The Mel Robbins Podcast
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal
Mon, 24 Mar 2025
If you feel lost or stuck in life, today’s episode will help you understand the root cause of trauma and how childhood experiences shape you throughout your life. Understanding your trauma is the key to healing. Your past doesn’t define you—but it does shape you. And today, world-renowned physician and bestselling author Dr. Gabor Maté is here to break it all down. Dr. Maté, a leading expert on trauma, shares insights on this topic unlike anything you have heard before. In this powerful conversation, he reveals how childhood experiences—whether you realize it or not—impact your relationships, self-worth, and the way you navigate life. You’ll learn why trauma, stress, addiction, and people-pleasing aren’t just personality traits but survival patterns formed in your early years. And most importantly, you’ll discover that while what happened to you isn’t your fault, healing is your responsibility. This conversation will challenge the way you see yourself—and give you the tools to take control of your future. For more resources, click here for the podcast episode page. If you enjoyed this episode with Dr. Gabor Maté, listen to his first appearance, where he dives deep into the connection between trauma, ADHD, and autoimmune disease: Dr. Gabor Maté: The Shocking Link Between ADHD, Addiction, Autoimmune Diseases, & TraumaConnect with Mel: Get Mel’s #1 bestselling book, The Let Them TheoryWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast InstagramMel's TikTok Sign up for Mel’s personal letter Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes ad-freeDisclaimer
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Gabor Maté and why is his work important?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so glad that you chose to listen to this episode, because today I've got somebody in our Boston studios whose work has fundamentally changed my life. This person has helped me understand exactly how my childhood shaped who I became as an adult. And today he's going to do the exact same thing for you.
Because what's happened to you in your past, first of all, it's not your fault. But it is your responsibility to yourself to do the work that you need to do in order to heal, to grow, to become healthier and happier. And today you're going to learn exactly how to do it.
You're also going to learn that no matter what it is that you may have survived in your childhood, it does not define who you are or who you can become. You're going to get a roadmap to better understanding yourself and also how you can connect with your true self. The extraordinary Dr. Gabor Mate is here.
He's written five books on the topic of childhood development, trauma, stress, ADHD, addiction, all of which are New York Times bestsellers. And it has taken me two years to get him to our studios here in Boston because he is in that much demand globally. Dr. Maté is going to help you understand exactly how your childhood shaped you.
You're also going to learn more than 10 surprising ways that trauma is created in childhood, even if you didn't realize it, and how it is probably still impacting you to this day right now. Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so thrilled that you're here with me. It is always an honor to be able to spend time together with you. If you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
And I know because you chose to listen to this episode that you're the type of person who values your time. And you're also interested in learning about ways that you can improve your life. I love that. I love that you're listening to this episode. And you want to know what else I love? I love that you and I are going to get to spend time learning from the extraordinary Dr. Gabor Mate.
Dr. Maté is a world-renowned physician and best-selling author whose work dives deep into childhood development and the impact of trauma on how it shapes your mental and physical health over your lifetime. Dr. Maté has completely transformed how the world sees, talks about, and understands trauma. And he has absolutely had that impact on me, and it's been life-changing.
I promise you, this episode is going to shift the way you see everything, how you show up for yourself, how you connect with the people you love, and why you experience life the way that you do. It's going to help you understand why coping has become your default and how you can move toward true healing. I am so excited for both you and me.
So please, please, please help me welcome the extraordinary Dr. Gabor Mate to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited to welcome you, Dr. Gabor Mate, to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
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Chapter 2: How does childhood trauma shape adult life?
Yeah.
And the state that I was in when I was carrying any one of our three children and how that absolutely impacted their development. There's this kind of conflict that I feel between, oh gosh, you know, I hurt my kids and I didn't mean to. And also this understanding that I think this is part of the human experience on some level.
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...
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.
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.
That is an incredibly helpful way to think about it. When you said that it's pain moving through you.
Yeah, yeah.
That made my shoulders drop. How do you define trauma, particularly for somebody who isn't aware whether or not they've experienced it?
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.
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Chapter 3: What are the surprising ways trauma is created in childhood?
I could listen to you all day, Dr. Mate. I want to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our sponsors. While you are listening to our sponsors, please share this episode with absolutely everyone that you care about. Dr. Mate's work has changed my life. I know that it will make a huge difference in your life and with anybody that you share this with.
So thank you for taking a listen to our sponsors. Thank you for sharing this with the people that you love and don't go anywhere. We have so much more to cover with Dr. Mate and we're going to do that after a short break. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And you and I are spending time today with the amazing Dr. Gabor Mate.
And we're digging into the topic of how your childhood has shaped who you've become as an adult. So Dr. Mate, when you think of childhood trauma, how do you identify it?
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.
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.
This show has listeners in 194 countries. Sure. And this might be the very first time as you're listening that you're actually starting to go, wait a minute, everything that he's saying is what I experienced.
Yeah.
Or at least pieces of it. I've never considered that this could be trauma. Yeah. And we've talked about it as a psychological wound, but I think it'd be really helpful if you also explained how does this create trauma either programming or conditioning in your body that starts to define who you become as an adult and create behaviors that you never intended.
So that happens on both the physiological and the psychological level.
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