In Conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté

Published Mar 16, 2023, 10:00 AM

In this bonus episode, Dani speaks with renowned physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté about his new book,The Myth of Normal, and the ways in which we can begin to heal from our wounds and traumas.

Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Now. If you look at the word healing and it's word origins, it comes from an Anglo Saxon word for wholeness. So yeah, literally is the process of ephole, which begs the question I mean whole hole in the first place? Well, yes, the nessence you are, but as a result of trauma, you get cut off from parts of yourself. That's Doctor gobor Mate, physician, renowned speaker, and best selling author of five books, including most recently The Myth of Normal. Doctor Matte is a leading expert in the field of trauma, addiction, and childhood development. I'm Danny Shapiro and this is a special bonus episode of Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Early in your book, you recount a moment from a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace, the parable of two young fish who encounter an elder fish on their aquatic paths, and the elder says to the younger fish, morning, boys, how's the water? And the elder fish says, what the hell is water? What does this story mean to you? Well, it means the exactly what David Foster follows what was intendedive to me, which is sometimes there's things that we were most used to and really swimming, and we don't recognize if we used as Summing's normal, we are not even related to it. We just carry on our merry way without actually being aware of the mel You that we're in, of the impact of the Melians. So those they know the everyday thinks, he says, have the greatest consequences for our lives. He himself is a tragic example because, as you may know, he committed suicide. You know, it was this incredible talent, but I don't think either was able to fully metabolize your suffering until all he could do was to escape from it. Yeah, that reminds me. Elsewhere in your book, you describe Elizabeth Wurtzel, who wrote fairly late in her All Too Brief Life, she wrote about having discovered that her father who raised her wasn't her biological father, and she writes about her depression. And there's something that you write about this kind of suffering that can go along with a glittering career, and yet underneath that there is this trauma that is either not understood or certainly not healed. Yeah, well, there are all too many people out there with glittering careers who have suffered tremendously, and many of them in the entertainment world. And we know these figures who are at the very top of their profession and adulated by millions. And look at the riches that Elvis accrued and that were stolen from the actually by his manager. And he was a suffering person. He had a twin brother who died at birth, and lots of other trauma, and much of his corriginal came from his suffering. Also as incredible talent, Marilyn Monroe the same thing. Lots of examples of this Aretha Franklin as another one, you know, incredible iconic singer. She sings the song always BCP about respect, and in her life she was never respected. She was traumatized as a child, abused as an adult, and didn't have the self respect to set boundaries for herself because of her childhood trauma. These people are suffered to trauma their childhood, and that trauma shows up even in their successes. That's part of the toxicity of our culture. It's sometimes reward people's desperate hoping mechanisms. That's really fascinating. Do you think that there's some correlation between talent or perhaps ambition or what makes somebody strive for that kind of worldly success, whether it's in art or it's in politics, and you know the initial wound or is that coincidence or do we only know these stories because these people are famous. To give my own personal example, before I wrote books and worked in trauma of a family physician and very successful. I had endless demand for my services and I never said no, I was a pure workaholic, and that work hasn't really hurt my family whood, my kids have hurt my wife that calls and was rewarded by the world. Everybody said, what a great doctor is always available. And of course the more I made myself available day or night, the more gratitude came my way, and the more money I made, so the world rewarded my Workhals and Bobbo was driving. It was a desperation to prove my value as a un being, because as an infant that value was not affirmed given the historical circumstances under which I was born and the suffering of my mother and my family and so on. I had no sense of birth that was the independent of what I do know. Now you can go to the autabagasies of a lot of famous people, including any number of US presidents, and see the same dynamic. And you know what, anybody's well versed in trauma, you can see the trauma in the demeanor. I mean, look at so many politicians anywhere in the world. They hate giving up power because they don't think very much of themselves deep down, unconsciously. There's a part in your book that I found extremely difficult to read. It's in this chapter called a sturdy or a fragile foundation, And I really wanted to unpack this with you because you quote Raffi, So Raffie says, we discover who we are from the inside. What's forming is no less than how it feels to be human. And then later in that same chapter you quote a book called the Secret History of the Unborn Child. This whole idea of long term influence, this was something I mean, I literally was writing exclamation points in the margins. But long term influence of the intrauterine period on emotional health and in my own history, and the reason that I started this podcast. I discovered in midlife that the dad who raised me had not been my biological father, That my parents had experienced infertility as a couple in the nineteen sixties, that they had used was a sperm donor, that they had been told to never tell a soul, to certainly never tell the child, right. I mean, I have a really successful and wonderful life, But in terms of early childhood intrauterine, my mother, I am convinced now must have been absolutely petrified the entire time she was pregnant. Fortunately, on the biology side, my biological father, who I was able to find and identify, has a constitution that is very, very stable, and I actually think that that had a lot to do and also with the way that I was surrounded by various adults who loved me and helped me. But I'm saying all this because what does it mean. We can't change where we started. We can't change the stories that were told that form our identity from the time that we're sentient beings. And there's so much that we can do, but there are things that we can't do. And your book is full of both. It's full of you know, the bad news and the good news, and there's so much about healing in there, but there's also the ways in which we can never alter or if we were formed in this way very early on, with a kind of lack of maternal connection with fear, even in the uterus, what do we do with that in our lives. There was a quote that so speaks to your situation, and she writes a certain kind of silence that which comes from holding back to truth is in itself abusive to a child. The soul has a natural movement towards knowledge, so that not to know can lead to despair. In the posity of explanation for a mood, a look, a gesture, the child takes on the blame and cares, thus a guilt for circumstances beyond childish influence. And that would have hurt you because the chot can sense that there's something wrong, there's something not being said, but it's so confusing, and all the chot can do is to develop a sense of lack of safety and self blame, and that's what happens. One of the things that I came to realize is that whole idea of the kind of trauma big t trauma you know as you write about in the myth of normal in which the person is trapped and powerless and there's nothing to be done as opposed to actually being able to make meaning out of it, do something with it, and that changes the game. That's right, So to forget your question about what to do about it all. Here's the good news about trauma. Trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you. Your trauma wasn't that they would have the truth from you. The trauma is the emotional psychological wound being green in your body and your nervous system. In terms of what to do about it, if the trauma was what happened to you, which is the circumstances are on your gestation and birth and child, trauma is what happened to me as a Jewish infant under the Nazis in hungry. If that was the trauma, there's nothing you can do, nothing I can do because it happened, it will never not at But if the trauma is what we made it mean about ourselves, which is that I didn't have value as it in being. But that's summer you were, you were faulty or not worthy or whatever you made it mean, that can be healed at any time. You can help heal what we made the past mean. And that's the actual journey. And so this is why I called the Buddha as well. He says that, you know, he points out that with our minds to create the world, Like, if my mind tells me that I'm not worthy, then I'm living in life. I'm living in a world where I was at the pool. My worthiness and how do people feel about me is hugely important. If I live in a world where I know that I'm worth a lot because I exist, it doesn't matter so much for any big things and what success you achieve, but what success I don't achieve, you know. So the Buddha said, every the minds, you get the world. What Buddha didn't say is that before with our minds you create the world, the world creates our minds, so that the mind and the brain which we interpret and interface of the world is created by our early circumstances, under conditions we had no control about whatsoever. And the whole idea of hearing them resigns in gaining agency. We were helpless in our origin story, but we're not helpless in the present moment. So whatever I believe or you believed as a result of all that, they can drop those beliefs, and we can drop the physical patelilogical reactions that those beliefs. That's a liberation that we're in a present form. We'll be right back. Do you think that the dropping of those beliefs is something that we can do and then be done with or is life a little bit more like a game of shoots and ladders where you know, you write in the myth of normal about the real meaning of triggers, not the way that it's often used in the culture today. And this may be a rhetorical question, but is there a kind of place that you get to where it's like, no, you're good, You're done, and that history no longer has the power to haunt. I'll let you know when I get though. I sometimes talk about my epitask. I've created my own it's going to be carved on my great STONI what's gonna say. It'll say it was a lot more work than I had anticipated, you know, and that work goes down forever. It's not that I can't get a triggered now, and we can talk about the meaning of trigger, but when I do get upset. Let's take a very personal example of the occasion. I talked about this with my explanation. So let's say one night in a long distance panse twenty years ago, I want to sleep with her and she says no, and my response typically would be occurred into a fetal ball and be in despair and being a rageful state, and my body would really be like this, sir, It would really be tense and constricted. You know, wow, what's that about. It's not the response of a mature adults who says, oh, too bad, I'm onder what's going on for you, or maybe you're too tired, or I'm disappointed. Let's talk about it tomorrow. You know that'd be immature. My response to go until field ball is literally the response of an infant. I'm being rejected by mother, which was my experience. Not that she rejected me, but she gave me to a stranger and I didn't see her for six weeks to save my life. But I experienced it as a rejection and that response is still ingrained in my body now. These days should have happen, it doesn't trigger the same reaction because I dealt with it. At most, I might feel a disappointment. You know, I wanted something I don't get it. Well, that's disappointed, you know. Well, you know what, I'm overstating my healing here. I can still feel some tension around it. So if you look at what a trigger is, a trigger is a metaphor drawn from weaponry. No, in a weapon, how big a part of the weapon is the trigger. It's a tiny little thing. The only reason the trigger works is because there's a whole weapon there with ammunition and explosive charge. Now, if you say something that triggers me, I could say, what was the explosive material inside need that got set off here? And that's by far the more interesting question. So triggers, I think are really useful. If you get triggered, boy, you've got a lot of beautiful material to learn from about yourself if you ask the right questions. The anger, if I cost your boundaries or hurt you some way, or let you down in stificant ways, you should be angered with me, you know, and you should say you don't do this to me. I will not interact with you. That's healthy anger, that's not being triggered. That's a healthy response to a present boundary violation. Do you means that we lose consciousness of what's driving us and we put all the blame externally and even you not even know where that were triggered. A body literally changes, and I've been in that state plenty of time, and whenever that happens to a person, rest assured that it's something about the past, not in the present. This is a present somehow resemble the past, and that's what the little trigger is well. And you also you also write quite a bit in the Myths of Normal about blame and one of the things in this lexicon of triggering, if you're triggering me, then I blame you instead of what is it in me that has just gotten set off by this little trigger? That is this seismic thing that's happening in my body or in my psyche exactly. Yeah, from that point of view, my marriage has been my biggest institution of learning, because that's why we have learned about myself to I mean, I've done a lot of learning, you know, in all kinds of platforms or venues, but the biggest transformation is always in relationship that you really have to do. If you want to, you've got to deal with your own stuff. Either that or you expect the other person to suppress themselves to suit you. And when that happens, more stuffering happens. Well. That leads me to something that I found to be this really provocative, interesting idea, This idea that you put so succinctly and beautifully about attachment in family and the ways that we are our laboratories in a way, like a family is its own kind of laboratory for all of it, for growth, for triggers, for whatever it is we do to each other, and for each other. Also being stunted. Both can happen even to the same person. So the thing that you write about that I found really fascinating is the idea that we want to feel attached. It's essential that we feel attached to the people that we love and the people who are closest to us. And at the same time, it's possible when that goes awry that when we are our author centic selves, we are putting that attachment at risk. Somehow, it took me a lifetime and perhaps even the death of my mother to fully inhabit my authentic self because it was going to deeply threaten whatever that attachment was that I needed so badly. That at tension between attachment and authenticity is a major seeming in a lot of people's lives. There's no bargain between parents and child. Ideally speaking, here's what I have to do that my mother loved me or my father accept me. You know, there's no bargain. There's only a one way responsibility. That responsibility is I'm going to accept you as you are, no matter who you or who you are, because you are, and there'll be no conditions on that acceptance. Don't have to be pitty, smart, compliant, to sweet, healthful, obedient, anything. You just accepted for who you are because you are. No bargain and without that attachment relationship will being taken care of. We just can't survive. No mammalian infant can survive. So attachment is like wired into our biology. That soul is authenticity wired into abology, the capacity to know what we feel and to be able to act on it. I mean, as we evolved, these creatures are in nature, how long would be have survived if we weren't in touch with our good feelings? You know? And so that's another need a lot of people. If you really might be accepted, you have to hold up your end of a bargain. Then the child will suppress the authenticity of their genuine series who their view you are for the sake of being accepted, and that tragic tension between authenticity and attention, and it's wired in and they will let spend the rest of our lives living out of it. So then in our future relationships we hide our deepest desires and our deepest fears and who media are really think and on a job there not express ourselves, and to our friends will not be there, not be authentic, and to our partners who are afraid of being authentic for being rejected, because that was your experience as a child, that when you're authentic, you will not give an acceptance, but your poor parents couldn't give it to you because they themselves never had it. You know, part of what you're saying, I feel thrumbs beneath so many of the stories that my guest share with me on this podcast, because when you're talking about secrecy, you're automatically and instantly talking about a lack of authenticity. If you're keeping a secret, it's very often or almost always, out of shame or out of the fear that it will destroy an attachment that feels important. And you know, I think one of the things that happens in the stories that my guests share, it's me because if they've come on this podcast, it means very often they've already dealt with a lot of this, And it really has to do with, well, what is the liberation that is available when a secret is finally voiced, spoken, metabolized, understood. Yeah, so I think you had the same experience that I had as a writer. Like you begin to write a book because you think you want to tell people something, and then you actually find out that you were writing about what you have to learn yourself so that you write the book. And I just thought I wanted to tell the world stuff. But in the posts of writing, the stuff emerged about me that I had to learn, or about the ideas that it was expanding on. It took them much deeper than I would have had I not written about them. And so in that sense, I think what you and I have in common is that any secrets we have don't stay secrets well, and that discovery is always at the heart of what makes what makes a book a good book is what's alive on the page. Is you actually feel the writer discovering something exactly? Yeah, I guess I want to ask you a little bit more about healing and the ways in which we can understand our wounds intellectually. What can you say about this ongoing process of moving through life and actually the difference between the gaping wound, the scar tissue that you write about, and perhaps the true healing. It's a process that occurs over time. Now, if you look at the word healing, and it's the word origins, it comes from an Anglo Saxon word for wholeness. So yeah, literally is the process of beginning being whole now, which begs the question, what I mean whole? Are going whole in the first place? Well, yes, in essence you are. But as a result of trauma, you get cut off from parts of yourself. So the essence of trauma is actually a disconnection from ourselves, which also means that the healing means connecting with ourselves. But hearing is the process of connecting with all answerts of ourselves, which takes compassionate dance of judgment, and it stakes curiosity. If I'm triggered, I could not judge myself and say, what an idiot you did it again? Or I could say, huh, what in me was set off by that trigger That hasn't looked at yet. So the therapeutic approach I've developed, it's called compassionate inquiry, and we've had about three thousand students nor in eighty countries in the last three years studying it. So it's a process. It has many different dimensions. I don't claim that either my book or my method is the answer. There's no doubt answer. There is all kinds of healing adalgies, but in general I would say that healim ofdalogies that don't allow you to get to know your trauma and to befriended and to learn from it don't work. So whatever healing needs, it needs becoming whole, and that means confunding, defending, dealing with all the wounds that we carried, and doing so in a compassionate man. Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zakour is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, Please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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