Is There Grief In Politics? with Dr. Gabor Maté

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Divine. If you listen to the main
episode this week with doctor Gabor Matte, you know we
covered a lot of territory really quickly. We jumped from
the personal to the cultural, to the historical, and back
to the personal, making connections between grief and trauma and
a whole host of mental health and relational health concerns.

(00:22):
But there's a topic that Gabor and I got into
that I wanted to set apart from the rest with
this bonus episode. We mentioned the impact of grief on
politics and on politicians really briefly in our main conversation,
but our broader conversation went a lot deeper. Now, I
do this work for a living. I am constantly looking
at the places that grief shows up in our personal lives,

(00:45):
in our cultural lives, and on our wider community scale.
So if you know me, or you've been listening or
following me for a while, you also know that I
often talk about grief as a political issue, especially when
policies or the lack of policies create suffering or death,
because both suffering and death create grief, which is often political,

(01:11):
but Gabor connected some dots on this topic that even
I hadn't connected. And as you'll hear in this short
bonus episode like he got to Me, you'll hear it
in my response to the example Gabor uses to talk
about the impact of grief on politics, This idea of independence,
someone who's strong and handles stuff on their own. Do

(01:32):
we ever wonder where that independence comes from? That got
me so the answer, along with some other interesting intersections
of grief and politics coming right up in this bonus
episode with doctor Gabor Matte. One of the things that

(01:59):
I love about your work, and specifically in the method Normal,
is talking about the ways that trauma and misalignment and
the lack of acknowledgment, the way that that shows up
in politics and in society. Can you tell me a
little bit about that how that shows up.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
In my chapter on politics? And people are wondering why
is there chapter on politics and a book on health.
The reason is because it's all connected. My whole point
is that individual pathology is not individual pathology, but it
reflects the function of multi generational families in the context
of a culture. So in the chapter on politics, actually

(02:41):
quote somebody who is a very close observer of politicians
being in that world himself. Michael Wolf or a book
called Landslide The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, and
Michael Wolf writes in his book in inside of political Circles,
almost all politicians are seen difficult and even damaged people

(03:03):
necessarily tolerated because they were elected. So then I look
at two example, well, I look at several examples, but
to give you the American examples, I look at the
two opposing candidates in twenty sixteen as Donald Trump and
is Hillary Clinton. Now Trump's trauma has front page news.
I mean, you should have been his niece, Mary Trump,

(03:26):
herself a psychologist, wrote a book about the Trump family
where her grandfather, Trump's father is described as a sociopath.
This is Fred Trump, Fred Trump Junior. Mary's father died
of alcoholic disease in his forties. The child to Trump
and that family was the immense and Trump in his

(03:48):
I'm not talking on politics here, I'm talking about personality here.
He was like besil Vandercock told me, Trump is a
postal vote for trauma, and he is randiosity, that difficulty
accepting reality, the need to make up stories, the aggressiveness,
the random cruelty of the way he talks about others.

(04:10):
These are all signs of trauma. But what was it, opponent? Now,
if I told you a story, if you didn't know
who I was talking about, But if I told you
a story of a four year old girl was bullied
by neighborhood kids and then runs into her home to
seek protection from the mother, and the mother says, there's
no room for cards in his house. Now you get

(04:33):
out there and deal with that, then what would you
think of that?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
What would I personally think of that with that interaction,
that interaction, Well, one, it's cruel, Yeah, right, it's cruel
on so many levels. There is there's no help here
for you.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, and what is the long term impact on a child?

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Fierce independence?

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah that's Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, that's also me.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah. And this story, well, I see that you're removed here,
and this story was told at the Democratic Convention in
front of millions of people. Is a wonderful example of
resilience building. And out of the millions of people who
watched and all the media that took this in, nobody
commented that what was being celebrated here is the traumatization

(05:22):
of a four year old girl. Yeah. Six years later,
that four year old girl runs for the presidency and
she has pneumonia. Remember what she did.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
She kept working, right, she kept going, and she was
like falling over and.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
She collapsed in the street with fear and deieration. But
she was all alone. She had to suck it up, right,
And this is celebrated. Is a wonderful thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
The fetishization of resilience and independence and strength.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Really the fatization of trauma. Yeah, because there's nothing more natural.
You tell a mother bear to ignore the distress of
the cub, right, you know, So this society celebrates that
very disconnection in validation of children. It really you know,
you know what the mother could have said, talk about grief.

(06:12):
Pick picked up Hillary and said, it really hurts you
that the kids are hurting you. What a drag? Come here? Yeah,
that's the proper response.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Not get out there and deal with it. No room
for cards in this house. Again. I'm not talking about
the politics of that person here. Personally I don't like
the politics of either of them very much, but that
doesn't matter here. I'm talking about the formation of the
personality in accrucible of trauma, which is actually celebrated in
this culture. Don't have you grief, Just be tough.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
When I talk about politics or policy in my work,
I don't get backlash as often as you might think
in a sort of an ugly internet world. But I
do get some complaints like can you just stick to grief?
And you know, my response is always like I am
sticking to grief.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, I know, I get the same thing. You're a doctor,
but you talk about politics. I talk about politics because
everything affects everything else. That's right, because human health is
not an individual or individualized quality. It's a reflection of
our relationship from in udu or onwards, with our parents,
with our environment, with our community, and with our whole culture.

(07:29):
Nothing is separable. So if you look at so called
political factors. There's an article in the New York Times
ten days ago another as we speak about black women
giving birth and their risk of the child dying or
them dying is higher than white women, regardless of economic status.

(07:51):
It's about the inflammatory literally physiologically inflammatory impacts of racism.
Another study three months ago in the afthmatic racism. If
you look at the person, they have higher inflammatory processes
in their bodies put that project that on a lifelong
basis no wonder than if you look at the health

(08:11):
of populations such as Indigenous Canadians or Black Americans, and
every measure they come out worse. And it's got nothing
to do with genetics. It has to do with politics
and society and sociology and culture and history. So how
can we not talk about it when it's all one
That's the whole point.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, yeah, you can't separate that stuff, because policies create grief.
Systems create grief, and systems and policies are created by
humans that are carrying deep trauma and a lack of
alignment and a lack of being seen. And we can't

(08:50):
talk about the need to acknowledge and honor grief and
find community and find relationship and not talk about politics, policy,
and culture because they are all one cloth. There is

(09:10):
no such thing as sticking to grief, friends, Grief is everywhere. Politics, politicians, policies.
They aren't immune. Grief is everywhere. I am sticking to
grief when I talk about the intersections of grief and politics.
For more of my conversation with doctor gaber Matte, be

(09:30):
sure to listen to the main episode now grief and politics.
This usually brings up a lot of comments and a
lot of connections from on one end like the stick
to grief grumpy stuff, to the other end of Wow.
I never thought of it that way, but that's totally true.
So let me know where you are in this intersection
of grief and politics. Are you the stick to grief,

(09:52):
grumpy or did you learn something or somewhere in between.
Let me know. Follow Refuge in Grief on Instagram and
Twitter to leave a comment on the social post for
this bonus episode and tag Refuge and Grief when you
share the episode. Same thing on TikTok but over there,
you can follow It's Okay Pod on any social platform
use the hashtag It's Okay pod so I can find you.

(10:14):
I totally search on that hashtag to see what you
have to say. Now we are back on Monday with author,
speaker and television host Baratunde Thurston for a conversation full
of as much joy as there is grief. Don't miss it, friends,
It's okay that You're not okay. The podcast is written
and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown,

(10:38):
produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, social media support by Micah, post
production and editing by Houston Tilley. Music provided by Wave Crush,
Background noise provided by the Spring Tree Cleanup. Finally happening
in sunny downtown Burbank

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Is There Grief In Politics? with Dr. Gabor Maté