have to be the way it is. That's already a huge step now. Beyond that, yoga, meditation, nature, therapy of all kinds, body work of all kinds like somatic experiencing or craniosacral treatments or even massage therapy. It's incredible what can be revealed just through body work like that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
then all kinds of forms of therapy the ones i teach the ones other people teach um journaling um certain exercises in this book that we recommend like just ask yourself where you have trouble saying no in life to things you don't really want to do and working that through on a regular basis so there's lots of ways once you open the door you know i have a chapter on psychedelics here which is uh
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Again, it's not like a panacea or for everyone, but certainly it's a helpful modality for a lot of people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
So some people may actually benefit from taking pharmaceutical medications if their situation is dire enough, but not as the final answer, but as a way of getting respite that allow them to go to work on the real issues that cause them to be depressed or anxious or tuning out, you know, so any and all of these things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
So something happens in the present and we react As if we're back there in the past when this first happened. And we're not in the present moment at all.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
The word? I define it very specifically. It's not something bad that happens to you. It's not that, you know, I went to this movie last night and I was traumatized. No, you weren't. You were just sad or you had some emotional pain, but you weren't traumatized. Trauma means a wound. That's the literal meaning of the word. It's a Greek word for wounding.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
It depends on how we understand trauma. So if we understand trauma, it's only the really terrible things that happen to people, which do happen to people. You know, in the book I talked about a British friend of mine living in Canada. They are a yoga teacher and a meditation teacher and a psychologist and an artist actually.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
And they grew up in some orphanage here in Britain where they were racially taunted every morning. You know, words that are in the book, by her permission, which I'm not going to cite here publicly. And that gave her a sense of deficient, a sense of self that I'm just not good enough, that I don't belong and so on. there's those obvious traumas or the obvious trauma of being sexually abused.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
So men who are sexually abused, according to a Canadian study, have triple the rate of heart attacks as adults, you know, and all kinds of physiological reasons. Well, that should be the case. So there's those
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
self-evident, big T traumas that we call big T trauma, T with a capital T, trauma with a capital T. There's a certain percentage of the population, much larger than we think, subject to that. If you include all the known factors such as physical, sexual or emotional abuse, spanking, by the way, has not been shown to be as traumatic as harsher forms of physical abuse.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Spanking, which is still recommended by so-called experts.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
who should remain unnamed for the moment, the death of a parent, violence in a family, parental violence against each other, a parent being jailed, a parent being mentally ill, did I say a parent being addicted, a rancorous divorce, these are the identified big traumas, big T traumas, not to mention poverty, not to mention extreme inequality, war and so on. But then,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
If you remember that trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you, it's the wound. People can be wounded not just by bad things happening to them, but small children can be wounded in loving families where they don't get their needs met. I mean, that's obvious in a physical sense. If a child doesn't get proper nutrition, their body will suffer, their mind will suffer.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
We're also creatures with emotional needs as important as our physical needs. So when the child's emotional needs are not met, that child is wounded.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
And that's what we call small T trauma, which is not the big ticket events, such as I described, but just the child's need to be loved unconditionally, to be held when distressed, to be responded to, to be seen, to be heard, to be allowed their full range of emotion without them being hurt,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
stamped on in the name of so-called discipline um the right to play creatively spontaneously out there in nature not with these damn digital the gadgets that subvert and hijack the child's imagination but spontaneous play that's essential for brain development
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
So what I'm saying is that when these needs are not for the unconditional loving attachment relationship, when those needs are frustrated, children are also hurt. And I call that trauma as well because it shows up later in life as the impact of painful wounds. So trauma in this society, for all kinds of reasons, is far more common than we imagine.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
So trauma is a psychological wound that you sustain. And it behaves like a wound. So on the one hand, a wound, if it's very raw, if you touch it, it just really hurts. So if I have a wound around not being wanted, or the belief that I'm not, then decades later, if anything reminds me of that, it hurts as much as it did when I originally incurred the wound.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Well, now look, so the two examples you gave, that really peaceful person may be really peaceful for genuinely good reasons, such as they found the milk of human love flowing through their veins and they've had some spiritual reconciliation with the world, or they may have genuinely learned compassion for themselves and others.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
But they could also be very nice and peaceful because they're suppressing their healthy anger. Because they're actually sitting on their rage unconsciously, which is going to show up in the form of some kind of health manifestation, I guarantee you, later on. So you can't tell from the outside without asking some questions. Or I can give you the example of a Donald Trump.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Who had a really traumatic childhood. I mean, his father was, as described by his psychologist niece, Mary Trump, his father, Trump's father, who is Mary's grandfather, was a psychopath. and who really demeaned and harshly treated their children. So Trump decides unconsciously that... By the way, I'm not talking about his policies here. This is not a political debate.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
And in the book I point out that his opponent was also traumatized, Hillary Clinton. So this is an ecumenical view of trauma and politics. I'm not choosing sides. I'm just saying that you can see his trauma in every moment he opens his mouth.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
His grandiosities need to make himself bigger, more powerful, aggressive and he's as much as said in his autobiography that the world is a horrible place, a dog-eat-dog place where everybody is after you. Everybody wants your wife and your house and your wealth and this is your friends, never mind your enemies.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
but that's the world he lives in now that world that he lives in reflects his childhood home he developed that world you he came to it honestly you might say because that's the world that he lived in and he gets to be really successful in this crazy world you know financially although people question you know was he really as big a success as he says he was but he certainly was successful politically if by success you mean the attainment of power
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
His brother, on the other hand, Mary Trump's father, Trump's niece's father, drank himself to death. And they were both responses to the same. You can never say it's exactly the same for two kids. But there was a toxic home environment. One ends up dead as an alcoholic. The other ends up at the pinnacle of power.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
And when I look at them both, I see dysfunction there, significant dysfunction there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Well, Donald Trump learned that the way to survive is to be aggressive and harsh and competitive and to get the other before they get to you, which is a faithful reproduction of his early childhood beliefs.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
experiences so for him these were not choices so much as survival techniques and when they talk about his lying well I don't know when he's lying or when he's not but my sense is that often he actually believes what he's saying and actually he's a biographer or the person who co-wrote his
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
In one sense trauma is an unhealed wound that touched we get triggered. That's what triggering means by the way. Some old wound gets activated or touched. And the other thing that happens to wounds is that they scar over. And scar tissue has certain characteristics. It's thick. It has no nerve endings, so there's no feeling in it. So people traumatized, disconnected from their feelings.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
quasi autobiographical the art of the deal this this writer says that he's never met anybody who's so capable of believing something that's not true to be true if he wants it to be true now that's the mark of a traumatized child you know a denial of reality it is an inauguration there was a certain number of people that came to the
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
He couldn't stand it that there weren't as many people there as came to Barack Obama's inauguration. There were a much smaller number of people there. He created this reality where many more people came to his inauguration. Now what age behavior is that? That's a four-year-old where more kids came to his party than my party. That can't be true. But that's Donald's way of dealing with reality.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
It's not a moral failing as such. That's how he survived. And these survival mechanisms then get to form our personalities. And again, in this world, sometimes they pay off in certain ways.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Oh, absolutely. The German philosopher, writer Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche said, people lie their way out of reality who have been hurt by reality. And so I've lied. You know, like when I had my shopping addiction, I lied every day to my wife. And even afterwards, when she stopped trying to change my behavior, I said, just tell me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
If you're going to shop, you're going to spend another thousand dollars on music. Just tell me. I still couldn't. Because I was so ashamed of it. And so the lying became like a way of survival for me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
It's a defense against reality and it's a defense against being judged. Well, that says something about my childhood. Nobody's born a liar. As we say in this book, there are congenial liars, but there are no congenital liars. No one day old baby tells any lies. No one day old baby pretends anything.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
If we end up pretending in any way at all, to the extent that we do, it's because we had to learn that's what we must do to survive.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
That's what I meant, that they're sitting on this crater, volcanic crater of anger which sometimes bursts out of them. So their demeanor is like a really developed, suppressed...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
way of handling rage which rage when they were children had they expressed would have got them into more trouble so suppressing it repressing it became their survival it's all about survival you see so it became their survival mechanism now That person, as long as they keep it that way, they're at risk. They're at risk for mental health diagnosis like depression. Because what is depression?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Scar tissue is rigid. It's not flexible. So we lose kind of response flexibility. So when something happens, we tend to react in typical, stereotypical, predictable ways. dysfunctional ways because of the rigidity and scar tissue doesn't grow like healthy flesh. So people who are traumatized tend to be stuck in emotional states that characterized their development when they were traumatized.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
It means you're pushing something down. That's what it means. What do we push down? Our natural emotions. Why do we push them down? Because we have to survive. So that person, I don't know, I can't prognosticate what's going to happen to them, but if they don't work it out... in general, they're at risk for some kind of mental or physical manifestation. That's my experience.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
That's a really good analogy. The trauma really is like a puppet master behind the scenes and the unconscious pulling your strings and you're not aware of it. Do you remember Pinocchio? Yeah. So you remember what Pinocchio says at the end when he finally becomes a real boy?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 210: Dr. Gabor Maté: Your Trauma Is Secretly Controlling You! (Until You Try This)
He says, how foolish I was when I was a puppet. And to the extent that we're being activated by these unconscious strings that are traumas pulling behind the scenes, and we're acting in our lives and we think we're autonomous, free beings, but we're actually being controlled by something in the past. that we haven't worked out, we're puppets. We're actually puppets.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
If you were a parent with a kid with ADHD, and if I was a doctor, and I said to you, madam, your kid's got this genetic condition, brain biology, nothing we can do about it, but here's some medication. Or if I said to you, Mel, you know, your child's got this condition, your child's very sensitive, very responsive to the environment.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And even now at age eight or age 16 or whenever, if we can create different conditions, the brain can still develop in different ways. Which message would you rather go with?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah, of course. This is a much more optimistic and much more science based attitude. But unfortunately, again, given the dominance of pharmaceutical companies and the biological mindedness or what they call biological psychiatry, which is just fixating on the biology and fixing it rather than looking at the conditions that shape the biology, we're very much stuck in a state where
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Hundreds of thousands and millions of kids are being medicated. And I'm not against medications. I prescribe them, I've taken them, but they're not the answer.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Absolutely. And so when a family with ADHD child would come to me, once I had this recognition, I would say, well, we can consider medication in the short term if we need to, but it's not the first step. It never should be the only step. Can we look at the family atmosphere? Can we look at the relationship between the parents? Can we look at the stresses in the family?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Can you understand the child's behavior in a way that doesn't blame the child? Because these kids tend to be blamed a lot for how they behave. Now, we talk about this phrase acting out. Kids are acting out, which usually means they're being obstreperous, oppositional, defiant, or non-cooperative, or rude, or something.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
But let's look at the phrase acting out. It's English meaning. We act something out when we don't have the language to say it in words. So in the game of charades, when you're not allowed to speak, what do you have to do? Act it out. These kids' behaviors are simply acting out their emotional needs and dynamics.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
It's up to the parents to understand that rather than just to respond or react to the behavior in a controlling or punitive way. Let's understand what is being acted out, which is one of the reasons I wrote that book, is I want parents to understand what is being acted out in the child's behavior. And if you change the relationship to the child, the child's behavior will change.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So it's not behavior control. It's actually promoting different conditions that will support the child's healthy development.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah, by actually hurting people for having been hurt. Yes. And then they act out that hurt and then we blame them for it rather than understand what that's all about. Let me say something else. The diagnosis doesn't explain anything.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So Mel or Gabor have ADHD. How do we know? Well, they're absent-minded, they have poor impulse regulation, and they're hyperactive. Why are they absent-minded and have poor impulse regulation? And why do they have hyperactivity? Because they have ADHD. How do we know they have ADHD? Because they're hyperactive, they tune out, and they have low impulse control. Why do they? It's circular. Yes.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
It's not an explanation. It's a description and a mistake. Medical practice tends to mistake descriptions for explanations. They're not. If you want to know why they're hyperactive or lacking post-regulation or tend to tune out, you got to look at their lives as those lives acted on their genes. That's the explanation. The diagnosis describes something, but it doesn't explain anything.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
I think descriptions are helpful. We just mustn't mistake them for explanations. That's all.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So for 12 years, I worked in Vancouver, British Columbia's downtown east side, which is North America's most concentrated area of drug use. We have more drug users there in a few square block radius than anywhere in the States or anywhere else in Canada. In fact, anywhere in Europe. Wow. So I was there for 12 years. And...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
A significant percentage of my patients clearly had ADHD that had not been diagnosed. Now, let's look at the commonalities. First of all, both addicts and people with ADHD lack impulse control. Like somebody said about addiction, is that the problem with an addiction is not lack of free will, but lack of a free won't.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Won't, oh. They have nothing to say no with because that circuitry didn't develop. Okay, number one. Number two, addictions all work on the dopamine system, which is what is affected in ADHD as well. So stimulant addicts, like crystal meth addicts, cocaine addicts, nicotine addicts,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
caffeine addicts they're literally boosting their dopamine levels which is precisely what's the issue in adhd is as well so if you look at the studies something like about 30 or more of stimulant addicts actually are diagnosable with adhd But again, this is studied and reported, but not much is done with it in medical practice.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Furthermore, all addictions, no matter what they are, they work on the dopamine circuitry. I will define addiction for you as manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences as a result of, and doesn't give up despite the harm. So craving, pleasure, relief in the short term, harm, inability to give it up.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's what an addiction is. Now, let me just go sideways a little bit.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Let me ask you a question. Yeah. I mean, you've already answered it, but... According to that, notice I didn't say anything about drugs. I said any behavior. Now, if I speak to a room of a thousand people and I give that definition and I say, according to that definition, which is not controversial, if you ever had an addictive pattern in your life, just raise your hand.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Another 1,999 will raise their hands and this one liar who won't, you know, but basically it's almost everybody. Now, here's the second question. And I don't care what your addictive patterns were, whether they were to alcohol, which you mentioned, or to whatever else. No one was wrong with it. But what was right about it? What did it give you in the short term that you wanted?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So what did it give you?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Okay. When do people need to escape?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
When they're suffering.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Okay. So the addiction wasn't the disease that you had. It wasn't your primary problem. It was an attempt to solve the problem of emotional pain and isolation. Okay. So my mantra on addiction is don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. And if you want to understand the pain, look at the person's life rather than just their genes.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So both people are addicted and people with ADHD often share these genes for sensitivity, which means they suffer more when circumstances aren't right. And so obviously the conditions will go together. And furthermore, to go back to dopamine, the shopping addict, the gambling addict, the pornography addict.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
The social media. And I've had my behavior addictions.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
You know what they're after? They're after a hit of dopamine in the brain, which they get through seeking that behavior.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Well, yeah. And I had my behavior addictions. But what I'm saying is it's all based partly on the dopamine circuitry. Which didn't develop the way it should have.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Exactly. So now you have to get your dopamine hit through pornography. And if you do brain scans on pornography addicts, they get multiple spikes of dopamine hits in their brain when they're... Just like a drug addict. Yeah, yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
May I just say one more thing about the brain?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah. Opiates. So people get addicted to heroin or Oxycontin or Dilaudid, hydromorphone or codeine or whatever, fentanyl, unfortunately, which is a very dangerous one. These are opiates. They come from the opium plant in Afghanistan or they're human manufactured copies of the same molecule. Now, why do... Opiates. Why does a plant from Afghanistan work in the human brain here in the States?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Well, because the opiate molecule, we have receptors for it in our brains, which means we have our internal opiate system. This is just pure brain science. And the opiate system is called endorphins. Endorphin means endogenous internal morphine-like substance. So we have an opiate system in our bodies, which affects many functions in our body from the gut to the immune system.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
But what do they do in the brain? If we understand opiate addiction, we have to understand what do endorphins do in the human trajectory. First of all, they provide pain relief.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
both physical and emotional pain relief our internal endorphins do that we have to have pain in life because without pain we don't survive because we can hurt ourselves but we also have pain relief so endorphins relieve pain but not just physical pain also emotional pain
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Because the part of the brain where people experience physical pain, the suffering of physical pain, it's also where they experience the suffering of emotional pain. So the endorphins, the opiates work there. That's their first role. The second role, along with dopamine, is to give you a sense of pleasure, elation, and joy.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
But that's rather important in human life because human life is difficult. So we have to have some expectation of pleasure, joy, relief. That's what the opiates do. That's the second thing they do. But the third thing they do, they facilitate a little thing called love. Endorphins help to feel as connected to other people.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And particularly, they help feel parents connected to their kids without which the child doesn't survive. And if you take little animals and you knock out their opiate receptors, they will not call for their mothers on separation. What would that do to them? It would kill them in the wild. So that's how important the opiates are. who are these people that develop opiate addictions?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Thank you. It's so nice to be here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
People whose lives have undermined their opiate circuitry. And I had a sex trade worker in the downtown east side of Vancouver. I asked her, what did the heroin do for you? She said, the first time I did heroin, it felt like a warm, soft hug. So just like the alcohol, which gave you a more sense of belonging, it gave her a sense of being loved, a sense of warmth. That's why people get addicted.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
It's because they suffered that early pain and they're trying to escape from. And because their brain circuitry was affected by adverse conditions so that these circuits didn't develop optimally. Now they have to substitute. So that's a shinny on addiction. It's not an inherited disease. It's a response to the environment. And it's not genetic, contrary to what 99% of physicians believe.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
It's my responsibility.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Exactly, yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Exactly right. And to go back to your question about now, what do we do with this information? If you are parents of a child who's been diagnosed with, say, ADHD, then make a considered decision about whether you want to get medicated or not. Medications can sometimes help. Sometimes they cause side effects.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
No child should be forced to be on medication because no child at any age should get the message that they're only acceptable to the adults when their brain is sedated. You don't want to give that message to any child. But they can help sometimes to mitigate symptoms. They know nothing for brain development in the long term.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So then the question is, can we create in this family better conditions for that child's brain to...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
develop in more optimal ways and yes we can and that has a lot to do with the emotional atmosphere in the family and the degree of understanding and connection not love because that's already there but they actually understanding and connection between the parents and the child and i mean that book's been out 25 years and i've been told by so often that it totally changed the family just to read that book you know and it totally changed their children
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And the world is punishing you. Yes. Teachers are punishing you. That's true. Your parents are exasperated with you. Yes. When it comes to treating addiction, then it's very complex, but the person again needs to understand there's nothing wrong with them. They weren't born with any kind of disease. That addiction is a perfectly normal response to abnormal circumstances.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
I mean, look at all the veterans who are traumatized and they become alcoholics or opiate addicts.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Exactly. I quote that study in my book on addiction because it's such a salient fact. In fact, it's been done with laboratory rats, you know, where they took laboratory rats and exposed them to different environmental conditions. And they tried to get them addicted to opioids.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Now, those rats that were stressed and isolated and under adverse conditions, they very easily became addicted to opioids. The rats who had good conditions, you couldn't even make them addicted to opioids. Doesn't matter how much you gave them.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Well, and I think it's not an individual process. It should be for the most part, you need the social help. That's what the 12 step groups are. I have my critiques of them, but the 12 steps themselves, I think are wonderful. And the group process is wonderful where people can share themselves and be heard compassionately and not be shamed.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
They can declare their so-called dysfunctions and be accepted. So I think it's not just an individual process, but I think what's missing from the 12-step rules, unfortunately, is awareness of Trump, which is interesting because Bill W., the original founder, was an abandoned child. highly traumatized.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And for some reason, trauma hasn't entered the conversation of the 12-step movement as much as I'd like to see it done. But again, healing should not be just seen as an individual process. It should be seen as a social process. And people that deal with addictions, they need to understand trauma.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah, I like to think here. I think what happens is when women get older, they tend to get a bit less repressed. and the tendencies that are in them that they've tried to kind of control in order to be acceptable and to fit in, it becomes intolerable for them, particularly perimenopausally. It becomes a real chore for them to continue to fit the stereotype in which they were molded.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So I think whatever's in them is more likely to show up. And I would say to them, what I say to anybody, I get curious about what is being manifested in this condition.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Not to the music, sorry. To shopping for classical music.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
There's a distinction.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
I love the music, but... But that doesn't make me an addict. That just means me a music lover. It's the shopping. I would drop $3,000 in a music store and go back two hours later because I had to get the next one. Typical addictive behavior. So it's the shopping that I was addicted to. It's not the having, but to the acquisition. And you know what?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So child conditions include the physical conditions, nutrition, housing, comfort, protection, but they also include the emotional conditions, which has to do with a child's sense of being accepted or being loved. Not just this love, but actually being seen, understood. And also on the parents' emotional states. Are their parents stressed? Are their parents struggling with economic difficulties?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
When I was in the classical music store, I had no ADHD. I had high dopamine levels. I was focused. I can almost remember... which record did I buy in which store, you know, which CD that is. So, so just to make the distinction, it's not the music, it's the shopping I was addicted to.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Well, here's where we have to make a distinction between drug addictions and behavior addictions. Because drug addictions become a very significant chemical problem and people go through withdrawal and that has to be managed and all that. Now, the behavior addicts, by the way, also go through withdrawal. but it's less noticeable.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Like with my work addiction, my workaholism, when I was at home, I'd go through, I'd be irritable and depressed. That's withdrawal because the dopamine wasn't flowing. But obviously it's more easily manageable. So I say two things. One is let's look at the need that is serving in your life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
No, that's not the need. What is the need for tuning out, serving your life?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Okay, so you don't know how to, you're not comfortable with yourself. You need to, you can't just be. You have to be doing and your attention is to be external.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That goes back to the childhood. It means that you weren't comfortable and you develop that comfort with the self. You develop that sense of your own goodness and validity. And so that when you're alone and you're not doing something, there's distress and your mind is going all over the place. So that's the need that it's serving.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So then you say, well, it's meeting this need to escape from myself. How can I learn to be with myself? So what techniques, what could I do? And there's ways to do that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
I mean, I have many suggestions in my books, but essentially it's recognizing the need that's being met, not invalidating the need, validating the need, but recognizing that the behavior itself only temporarily soothes it, but it doesn't meet the need.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's the whole point. And there's nothing wrong with saying don't drink. I mean, all that. It's only that it doesn't deal with the fundamental needs. So let's recognize the need. Those needs are valid. You need for social contact or not being isolated. Social isolation, which you interpreted as rejection. And your husband points out, you're not being rejected. It's just something else.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
But your childhood programming tells you that it's rejected.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yes. Pretty much. That's why we're shaped. Look, have you ever had a puppy dog?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Okay, well, tell me about them. I mean, how you treat that puppy. Will that not define to a significant degree what kind of creature they're going to be?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah, well, hearing beings are infinitely more complex than puppy dogs. And it's totally true. So what I'm saying is recognize the need, validate the need, but then ask the question, okay, how can I meet that need in ways that are not harmful?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
You know, there are 80% of people, 80% of autoimmune disease, which are diseases where the immune system attacks the body that it's supposed to protect.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Are their parents carrying traumas that they hadn't worked through yet, like I had when I was a young parent? Are the parents in a marriage that's relatively peaceful? Is there a lot of conflict? Is there a lot of instability? Is there unpredictability? What kind of community support there is? Is there an extended family that can spell off the parents and give them some kind of emotional support?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, probably fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, fonsal psoriasis, autoimmune eczema, scleroderma. I could go on and on. There's about 100 or so of these, and 80% of them happen to women. Why?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So in my medical practice, I began to notice, and here's my advantage over my specialist colleagues, is that they know a lot more about certain body parts and systems as they should, but they don't know the patient. I knew people before they got sick. And I knew them in the context of their families of origin and the extended family very often. So I got to see who got sick and who didn't.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And when I was in palliative care, again, I saw who ended up in palliative care and who didn't. And these people had four significant characteristics. One is they tended to put other people's emotional needs ahead of their own and they tend to ignore their own, number one. Number two, they tended to identify with duty, role, and responsibility, rather than the needs of the self.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Number three, they tended to be very nice, which means they repressed healthy anger. The healthy anger is a boundary defense. And these people tended to be very nice. And number four, these people tended to believe That they're responsible for what other people feel, which is a point that you address in your book, Let Them. And they had this belief that there was never disappoint anybody.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Now, those beliefs lead you into not saying no to the demands of the world. And you're constantly taking on stuff and stress and other people's stress. You get stressed. That stress undermines the immune system, which then turns against you. No. And I could explain the physiology of it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And by the way, people, because the immune system and the hormonal apparatus and the nervous system and the emotional system are one system. They're not separate. They're wired together in a whole lot of chemical and neurological ways. I'm not making this up. This is science. Science is called psychoneuroimmunology. It was psychology and neurology, immunology, and endocrinology, the hormones.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
It's all one system. People that repress healthy anger, they're suppressing their immune system biologically. Now, if you understand that it's all one system, And if you ask why, well, what is the role of healthy anger? It's a boundary defense. What is the role of the immune system? It's a boundary defense. It's meant to let in what is good and nurture and keep out what is toxic and dangerous.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
When you're suppressing your emotions, you're also messing with your immune system because it's all one.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And it ought to turn against you. Like anger that you repress turns against you from depression or self-loathing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Same way the immune system turns against you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's the whole point.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Well, physiologically, it's just a fact. Now, why is it women? Because who in this culture is programmed to always looking after everybody's emotional needs, taking everybody's stresses, identify with their duties and their role, be nice all the time, not be angry in a healthy way, and to take responsibility for other people's feelings? It's women. It's not a gender issue. It's a cultural issue.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And of course, The more stress the woman experiences, the greater the risk of autoimmune disease. So if you look at minority women, they have a higher percentage because they're women and they're minority.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Many studies. And in Canada, an indigenous woman has six times the rate of rheumatoid arthritis than somebody else. And this is in a population that never used to have rheumatoid arthritis. And by the way, again, are we blaming people here? No, we're not. Because we have to look at what happened here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Are they rather isolated? Are you a single parent struggling to make a living and raise a child? So all these conditions affect the personality and the brain development of the child.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
What happened here is the child is born with all these emotions wired into their brains, but the child has two big needs here. The need for attachment, for belonging, for being held, for being accepted, supported, and so on. That's a need that you have. It's not negotiable. Without it, as an infant, as a young child, you die. You die, yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So there's one need, but you have another need as well, which I call authenticity, which means being connected to your emotions and your gut feelings. Now, in any audience, when I ask people, have you had the experience of having a strong gut feeling about something, ignoring it and being sorry afterwards, most people put their hands up. You probably would.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Now, gut feelings were programmed into us by evolution. We evolved out in nature. For millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, we lived out in nature. How long does any creature in nature survive if they don't pay attention to their gut feelings?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
At this point, so we have this two-need attachment and authenticity being connected to ourselves. Now, if the child gets the message that they're being authentic with their emotions and so on, they're not acceptable to the environment, guess what gets in the contest between us?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah, and you're trained to disconnect and you're trained to push down your feelings. So we give up our authenticity for the sake of attachment. Now in your book, there's an example of this guy who's about to get married.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And it's called these misgivings.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And then he's afraid of what everybody else will think.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And you're wishing he would say no to the wedding.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
You know, what's going on? He's stuck in this tension between attachment, which is a need to be acceptable, and authenticity, being himself. Yes. Women are caught in that trap in this society. So are many men, of course. It's not just a gender issue, but overwhelmingly, it's women who have to choose the attachment to being acceptable over authenticity.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's why they have much more autoimmune disease.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's the whole point. As a child, you had no choice. The question is, as an adult, can we develop that choice? Do I have to keep choosing the attachment over the authenticity?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Oh, yeah, yeah. But here's what's interesting. Typically for these conditions, we give cortisol.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah. If you go into the dermatologist with an inflamed skin, they're going to give you a steroid cream, cortisol. If you go to a gastroenterologist with an inflamed intestine, they'll at some point give you cortisol, stress hormone. If you go with an inflamed nervous system, multiple sclerosis, they're going to give you a stress hormone, cortisol. I could go on.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
But we never ask ourselves, gosh, we're giving stress hormones to people. Is it possible that stress may have something to do with their condition? Doctors know that in cases of acute stress, that can flare up a disease. That's clear. Right. What they don't recognize is those emotional patterns that I'm talking about, which stress people chronically, but in less dramatic ways.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Because what's it like to always have to repress your anger to be pleasing other people? That's the whole point. And that's what the stress that I think often instigates.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's the whole point.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah, the good news is if you change these patterns, you can actually significantly affect the course of your illness. And I know lots of examples of that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Okay. So let's take one example. Okay. Very simple one. Prior to your awakening and transformational journey that you undertook sometime in your 40s, how easy did you find it to say no to other people's expectations?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Okay. So you couldn't say no? No. All right. So I ask people this question, where in your life do you have difficulty saying no? It shows up in two areas, work and in personal life. Okay. So you couldn't say no. The second question I ask people then is, what's the impact on you if you're difficult to say no?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah. So it's this shame. Lack of control. Lack of control. Lack of control, by the way. Anger.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's right. And loss of control is one of the most significant triggers for stress, by the way, according to the stress literature.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Exactly.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Only because we learned in childhood that if we didn't, there'd be no safety. If we learned that there was safety, we would trust the world a lot more and we wouldn't have to control. So nobody's a control freak. Nobody's born a control freak. It's an adaptive trait is what that is. But here's what I'm saying. So that going through this exercise. So what's the impact? You identify some impacts.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Could also be frequent colds, illness, and so on. The third question is, what's your belief that keeps you from saying no? So when you had trouble saying no, what's the story? What was the belief?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So then the fourth question is, how did you develop that story that if I say no, I'll be rejected? Where did you learn that?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And that made me feel safe. In other words, you learned it when you're two or three or four years old or five.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And now you're adult, as you say in... My book.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yes, along with certain genetic predispositions.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
You're choosing authenticity over attachment is what you're doing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
That's the whole game. That's what I'm talking about here. So once you understand that you learned the story when you were hypnotized into it, by the way, three or four-year-olds are in hypnotic states. That's why they believe that when they're playing monsters, they're actually monsters. So those hypnotic influences are really powerful. They stay with us.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So then the next question is, who would you be If you didn't believe that you couldn't, that you mustn't say no, would you be then?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
But I can talk about genetics later, but what I want to say about them now is a predisposition is not the same as a predetermination.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Exactly. Do that exercise once a week.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
It's in the methanormal. There's a chapter on it. There's a sixth question.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Where you're not saying yes.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Well, that not saying yes is as harmful as the not saying no. So those two little words, just that little exercise, do that once a week, it changes people's lives.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
to play and rest. I mean, I'm much better than I used to be. As a matter of fact, I've told this story many times, but five years ago, I was in London giving a talk on my book, When the Body Says No. And I was very articulate and adept on stage. But personally, I was irritated. I was working too hard. I was driving myself too hard. I was not kind to my wife. And she said to me, her name is Ray.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And she said, buddy, you've written a book called When the Body Says No. Now you better write one called When the Wife Says No. And, you know, so part of what has helped me draw up these patterns, and I'm still working on it, is because I love this relationship, I want to be in it. And I don't want to be this person who's not saying yes. I'm an 80, you know.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So you can have predispositions, but then depending on the environmental conditions... Those predispositions can be expressed one way or another way. So you can have animals with the same genes or humans with the same genes that have very different outcomes depending on the kind of conditions under which their early years were spent under. So that's what I'm saying, yes.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Again, when you look at the top five regrets of dying people, you know, that book that I mentioned in another conversation, this was written by a palliative care nurse. who worked with dying people, the top regret was that I didn't have the courage to be myself. And the third regret was I didn't have the courage to express my emotions.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And the fifth regret was, and I neglected my friends, the fourth regret. And then the fifth one I think was, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I had played more. I wish I'd given more scope for the creativity and playfulness and childlike self that I am. So I'm still looking for that one to develop it more. I'm a whole lot better than I used to be.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Everybody's got the capacity to heal. As long as there's consciousness, there's the capacity to heal. And For some people, it's tougher because they don't have the resources. But you know, you can go on YouTube. Lots of my talks on YouTube, people have told me that it's changed their lives for the better. They haven't cost a penny. And not just my talks, by the way.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Talks by other wonderful teachers, some of my colleagues. Some spiritual teachers. That doesn't cost any money to watch that. You can take books out of the library. That doesn't cost a penny. And they can be very helpful. You can learn to meditate and be with yourself and observe your mind. That can be very helpful. There's free meditation instruction on the line or in many books.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Those people that can afford therapy. If it's the right kind of therapy, they can address these issues. They can connect with nature. Nature's got a huge healing capacity as our indigenous people really know. We can learn a lot from them about connecting with nature.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Those people that have the capacity to get out of the city or even go to a park and connect with the plants and the trees and the flowers. That sounds hokey, but it's hugely healing. Exercise, giving your body what it needs.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
eating the proper food if you can afford it and most people may not be able to afford the best foods but they could probably afford to eat better than they do if they paid attention to themselves so all those things are not inaccessible so in other words healing is possible it's available to all of us and it just takes the decision to embark on that path
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And the first recognition of that in my life came when I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 53 or 52 or something.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Wait a minute. Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
I'm sorry. There's a helicopter.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Well, it's possible because Western medicine separates the mind from the body. So they tend to look at things purely from a biological point of view. So ADHD is considered to be a genetic disease that you inherited. Here's the problem with that. Number one, if that's the case, why are the numbers going up? Genes don't change in a population over 10, 20 or 30 years.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So something's going on in the environment that's affecting the child development. Number one, number two, even if you look at the physiology of the child's brain,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
was not understood by most physicians because it's not taught in the medical schools, but it's firmly and completely unequivocally and uncontroversially established in brain science is that the brain is a social product, that the brain development of the child depends on the emotional conditions under which the child lives from in utero onwards.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And so that the very circuitry of the child's brain is programmed by the action of the environment on the genes. So different environments will act differently on the same genes. No. If you look at ADHD, what's the medication that we give? I took it for a while. Stimulants. What do stimulants do? They elevate the level of a chemical called dopamine in the brain.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And dopamine is essential for motivation and therefore for focus. And that's what Ritalin and Dexedrine and Adderall and all these medications elevate. No.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
the dopamine circuitry of the child's brain develops in interaction with the environment and this is what most people who deal with ADHD just don't look at even though it's just a pure scientific fact you know and a summary from Harvard University pointed out that the child's brain develops in interaction with the environment especially the emotional relationship with the nurturing adults now dopamine is a brain chemical
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
We have receptors forming in our brain, receptors are molecules where the dopamine can land and do its job. The number of dopamine receptors in a child is affected by stress on the mother already in pregnancy, let alone afterwards. If you take mice and you isolate them, the number of dopamine receptors will go down.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
If you bring back into companionship, the number of dopamine receptors will elevate. In other words, the brain is a social organ. It's interactive with the environment all our lives and therefore environmental conditions affect the brain, especially during its phase of early development. It's just pure science. It's not even controversial.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
So the problem here is the tendency of the medical profession in which I was trained is to separate the mind from the body and to look at
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And continues to.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
It interferes with dopamine, it interferes with cortisol, it has an effect on the memory centers in the brain like the hippocampus, it affects the amygdala, all those things. And if you look at children in poverty or who experience racialized circumstances, they're more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. The children of women with postpartum depression
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
are more likely to be diagnosed with adhd the children of women who are stressed during pregnancy are more likely to be diagnosed with adhd and there's this myth about it being genetic because it tends to run in families like you were diagnosed your kids are diagnosed i was diagnosed a couple of my kids were diagnosed but it's not because the so-called disease personal is not even a disease but it's not because the so-called disease was passed on but because the conditions
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
that created your brain, were also then repeated in your children's childhood as in mine. So something running in a family says nothing about genetic causation. And going back to the flight or fight thing, if a child is feeling stressed, and by the way, I think there's something genetic here, and what is genetic here is sensitivity.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And the more sensitive kids are, the more they feel what's going on around them. So if the parents are stressed, the child feels the stress. Can the child escape or fight back?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
What do they do? They tune out. But when did they tune out? They tune out when their brain is developing. So that gets wired into the brain. And now they're told you've got this genetic disease. No, you don't. It's an adaptation. It began as an adaptation. And as with many of these sheltered adaptations, later on they create problems. So they serve a purpose. But now they are wired in.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Not to mention, if you look at the traits of ADHD, which is the absent-mindedness, the tuning out. And then the other traits of ADHD are poor impulse regulation, which means that when you want to do something, like I might have an impulse to do something. There's nothing wrong with the impulse, but there's something wrong with me acting out the impulse.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
But impulse regulation depends on certain circuitry in the brain. No baby has any impulse regulation. It has to develop. For anything that's developmental, the conditions have to be right. If a plant in your backyard wasn't growing the way you expected it, you'd look at what's missing here. Nutrition, sunlight, irrigation. It's the same with kids.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
When they've got these challenges, let's look at the conditions that shape their development. So impulse regulation is another brain circuitry that doesn't develop well in people with ADHD and incidentally in people who are addicted, which is why there's such a great link between addictions and ADHD. And then the third one is, which is sometimes they're not always hyperactivity. Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
More tends to be there more in boys.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
And the regulation of the body is a function of the midfrontal cortex. That has to develop. So under conditions of stress, given that the brain is a social organ and it's also a historical organ. Does the name Bruce Perry mean anything to you?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
I don't know where he is, but he's a well-known child trauma psychiatrist.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
Yeah, he wrote the book, What Happened to You? And he says the brain is a historical organ. So it stores the impacts of life experiences. So when we look at brain biology, let's not think that the biology is somehow distinct and separated from life experience. So there's no fault laying here. And sometimes I do get accused of blaming parents. It's the last thing I want to do.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
No, but there's a very well-known ADHD psychologist who goes on YouTube and says, I blame parents. And I don't. Actually, I think parents do their best. They love their kids. But their best is limited by their own particular challenges and limitations. There's no parent blaming here. But we have to recognize the importance and the impact of early experiences. So what I'm saying is,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & Trauma
that ADHD is the result of all that stress and its impact on the brains of especially genetically sensitive kids. That's what's inherited is the sensitivity. But if there was only the sensitivity and optimal conditions, they'd never have ADHD. So it's not the ADHD that's inherited, it's the sensitivity. And that's the good news.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, that self-talk, that negative self-talk that you just articulated is itself a psychological wound. It's a sign of psychological wound. It's a sign of self-rejection, which is one of the deepest impacts of trauma, is that people traumatized, they develop a shame-based view of themselves. So they began to think that there's something wrong with them. That itself is a wound.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Now, when you talked about seemingly insignificant things, we have to make a distinction here. There are what we call the big T traumatic events. Those have been well studied. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse of children, neglect.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
A parent being addicted, a parent dying, a parent being jailed, violence in the family, a rancorous divorce, a parent being mentally ill, to which we need to add social factors such as poverty or racism. These are big traumatic events that can wound kids. And we can talk about the ways in which it happens. But you can also wound kids not by...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
doing bad things to them that you shouldn't, but by not doing the good things that they need. In other words, children have certain needs. A human child is born with certain evolution-determined needs.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Those children whose needs are not met that way, for example, for unconditional loving acceptance, and I'm not talking about the parent's love, I'm talking about the capacity of the parent to unconditionally accept the child and to see the child,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Sure. Children get to experience and see themselves the way they are seen by the adults. So if a child gets emotional and they get criticized, then there's nothing wrong with their emotions. Hmm. If a child is very sensitive and they're told, don't be so sensitive, they think there's something wrong with them.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
If a child, a young toddler is behaving a certain way and the parent thinks that the way to correct this is to punish the child, And the child is just being a two-year-old. Then the child begins to believe that there's something wrong with them, and they have to compensate for that by meeting the parents' expectations. So now the acceptance is no longer unconditional. I'll accept you if...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
You look this way, talk this way, behave this way. And then all your life, you'll be worried about how do people see you. That's a sign of a childhood wound. Because fundamentally, we need to be connected to ourselves. And when parents don't see us, we don't see ourselves. That's just a fact. And if you look at human evolution, We didn't evolve under the conditions that kids are raised now.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
We evolved under conditions for millions of years, until 15,000 years ago, living in small communities where there were many adults. It takes a village to raise a child. The kids were always with the parents. There was no separation. Kids were carried everywhere. They were not put down to let them cry it out. They were just unconditionally accepted. and not punished, actually, not hit.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
It's a totally different paradigm of parenting. That's how we evolved, which means that the human child expects to be treated that way. When those needs are not met, kids are hurt. Children have another need, which is we're wired to have certain emotions, you know, along with other mammals. We're wired to have anger. Anger is essential for survival. Fear, we're wired to have fear.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
We're wired to have curiosity, seeking. We're wired to have separation, distress, so that if the adults are not around, we should be upset, we should panic, so we cry, so the parents come and get us.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
We're wired for play. And children have this need that when those emotions arise, parents should understand those emotions and not necessarily do what the kid wants them to do, but to understand the child's feelings. And when children are denied that kind of understanding, they think there's something wrong with their emotions. Then they start telling themselves, I'm too emotional.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
I'm not good enough. I'm too sensitive. I am not lovable. Or when children don't get the attention that they need, guess what they develop? They need to be attractive so they can attract attention. Now look at the damage done in this culture by people thinking that they need to meet certain standards of physical looks.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And the trouble that people go to, it's all because they were not accepted just for who they were. And now they're trying to attract attention.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That's right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah. So going back to your question about is there anybody on the planet? Yeah, but in this culture, that would be the exception. Because there's so many features of this culture that don't meet human needs, that make human life difficult. Look, the United States is the richest country in history. 70% of adults are at least on one medication. 40% of adults are at least on two medications.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
More and more kids are getting medicated for all kinds of conditions, from ADHD to self-cutting, to aggression, to so-called oppositionality, to anxiety. We can look at this two ways.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Either human beings are just innately troubled, or there's something wrong with the environment in which we're raising our kids and in which we're striving to doing our best, but we're facing conditions that are inimical. to healthy human development. So in this sense, when we talk about trauma, we're talking about the conditions under which parents have to function these days.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
If I was functioning in a laboratory, trying to grow microorganisms, the word is called culturing. We're trying to culture organisms, laboratory culture. If in that laboratory culture, a lot of those microorganisms began to develop pathologies or die off, you have to say this is a toxic culture. Well, it's the same thing with human beings.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So rather than look at the source of people's problems strictly within themselves, we have to actually look at the conditions for any creature in the world, whether it's a plant or animal. You have to look at the conditions under which people are living and raising kids and trying to function. So that's what I'm doing here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, again, I mentioned those 10 conditions. The big T. The big T's ones, adding to it poverty and racism. those things actually affect the physiology of the body. So people who are traumatized that way, they have a much higher risk.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
For example, people who've had several of those big experiences that I talked about, they have a higher risk for autoimmune disease, higher risk for cancer, much higher risk for addiction, much higher risk for mental health problems, and so on.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So that happens on both the physiological and the psychological level.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
On the physiological level, trauma incites inflammation in the body. So people who are severely traumatized in childhood, you can measure the level of inflammatory particles in their bloodstream. They'll be abnormally high.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
which makes them more at risk for cancer more risk for autoimmune disease more risk for depression mental health problems and so on that's just a physiological fact trauma can affect the way genes are turned on and off so genes don't function independently there are very few conditions that are purely genetically determined there are some one runs in my family muscular dystrophy
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
If you inherit the gene, you'll have the disease. But that's very rare, relatively. But genes are turned off by the environment, so the wrong genes can be turned on and the right genes can be turned off by trauma. Then trauma can dysregulate the body's stress mechanism. So people are secreting more cortisol and adrenaline. These are the stress hormones. which in the short term are life-saving.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Because if I was threatened or if you were, we would generate cortisol and adrenaline from an adrenal gland and we would be stronger and faster and better able to counter the threat, either to escape or to fight back.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
But in the long term, those same stress hormones thin the bones, create more clotting in the blood, narrow the blood vessels, elevate the blood pressure as you get hypertension, suppress the immune system, put fat on your belly, creating higher risk for heart disease. makes you depressed, ulcerate your intestines. These are the stress hormones. So there's all that on the physiological side.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And I could say more about it. But if you, for example, I mentioned racism. So if you look at the chromosomal aging of black people in this country, they age faster than Caucasians. And black kids already have higher blood pressure measurements than their Caucasian counterparts. It's got nothing to do with genetics. It's got to do with the stress of racism.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
A black woman in this country, the more episodes of racism they experience, the higher the risk for asthma. Children whose parents are stressed. are at higher risk for asthma. This has been known for decades. I could go on a great length about that. So these are some of the physiological impacts. Then there are the emotional impacts.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So like in my case, being given to a stranger gives me the sense of not being wanted, not being important. Then I develop behaviors where I try and prove my importance. So I become a workaholic doctor. So I drive myself too hard. And I don't pay so much attention to my family because I'm out there trying to prove my importance in the world. Now, that has an impact on my kids.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That has an impact on my marriage. So there's these behavior, emotional impacts, which result in certain behaviors. Then we can talk about addictions. Addictions is a huge consequence of childhood trauma of all kinds. And there's all kinds of science behind that. So one more thing, if I may say, when people...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
get the message that their emotions aren't acceptable to the adults, children will push down their feelings in order to be accepted. And they'll try to be nice and cooperative. And they'll try to fit in with other people's expectations, which then means they'll be stressed all the time, which then potentially is all kinds of illness.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah. Well, the child is very sensitive to the parent's emotional states. And even if, for example, you can, one of the ways you can tell if a marriage is troubled is that you can ask the parents or you can measure the child's stress hormone levels. So the stresses of the parents are directly affecting the child's physiology and the child's psychology.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So you may not have articulated and clearly see what was going on, but especially if you're a sensitive person genetically, and that is genetic sensitivity, you'll feel exactly what's going on and you'll think it's all about you. And then you also develop the belief that it's your job to fix it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And then when you can't fix it, you have to cement a sense of guilt and shame because you failed at your job of making your parents happy, which never should have been the child's job in the first place.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
About what?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
But you see, that's how you survived. Because what you needed most of all is a relationship with your parents. And one of the needs of children that I haven't mentioned is what we can call rest. Because in a rest state, we can develop and grow and unfold. Now, rest means the child doesn't have to work to make the relationship work with the parent. The relationship is just there.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
There's nothing the child can do to break the relationship. Now, in a situation where that's not the case, then the child necessarily... has to work to make the relationship work, because without that relationship, they know they can't survive. So that adaptation, the hypervigilance on your part, remember I said in the beginning that nobody's damaged goods?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So that hypervigilance on your part, and that belief that it's your job to make the situation peaceful, that's an adaptation on your part.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That's an outcome of trauma. The problem is that that becomes then wired into your personality. But children don't have any choice in the matter. They have to adapt to this situation. Those adaptations, they become wired into their personalities and that's who they think they are. That's not who they are.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Those are their adaptations, their trauma showing up in their behavior and in their emotional functioning.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
No siblings grow up in the same house. No siblings have the same parents. No siblings have the same family. No siblings have the same childhood. Why not? There are a whole lot of reasons. Number one, there's the birth order. Parents don't relate to the first child the way they relate to the second child. Then there's gender differences.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Parents don't relate to... I'm not talking about whether parents love the kids or not. I'm talking about what actually happens. The child doesn't experience... The parents love, the child experiences the way the parent shows up. So, number one. Number two, the parent's relationship might be in a different phase, one child and another. The parents might be in a different economic situation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Thank you for having me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
The parents' lives might be different. Then each child will evoke a different response from the parent. Like with my three kids or your three kids. Yeah, you have three children. Yeah, you have two daughters and a son. I have two sons and a daughter. It's not that I loved or we loved any one of them more than the other, but we responded to them differently.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And there's one more factor, which is children born with different temperaments, which is they experience the world differently. So even if I could be the same parent to all my kids, which I couldn't be, they'd still have three different parents because they would experience me differently.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Thank you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, a lot of people are facing challenges. A lot of people are very hard on themselves. A lot of people think there's something wrong with them. My fundamental understanding and what I've learned is that underneath there's nothing wrong with anybody. That everything you're dealing with came along for a reason. There were adaptations or there were responses to difficult situations.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And the more you can understand where your issues came from, and even when your negative self-view and the shame and the self-loathing and the self-criticism and the perfectionism that you experience, that there are actually responses. to some kind of life experience. And that fundamentally there was and there is nothing wrong with you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Thank you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Thank you. Thank you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And those things can be looked at and you can understand them and you can transform that and really become yourself, who you are. That's available to you. It's available to everybody. So nobody's damaged goods.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Which means that you came home in different moods all the time. And the kids couldn't rely on who dad was going to be for one minute to the next. And your mom was constantly stressed. And if you were this way, do you think your kids wouldn't be hurt by that? So just plug your kid into the situation that you're in.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
You see how... And if one of your kids came to you and said, Dad, I don't like it that you're drinking and you're behaving this way or that way and you're a workaholic and never around. Would you say to your kid, well, there's food on the table. What are you complaining about?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah. I'm just saying that when people look at their own childhoods, they kind of minimize.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
because it was too painful to accept in the first place. So that people dissociate and they disconnect from their bodies and their feelings. Now you said that he had a hard time feeling what he feels. That itself is a trauma impact. It's a protection. It's not a flaw. It's not a damage. It's an adaptation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
If I was hurting you right now and you couldn't escape and you couldn't fight back and you couldn't ask for help, then dissociating and not experiencing your feelings would be your only protection. But then it gets wired into you. And then all your life you go through not knowing what you feel and not knowing what your needs are. So again, it's an adaptation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That's what I'm saying is that nobody's damaged goods. These are just adaptations. The abnormality is not an individual. It's in the circumstances to which the individual had to respond that way so that his response or yours or mine, for that matter, were perfectly normal responses to abnormal circumstances. I say abnormal in the sense circumstances that did not meet human needs.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Mel, there's a lot in what you said. Okay, first you said you behave that way by default. There's a difference between default and fault. Okay, default, you didn't know you were doing it. You didn't know any better. You were just following patterns that were programmed into you, but it's not your fault. Okay, there's a huge difference, important distinction. Number one.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, so I was born 80 years ago this year in Budapest, Hungary, in January 1944, to Jewish parents whose lives were already impacted by the Second World War. My father was in forced labor with the Hungarian army. A Jewish man had to go into forced labor when I was born, so he wasn't there when I was born. In March, the German army occupied Hungary.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Number two, it's never the child's job to make the parents happy or to create peace in the family. And the child invariably fails, which instills a huge sense of guilt and inadequacy for not having fulfilled a task that never ought to be in yours, never should have been yours in the first place. It's a reversal of roles, because whose job it is to hold who emotionally, to create peace?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And so when a child is forced into that position, again, as an adaptation to maintain a relationship with the parents, she's given an impossible task that she's bound to fail at and bound to feel shame over it. Which means that any shame and guilt that you feel is completely undeserved. When we start to notice these patterns, we can start asking ourselves questions.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
But it depends on how we ask them. So I could say, why am I behaving this way? Is that a question?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
It's an indictment. But I said, hmm, I wonder why I'm behaving that way. So we need to begin to develop that compassionate curiosity towards the self where we start looking not to why did I, not this indictment, as you say, but genuine curiosity. And from that perspective, everything, pretty much everything anybody thinks is wrong with them
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
It actually begins as an adaptation or it begins as a failure of development because the conditions for development were not adequate. And so then we can understand, no, it's not a question of being victims. That's the last thing we want to do is to foster victim mentality. They did this to me and I can't help it. No, that happened and it's your responsibility and it's your capacity.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
to change that now. So you have to drop the victim mode altogether, but that doesn't mean that we don't recognize what happened. So to say that stuff happened to you, and I get the sense that something big happened that you haven't articulated yet, but something big happened to you at some point, to recognize that is not to say that you're a victim.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
It's just to say that whatever happened had certain impacts and fostered certain adaptations on your part that made you behave and undermine your development in a certain way.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Okay. All right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Don't go there.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Now, can I unpack this for you a little bit? Sure. Are you open to it?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah. Okay. Here's a question I'm going to ask you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
How did you feel when this happened?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Confused and scared. Good enough. Who did you speak to about it?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Okay. Now, if something like this happened to one of your daughters in grade... Was it grade four?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Okay. If one of these things happened to Sawyer or Kendall in grade four, and if they didn't talk to you, how would you explain that?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
I understand how you'd feel, but really I'm not asking how you'd feel. I'm asking how you'd explain it. Why wasn't my daughter talking to me about feeling scared and confused and violated?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That's the trauma. The trauma began before that happened. Because if you had been able to talk to your parents, and they would have said, this is awful, you must feel terrible, come here, let me hold you, and let's deal with the situation. So the trauma is not only in what happened, it's that you were so alone when it happened.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And then the genocide, the Holocaust that had obliterated the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, but not yet that of Hungary, began in our country. And within three months, between March and June, They murdered half a million Jews, including my grandparents.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And that aloneness was yours before this traumatic event ever occurred. As a matter of fact, abusers can tell with almost laser-like accuracy Who is defended and protected and who is not? Who can be victimized and who cannot? So that your primary traumatic event was not this event. Not that this wasn't traumatic. Of course, it was hugely traumatic.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
But it became hugely traumatic because you were alone. And that sense of lack of safety and lack of protection happened. Furthermore, you may not even have wanted to bother your parents because they're already stressed enough already. You were protecting them. That's the primary traumatic situation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Do you see that?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
There was dismissal.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That's one of the impacts of trauma is that shame is to you of the self. People start blaming themselves that somehow you invited it or deserved it or you didn't fight back hard enough or which if you didn't was also self-protection.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Which was a defense.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So again, it's an adaptation. So that's what I would say about that incident.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah. But again, the problem is in the environment and in the lack of being held and being seen. So there's nothing. And your initial impulse when you began that narrative about, oh, it's not as bad as what I... Right, right, right. Would you say that to your, if your daughter comes to you and says, oh, it's not so bad. Think of all the kids that are, you know, being beaten or, you know.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So that lack of self-compassion is one of the ways that trauma shows up. And that's why I'm saying the healing needs to begin with some compassionate curiosity towards the self, not why, but why. It's a totally different conversation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Absolutely.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Absolutely.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And we came very close to being deported ourselves, my mother and I. So I spent the first year of my life under Nazi occupation, with the mother who was terrorized and grief struck.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That's the whole point, is that we all want to be free. But as long as we're running on default mode and we're just reacting to stuff, there's no freedom in it. We're actually like puppets on a string. And if you remember Pinocchio, when he becomes a real boy, he says, how silly, how foolish I was when I was a puppet. Well, we're all puppets. in that sense.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
As long as these traumatic impacts are running our lives, we're puppets on a string. And those strings are unconscious. So it's the whole thing about becoming really free. And that real freedom depends on looking at how it was and getting in touch with our capacity to take responsibility now. You know, so what really
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
The work is, for all of us, is how to become free so we can be in the present moment connected to ourselves. The great trauma psychologist Peter Levine says, no longer living under the tyranny of the past. And it's totally available. It's totally possible.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
didn't know if my father was dead or alive for most of that year and then when i was 11 months of age to save my life mother gave me to a complete stranger a christian woman in the street and she conveyed me to some relatives living in relative safety and hiding um i didn't see her for five or six weeks and all this is recorded in the journal that she kept i I didn't discover the journal.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
If they choose it, yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So that's actually the first step is to recognize one's suffering rather than taking it for granted, which incidentally is the Buddha's first teaching is that life is dukkha, life brings suffering. And then the second question is, okay, why? So it does begin with recognizing the suffering rather than denying it and running away from it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And there's many ways to run away from our pain through certain behaviors and addictions. And the point is, stop running from your pain, accept that it's there and be curious about it without blaming yourself for it. So those are the first steps. And then you ask for help. I mean, if help is available. We were born seeking help.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
You've never met a one-day-old infant that doesn't know how to ask for help. But let me ask you a question. How easy it has been going back for you to ask for help?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Then and even decades later. Can you ask for help or is that a challenge for you?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
No, I don't mean now. I mean before your transformation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Which was an adaptation because there was no help available. You know what's interesting? Sorry, go ahead.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah, to protect your parents?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
I understand.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
That's not what you needed your mother to do. You need any mother to say, oh, gee, that's awful. Come here. Let's talk about it. You weren't born not knowing how to ask for help. You were born with the supreme capacity to ask for help. I mean, as we know, any infant knows how to ask for help. So something educates it out of us. Something compels us to suppress a capacity to seek help.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So if the first step is recognizing our suffering and the second step is getting curious about it, then the third step is I need some help here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
But it's only the simple truth.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So there's a book written by a palliative care nurse in Australia. And I used to work in palliative care. And it's called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People. And she's talking to people who died before that time, you know, from cancer usually. One of the regrets is that they worked too hard, they didn't play enough. Now, playfulness is built into our brains.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
All mammals play, bear cubs play, lion cubs play, puppies, kittens, they all play. We're wired for play. Why? Because play is essential for a number of things. One is essential for brain development. It's much more important for brain development than academic learning. I'm talking about scientifically, you know, brain physiologically. So play is important.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
I always had her journal. But for many years, when I tried to read it, I'd get dizzy. It's almost like something in me knew that this is too painful for me to handle. So it wasn't until some years ago, when my mother is still alive, when I asked her to actually read the journal to me so I could really read what happened.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Play is also important to form relationships. Because in play, you can kind of roughhouse a bit, but you're not actually being enemies. So you're making friends that way. So play is essential. Winnie the Pooh, which is one of my all-time favorite books.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, it's so playful. But at the very end, and I know you're married to Chris Robbins, which is Christopher Robin. Anyway, there's a passage at the end of the book, Winnie the Pooh, where Christopher, the boy, by the way, him and his father had a terrible relationship, which is a whole other issue. I'm talking about the real Christopher Robin.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
But the fictional Christopher Robin is now growing up and he has to go to school, which means he won't be able to play with his animals anymore. And he's trying to explain this to these animals, including Winnie the bear. And the book ends with the statement that I'll paraphrase where it says, they go off walking together hand in hand.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And the book ends with, but whatever they do and wherever they go in the enchanted forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing together. And that passage as an adult would bring me to tears because as a kid, as an infant, I wasn't played with. My mother was way too terrorized and depressed to play with me. And kids, peekaboo, play starts so early. It's essential for our mental health.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
It's essential for our brain development. So these poor people who were looking back on their lives and saying, I wish I had played more. Play is just essential. And I have to say that one of the things that has kept our marriage going 55 years now is that we play so well together. And we're just playing all the time when we're not fighting, which, by the way, is long gone.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Not long gone, but gone. So play is just essential.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
It's interesting. I have two brothers. They're both intuitively playful with young kids. They just know how to be with them, how to pretend, how to just get into their space. I watch them and I don't know how the hell they do it. Because I didn't know how to play with my kids. Not really. I kind of faked it. But I always kept waiting for them to develop minds that I could engage with verbally.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Because on that verbal level, I'm very comfortable. On the play level, I wasn't. I was rather stiff. I wish I was a grandfather. I'm not yet. Because I learned how to play. I let that infant teach me how to play. But no, I didn't know how to play. I didn't know how to play. I really lacked that. Because it wasn't given to me when I was small. My brothers had it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
They grew up under very different circumstances. They didn't have the same parents. The way we talked about it. So they know how to play. I don't. But kids, I mean.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
She wrote in the journal that, I'm writing this because if my son grows up, I want him to know what happened. So that's in a nutshell. But those events left a deep imprint in my nervous system, in my body, and in my psyche. And those traumatic events created a lot of psychological wounds in me that took me some years to even recognize, let alone to heal.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Just count to five. That's true. And then hug somebody. I used to be hug-phobic.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah, you did. But I, honest to God, when people in the room would start hugging each other, I'd stand there like this.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
It's a response to really not being held. And it's also kind of a protective shell. I don't want to make myself that vulnerable. I don't want to open up.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, sometimes it's attributes and behaviors that the world respects you for. So great success can sometimes be an outcome of childhood trauma because you're working so hard to prove something to the world. Like I talked about my own workaholism because I had to prove that it was important. Now that made me a very successful or respected physician from the outside.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
On the inside, different story. In my family, a different situation altogether. People who are very attractive and who put a lot of effort into being very attractive, the world admires them, but it's very often, like I said before, they're trying to attract the attention that should have been their birthright. And they don't feel good if they're not attractive.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And you see this as people age, this desperation to keep looking young because they're not acceptable the way they are. So sometimes it shows up in success and what the world considers success.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, my response to a sense of disruption in my relationship with my wife is to shut down. So I just, you know, go sullen and non-communicative. I mean, I talk about that in the first chapter of the book. This is, you know, I arrive home from a speaking trip and
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
She texts me that she hasn't left home yet to pick me up from the airplane and I go into a sullen withdrawal stage because I'm reliving my abandonment unconsciously, but I don't realize it. And when I saw my mother again after that five or six week separation, I didn't even look at her for several days, which is the typical response of the child.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Because the child's brain says, you were so hurt when you were abandoned that you will not open yourself up again. So your husband is exhibiting the same thing that has been a very dominant problem in my relationship, in my marriage, is my tendency to shut down in response to any sense of hurt, even if the hurt has nothing to do with the present moment, but it's a re-triggering of some old wound.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
You know what comes up for me is that beautiful movie with Robin Williams and Matt Damon.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Good Will Hunting.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah, that's right. Where the psychologist Robin Williams grabs this very dysfunctional, dysregulated client paid by Matt Damon and he says, it's not your fault. We can only get that. That's the biggest takeaway. I would say, just get it. It's not your fault, but there's reason for it. It can be worked through.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
My pleasure. Thank you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And it wasn't until I was into late adulthood or middle age. that I really began to deal with it and to recognize the subsequent impacts that then I passed on to my kids without meaning to, but just for the lack of awareness. So that's it in a nutshell.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Okay, get over it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Kids whose mothers were depressed postpartum have a higher risk of ADHD. And we can talk about why that's the case.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, join a club.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Sometimes I just go on because these topics are so, I'm so passionate about the stuff.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
I used to be an English teacher.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
I used to be hug-phobic.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah, you did.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, before it shaped my work, it shaped me and how I functioned in the world or how I dysfunctioned in the world in so many ways. So it's when I began to experience challenges in my life. I was a successful doctor in my early 40s, respected, but depressed and unhappy. I was married to the love of my life and we had a very strained, conflictual marriage.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And my kids had issues and in some ways they were afraid of me because I was very unpredictable. So all those issues then made me start looking for some answers. So the work began by having to look at myself and trying to understand the sources of my behaviors. And that coincided with me noticing things as a physician in my medical practice.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And that's how I began to look at childhood development, the impacts of early years, the concept of trauma and what that represented and its impacts on adult or childhood mental health, physical illness, and so on. So both my personal experience and my professional work kind of led me in this direction of exploration.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
They're largely decisive. This begins even before birth. So already the emotional states of the mother while carrying the baby will affect the child's brain development.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Sure. And what we have to nail down first is we're not blaming mothers here. They do their best. We're talking about the stress is acting on the pregnant woman. That's no fault of her own. But speaking of stress, when people are stressed, they release stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
When the mother is stressed in pregnancy, those stress hormones go through the placenta, the umbilical cord to the baby. That affects the child's nervous system and its development. Cortisol has a huge impact on the development of important brain circuits. You can look at the heart rate of infants in the womb as it changes as the mother is more or less stressed.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So these are just physiological facts. So there was a study done after 9-11, after the tragedy of 9-11, women who were pregnant and who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in the third trimester of pregnancy, as a result of 9-11, their infants had abnormal stress hormone levels a year later.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Now abnormal stress hormone levels have an impact on brain development and on the physiology and physiological health as well. So you can expect those kids, unless something is done to correct it, to face more challenges later on. And we know that mothers who are stressed during pregnancy, depressed during pregnancy
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Their children are more likely to have ADHD, attention deficit disorder, other mental health challenges. So it's just, now what's interesting here is indigenous people have always known this.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
I was talking to a native group in British Columbia where I live, and this guy comes up to me and says, you know, doc, in our community, when a woman was pregnant, there was a rule that if you're stressed or upset, you are not permitted to go near them. We didn't want your stress and upset to affect the baby. So this modern science has only confirmed indigenous wisdom.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
But it's a huge issue in this country, in this culture, because people are so stressed for so many reasons.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Well, first of all, when my mother was carrying me, I don't think she even wanted to be pregnant. I mean, what Jewish woman really wanted to be pregnant in the middle of the Second World War when her husband is in forced labor? I already knew, though, kids can feel if they're not wanted. I've seen this show up in many, many, many, many ways. Now, the thing that I would take up with you is...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
On the one hand, there's the awareness that this is what happened, but the way you formulated it, that you hurt your kids. No, pain flowed through you to your children, but you didn't hurt them. It's not that you did something deliberately or consciously to hurt them. It's just that the way it worked is that trauma is transmitted transgenerationally. But that's not to blame anybody.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
And it's really important to remove blame because parents feel so guilty already. Parents with kids who have challenges, believe me, I've been one of them. There's a tremendous sense of guilt, which is entirely unwarranted and undeserved, and it doesn't even help. So let's just agree that the trauma does come through us, but we don't do it as such.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Yeah, yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
The way I define it is very straightforward. Trauma comes from a Greek word for wound or wounding, so trauma is a wound. It's a psychological wound in this case. It could be a physical wound, but here we're talking about psychological wounds. The important distinction to make is that trauma is not what happened to you. It's what happened inside of you as a result of what happened to you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
So in my case, my trauma wasn't that my mother gave me to a stranger. The trauma was the wound, which is that I perceive myself as not wanted. I perceive myself as abandoned. Who gets abandoned? Somebody who doesn't deserve to be loved. So then I developed this sense of not being good enough, not being lovable enough. Now that means I spent much of my life trying to prove
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
that I'm good, that I'm lovable, that I am important, which then drives all kinds of behaviors, which then create more problems. But the trauma is not the event. That's the traumatic episode. But the trauma is the wound that happens inside you. So if I get a blow on the head, that's not the trauma. The trauma is the concussion that I developed.