Dr. Gabor Maté
Appearances
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.