Transcription
Today's guest is Dr. Gabor Maté, a best-selling author and world-renowned expert in addiction, stress, and childhood trauma. With decades of experience in the space, Gabor has revolutionized the field of mental health and well-being, providing millions of people with life-changing knowledge and advice.
In this episode, we dive deep into the hidden forces that shape our lives. "People are relational creatures. When I was being dishonest, my wife would get a neck pain, literally. We get a neck ache after a while. She learned, 'I got this neck ache. Are you lying to me right now?'"
We also dive into Gabor's definition of trauma. "Trauma is a wound that hasn't healed. Which also means that trauma is not what happens to you. I sustain a blow on the head, that's not the trauma. The trauma is the concussion that I develop."
We discuss addiction and how it can manifest itself in the different areas of our lives. "Could be heroin, crystal, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, sex, work, shopping, eating, gambling, internet gaming."
"According to that definition, have you ever had an addictive pattern in your life?"
Before we get into it, I want to ask you for a small favor. We want to make sure these impactful conversations get to as many people as possible. By subscribing to this channel, you help these conversations reach the people they need to. In return, if you're part of the first 20,000 subscribers, we're going to pick 10 of you to come down here to the "We Need to Talk" studio to meet me, the guests, and let us know who you'd like to see on the show. Thank you. Don't forget to stick around until the end, where I'll share my top takeaways. Let's get into it.
[Music]
"You were 55 when you, in essence, launched a new career."
"Well, that's when I wrote my first book."
"Yeah, so you wrote your first book at 55, and then that kind of launched this media side to your career over time."
"Yeah."
"What I find interesting about that is, at, at, I think the world mostly knows you as a result of your publishing and the media work."
"That I believe that's true."
"Yeah."
"I just did what I did, and, uh, I remember being quite frustrated in the beginning because I was always quite confident about the value of my ideas. So that by the time I put something out there, I knew that whatever somebody thought of it, I was right, you know. Uh, and it frustrated me that the world didn't come knocking, beating a path to my door. And my wife said to me, 'Don't worry about it. And don't try and make it happen. Just keep doing your work.' And that's all that happened. So the books happened. Um, but they didn't all immediately become overnight sensations. They did well, but over years, people discovered them all over the world. So that's what happened. And, and in terms of the media, I, I didn't do any of it. I mean, all the things you see on YouTube, I don't post any of them. So I didn't do, to tell you the truth, I didn't do anything. So I can't give you advice because I, I didn't create that, um, that flood of interest. It just burgeoned and came and built on its own. That's what I can tell you. There's no strategy behind it. There's no intention behind it. I just kept saying what I'm saying and writing my book, and then it just gradually the public responded. But there was no conscious strategy behind it. So that's not much help, but that's what happened."
"Well, well, I tell you, from looking from the outside in, what, what I see is I see someone who is world-class, yeah, at, at what you were doing, yeah, extraordinarily passionate about what you were doing, yeah, and then became an extraordinary teacher of those things through your books, through these interviews."
"Well, yeah, I used to be a teacher before I was a physician."
"Oh, interesting."
"And it's just interesting on the end, it all, all comes around."
"Yes."
"All I can tell you is whatever your passion is and whatever your work is, do it and rely on the world to respond."
"I would love to hear from you your opinion on the connection between your mind, your body, yeah, and how that shapes your relationships."
"Sure. Human beings are relational creatures. Important circuits of our brain are dedicated to relationships. And the brain develops an interaction with the environment, particularly in early years, beginning already in utero. So if we receive the right relationships, the right connections, the right understanding, the right acceptance, the right love in the beginning, then our template is for healthy, connected, mutually respectful, loving relationships. But if that template is a disturbed one, if a needs for being understood, um, being seen, being received, um, being cared for, being validated, are not met, then those same brain circuits that modulate relationships now become troubled. And generally, this is when I talk to couples, they say, 'I got bad news for you. You always marry somebody that's going to trigger for you every unhappiness that you ever had in your childhood.' So when we find somebody to be in relationship with, it happens on two levels. One level is, I find them attractive, they're humorous, they're fun to be with, um, there's a commonality, you know, so that there's the attractiveness that's in, that's important. But underneath it, there's something else. Underneath it, there's a looking for the love that we never got in the first place. So, for example, why do so many women, specifically, who were abused in childhood, end up with abusive men, which they do repeatedly? And you think, 'What's wrong with them?' Well, there's nothing wrong with them. What's wrong is whose love did they most want when they were kids? Precisely that abusive person. So unconsciously, they'll be drawn towards men who've got that abusive potential. But that's where they're looking for love. Now, this is generally true. So my wife and I have been married 55 years now. And yes, we found each other attractive and fun, and we had a lot to talk about. But on a deep level, I was compensating for the love I didn't get as a child, the way I needed it. And so was she. In other words, we married our parents' dysfunctions. And then their relationship becomes either destroyed by that, or you grow mutually. So relationship is very much a matter of growing up together, if that can happen. But I guarantee you, when you marry somebody, you're going to find both your dreams and your worst nightmare."
"That's profound. That we're all seeking subconsciously, we're seeking our parents' dysfunction, yeah, because that's where we wanted the love. So we're still looking for the love. Now, that's wired into our brains, and it's wired into our bodies. And very often, when I speak to people and, and they're upset about their relationship, and they say, 'What's in your body?' And they'll say, 'Well, there's tension, there's, you know, my heart's beating fast, my throat is tight.' I see, 'How familiar is that feeling?' Goes way back to childhood."
"Wow. Wow."
"So in terms of our unhealthy, should I say, when we have those unhealthy relationships, how does that then manifest itself physically? So whether that be an unhealthy childhood relationship, or even as an adult, if we're in a marriage or we're dating someone, and, and it's, it's, it's unhealthy, and we know it is, how does that manifest itself physically?"
"Well, it'll, it'll manifest itself in physical states such as I described, tension in the body, um, upsets of the intestines. See, people are relational creatures, and we always think of ourselves as sort of discrete individuals. But like in my marriage, if I can be self-disclosing here, when I was being dishonest, my wife would get a neck pain, literally would get a neck pain. So, so after a while, she learned, 'I got this neck ache. Are you lying to me right now?' You know? Or, or, and I was, you know, or, uh, intestinal upset. We tend to think of it as, 'Oh, this problem with the individual's, um, intestinal tract.' But the intestinal tract is very responsive to relationship because there's a big nerve called the Vagus nerve, called the wandering nerve. It's the largest autonomic nerve in the body, and it, uh, connects the organs to the brain. And when the brain picks up a, a hint of disturbance, the Vagus will act up, and now you're going to have stomach aches and diarrhea and, and, or constipation, even, and so on, because of something disturbed in the relationship. The whole point is, we're, we're wired together as human beings. And so that, that'll manifest through our nervous system. So it shows up in the body."
"Children are very much creatures of relation, and they're very dependent on the parents' emotional states. So if you want to know if a couple is having, uh, tensions, there's two things you can do. You can ask the mother and the father, or you can measure the child's stress hormone levels. And the child's stress hormone levels will be a perfect readout of the parents' state of relationship."
"Wow. So it sounds like what you're saying is that we, we need to be in touch with how our body is reacting, yeah, in, in all of these moments with our partner. We need to be aware."
"We need to be aware. And, and the more body awareness we have, and realizing that our bodies are responsive to the environment, uh, the more, um, more of a clear map we have to our relationship."
"Okay. The Western medicine that I'm trained in tends to separate the mind from the body. People, women might go to, or men for that matter, might go to a physician with certain physical symptoms, and the doctors will look for the source only within the body itself. Whereas very often, the source is, um, interactional and relational."
"Now, correct me on this, yeah, because I've always said, who we choose as our partner is one of the most important decisions of our life."
"It's one of the most important decisions. And it's, in many ways, it's also one of the least conscious decisions because the conscious reasons that you have may be valid, but there's so much more to it that is unconscious."
"Yeah."
"Yes. And then in any successful relationship, the task of the relationship really is to make that unconscious conscious. Because what we all want is freedom, but there's no freedom without awareness. So if I'm unaware of all these things that are motivating me, how can I talk about being free?"
"Do you believe that's true, then? Who, who we choose as a partner is one of the most important decisions of our life?"
"Well, it's the most important decision. You know, and, and again, it's the one that we're very often the least conscious of all the factors that go into it."
"Yes."
"Does that speak to, uh, because I've seen you talk about these two needs, yeah, that we have, yeah? One being attachment and one being authenticity. Yeah. Could you explain that? And also, uh, I recently interviewed Will Storey, oh, yeah, who wrote phenomenal books, one, uh, being Status Game, and he talks about, he also sees a need for status, yeah, as well. So what's your thought in terms of those two needs, and do you see status also as an important need for us?"
"Let me, let me talk about attachment, authenticity, and come back to status, okay? So in the book, *The Myth of Normal*, children are born with certain needs. Now, one of the essential needs is attachment. Attachment being the drive to be close to somebody for the sake of being taken care of, or to take care of the other. So the essence of the attachment drive, not just in human beings, but in all mammals, and even in birds, is so that the young, vulnerable one can be taken care of by the more mature adult one. So the adult has an attachment instinct towards the vulnerable infant, and the infant has an attachment need towards the adult, so that the caretaking can occur the way nature intended it. So now, the attachment drive stays with us all our lives. Um, is never as dire and as, um, dominant and as definitive as it is in childhood because you're never as vulnerable and helpless, um, and immature. But it stays with us. So that adults and old people will still have an attachment need. We're just human beings. We're wired for attachment. That's clear. Um, but we also have a need to be ourselves, to be authentic, which means to be in touch with our bodies, to, with our touch with our emotions, and to be able to, um, act according to the truth of ourselves. Now, very simple example, gut feelings. I often ask people this question, which I can put it to you: Have you ever had the experience of having a strong gut feeling, not listening to it, and being sorry afterwards?"
"Absolutely."
"Okay. Now, so that tells me about your childhood because, um, and by the way, we all give the same answer. Us. Gut feelings are not luxuries. We don't survive without them. They tell us about reality. And, and nature wired us for it. In nature, where we evolved, how long does any creature survive if they're not in touch with their gut feelings?"
"Not long at all."
"So it's an essential need to be connected to self. Auto meaning the self, authenticity. All right. So we have these two needs: to be in touch with ourselves, to be able to express that selfhood, and to be able to act on it. And we have the need to attach. What happens to a child where they need to attach, but if they're being themselves fully expressed, they're not accepted by the parents? Not because the parents don't love them, right, but simply because they're too traumatized, or too stressed, or unavailable, or just they can't see the child, exactly. Now, the child's got this dilemma, an unconscious dilemma. I can be myself, but then I won't be accepted. Or I can go for the attachment by suppressing myself, my authenticity. Yeah. Now, what do you suppose the child has to do in every case?"
"Suppress yourself."
"Suppress yourself. At some point, that's where we lose in touch with our gut feelings. So I don't know what happened to you, but something happened at some point where you learned that for the sake of survival, that is to say, for the sake of maintaining your attachment relationship, you had to give up some aspect of yourself. And so when then later on, gut feeling comes along, we don't listen, and then we suffer. Yeah. So maturity is, in many ways, and this can happen in relationship, of course, because then we take our lack of authenticity and a need for attachment into our relationship. Right. And it's so hard then to be ourselves in relationship. So it's basically, very often, two partially authentic selves, or two inauthentic selves, get into relationship with each other. And now the task is, can we grow up to be authentic together? So we can be ourselves and still be in relationship."
"Wow. Well, that's a beautiful challenge, but it's also very difficult. Many of us grow up believing that to be accepted, we need to hide parts of who we truly are, choosing attachment over authenticity. But this pattern can follow us into our adult relationships, leaving us feeling disconnected or inauthentic. The key to breaking this cycle is to consciously reconnect with your true self. Start by asking, 'What parts of me have I been holding back to please others?' Then take small steps to express that part of yourself. The more you practice this, the easier it becomes to be authentic in relationships, which leads to deeper and more fulfilling connections."
"What you just described, I actually saw so many incidents, yeah, of my life, yeah, where I feel like I, I have suppressed myself, not only as a child, but also through adolescence."
"Well, you do. Because once you associate survival with self-suppression, then you continue to suppress yourself. So that these patterns are laid down early in life, but they become the template for, for later on. That's the whole problem, right? You know, the, the suppressing of yourself wasn't the temporary strategy on your part. It wasn't even a strategy. It was something your organism did automatically. You didn't do it. Your organism did it unconsciously. But because it's unconscious, it's hard to give it up. So, yeah, then you become an adolescent, then you try and fit in with the peer group for the sake of being accepted. And then as an adult, you always do whatever you can to be accepted. And only gradually does it dawn on you that, 'Oh my God, this is costing me, and there's something missing here.' And what's missing is me."
"So being aware of that now, yeah, at this moment, yeah, uh, how do we then become more authentic? How do we increase that, our authentic selves?"
"Well, the awareness is the big thing. Now, the, the second thing is to be really compassionate with yourself. So that rather than berating ourselves, 'I'm not being authentic, I'm a phony,' forget all that. Nobody is a phony. You became that way as a way of survival. It had a survival value to it, but now it's no longer functioning to support you. So the first thing is to be aware of it. The secondly, second thing is to look at its impacts. So, for example, one way that people have trouble being authentic is they have trouble saying no when people have demands on them, where they, or the person perceives that there's demands on them to be a certain way. And the world is asking you, 'Do this, that, and the other.' And you never say no."
"No. Do you know that one at all personally?"
"Okay. All right. So let me ask you this question then, um, and you know, I'm not probing here, just, uh, as much as you're willing to share. But if I ask you this, basically two areas where people have trouble saying no: one is personal relationships, and the other is, uh, work. Work."
"Okay. Now, choose one where, where in those areas do you have trouble saying no?"
"Work, for sure."
"Okay. Yes. Fair enough. So let me ask you then this question, and this is actually an exercise you can do with yourself, okay? And, uh, I do lay it out in *The Myth of Normal*. What is the impact on you of not saying no?"
"Drained. Drained."
"Fatigued. Fatigued. Yeah. Okay. So that little word, that two-word phrase is huge implications if we don't employ it. Okay. So fatigue, being drained. Okay. Now, fatigue, being drained, of course, is not only an impact on you, it's also an impact on your spouse, and then on your child."
"Yes. Yes."
"You know, so it's got huge implications. Now, that's the second point. Is just, what is the impact? The third question then is, what is the story behind your difficulty saying no?"
"I'm like, what do you believe if I say no, then what?"
"There's a story there. I, I feel like it's a missed opportunity. Someone else is going to take the opportunity that I could have had."
"So there's a fear of loss."
"Fear of loss, yeah."
"Okay. The next question is, who would you be without that fear?"
"Bold. Uh, fearless. You know, I would be true to myself."
"You'd be free. Yes. First of all, this fear of loss, how important is it? Like, yeah, what if you did lose some opportunities for the sake of gaining personal freedom?"
"I mean, if you look at this issue of, 'I won't have enough.' How familiar is that fear to you of not having enough?"
"Acute."
"How far does it go back? From the beginning. So it's got nothing to do with the present moment. So it's not that it's selfish, it's that it's old, and it had some basis to it at a certain point in your life, but it probably doesn't anymore. So basically, it's the past running our present. So when you say, 'How do you give it up?' You recognize the impact, and you recognize its source, and then you do, 'Is it really necessary? Is it really true right now?' Right? I could actually be free now."
"Some people in this unequal, unjust world, it's certainly true, they have limited room for action because they might really be poor, they might really be having to do jobs that they don't like with bosses that are not fair. But given the economic situation in this world of inequality, that may not have a whole lot of choice in the matter. So I don't want to generalize. But for many of us, this inability to say no is not demanded by our present circumstances. It's old programming. And so how do you become more authentic? Learn how to say no."
"Yes. And, and by the way, let me ask you another question. It comes to authenticity. Um, as, have you ever been in a situation, I mean, I have, where you're in some social scene, and afterwards, you feel a bit ashamed because I wasn't really myself?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Now, what is the feeling in your body when you admit to yourself that you weren't yourself? That you know, I kind of pretended, or I gave myself up?"
"Disappointment."
"There's a kind of, something here that's not pleasant, you know? So listen to your body again. So when you say, 'How do you become authentic?' Listen to your body. Yes. Yes. You know, so learn how to say no. Listen to your body. And there's one final question. Are there areas in your life where your ambitions, or intentions, or passions, or calling, but you're not saying yes to?"
"There must be."
"Well, yes, there are. That I'm not saying yes to."
"Yeah. Well, that's costing you as well, because that's creates frustration. So on the one hand, we're too busy not saying no, and then we don't have time to say yes to what really matters to us. Right. So it's a huge, this yes and no is the best way to find out about your authenticity. Where am I not saying no, where there's a no that wants to be said, and what's the story behind it? And then, where am I not saying yes, and what is that costing me?"
"Okay. And, you know, I, I really had to learn that both my wife and I had to learn is to say no and trust that the relationship will still endure. The other person being authentic."
"Yes. You know, now this applies not just to, it applies to both, all genders, but women particularly, because women are particularly programmed not to say no in this culture. It costs them hugely in terms of mental and physical health. Learning when to say no and yes is essential for living authentically. Start by identifying where you feel a no but haven't voiced it. Ask yourself, 'Why am I not saying no? What is it costing me?' Then think about the things you aren't saying yes to, and what opportunities for joy or fulfillment you might be missing. As Gabor points out, we all want to be seen in the best possible light, but society often punishes us for being authentic, pushing us to conform and hide our true selves."
"There was a study that you had talked about where, uh, these were women who were in relationships, yeah, all having challenges in the relationship. One half talked about that too, yeah, yeah."
"Well, that study is in the book, *The Myth of Normal*, and it was done in Massachusetts. They looked at 2,000 women over a 10-year period. This is it. And those women that were unhappily married and didn't express their feelings were four times as likely to die as those women who are also unhappy, but they did express their feelings. So the issue wasn't happiness, the issue was authenticity. Yes. Self-expression. Yes."
"That is profound. It's frightening. It's, but why are we not talking about? I mean, this is that is so four times more likely to die by simply not expressing."
"Yeah. Yeah."
"Well, well, we live in a society, uh, which very much is dependent on roles, and roles depend on how other people see you. So we all want to be seen in the best possible light, and society punishes us for being authentic. You know, they don't, you know, you're a troublemaker, or you're, you're different, or, you know. So basically, there's a huge social pressure to conform. And, uh, in relationship, of course, there's a, a fear of being ourselves for, for fear of being rejected. So it's very common."
"It is fair. No, to go back with status. I don't want to know what is meant by status because..."
"Well, here, here's what I think he, if he did, if I can jump in, is I think he was referring to our place in our community, yeah. So the, the role that we play, and, and almost the respect that that role garners within our, our community."
"Fair enough. And as human beings, uh, we're all communal creatures. We, uh, evolved as communal creatures. We could not have evolved or survived as a species otherwise. And so standing in the community and our relatedness to community was always very important. What's, what's interesting though, is if you look at, um, ancient cultures or aboriginal cultures, status wasn't defined, for example, the way it's defined in our society. In our society, it's defined in terms of possession and power. Whereas in more original societies, it's defined by how giving you were and how present you were for the others. So it wasn't about individual status in competition with others. It was based on your status as a contributor to the community. It's a very different ideal status. Right. But if that's what he means, I totally agree. Okay. Then, then that's important as well."
"Yeah. Yeah."
"You, you know, going back to to stress and almost the study and authenticity. So with, with stress, there are various forms of of stress. What are the, the different forms?"
"Well, the, so we can look at stress on, on three different levels. One is the physiological stress response, which is when you're under stress, under some kind of threat, some kind of challenge. Stuff will happen in your body. Your hypothalamus, which is the master gland in the brain, will release certain trigger chemicals that will alert the pituitary gland at the base of your skull, that will then send messages to your adrenal gland. And the adrenal gland will then release the stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. So that's called the HPA axis, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Okay. The straightforward physiology, releasing and ending, culminating in the release of stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, which are good for you. Because adrenaline gives you more energy, speed, strength. And cortisol gives you more, um, sugar, so that you have more energy to escape or to fight back. Okay. Good stuff. Okay. In the short term. In the long term, those same hormones, if continually released, will make you ill and even kill you. So that adrenaline will elevate your blood pressure, constrict your blood vessels, cause, you know, heart disease, strokes, and so on. Cortisol will thin your bones, undermine your immune system, ulcerate your intestines, put fat on your belly, so you're more likely to get heart disease, makes you depressed, and I think I mentioned, I mentioned suppressed immunity and other factors. So the, the stress hormones in the short term, necessary for survival. Chronic stress, however, creates illness, inflammation, and death. No, that's the physiological stress response. Then there's the external stressor, whatever triggers the stress. So if a sabertooth tiger were about to leap into the studio right now, uh, you and I would both be stressed, right?"
"I would jump in front of you. I would, I would block it for you."
"I'd block. Well, thank you. Grateful for that. But, you know, good thing we should be stressed, 'cause we want to be able to fight her to a cck, you know, right? So, but that's the external stressor, whatever that is. But there's no universal stressor. It depends on who's being stressed. And, and that's because this is a third aspect of stress called the processing apparatus. And that's you and I with our particular histories and interpretations and templates. So, for example, you might say the loss of a job is stressful. Could be for one person who believes that their worth and their livelihood depends on that job. For another person, I mean, I lost a job once, and it became the greatest opportunity. So it wasn't, didn't end up being so stressful. So there's the physiological stress response, there's the external stressor, but then there is the interpreting apparatus, um, which is our, our programmed view of ourselves and, and our unconscious beliefs of ourselves in the world. That's the processing apparatus. Okay. So that's what happens in stress. Now, there's certain triggers that set up the stress response, and they're so prevalent in our society: uncertainty, lack of information, conflict, and loss of control. And these factors are predictable to release the stress response in people chronically. So, for example, you can take rats. There's an interesting rat experiment. They, they yoke together two pairs of rats. Am I talking too much?"
"No, not at all. Okay. I'm in this."
"I'm in this. Yeah, yeah. You yoke together pairs of rats. You wire their tails with electrical wire, and you shock them with electricity. But one of them has a free lever. They can turn a lever that'll turn off the electrical shock, okay? But the other one does not. But they both receive the same shock for the same length of time. Now, the one that has got the freedom to turn a lever off has got less of a stress response than the one who didn't have that freedom, even though the shock they received was exactly the same power and duration. Just the lack of freedom. It's a loss of control."
"Yes. Now, in this society, that's just endemic. And I would imagine, in, in a relationship, especially with regard to the external, yeah, is it that your partner acts as either a magnifier or a shield to the stress?"
"Well, that's the whole point. They can be one or the other. And, and even variably, because like in my relationship, sometimes we acted as a magnifier for each other's stress, and sometimes we acted as a shield, depending on what state we're in and the state of our relationship. So, yeah, it can work both ways. Both ways. Yeah. And, and, uh, ideally, as the relationship proceeds, you learn how to be each other's shields, and it's kind of like the lightning rods rather than a magnifier. Yes. But, but certainly with my wife and I, there have been times where we just stressed each other to the max."
"It goes back to what we were saying in terms of your partner being such a critical decision. The most, and I'm glad you said the most important, because truly, my gut tells me it's the most important decision of, of our life. And you have literally partners, when you choose poor partners, or allow yourself to be chosen, you, if, if your partner is acting as a magnifier, your partner is killing you."
"Well, your partner is not killing you. You're killing yourself by being with that partner. You're not a victim, or you don't need to perceive yourself as a victim. And, again, the question is, how much latitude is there for growth in a relationship? Yeah. And so relationships can be the most powerful spiritual work you ever do in terms of becoming truly yourself and truly connected to the world. Unfortunately, again, in all cultures, there's just not enough support for healthy relationships."
"Yeah. So, so that, that brings up kindness. Yeah. What are the benefits of kindness, especially with regard to your partner and in a relationship? Because physically, there must be benefits."
"Well, just imagine yourself in a state of rage. Have you been in a state of rage?"
"Yes."
"What's happening in your body when you're in that state?"
"I'm, could hardly breathe. Okay. Uh, I feel, uh, flooded. Yeah. Uh, sweating. Yeah. Um, can't focus. Lot of attention. Lot of tension."
"Yeah. Bob, your heart is beating fast. Yes."
"Okay. Now, have you ever felt real kindness towards somebody?"
"Yes."
"What's in your body then?"
"It's the, the opposite of, of all of those. It's calm. It's calmness. Relaxation. Relaxed. There's peace."
"Peace. Yeah. So that's your answer to your question. Like that, kindness actually is not a gift you're giving to the other, although it is. It's a gift you give to yourself because you're suffused with positive hormones, um, oxytocin, which is a love hormone, and endorphins, which is the pleasure hormones. Um, your body relaxes, your blood pressure is lower, your belly is in the state of warmth, you know. So now you can't pretend kindness. But see, see a theme in our conversation, as you laid it out right from the beginning, is the body. And the point is, it all happens in the body. So whether you're in a state of hostility or in a state of kindness, they all have their bodily manifestations. And the kindness is a lot healthier for you. It's the eternal struggle most of us face: building a fulfilling, successful career, but also being an available partner, parent, and friend. It never lets up, and sometimes compounds to an overwhelming feeling of being stretched too thin. But there are ways to ease the load. And today, I want to introduce you to one of them, who is also a sponsor of this podcast. Fiverr is the marketplace where you'll find thousands of highly skilled freelancers ready to take on your business needs, from graphic design to digital marketing. Fiverr is your one-stop shop. Here, you can browse talent portfolios until you find one whose work and skills and budget aligns with yours. What's even better is Fiverr's new AI tool, Neo, which streamlines the process of matching talent and briefing them. Free up some of your time in life. Head to fiverr.com, that's F-I-V-E-R-R dot com, or click the link in the description, and use code PAUL, that's P-A-U-L, at checkout for 10% off your first order."
"You mentioned that's one need, attachment. But if we go back to attachment styles, what I noticed is this is probably one of the most popular topics right now, and I think it's for good, yeah. Uh, but many of us still misinterpret exactly what attachment styles mean, but more so how they impact us as adults. Yeah. So, how does our attachment as a child show up when we're an adult in adult relationships?"
"These are based on studies that have been done with young ba, young children and their, and their mothers in a laboratory situation. What happens is you bring a one-year-old into a room with the mom, and then the mom will, maybe, um, be there for a while, and then leave. And then there might be a stranger in the room, the examiner. The mother comes back. This is just one example. Then is the secure. In a secure attachment, the infant will have been upset by the mother's leaving, but when the mother comes back in, the infant comes to the mother, is soothed by the mother, is easily soothed, and becomes calm again, and starts playing again. You might, that's a secure attachment. Then there's very forms of insecure attachments. So, for example, the mother comes back in, and the child won't go to the mother to be soothed, or will go to the mother, but but can't be soothed by them. What's really frightening here and interesting here is the something called the adult attachment interview, where you ask an adult about their attachment relationship with their parents. You could do this adult attachment interview with this adult before they have children, and the result of that will predict how the yet unconceived child will behave on this attachment experiment three years later."
"Goodness. Because it's passed, it's passed on generationally."
"The example that I gave for myself, and I open the first chapter of *The Myth of Normal* with this anecdote, and I've often told it, of, um, me arriving home from a speaking trip, and my wife's supposed to be at the airport to pick me up, and I get a text saying, 'I haven't left home yet.' And I go into a total rage. And when I go home, I, I, I take a taxi home, and I'm not even looking at her. But this is at the tender young age of 72, okay? And after 40 years of marriage, you know. And so what that's about? So I'm feeling the deep sense of abandonment. Now, nobody abandoned me. My wife's an artist, she's in the studio, she's painting, and when she's in her painting, the world disappears, including me, you know? Like, it's just how I've only known this for four decades. But what's triggered in me is a deep sense of abandonment because when I was 11 months old, my mother did abandon me. Not that she abandoned me, she gave me to a stranger to save my life during a war in Hungary, and didn't see her for five or six weeks. And when I saw her again, I wouldn't even look at her, which is an, I call an avoidant attachment. It's a defensive response of the organism. The message being, 'I was so hurt when you abandoned me that I will not make myself so vulnerable ever again.' So I won't reconnect with you. 71 years later, the same reaction gets triggered in me, and I come in the house, won't even look at my wife, and barely even talking to her until she finally said, after 24 hours of this cold shoulder, she said, 'Knock it off already.' So I knocked it off, you know, just step forward. Because years ago, might have taken me days to knock it off. So that's an example of an early template. This is called implicit or unconscious memory. I have no recollection of my mother giving me to a stranger because at 11 months of age, the circuits of explicit recall memory aren't even online yet. But the circuits of emotional memory, of the emotional impact of experiences, is in me already in the third trimester of pregnancy. So deep in my nervous system is wired a sense of abandonment. When something vaguely resembling that occurs in the present, I'm triggered. And I'm not a 72-year-old internationally known author and speaker, speaker, physician, all that. I'm, I'm a one-year-old infant. One-year-old."
"Yes. Yes. So this is how early attachment templates then show up and vex adult relationships. And, uh, it's almost universal."
"Gabor shares a transparent story about his own relationship. His instinct was to withdraw when tension arose. The key lesson here is the importance of communication. Instead of retreating, Gabor acknowledges that sharing his feelings, like the sense of abandonment he felt when Ry didn't pick him up, could have led to a simple conversation and resolution. Awareness of your own patterns and being willing to communicate vulnerably can dissolve tension and foster deeper connection in a relationship."
"According to, to the research I saw here, is that 30 to 40% of adults have either, you know, have a non-secure attachment, avoidant or or anxious. So what can we do as adults if we fall within that group to become secure, to earn a secure attachment?"
"Well, again, um, it's a matter of awareness. And by the way, I, I've seen those statistics, and I think they're underestimates. I, I think that much higher percentage of relationships, if you actually look at it, carry some degree of insecurity, you know, which is why there's so many problems in marriages. But what do you do? For decades, you know, my response has been, if there's tension in the relationship, is to withdraw. Hers is an anxious attachment. So she comes in and tries to, right, bring me on board. You know? So what if I communicated? What if I said to her, 'Look, my wife's name is Ry. You didn't pick up, pick me up at the airport. I had this deep sense of abandonment.' Then she might say, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, but, you know, I was in the studio, and you know what happens when I'm in the studio.' That would have been the end of it. So for one thing, communicate. Okay? Don't just, um, stew in your own, um, troubled attachment brew. Communicate it. Number one. Number two, when you look at it retrospectively, obviously I knew it even at the time, my reaction, as I could recognize, was way out of proportion to the stimulus. Okay? So look at your reaction and see how proportionate it is to what actually happened. And when it's out of proportion, it's always about the past."
"What, what about if you are not yet in a relationship, but you've noticed that you are anxious or avoidant, and you want to try to become secure before entering a relationship? What are things that you could do?"
"Well, then you need help. I mean, again, recognition is the, uh, is the key. A lot of people don't recognize it. They just bring this anxiety into the relationship, and then they wonder why their relationship doesn't work. So those, those that are fortunate enough to be some, to have generated some self-awareness, they can get help. Yeah. But the other thing they can do is when they do meet somebody, they can say, 'Look, I got to tell you about something myself. I'm not proud of it, but I'm also not ashamed of it. But this is just, you know, I tend to have certain abandonment fears. I'm not going to make that your responsibility, 'cause it isn't. But I just want you to know that about me.' Yes. Now, most partners, some partners say, 'Okay, well, thanks very much for telling me, and goodbye.' But most of the time, that's not what happens. Most of the time, the other person appreciates the vulnerability and the openness and the desire for intimacy, and they'll share something about themselves. Yes. I think that's what happens most of the time."
"Yes. Yeah."
"I always say that intimacy drives intimacy, which drives intimacy, which is what you want."
"Exactly."
"U, I think that's beautiful with regard to, uh, attachment styles, because I, I've noticed that, uh, I, I, awareness is key. And I believe that I have an anxious attachment style. Yeah. And I think it's because my parents adored me and continued to to adore me. They worked their butts off, right? My, my mother was, uh, an immigrant, yeah. You know, my father was the first in his family to go to college. And they worked incredibly hard. Yeah. But as a result, weren't always in the house."
"Was there a grandparent around or anybody there?"
"My grand, so they would bring in, uh, sitters. Oh, yeah. And, and I felt, and when I look back, I realized that potentially anxious, I have an anxious attachment style as a result of this, right? But my question is, what are the health consequences of having an anxious or avoidant attachment style?"
"Well, first of all, we're wired for fear. We're wired for it. It's essential. Again, if the sabertooth tiger walked into the room, we should have fear, you know, because that'll help us survive. We're also wired, it seems, for what's called panic. And, um, that's an attachment need. So if an infant is left alone, what should they feel? They should feel panic. Panic, which will make them do what? Which will make them cry out for help. Cry. Yes. Which should do what? They should bring the parents running. Yes. So this is all survival stuff. Um, now, in aboriginal cultures, kids are never left alone. Um, there's a book you may wish to read. It's called *The Continuum Concept*. The Continuum Concept, yeah. And it's by an American model, Jean Liedloff, who traveled to the Venezuelan Amazon, six weeks away from civilization, lived with some Stone Age people. And they just parent totally differently. Kids are don't never left alone. When the parents go to work, the kids, of course, are attached to them. Attached to them. When the parents engage in social, you know, activity, the kids are there. They all sleep together, you know, there's no separation. There's no anxiety either, because that panic never gets triggered. But in your case, if at a small age, you find yourself with semi-strangers some of the time, right, and your parents are not around, that panic is wired in. And that's what creates the anxious attachment style. So that's a perfectly normal response that you had. And that's not the only issue either. The other issue is, do you remember feeling that anxiety as a child? Yes. Who did you communicate it to?"
"You know, I think I kept it to myself."
"That's the whole point. No, you have a child. You said, yes, two, 10 and 13. Okay? Now, if they felt anxiety, who would you want them to communicate it to? Me or their mother?"
"Me or their mother."
"If you found out through some third party that your child felt anxious and they didn't talk to you or their mother, how would you interpret that?"
"Oh, God, I'd be incredibly sad."
"What would happen between them and you for them not to come to you?"
"Oh, yeah. Oh, I would have to have created distance."
"You would have created the message to them that you're not available. Yes. Okay. That's the message you got. So it's not just that you were anxious, it's that you were left alone with your anxiety. And that has an impact. Now, how it plays out in adulthood, you might become a people-pleaser and never say no, uh, because you don't want to be rejected, you want to be liked, and you want to be accepted all the time. And that not saying no, as we said earlier, can lead to all kinds of stress in your life. Right? And that stress can create all kinds of physical health problems. It can also manifest as frank anxiety. It can manifest as depression. Or if it was very painful for you to be that alone, the pain might be too much, and it might arise in the form of addictions, because addictions are all about trying to soothe pain. So if you have unresolved emotional pain..."
MH, can we explore addiction here, if you like? Please, uh, because I've, I've heard you talk about it. I've seen you write about it, where addiction stems from these emotional voids, yeah, yeah, in, in our lives. Yeah, which I don't think as a society we have embraced that as, as a concept. No, this society is, uh, completely misguided when it comes to understanding addictions.
So I worked with hardcore drug addicts for 12 years on Vancouver's downtown Eastside. People really dependent on cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, fentanyl. Well, actually, fentanyl came along after I left medical practice, but opiate heroin, yes, you know, um, codeine, um, demerol, and so on. If you look at the physiology of the opiates, they work in the brain because we have receptors for them. But then you say, well, why do we have receptors for something that comes from a plant in Afghanistan, the opium plant? Well, we don't. We have receptors for our own internal opiates. So human beings have an internal opiate system, and those opiates are called endorphins. And endorphin means endogenous morphine-like substance. Now, why do we, we have endorphins? Because they're essential for life. Number one, they're pain relievers. So the, so-called placebo effect, right? Is not perceivable at all. When people perceive they're getting help, their brains will leave end, will release endorphins, which will then kill the pain. Okay, right. So see it. So it's not an empty, imagined effect. It's an actually a physiological response. So pain relievers, physical and emotional pain, both. So we have to have pain in life. You and I both agree. Without pain, we're not warned about what's dangerous. But we also have to have pain relief. So that's the endorphin. That's the first thing they do. I'm talking pure physiology here, okay?
The second thing they do is they modulate experiences of pleasure and reward, elation. Now, imagine how dark and dull life would be without pleasure and reward. And the endorphins give us that. That's the second thing they do. And the third thing that they do, the most important thing they do, and we've been talking about the whole day, which is attachment. Attachment, yes. So they make attachment possible. Now, when you speak to heroin addicts, and I've done this repeatedly, and say, "What does it do for you?" One of them said, "First time I did heroin, it felt like a warm, soft hug." What was she talking about? Love. Another guy said to me, "Oh, heroin, Doc, it's like, uh, you're sick and you're shivering with a fever, and you're three years old, and your mother wraps you in a warm blanket and gives you warm chicken soup." That's what the heroin feels like. They're talking about love. Yes. Who gets prone to heroin addiction? The people who didn't get the love they needed as children, and they're lacking the endorphins. Nor do they need to get it from the external opiates. So it's a normal response to some deprivation in childhood.
More generally speaking, I could give you a definition of an addiction and just again, see how it fits for you, okay? So addiction is manifested in any behavior where a person finds temporary pleasure or relief, and therefore craves it, but then suffers negative consequences and can't give it up. No, I said any behavior. So pleasure, relief, craving, harm, inability to give it up. Give it up. Any behavior could be heroin, crystal meth, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, pornography, all pornography for sure, sex work, um, shopping, eating, gambling, internet, cell phones, gaming, extreme sports, and self-cutting, bulimia, any number of activities. My question to my audience is, in this case, my audience of one, is according to that definition, have you ever had an addictive pattern in your life? According to that? Many. Okay. Well, yeah, me too. So then the question I ask is, no, what was wrong with the addiction? Because we know what was wrong with it. What was right about it? What did it give you in the short term that you wanted? Right? That, that warm hug? Give you warmth. Warmth, yes. Okay. Yeah. So, in other words, the addiction wasn't a disease that you had, nor was it a choice that you made. It was an attempt to supplement in your life that you desperately needed. In other words, that lack of warmth is a form of emotional pain. So my mantra on addiction is not "Why the addiction?" Don't ask "Why the addiction?" Ask "Why the pain?" Now, if I wanted to ask "Why the pain?" I wouldn't have to look at your genes and your inheritance and all. What would I look at? Your childhood. Your childhood. It always goes, goes back to childhood. It goes. Yeah.
But on this note, so this is, this is profound. This is not how we look at addiction in the world. And when I look at, you know, we have a presidential election in the United States, uh, but when you look at politics and how even fentanyl, yeah, it feels as if the answer is heavier policing. Yeah. Well, the Americans have, um, not only, um, insisted upon, but I've also internationalized the so-called War on Drugs. And they've been doing this for good 50 years now. And, uh, what's the result? The result is that the Americans have more people in jail than any other country in the world. They have 5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's jail population. And last year, I think about 120,000 people or more died of overdoses in the US. So in one year, the Americans lost over twice as many deaths to overdoses as they lost in the Vietnam, Afghan, and, and Iraqi wars put together. This is how successful they are. And they insist that the whole world follows their example. And, and this is because they have a punitive, rejecting, you know, if they attitude. Now, if they actually look at what's going on, these have been called by two American economists, "deaths of despair." Where they happen most is where the industrial heartland has been flattened, meaningful jobs have disappeared, communities have eroded, people feel more alone, more isolated, there's less meaning in their lives, there's less purpose in their lives, there's less status, if you like, sense of belonging. And if, on the personal level, it's childhood trauma that is the template for addiction, then on the social level, it's the loss of meaning, connection, uh, purpose, and community. And as society generates more and more those, uh, ills, you're going to have more and more addictions. And then what they do is they punish these people as if they were somehow personally sinful. They're just normal human beings caught up in something bigger than they are, right? Looking for love. They were looking for love. Yeah. Incredibly sad. But what's worse is that how this information is here, you're talking about it, it's out, but it's, it's, it's, it's not being executed, you know, it's, it's, it's not built into the system. Um, but I, I, I know that I only have you for a few more moments. I want to look at trauma. Yeah. Uh, because everything that you've mentioned here, the answer is, go back to childhood. Yeah. So, so let's look at, if I may interrupt, sure. Go back to childhood, but look at the large social context in which that childhood takes place, okay? Because you can't separate the individual from the environment. Fair. This is fair.
First, how do you define, how do you define trauma alone? Yeah, because I, I've heard different definitions. Sure. So that's an important, I mean, it's one of these words that so much depends on what we mean when we use it. Like, if I use the word God, um, so many people would understand so many different concepts. So we are, you know, I mean, for some, so some people, God is the universal ground of all being and meaning and purpose and existence. For others, it's an old guy in the sky with a beard, you know? So, so it all depends. Now, trauma, uh, in my definition, it's very simple. If you look at the word origin, it's a Greek word for wound or wounding. So trauma is a wound that hasn't healed, okay? Which also means that trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. So I sustain a blow on the head, that's not the trauma. The trauma is the concussion that I develop because that's the, that's the unhealed wound. So there are traumatic events that can wound people, but the trauma is the wound itself that hasn't healed. To people break their legs, um, in one case, the leg doesn't heal, that's the trauma. If it heals, it's not a trauma, it's just a painful experience. All right. So not everything that's painful is traumatic. Everything that's traumatic is painful. Not every stress, not every pain is traumatic. If it doesn't heal, it is. And I'm talking not psychologically, okay? So must be unhealed. It's the unhealed. So it's the unhealed wound, and then our attempted defenses against the unhealed wound. So, for example, on your wound, in one case, might be that they perceive themselves as abandoned in childhood. That's not the wound. The wound is not that my mother gave me to a stranger. The wound is that I therefore came to believe that I wasn't lovable, and that's what I'm carrying. And then I have my defenses against not being lovable. One of my defenses against not being lovable is to try and make myself perhaps powerful and unassailable, you know, um, grandiose, yes. And then I go into politics, then I run for president. Or, or it might be that I try to be a people pleaser, yes, and I try and take on everything and try and help the whole world while ignoring my own needs, you know? So trauma is wound, and our, our defenses against the wound that later on create more problems. So that's my understanding of trauma.
H, how many adults, what percentage of adults are living in trauma? Well, in our society, I would say a large percentage because we can be wounded in two ways. We've already touched upon some of them. Some of the ways we can be wounded is overt suffering, such as being physically abused or emotionally abused or sexually abused, or a parent dying, or a divorce where a parent kind of disappears, um, or a parent being jailed, um, certainly racism, poverty are traumatic experiences for a lot of people, you know, with impacts on the body, impacts on the brain, uh, uh, a parent being addicted, a parent being mentally ill. All of those things can be traumatic. But there's another, uh, subset of trauma that isn't due to bad things that were done to you, but the good things that were not done that should have been done. For example, your parents, if they had to go to work, they should have been alert to your sense of isolation and dealt with it. Now, they didn't mean to hurt you. They loved you. They, in fact, as you said, they adored you, but they didn't see you. And not being seen is a source of a wound because that's the need that we have. We need, we have this need to be seen for who we are, as we are. Yeah. That's so lot in our society because of the stress on parenting and the erosion of extended families, the loss of community, the increasing isolation, the tremendous pressure on parents, um, a lot of kids are wounded in loving homes. Yes. Yes.
What is the answer around how we go about healing ourselves? And everyone's quick to say therapy. That's the way. But we know therapy is not always accessible. Not everyone's going to go to it. So how do we heal our trauma? Well, again, the first point is, and the most important point is recognition. So then rather than believing, "Oh, there's something wrong with me," you say, "Well, something happened to me, and that what happened had certain impacts." Not information is not hard to get these days. Just to mention myself, there's so many of my talks on YouTube that millions of people have seen, and they tell me that just watching them helps them. Didn't cost a penny. Yes. I don't have a YouTube channel. You have to subscribe. You can just put my name in there. But not just myself, other trauma healers, uh, Bessel van der Kolk, yes, um, the books that I've written, the book that Bessel has written, which is a perennial bestseller, it's called "The Body Keeps the Score." My various books, "The Myth of Normal," "When the Body Says No," "Scattered Minds," you know, my book on addiction, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts," but other books by people that I've learned from, like Bessel, or Peter Levine and his, uh, books on trauma, or his lectures on YouTube on trauma, and many, many, many, many others. Those are easily accessible to everybody. Number one. Number two, each of these books will have certain exercises in them that you can actually regularly do and follow. Uh, number three, you can develop self-awareness practices, such as meditation. Again, lots of instruction on that on YouTube, or simple to get books on meditation, where you learn to observe your emotions and your body without reacting to what you observe. So you develop the sense of awareness and presence with which to hold yourself. Yes. None of that costs money. No. Not at all. Then, are there friends you can talk with intimately? Can you say to somebody, "Look, there's some stuff here that's been bothering me. I don't need you to give me advice or tell me what to do. In fact, I don't want you to. Can you just listen to me?" Mhm. So just being received by another human being, if you're in relationship, as we've been saying this entire conversation, the relationship can be a beautiful ground, yes, for healing. Now, having said that, ideally, if you can also afford some therapy, some good therapy, because lots of bad therapy out there, um, well, that's always very, very helpful. But you, you know, nature. If you look at indigenous practices, they're so connected to nature, yes. It's, it's unbelievable, actually. Like, like I have some indigenous friends. When they look at a plant, they don't see what I see, right? I agree. I agree. Yeah. You know, a good friend of mine is Rasta. Oh, yeah. Which is, so this is the, uh, the Blue Mountains of Jamaica on the Portland side. And I have, I have a strong affinity to to Rastafarians. And he tells me that every day I should walk outside without shoes, yeah, to, to, to, to be planted in the earth. Exactly. To connect with the Earth. Yeah. Yeah. So there's nature out there. And, and even in London, you can find where we're speaking right now, yes, you can find nature. Where's where find some? You can find some trees and some grass, for God's sake, right? And hold on to it and look at it. Yeah. You know, there's parks. And, you know, some people have a religious practice, yes, prayer. You know, I don't. I do some of that, not much. I'm not a religious person in that sense. So there's all these things. But the biggest of all is just the awareness. Yes. You know? Yes. I felt that through our conversation. How critical, how life-changing awareness can be. Oh.
Um, I have just two more questions for you. Please. One is, um, like I said, I've seen countless of of of your interviews. Yeah. What is one topic with regard to relationships, our body, our mind, emotions, trauma, that you feel you've not yet talked about that you believe is incredibly important to talk about? H, it's hard to imagine what, at age 80, I haven't talked about. But, you know, what healing, um, in relationship, um, because just even recently, I'm just so happy to say that in my 55-year marriage, we've had such healing just within the last two months, you know? Um, so I can talk about it now in ways that I might not have been able to talk about it even six years ago, or, or six months ago, I should say. And so, um, the capacity of healing in relationship, I can't overemphasize it. Wow. Are, are you open or comfortable talking about what you have healed in the last two months? Yeah, we've more or less dropped our automatic reactions, our past-based reactions to the other. We can be present with each other, and that makes all the difference in the world. So when R and my wife says something that even might be difficult for me to hear, I'm not reacting like a, a triggered child anymore, or vice versa, which just creates such freshness, you know? Um, I remember on one of our first dates, um, I was stoned at the time. We're looking back, how many years now? We're looking back 57 years now, okay? And we're on the beach, and I had this portable little record player, and I put on some music. I think it was the Beatles or something. And I looked at this woman and I said, "I want to grow old with her." And I had the sense that we're going to have a lot of problems, but I also had the sense that once we work through all this ego stuff, I can just be with her. Then this is the person I want to be old with. And, you know what? Knock on wood, that's where we are. So we're young again. We're young again together, you know? And, uh, I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said that, "We don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing." Yes. So just the capacity to play in the present moment, you know? And knock on wood, it'll last, you know? But, but I, I never talked much about that healing because I hadn't really got there, you know? I've always been much more articulate about talking about problems than about healing itself. Yes. Yes. And, and, and furthermore, there always used to be a, this gap between how I could talk about these things in public and what I could manifest in my personal life. And at this stage in my life, I don't want the gap anymore. You know, I appreciate that. I, I really do.
Uh, I have one final question for you. Yeah. And that is, this is all the guests get this. You've had some incredible conversations in your life. Know this. Yeah. When you think back to the most memorable conversation, who was it with and what did you talk about? Now, do you mean public or private, or both? Both. Well, if I say most meaningfully with my wife, and it'd be about everything I just said, and it's a repeated conversation. Those are the most important conversations in my life. Yes. Yeah. And much of what I'm able to say publicly flows from what I've learned in that process of personal growth in, in, in my relationship. I've learned a lot through all kinds of mentors and books and research and experience, but the biggest learnings have been in my personal relationship.
I want to end with thanking you from the bottom of my heart. Truly. You have been a mentor to me from afar. And what I most appreciate is actually what you just shared right there at the end. And that is, is that you speak authentically. Yeah. And you're vulnerable. And what you do is you give me hope. You truly do. And, uh, my wife and I, we've been married for, uh, 23 years. Oh, wow. Um, and what's interesting is everyone says, "Oh, you must have the most incredible relationship." And we say, "It's work. We, we work at it." And what I appreciate is that you're open about the work that you do. And the fact that you're able to continue to enjoy your relationship and enjoy life and give to life and be kind. Um, I think you are a phenomenal human being. And I just thank you, uh, from, from the bottom of my heart, not just for this, but for the work that you do. Truly. Thank you. Well, I mean, thank you for that kind of acknowledgement. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. So it's a real pleasure to speak with you. Yeah. It's, it's, it's been an honor, really. It's been an honor. Thank you. Good. What a thought-provoking and fascinating conversation. Gabor is truly one of my heroes, and I feel so grateful to him for having this conversation with me, sharing his almost half a century's worth of wisdom. And as usual, I'd like to share with you my key takeaways. Firstly, Gabor Maté's insight about marrying our parents' trauma really made me think deeply. It reveals how our relationships often mirror unresolved dynamics from our childhood. Essentially, when we choose a partner, we don't just marry them; we also bring the emotional wounds and patterns from our upbringing into the relationship. The key lesson here is to recognize that the issues and conflicts we face with our partners might not be entirely about the present situation. They can be reflections of deeper, unresolved childhood wounds. Instead of blaming each other, use these moments as opportunities for growth. When both partners commit to understanding and healing their own and each other's traumas, the relationship can become a space where true healing and growth occur.
Secondly, Gabor's quote, "We are wired for fear and panic, which are essential," speaks to the natural evolutionary role these emotions play in our survival. Fear and panic are not enemies; they're deeply ingrained in us to protect us from danger. However, in modern life, we often experience these emotions in situations that aren't life-threatening, which can lead to unnecessary stress and anxiety. The key takeaway is to understand that fear and panic are normal, and we must learn to recognize when they're truly helpful and when they're misplaced. Embrace fear when it serves you, but learn to manage it when it doesn't.
And lastly, what truly makes someone a great relationship expert is the ability to draw wisdom from a wide range of experiences, including personal ones. Gabor Maté highlights this perfectly when he shares that while he's learned from mentors, books, and research, his biggest lessons have come from his personal relationships. To me, this is what sets apart a truly exceptional expert in most fields. It's not just about theory; it's about living through challenges and growth that come with real-life experiences. In this case, of relationship experts, it's in those personal conversations and experiences that teach the most about love, authenticity, and what it means to truly connect with others. Gabor embodies this perfectly. When it comes to love, we're all on our own journey, and that means any advice we're given should be tailored to our love goals, not someone else's. This is where my show and Tinder, who sponsor this podcast, have teamed up to help you. Each week on "We Need to Talk," I'll explore love and relationships through a different lens so you can get the advice that relates to your romantic situation. Tinder is for all types of relationships, and I truly believe it has the best tools to help you form the connections you're looking for. That might be long-term commitment, or short-term experiences, maybe it's friendship. But regardless of which part of the journey you're on, Tinder and I are here to support you. Their app is full of possibilities, and it's designed to help you explore every kind of connection. It starts with a swipe, so download Tinder today.
[Music]