April 14, 2026 • 50 mins
Dr. Gabor Maté is one of the world's most transformative voices on trauma, addiction, and healing. He’s a physician, international bestselling author, and the man who has trained more than 4,000 healthcare providers across 110 countries to understand what the medical system too often ignores.
In this extraordinary solo conversation with hosts Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, Marc Kielburger, and Craig Kielburger, Dr. Maté challenges everything we think we know about why we suffer and how we heal.
Together, they explore how:
- Trauma isn't what happened to you — it's the wound you're still carrying
- Your body keeps a score your mind tries to ignore
- Addiction isn't a moral failure — it's an attempt to escape emotional pain
- The people closest to you trigger you most because your deepest wounds live there
- You are not broken — you are whole, with something to heal
Don't miss an episode — subscribe now to catch new episodes every Tuesday.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so if you trigger me, it's not because of
what you said or you said it, It's because I
carry this imposive material and ammunition inside me.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Doctor Gabor Mate has spent decades researching the connection between relationships, addiction,
and healing.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Doughnuts white the addiction that's white of pain. For the
addiction wasn't a primary disease. The addiction was you attempt
to solve the problem of emotional pain.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The international best selling author who has trained more than
four thousand healthcare providers across one hundred and ten countries,
reveals a deeper truth about healing. The body holds what
the mind tries to ignore.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Women are more likely to be the diagnosis of depression.
What does it mean to depress something? He means to
push it down? What do you think is being pushed down?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
But nothing reveals the truth about ourselves more than our
closest relationships.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
How does our childhood pain shape who we choose to love?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Nobody triggers you more than the people you look too
for support and love.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Exactly thirty years Join host Martin Luther King the Third,
Andrea Waters, King, Mark Kilberger, and Craig Kilberger for an
eye opening conversation about the wisdom your body holds and
my listening to it might be the key to reclaiming
the lives we were meant to live.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
How do we move from being a sense of a
victim to having compassion for the person who hurt us?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
If I say to you, wife, forgive you, you know what
it means I haven't.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Welcome to My Legacy. It's a special episode today because
from the moment we launched My Legacy podcast, we wanted
to interview the legendary doctor Gabor Mattey. His work has
been transformative for me and our co hosts and for
millions of others to understand trauma, relationships, addiction, and what
(01:48):
it means to heal. Gabora, We're deeply honored to have
you here. Thank you so much for your time and
your passion.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oho more honored than I am to be with you guys.
Thank you very much. Gabura.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
I want to start with your definition of trauma because
it's been revolutionary for millions of people. You said, trauma
is not about the event itself, It's about something else entirely.
Can you define trauma for us the way you've come
to understand it?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Sure? Well, it's really rather simple when you look at
the word origin, which is a Greek word for wound. Now,
a wound is not about the event. It's about what
damage or harm the body sustains. So you can have
a wounding event such as a knife slicing you, but
the wound is the actual cut and your skin on
(02:36):
your flesh. Or you have a blow on the head,
and that's not the wound. The wound, or you might say,
is the concussion. So really a wound is what happens
in your body, in your psyche. And by the way,
you can't separate the physiology from the psychology. So the
wound is the ongoing dysfunction might say, or problem that
(03:03):
stays with you after the event. So in other words,
some people experience sexual abuse, that's not the trauma. That's
the traumatic event. The trauma is the shame that they feel.
The trauma is the self loading. The trauma is the depression,
the anxiety. So the trauma, in other words, is the
(03:23):
wound that you sustained as a result of what happened
to you. And that's the good news. Because if trauma
was what happened to you ten twenty thirty or in
my case eighty years ago. There needs nothing you can
do about it. It happened. But if the trauma is
the wound that we carry, that can be healed today.
So that's the distinction. I think it's an important mine.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Oy.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Yeah, Bro, When you talk about that concept of wound
and wounding, you've also said children can be traumatized not
just by terrible things happening to them, by by simply
not having some of their basic and most important needs mets,
but not being seen, not being heard, not being held.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
While people are born with emotional needs as much as
we have physiological needs, and those emotional needs are not arbitrary,
they are dictated by evolution and by nature, and so
that children ever need to be unconditionally accepted, loved for
who they are, to be seen for who they are.
And being seen for who they are means that nature
(04:22):
has wired us for a whole lot of emotions, like fear.
We have to fear in or to survive, don't we.
I mean, as we evolved out there in nature, if
we didn't have fear, we would not have survived. We
have to have ways of dealing with loss or grief.
We have to have anxiety or you know or if
(04:45):
we lose our attachments, we have to have anger, healthy
anger to maintain our boundaries. No, So children e the
need to be able to experience their emotions and they
have those emotions validated and accepted and understood and mirrored
by the parents. So really good parents, loving parents, the
(05:09):
best of intentions. If they're too stressed or to traumatized themselves,
or if they were not seeing themselves as children, may
not be able to see their kids for who they are,
may not be able to validate the child's experience, and
that can be wounding to the child, and that happens
to a lot of us.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
This leads us to something that you've written about that
sort of really struck me. How children face an impossible
choice between authenticity and attachment. Can you explain what that
means and why it is such a painful trade off?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
If I mean, if I may quickly turn it around, Mark,
And if I could ask you, as an adult, have
you been in a situation where you had a choice
to make. If I manifest who I am, if I
express my point of view, if I speak my truth,
I may lose some relationship or I may jeopardize some relationships.
(06:10):
As that have happened to you. Oh yeah, as an adult. Yeah, Now,
as an adult, you can make that choice because if
you're a passionate point of view about something that you
need to speak, some people might not like it. Your father,
(06:31):
when he came up against the Vietnam War, the New
York Times said, now he's stepped over a line. So
he lost followers, but he made a decision that my
truth is more important than who likes me and who
doesn't like me. So as adults we can make those decisions.
(06:52):
And even as adults, it's a very painful choice. Can
I be authentic or do I stay attached? Ideally we
can do both, but what happens if we can't. Now,
as a young child, if you're being true to yourself,
for example, if you have healthy anger about something, or
if you have said about something, but you get the
message from the parents that good little kids don't get angry,
(07:17):
what the message the child really gets is angry little
kids don't get loved. Another child is in this situation.
If I express myself, if I allow myself to feel
my feelings and manifest them, I might lose my relationship.
But without that attachment relationship, I can't survive as a
(07:38):
young child. So then the child is in this impossible
situation of having to choose between attachment or being loved,
being connected with being nurtured, or being true to themselves.
No child should have to be in that situation. The
lot of kids are, and what happens is for the
survival's sake, the child will suppress who they are, suppress, yes,
(08:00):
their emotions, in order to belong in order to be accepted,
and that then becomes a lifelong pattern. And then because
it's an unconscious adaptatient, it's a survival mechanism. So that
means for all our lives we're free to be ourselves
for fear of being rejected, and that has multiple consequences,
both physically and mentally. But that choice of being authenticity
(08:23):
and attachment, it's a big one, even for adults. For children,
it's not a choice. They have to give up their
authenticity in order to be accepted. In almost every case.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's such a powerful statement, as so much of what
you say is but the fact that you feel that
you have to suppress who you are and give up
in order to belong. Yeah, and I love that you
also bought up the fact of because I think we
talk about it a lot in our family, but people
(08:56):
really don't realize that Martin Luther King Junior and he
was assassinated, was one of the most unpopular people at
that point in time in America, and it was based
on the you know, his taking me moral stand, you know,
on the Vietnam War and so many other things. So
(09:17):
we've kind of see the legacy sixty years later, but
we forget that, and we forget that when he died
he actually had the heart of a sixty year old
because of the stress of carrying so much in the world.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Actually, this tension between looking to this entertachment, plays it along,
plays it along racial lines and along gender lines as well.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
Can you help us just explain that a little bit,
doctor Geppett.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Well, James Baldwin once said, I'm paraphrasing him, but he
said that to be a black person in the US
is to be in a state of suppressed rage all
the times. Right, No, because of all the historical reasons,
I don't think I have to explain on this podcast. Well,
the suppression of anger actually creates physiological damage. I'm talking
(10:10):
about the suppression of healthy anger. It's not accidental that
Baldwin died of cancer, because a lot of people with
malignancy have a lot of suppressed rage. A lot of
people with autoimmune disease a lot of suppressed anger. Now,
people who are racialized, they're not given permission to be
as much as themselves as they actually are. They have
(10:34):
to pay this be nice and be good, and be
colluding and be compliant. And so if you look at
so there's a lot of tension inside. And if you
look at Black American males, their blood pressure tends to
be higher than Caucasians or those are their relatives in Africa,
(10:57):
And that's purely an artifact of racism. And now if
you look at women, between the two major genders, who
has to be nice? Who has to repress their anger?
Who is to be compliant? Who is to be concerned
about being accepted by the other. It's not exclusive to
any one gender, but by and largest women. And one
(11:20):
reason and one outcome is that women are more likely
to be the diagnosed with depression. What's the word? What
does it mean to depress? Something that means to push
it down? What do you think is being pushed down?
Their healthy emotions typically anger, and that also is in
my view, a major contributor to autoimmune disease. So if
(11:41):
you look at autommune disease like colitis, clone disease, syrogan syndrome, Loopers, rumatolatritis,
eighty percent happens to women. And I think that has
a lot to do with in this gendered culture, some people,
well particularly the females, have to suppress themselves more than
(12:06):
males do. In general. That's not one hundred percent, and
it's not only one way, but by and large, is
that sort of clear enough to William Stadium.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
It's so clear that I have to be honest in
some ways I'm fighting by fighting back tears because it's
a witnessing as a woman and a Black woman of
being seen and the understanding as well of the trauma
(12:39):
in marginalized communities. You know, there's this whole thing about
angry black women or you can't be an angry Black woman.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
You can't.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
And if we want to have health and our bodies
and our soty, part of that includes the health of
our societies and that building of the beloved community. Just
an acknowledgment of the weight that's carried through this world
because of racism.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
They identified people of color. Women of color are much
unlike to a lot of immune disease. Why because a
they're racialized and because they're women genderized, and so they
have to suppress themselves some more. So that's a cause of,
or at least a contributor to a lot of what
we called disease.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Yeah, but when you talk about disease as a state
of disease. You've helped millions understand the connection between emotional
health and physical health. And you've shared research, for example
that women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of
a variant cancer. You've said that wounds can show up
in our psychology. So help us understand the true relationship
(13:44):
between emotional trauma and physical illness and what do we
need to know about that in terms of how that's
manifested and how do we prevent it.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Here's the scientific reality that is not taught in medical
schools for the most part, is then body can't be separated.
So emotional life is inseparable from our physiological existence. Now
we have the science that shows that the bodies in
(14:13):
the brain's emotional circuits and our and our nervous system
and our hormonal apparatus and our immune system are not
separate systems. They're one. And the science that studies that
is called psycho neuroimmino endrochronology. If you want a tongue
(14:34):
break overword.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
For you, Let's say that again for our listeners.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Psycho neuro imino indochronology, which is the means psycho, the psyche,
the emotional circuits, the nervous system, immune and the immune system,
and endochronology the hormonal system. It's all one. Now, it's obvious.
I'm talking to the three of you now. I don't
even know where you are somewhere in the States. But
I can't physically hurt you. But I could change physiology
(15:00):
in a split second by screaming at you. And as
as soon as they screamed at you, the emotional circuits
in your brain would send messages to your hypothalamus, which
is at the apex of your body's hormonal apparatus, an
autonomic nervous system, which should trigger a whole cascade of
(15:21):
neurological and hormonal events resulting in the release of cortisol
and adrellinin and so on. In other words, the emotions
are immediately translated into physiology, and this happens twenty four
to seven. So the reason psychic wounds translate into physical illnesses.
(15:45):
People who were sexually abused as children have significantly increased
risk of multiple scrosses. Wow, you mentioned the study from
Harvard Women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of
bavarian cancer. Parents who lose a child are more likely
to develop multiple sclerosis. I could go on and on
(16:09):
and on and on. We all know about the broken
heart syndrome. You know Debbie Reynolds, the actor whose daughter
Carrie Fisher died one day and Debbie died the next day.
What they probably thought was the broken heart syndrome. In others,
you can't separate the emotions from the physiology because it's
(16:31):
all one system. They're not connected, it's one. Therefore, whatever
happens to people emotionally is likely to significant impact physiologically.
And that's one way in which trauma translates into ronal as.
The other way it translates is we adapt to traumatic events.
(16:57):
So if a child is traumatized heard I should say
abused or threatened, their natural instinct is to run away
or to fight back, but they can't so in order
to survive. They actually disconnect from their good feelings because
if they follow the good feelings, they'll be fighting, which
(17:19):
means they'll be even more hurt, or they be running,
which they can't. A four year old can't run away
to survive. They disconnect from their good feelings. That has consequences.
So let me ask you three. Let me ask the
three of you a question which I often ask audiences.
Have you ever had the experience of having a strong
(17:40):
God feeling about something and you didn't pay attention and
you're sorry afterwards very much? Yeah, of course you just
told me about your childhood's because no infant is born
suppressed in their God feelings. I just became a grandfather
for the first time nine weeks ago to make us
thank you very much. That little baby does not suppress
(18:02):
any good feelings. You know. She doesn't lie there at
night saying, oh my God, I'm hungry and thirsty and wet,
and I'm uncomfortable and lonely, but I better not bother
mummy and dotty right now. So at some point we
learn to disconnect from our God feelings in order to
be acceptable to our environment. But that suppression of God
(18:24):
feelings means that we've taken a lot of stress later
on because we can't protect ourselves.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
Scrolling won't change your life, but subscribing just might tap
that button and stay connected to conversations that kept.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Is there anyone that escapes life without being traumatized? Because
I'm thinking about your beautiful nine week old granddaughter, and
peer's to her having a beautiful life throughout her life
right here, and she's gonna get from her parents and
her grandparents, you know, the most enlightened, loved, nurtured, protective
(19:00):
childhood as possible when you go out into the world,
you know, or when you send your children to school,
it could be a classmate. It seems almost impossible to
get through this lifetime without some type of trauma.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Well, I think that's largely true. But of course the
degrees of trauma part of the vi and that that's
why the subtitle of my recent trauma I honest and
meaning a toxic culture, because I think in this culture
it's very difficult to escape those negative influences. Now, however,
(19:37):
if you look at how human beings evolved over millions
of years, we evolved not living the way we do.
Not we lived out in nature connected to the land,
connected to the seasons, very much attune with our good
feelings and surrounder, then looked after by a community. Yes,
(19:58):
parents weren't raising children in an isolated, nuclear family home
or in single families. In the United States, twenty five
percent of women have to go back to work within
two weeks of giving birth, which is barbaric. Basically means
the abandonment of children because the children needs that mother
and figure. And so we used to grow up in
(20:21):
communities where there was aunts and uncles, and you know,
it takes the village. So I don't think it's necessarily now.
Will we have painful experiences as human beings, Yes we will.
Will we have stressful experiences as human beings, of course
we will. That's the nature of life. But pain and
stress aren't necessarily traumatic. Every trauma is painful and stressful,
(20:45):
but not every pain is traumatic. For example, we mentioned
a schoolmate. Let's see the kid gets marked or bullied
by a schoolmate. That's painful, but it's not necessarily traumatic.
If the chuck can go home and talk to the parents,
(21:07):
and their parents will say, oh, that really must have
hurt you. Come here, let me give you a Logeah,
you know when you talk to a lot of kids,
when you actually research bullying, the kids do get bullied
repeatedly are the ones who have nobody to talk to.
So what I'm saying is that stress and pain happens
in life. That's just the norm of human existence, but
(21:31):
it doesn't need to be traumatic, depending on how much
support we have and how or how alone we are
with it.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Well, let's talk about home, because I know that you've
been married for fifty five.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Years fifty six actually fifty six.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Wow, that's extraordinary, And you've been remarkably honest about your
own marriage, and I want to read something that you
said because I want to make sure that I get
it exactly correct. We find each other attractive and fun
and we had a lot to talk about, but on
a deep level, I was also looking to compensate for
the love I didn't get as a child the way
(22:07):
I needed it, and so was she. In other words,
we married our parents' dysfunctions. Can you explain that? And
how does our childhood pain shape who we choose to love?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, this is not original to me. I've lived it
and I articulated, but hardly the first or the only
one to make the point, and yeah, we've made fifty
six years. And we used to say it used to
have a very difficult marriage until about two weeks ago,
you know, because it's ongoing work, you know, but we married.
(22:47):
Almost every human activity, the motivation occurs on different levels.
There's the conscious motivation, gonness, the onc. So, for example,
if it asked me before I went to medical school,
why did you want to go to medical school? I
(23:08):
would have said because I want to serve humanity and
have a meaningful profession and maybe have job security. Those
who were to be inaccurate, But an underlying motive that
had to do with unconscious needs was I needed to
be important and wanted by the world, because the message
I got early in life that I wasn't important and
(23:29):
I wasn't wanted by the world. So, in other words,
a lot of our most important decisions are made for
certain conscious reasons, but it's equally and even more powerfully
for some unconscious reasons. So when you went to a marriage,
it mighty because the other person is fun and you
(23:49):
can laugh together and play together and enjoy the same
movies or music or food activities and so on, and
that's all good and wonderful and necessary, but there also
or some unmet needs. And those unmet needs made me
that you want somebody to feel an emptiness inside yourself
that you don't know how to feel yourself, or you
(24:11):
want somebody to make you feel unconditionally loved no matter
what you do and how you show up, or you
want somebody to make you see the important because you don't.
And then to the extent that they don't fulfill those needs,
(24:34):
then you blame them for it. So once you through
the once you through the animoon period, then it's all
these unmet needs start showing up now. It also means
that when we find a partner, we usually find a
partner who is at the same level of woundedness that
we're at, so that their childhood may have looked different externally,
but internal wounding is at the same level. So we're
(24:58):
looking for somebody to heal our wound, and they're looking
for me to heal their wounds and so on. So
that means we can grow up together or we can
blame each other for not meeting those unmet needs.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
You know, you've said so many, many, many, many powerful things.
When you get triggered, that's a good time to learn
something about yourself. And certainly nobody triggers you more than
the people you look to for support and love.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Thirty years thirty years?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Why is that?
Speaker 4 (25:41):
And what do we need to understand about those moments?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So, if you look at the word trigger, it's a metaphor.
It comes from a weapon. Now, how big a part
of the weapon is the trigger? It's really small, the
piny little part. The reason the trigger sets off anything
is because there's ammunition there and explosive material there. So
if you trigger me, it's not because of what you
(26:08):
said or I said it, It's because I carry this explosion,
explosive material and ammunition inside me, which is my unresolved trauma.
So let's say that you called me a name. If
I'm confident in myself, I might just say to you,
I don't want you to talk to me that way,
(26:29):
or curious why you would even say that. But if
there's some unhealed wound inside here, then I'll explode like you,
or I'll take it personally and I'll believe you know,
well that's inside me. So in other words, now, why
is it the people who are closest to us. It's because,
(26:55):
again are expectations for validation and acceptance and being seen
and understood or transposed from our parents to the ones
closest to us, which is often our spouse, sometimes our friends,
and sometimes even our children, and then when they don't
(27:18):
meet those needs, then we explode at them. So that's
why the people that you know, there's a book about
marriage written decades ago called Intimate Enemies. It's because and
it's because our expectations for those unmeet childhood needs are
(27:39):
projected onto our partners, so when they don't meet them,
we're all the more likely to explode. And so that
which also means but in my case, my family has
often noticed this. I can be very different out in
the world than I can be at home then, and
(28:01):
I don't think I'm the only one that way, And
people will say, how can you be one way out
there in the world and be a totally different creature
at home? You know, well, it's because this part of
us that we haven't integrated.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
One of the things I've also seen you say, and
you expressed it in your book that had a huge
profound impact on me, and Candily has changed my life
in ways it's hard to explain. Is I used to work,
you know, sixteen seventeen hours a day out of his
sake of feeling a need for importance. And you said
something in your book that if you can just extrapolate,
(28:36):
you wish looking back, you hadn't worked so hard. Can
you just explain that to us as well.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I was in Australia speaking to it in February this
year and I met a woman there called whose name
is Brownie Ware and Bronnie Ware. It was I used
to work with dying people in palliative care, and I
used to do that as a physician for seven years
I worked in pallative care. And Brownie wrote a book
called the Five Top Regrets of Dying People. These are
(29:04):
people that had often died before their time and beth
really wakes you up, you know, or the impending that
really wakes you up. It concentrates the mind. I had
some very deep conversations with my dying patients. Anyway. One
of the top regret of dying people was guests going
back to attachment authenticity, I wish I had the courage
(29:26):
to be myself. But one of the top five regrets
was I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish
I had played more. I wish I had my joy
to shine more in the world now when I look
at my own life. When my kids were small and
this granddaughter of mine, the husband is at home with
(29:46):
the mother, both of them looking after the baby. When
my kids were small, if you'd ask me what was
your most important value, I would have said, well, the
happiness of my family. But you know what, if you
want to know what somebody's values are, don't look at
what they say, look at what they do. And what
(30:09):
I did, my high value was being important in the world,
being a busy doctor, being respected, making the money, building
a career, being popular, which means I worked so much
I wasn't available to my own family, let alone for myself.
So when I say I wish I hadn't worked so hard,
(30:29):
I literally mean that I wish I had had the
self confidence to know that I didn't have to prove
to anybody that I was important, and therefore I would
have been at home for the people that I really
was important to, which is my own children and myself
and my spouse. So that's what I mean.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Well, now you're writing a book with Daniel, your adult son,
and it's called Hello Again. A fresh start for parents
and their adult children. So I want to know what
it's like working on this book together and what are
you both learning about repair and forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
So Daniel helped me write The Myth of Normal, and
with all his assistance, that would not have got written.
It was just too big a project. He's a wonderful
writer and very bright, and he can also tell me
when I'm off base or two academic or pedantic, or
too inauthentic that for that matter. So it was a
(31:32):
good partnership. But that book was still based on my work.
This one, Hello Again is based on our mutual work.
It's a work when I see mutual work, both in
the sense of it's a workshop that we've given together
for parents and adult kids. But it's also a mutual
work in terms of our own relationship, which is what
your question is about. And we've had to work on it,
(31:53):
you know. And because here's the thing, consider this, when
you concede your one celled organism for a few seconds,
your father has got thirty eight trillion cells, your mother
has got about twenty seven trillion cells. How do you
(32:13):
ever get to the point of equality? And the child's
nervous system. If you look at how the brain developed,
it's actually shaped by the parents nervous system. So if
you look at the science of brain development, Wow, the
circuits of the brain are shaped by the environment acting
(32:35):
on the genes, and the most important aspect of the
environment is the child's relationship with the nurturing adults. So
then this little nervous system that was shaped by you,
not that you meant to it, but that's what happens.
Not then, as to become an equal adult, there's quite
a challenge, and in the stressed culture, there's a lot
(32:56):
of alienation between adult kids and parents. So I always
used to say that I wasn't worried that my kids
would be angry with me. I was worried that they
wouldn't be angry enough, because I really wanted them to
feel and to know and to heal from these traumise
(33:16):
that unwittingly I passed on to them. That's on them,
But it doesn't mean there's a lot of repair, like
you suggest that has to happen. So the good thing
is that repair and rupture is a normal part of
human life, and it's a part of growth. So when
(33:36):
there's willingness on both sides and a willingness not just
the willingness to actually look at oneself and its own
contribution to this situation. Then there's all kinds of repair possible. Forgiveness.
I don't want advise forgiveness. I think it's more important
(33:57):
to be real, and so I think forgiveness actually happens
as healing happens. But I don't advise forgiveness. I don't
advise against it, but I don't make it a priority.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
So you're saying that forgiveness happens only if healing happens.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Exactly, Yeah, genuine forgiveness happened. If I say to you
I forgive you, you know what it means. I haven't.
It's usually a statement of the opposite, because it really
means I still believe that you hurt me and you
wounded me, but I'm going to be large enough to
forgive you. When you heal and the woundedness is no
longer so cute, then you realize, well, then there's nothing
(34:36):
to forgive, you know. But that's a slow process. So
I don't push forgiveness. I to gate healing that to
forgiveness happens when it does.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
And speaking of healing, I know that there are so
many of us because addiction is it touches just about
every family that there is. And so what would you
say to someone who loves someone that is facing addiction?
Speaker 1 (35:06):
As you probably know, for twelve years, I worked in
North America's the most concentrated neighborhood of drug use, which
is the downtown East side of Vancouver, British Conia, and
so I works with people severely addicted to cocaine, opiates, heroin,
phentomyl wasn't around yet it is now, you know, codeine, heroine,
(35:30):
delauded and alcohol of course, nicotine, everything. And when you
ask me what to say with families, it depends how
we understand addiction. So if we understand addiction is a
bad choice, is a moral failure, is the weakness of will,
then we impose a lot of judgment and narscracism. I'm
(35:53):
the addicted person. Even if we see it as a
medical disease. There's genetics, which is a step forward because
at least we're going to treat somebody and not ostracize
them and not punish them. I mean, you don't send
people to jail for having room with the littritis. Why
do we send people for jail for having the so
(36:15):
called disease of addiction, you know, so that's a step forward.
I'll define addiction. I'm giving you my definition and those
people interested in addiction can read my book in the
Realm of Hungry, Ghosts, Coast and Currents with Addiction or
The Myth of Normal, where we talk about addiction. So,
an addiction is defined as manifested in any behavior where
(36:36):
a person finds temporarily really for pleasure and therefore craves
but then suffers negative consequences and doesn't give it up
despite the harm. So craving pleasure, relief in the short term,
harm in the long term, difficult to giving it up.
Those are the criteria for addiction. Now, I said, any behavior.
(37:00):
It could be drugs, could be alcohol, could be legal
ways to kill yourself like alcohol or nicotine, or could
be the illegal ways like heroin and copain. Or it
could be pornography, sexual acting, out shopping, eating, gambling, extreme sports, work,
(37:25):
cell phones, scrolling on Instagram. Anyone. As long as there's
temporary pleasure or relief and you create it causes time,
you don't give rep you got an addiction. So my question
now is I'm not going to ask any specifics, but
if any of you have had an addictive pattern in
your life according to my definition, would you kindly raise
(37:47):
your hand? All right? So here's when I asked the
three of you. I'm not going to ask you what
you were addicted to. I don't care, not for this
conversation or when. What I'm going to ask you is
what did they give you in the short term? What
did you like about it? What did you what did
you what did it give? What was wrong with it?
(38:08):
What was right about it? So who would tell me
what did they give you?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Distraction?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Distraction?
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Okay, so pleasure from the pain. So it was a
distraction from the.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
Perception of temporary relief received from what relieved from what?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
From pain?
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yes, yes, yes, yes okay. Hence my mantra, don't ask
why the addiction, asked why the pain, because the addiction
wasn't a primary disease. The addiction was you attempt to
solve the problem of emotional pain of distress, and that
emotional pain and distress was rooted in trauma. And so
(38:49):
what I'm saying to people is understand that the person
in your life is addicted is not a moral weakling.
And although they behave like a disease, primarily it's not
that David disease. They're trying to escape from some pain,
and that pain is rooted not in the individual, but
(39:10):
in the family history, in fact, in the multi generational
family history. So there's no way to blame. So first
thing is, don't blame anybody. Number one. Number two, there
are three things you can do. Two of them are
healthy and sane. One of them is insane. You can
(39:31):
say to the person, I understand that this behavior in
your part, you're trying to soothe some pain. You're trying
to relieve some distress in your soul. And I love you,
and I'm not gonna blame you, and I'm here for you.
(39:53):
I can't do the work for you, but I'm here
for you. That's legitimate. All you can say, I understand
that what you're doing is you're trying to really, really
relieve some pain in your life. I don't blame you
for it, but it's too stressful for me. It's too
painful for me. I can't be around it. I'm sorry.
(40:15):
I love you, but I can't be around it. I
don't have the resources to handle it. So I can't
be with you. That's also clear. That's also saying. The
insane thing is I'm going to try and change you.
Beg you, cojoy you, force you, co urge you, bribe you,
(40:38):
convince you to be different because I need you to
be different so I can feel better. That's the insane part.
So I'm saying, do one of the first two, but
not the third. More powerfully, even more powerfully, you could say,
(41:00):
I get that you're the canary and the mine. You're
the one who's carrying or I'm exhibiting the pain of
the whole family and the multigenationial family, so this whole.
So thank you for pointing out to us that the
family needs healing and we're going to embark on that
healing path and we invite you to join us. But
if you're not ready, that's okay. We're going to do
(41:22):
it anyway. So that's what I would So that's what
I would say to you.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
Yeah, we're just on that concept of healing. Just from
a personal note, you've certainly helped for me to heal
my relationship with my mother, our mother, my brother Craig
and I. You know, she grew up in a very
significant poverty from Windsor, Ontario. Father was an alcoholic, died
when he was young. Mother raised four children under the
(41:50):
most extreme circumstances. Literally they were homeless. She was not
given a lot of love. Candidly, she was loved, but
wasn't told she was loved. And we grew up in
a household where we weren't told we were loved, like
literally not said those words until we were in our twenties.
And I remember, distinctly for me was when I was
(42:11):
about seven years old, my mother threw a toy at
my head when she was very upset one day, and
that was the moment I remember when I realized I
was no longer safe and ended up having to be
somebody different than myself. Yes, and it was reading your
books that I've had a profound impact on me. I
just want to say thank you again. And my question
to you is, how do we move from being a
(42:32):
sense of a victim to having compassion for the person
who hurt us?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
First of all by having compassion for yourself. Look, that's
a frightening thing to happen to a seven year old,
and it may have been the first time that you
consciously realized that you weren't safe, but it's not the
first time you experienced not being safe. Yes, what does
it mean to be a victim? A victim is somebody
(42:59):
who is at the effect of somebody else's behavior and
they're helpless and resourceless. Now, as soon as you realize,
by the way, is it that's surprising that you and
your brother went to work on helping kids around the
world to say, you know, at a certain point, when
(43:21):
you realize that you're not resources or helpless and you
start to heal, then actually compassion actually opens and then
you can say, well, what happened to my mother? You
know what happened to my mother? And my mother bitter
her best under the circumstances of her life, but that
(43:42):
was her best, and that best was constrained by what
she experienced as a child, which is tremendous loss and
tremendous anxiety and geminious insecurity. And so there's an old
English expression I forget where it's from. It it says
to understand is to forgive. So once you really understand somebody,
(44:08):
then you say, well, I get it they did that
because that's what they that's how they were programmed. And
you know this is true in the States as well,
But suddenly here in Canada Mark you have this terrible
legacy of child abuse and Indigenous communities, and those communities
(44:31):
prior to the coming of the Caucasians, they knew how
to parent much better than we did. They held their kids,
they didn't hit their kids, they cherished their kids, they
honored their kids. And then under the impact of the
residential schools where generation after generation were abducted from their
families and beaten and abused and coursed and all this,
(44:54):
then they became parent they did the same thing to
their children. So if you understand the history multi generationally,
one realizes there's nothing to forgive. But you have to
get past that victimhood because as long as you see
yourself as a victim that you know, yes, your mother
threw something active when you're seven, But sitting there today,
(45:18):
can you say that you're a victim or can you
say that you're somebody who had a wound and you've
healed it. Then you've got some power and you've got resources.
You know, neighbor's victim.
Speaker 5 (45:29):
But it was your work that pointed out to me
in the most effective way possible, and it was how
you articulated that relationship and looking at the perspective from
somebody else who is the person that's causing the wound
in the first place, and understanding empathy from them of
where they've come from, shifted my relationship with my mom.
So I just wanted to say thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Oh well, I'm so glad that happened. Yes, there's a
book by a family therapist called Mark Woolen. It starts
it didn't start with you, and it's about the multigenerational
transmission of trauma.
Speaker 4 (46:01):
You said that people want to see themselves not as
broken or irretrievably damaged, but it is actually fundamentally whole
with some stuff to work through. What's the difference between
seeing yourself as broken versus seeing yourself as whole but wounded.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
So when I asked a question about is anybody had
an addictive pattern? What you say to somebody? What's the
word that we use when somebody's healed from an addiction?
What have they done?
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Recovered?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Or here, yes, recovered? Okay, now let's look at the
English language again. What does the word what does it
mean to recover something.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
To uncover it, or to find it, find it again,
to find.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
It again, yeah, to find it again, yeah, But if
you've found it again, it means it was never destroyed
in the first place. Otherwise you couldn't re covered. So
what is it that people recover themselves, that recover themselves.
The true self was never destroyed. They got it, got suppressed,
(47:12):
they've got lost, they've got fogged over arm, but it
never was destroyed. If you see, if he was broken
or damaged goods, then that means that you're seeing yourself
as less than who you actually are. And and you
see this all the time. I mean, I'm sure all
(47:33):
three of you, you know, all kinds of people who've
behaved in difficult self harming, maybe selfish, maybe even hurtful,
maybe even criminal ways, but then they've become fully realized
and compassionate and productive and loving people. Well, they just
(48:00):
found their true selves. That's all that happened. Sometimes, people
who work with people on death row, these are people
that have been committed some terrible crime, usually in their
late teens, under the influence of trauma and gang culture
or whatever. But then they in prison the undergo this transformation.
(48:25):
I've met with them and other people I have met
with them, and it's not a romanticization to say that
they can be some of the most compassionate, sweetest people
in the world because they found themselves. Now, the legal
system doesn't recognize that you did this thirty years ago.
You know, we're not going to believe that you've changed,
(48:48):
but I've seen it, and I'm sure so have you, kay.
Speaker 5 (48:53):
But this has been the most remarkable and profound conversation
We've had icons, celebrities, actor, actors, as sports heroes, and
you're the one that we've been most excited to listen
and learn from. And you've done that with us today.
You spent your life shaping and helping us understand that
our wounds do not define us, but they do of
course shape us, and with compassion, curiosity, and courage, we
(49:17):
can heal. You reminded us that trauma is what happens
to us and what happens inside of us, and freedom
comes when we stop running away from that and start
understanding it. You reminded us not to ask why the addiction,
but instead ask why the pain, And of course you've
also reminded us that not every pain is traumatic if
(49:38):
we have the love and support around us. Thank you
for your wisdom. Thank you for your honesty, thank you
for your compassion, but most importantly, Gabor, thank you for
your love.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
And I want to thank you so much for your
gift of having so many of us feeling seen and
validate it and all of the work that you've done
within marginal lized communities.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Well again, thank you. It's moving to be with you,
and thanks for your curiosity and interest. Thanks very much.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Thank you for joining us. New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a moment.
And so if you trigger me, it's not because of
what you said or you said it, It's because I
carry this imposive material and ammunition inside me.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Doctor Gabor Mate has spent decades researching the connection between relationships, addiction,
and healing.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Doughnuts white the addiction that's white of pain. For the
addiction wasn't a primary disease. The addiction was you attempt
to solve the problem of emotional pain.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The international best selling author who has trained more than
four thousand healthcare providers across one hundred and ten countries,
reveals a deeper truth about healing. The body holds what
the mind tries to ignore.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Women are more likely to be the diagnosis of depression.
What does it mean to depress something? He means to
push it down? What do you think is being pushed down?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
But nothing reveals the truth about ourselves more than our
closest relationships.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
How does our childhood pain shape who we choose to love?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Nobody triggers you more than the people you look too
for support and love.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Exactly thirty years Join host Martin Luther King the Third,
Andrea Waters, King, Mark Kilberger, and Craig Kilberger for an
eye opening conversation about the wisdom your body holds and
my listening to it might be the key to reclaiming
the lives we were meant to live.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
How do we move from being a sense of a
victim to having compassion for the person who hurt us?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
If I say to you, wife, forgive you, you know what
it means I haven't.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Welcome to My Legacy. It's a special episode today because
from the moment we launched My Legacy podcast, we wanted
to interview the legendary doctor Gabor Mattey. His work has
been transformative for me and our co hosts and for
millions of others to understand trauma, relationships, addiction, and what
(01:48):
it means to heal. Gabora, We're deeply honored to have
you here. Thank you so much for your time and
your passion.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oho more honored than I am to be with you guys.
Thank you very much. Gabura.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
I want to start with your definition of trauma because
it's been revolutionary for millions of people. You said, trauma
is not about the event itself, It's about something else entirely.
Can you define trauma for us the way you've come
to understand it?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Sure? Well, it's really rather simple when you look at
the word origin, which is a Greek word for wound. Now,
a wound is not about the event. It's about what
damage or harm the body sustains. So you can have
a wounding event such as a knife slicing you, but
the wound is the actual cut and your skin on
(02:36):
your flesh. Or you have a blow on the head,
and that's not the wound. The wound, or you might say,
is the concussion. So really a wound is what happens
in your body, in your psyche. And by the way,
you can't separate the physiology from the psychology. So the
wound is the ongoing dysfunction might say, or problem that
(03:03):
stays with you after the event. So in other words,
some people experience sexual abuse, that's not the trauma. That's
the traumatic event. The trauma is the shame that they feel.
The trauma is the self loading. The trauma is the depression,
the anxiety. So the trauma, in other words, is the
(03:23):
wound that you sustained as a result of what happened
to you. And that's the good news. Because if trauma
was what happened to you ten twenty thirty or in
my case eighty years ago. There needs nothing you can
do about it. It happened. But if the trauma is
the wound that we carry, that can be healed today.
So that's the distinction. I think it's an important mine.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Oy.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Yeah, Bro, When you talk about that concept of wound
and wounding, you've also said children can be traumatized not
just by terrible things happening to them, by by simply
not having some of their basic and most important needs mets,
but not being seen, not being heard, not being held.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
While people are born with emotional needs as much as
we have physiological needs, and those emotional needs are not arbitrary,
they are dictated by evolution and by nature, and so
that children ever need to be unconditionally accepted, loved for
who they are, to be seen for who they are.
And being seen for who they are means that nature
(04:22):
has wired us for a whole lot of emotions, like fear.
We have to fear in or to survive, don't we.
I mean, as we evolved out there in nature, if
we didn't have fear, we would not have survived. We
have to have ways of dealing with loss or grief.
We have to have anxiety or you know or if
(04:45):
we lose our attachments, we have to have anger, healthy
anger to maintain our boundaries. No, So children e the
need to be able to experience their emotions and they
have those emotions validated and accepted and understood and mirrored
by the parents. So really good parents, loving parents, the
(05:09):
best of intentions. If they're too stressed or to traumatized themselves,
or if they were not seeing themselves as children, may
not be able to see their kids for who they are,
may not be able to validate the child's experience, and
that can be wounding to the child, and that happens
to a lot of us.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
This leads us to something that you've written about that
sort of really struck me. How children face an impossible
choice between authenticity and attachment. Can you explain what that
means and why it is such a painful trade off?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
If I mean, if I may quickly turn it around, Mark,
And if I could ask you, as an adult, have
you been in a situation where you had a choice
to make. If I manifest who I am, if I
express my point of view, if I speak my truth,
I may lose some relationship or I may jeopardize some relationships.
(06:10):
As that have happened to you. Oh yeah, as an adult. Yeah, Now,
as an adult, you can make that choice because if
you're a passionate point of view about something that you
need to speak, some people might not like it. Your father,
(06:31):
when he came up against the Vietnam War, the New
York Times said, now he's stepped over a line. So
he lost followers, but he made a decision that my
truth is more important than who likes me and who
doesn't like me. So as adults we can make those decisions.
(06:52):
And even as adults, it's a very painful choice. Can
I be authentic or do I stay attached? Ideally we
can do both, but what happens if we can't. Now,
as a young child, if you're being true to yourself,
for example, if you have healthy anger about something, or
if you have said about something, but you get the
message from the parents that good little kids don't get angry,
(07:17):
what the message the child really gets is angry little
kids don't get loved. Another child is in this situation.
If I express myself, if I allow myself to feel
my feelings and manifest them, I might lose my relationship.
But without that attachment relationship, I can't survive as a
(07:38):
young child. So then the child is in this impossible
situation of having to choose between attachment or being loved,
being connected with being nurtured, or being true to themselves.
No child should have to be in that situation. The
lot of kids are, and what happens is for the
survival's sake, the child will suppress who they are, suppress, yes,
(08:00):
their emotions, in order to belong in order to be accepted,
and that then becomes a lifelong pattern. And then because
it's an unconscious adaptatient, it's a survival mechanism. So that
means for all our lives we're free to be ourselves
for fear of being rejected, and that has multiple consequences,
both physically and mentally. But that choice of being authenticity
(08:23):
and attachment, it's a big one, even for adults. For children,
it's not a choice. They have to give up their
authenticity in order to be accepted. In almost every case.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's such a powerful statement, as so much of what
you say is but the fact that you feel that
you have to suppress who you are and give up
in order to belong. Yeah, and I love that you
also bought up the fact of because I think we
talk about it a lot in our family, but people
(08:56):
really don't realize that Martin Luther King Junior and he
was assassinated, was one of the most unpopular people at
that point in time in America, and it was based
on the you know, his taking me moral stand, you know,
on the Vietnam War and so many other things. So
(09:17):
we've kind of see the legacy sixty years later, but
we forget that, and we forget that when he died
he actually had the heart of a sixty year old
because of the stress of carrying so much in the world.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Actually, this tension between looking to this entertachment, plays it along,
plays it along racial lines and along gender lines as well.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
Can you help us just explain that a little bit,
doctor Geppett.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Well, James Baldwin once said, I'm paraphrasing him, but he
said that to be a black person in the US
is to be in a state of suppressed rage all
the times. Right, No, because of all the historical reasons,
I don't think I have to explain on this podcast. Well,
the suppression of anger actually creates physiological damage. I'm talking
(10:10):
about the suppression of healthy anger. It's not accidental that
Baldwin died of cancer, because a lot of people with
malignancy have a lot of suppressed rage. A lot of
people with autoimmune disease a lot of suppressed anger. Now,
people who are racialized, they're not given permission to be
as much as themselves as they actually are. They have
(10:34):
to pay this be nice and be good, and be
colluding and be compliant. And so if you look at
so there's a lot of tension inside. And if you
look at Black American males, their blood pressure tends to
be higher than Caucasians or those are their relatives in Africa,
(10:57):
And that's purely an artifact of racism. And now if
you look at women, between the two major genders, who
has to be nice? Who has to repress their anger?
Who is to be compliant? Who is to be concerned
about being accepted by the other. It's not exclusive to
any one gender, but by and largest women. And one
(11:20):
reason and one outcome is that women are more likely
to be the diagnosed with depression. What's the word? What
does it mean to depress? Something that means to push
it down? What do you think is being pushed down?
Their healthy emotions typically anger, and that also is in
my view, a major contributor to autoimmune disease. So if
(11:41):
you look at autommune disease like colitis, clone disease, syrogan syndrome, Loopers, rumatolatritis,
eighty percent happens to women. And I think that has
a lot to do with in this gendered culture, some people,
well particularly the females, have to suppress themselves more than
(12:06):
males do. In general. That's not one hundred percent, and
it's not only one way, but by and large, is
that sort of clear enough to William Stadium.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
It's so clear that I have to be honest in
some ways I'm fighting by fighting back tears because it's
a witnessing as a woman and a Black woman of
being seen and the understanding as well of the trauma
(12:39):
in marginalized communities. You know, there's this whole thing about
angry black women or you can't be an angry Black woman.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
You can't.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
And if we want to have health and our bodies
and our soty, part of that includes the health of
our societies and that building of the beloved community. Just
an acknowledgment of the weight that's carried through this world
because of racism.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
They identified people of color. Women of color are much
unlike to a lot of immune disease. Why because a
they're racialized and because they're women genderized, and so they
have to suppress themselves some more. So that's a cause of,
or at least a contributor to a lot of what
we called disease.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Yeah, but when you talk about disease as a state
of disease. You've helped millions understand the connection between emotional
health and physical health. And you've shared research, for example
that women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of
a variant cancer. You've said that wounds can show up
in our psychology. So help us understand the true relationship
(13:44):
between emotional trauma and physical illness and what do we
need to know about that in terms of how that's
manifested and how do we prevent it.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Here's the scientific reality that is not taught in medical
schools for the most part, is then body can't be separated.
So emotional life is inseparable from our physiological existence. Now
we have the science that shows that the bodies in
(14:13):
the brain's emotional circuits and our and our nervous system
and our hormonal apparatus and our immune system are not
separate systems. They're one. And the science that studies that
is called psycho neuroimmino endrochronology. If you want a tongue
(14:34):
break overword.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
For you, Let's say that again for our listeners.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Psycho neuro imino indochronology, which is the means psycho, the psyche,
the emotional circuits, the nervous system, immune and the immune system,
and endochronology the hormonal system. It's all one. Now, it's obvious.
I'm talking to the three of you now. I don't
even know where you are somewhere in the States. But
I can't physically hurt you. But I could change physiology
(15:00):
in a split second by screaming at you. And as
as soon as they screamed at you, the emotional circuits
in your brain would send messages to your hypothalamus, which
is at the apex of your body's hormonal apparatus, an
autonomic nervous system, which should trigger a whole cascade of
(15:21):
neurological and hormonal events resulting in the release of cortisol
and adrellinin and so on. In other words, the emotions
are immediately translated into physiology, and this happens twenty four
to seven. So the reason psychic wounds translate into physical illnesses.
(15:45):
People who were sexually abused as children have significantly increased
risk of multiple scrosses. Wow, you mentioned the study from
Harvard Women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of
bavarian cancer. Parents who lose a child are more likely
to develop multiple sclerosis. I could go on and on
(16:09):
and on and on. We all know about the broken
heart syndrome. You know Debbie Reynolds, the actor whose daughter
Carrie Fisher died one day and Debbie died the next day.
What they probably thought was the broken heart syndrome. In others,
you can't separate the emotions from the physiology because it's
(16:31):
all one system. They're not connected, it's one. Therefore, whatever
happens to people emotionally is likely to significant impact physiologically.
And that's one way in which trauma translates into ronal as.
The other way it translates is we adapt to traumatic events.
(16:57):
So if a child is traumatized heard I should say
abused or threatened, their natural instinct is to run away
or to fight back, but they can't so in order
to survive. They actually disconnect from their good feelings because
if they follow the good feelings, they'll be fighting, which
(17:19):
means they'll be even more hurt, or they be running,
which they can't. A four year old can't run away
to survive. They disconnect from their good feelings. That has consequences.
So let me ask you three. Let me ask the
three of you a question which I often ask audiences.
Have you ever had the experience of having a strong
(17:40):
God feeling about something and you didn't pay attention and
you're sorry afterwards very much? Yeah, of course you just
told me about your childhood's because no infant is born
suppressed in their God feelings. I just became a grandfather
for the first time nine weeks ago to make us
thank you very much. That little baby does not suppress
(18:02):
any good feelings. You know. She doesn't lie there at
night saying, oh my God, I'm hungry and thirsty and wet,
and I'm uncomfortable and lonely, but I better not bother
mummy and dotty right now. So at some point we
learn to disconnect from our God feelings in order to
be acceptable to our environment. But that suppression of God
(18:24):
feelings means that we've taken a lot of stress later
on because we can't protect ourselves.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
Scrolling won't change your life, but subscribing just might tap
that button and stay connected to conversations that kept.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Is there anyone that escapes life without being traumatized? Because
I'm thinking about your beautiful nine week old granddaughter, and
peer's to her having a beautiful life throughout her life
right here, and she's gonna get from her parents and
her grandparents, you know, the most enlightened, loved, nurtured, protective
(19:00):
childhood as possible when you go out into the world,
you know, or when you send your children to school,
it could be a classmate. It seems almost impossible to
get through this lifetime without some type of trauma.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Well, I think that's largely true. But of course the
degrees of trauma part of the vi and that that's
why the subtitle of my recent trauma I honest and
meaning a toxic culture, because I think in this culture
it's very difficult to escape those negative influences. Now, however,
(19:37):
if you look at how human beings evolved over millions
of years, we evolved not living the way we do.
Not we lived out in nature connected to the land,
connected to the seasons, very much attune with our good
feelings and surrounder, then looked after by a community. Yes,
(19:58):
parents weren't raising children in an isolated, nuclear family home
or in single families. In the United States, twenty five
percent of women have to go back to work within
two weeks of giving birth, which is barbaric. Basically means
the abandonment of children because the children needs that mother
and figure. And so we used to grow up in
(20:21):
communities where there was aunts and uncles, and you know,
it takes the village. So I don't think it's necessarily now.
Will we have painful experiences as human beings, Yes we will.
Will we have stressful experiences as human beings, of course
we will. That's the nature of life. But pain and
stress aren't necessarily traumatic. Every trauma is painful and stressful,
(20:45):
but not every pain is traumatic. For example, we mentioned
a schoolmate. Let's see the kid gets marked or bullied
by a schoolmate. That's painful, but it's not necessarily traumatic.
If the chuck can go home and talk to the parents,
(21:07):
and their parents will say, oh, that really must have
hurt you. Come here, let me give you a Logeah,
you know when you talk to a lot of kids,
when you actually research bullying, the kids do get bullied
repeatedly are the ones who have nobody to talk to.
So what I'm saying is that stress and pain happens
in life. That's just the norm of human existence, but
(21:31):
it doesn't need to be traumatic, depending on how much
support we have and how or how alone we are
with it.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Well, let's talk about home, because I know that you've
been married for fifty five.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Years fifty six actually fifty six.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Wow, that's extraordinary, And you've been remarkably honest about your
own marriage, and I want to read something that you
said because I want to make sure that I get
it exactly correct. We find each other attractive and fun
and we had a lot to talk about, but on
a deep level, I was also looking to compensate for
the love I didn't get as a child the way
(22:07):
I needed it, and so was she. In other words,
we married our parents' dysfunctions. Can you explain that? And
how does our childhood pain shape who we choose to love?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, this is not original to me. I've lived it
and I articulated, but hardly the first or the only
one to make the point, and yeah, we've made fifty
six years. And we used to say it used to
have a very difficult marriage until about two weeks ago,
you know, because it's ongoing work, you know, but we married.
(22:47):
Almost every human activity, the motivation occurs on different levels.
There's the conscious motivation, gonness, the onc. So, for example,
if it asked me before I went to medical school,
why did you want to go to medical school? I
(23:08):
would have said because I want to serve humanity and
have a meaningful profession and maybe have job security. Those
who were to be inaccurate, But an underlying motive that
had to do with unconscious needs was I needed to
be important and wanted by the world, because the message
I got early in life that I wasn't important and
(23:29):
I wasn't wanted by the world. So, in other words,
a lot of our most important decisions are made for
certain conscious reasons, but it's equally and even more powerfully
for some unconscious reasons. So when you went to a marriage,
it mighty because the other person is fun and you
(23:49):
can laugh together and play together and enjoy the same
movies or music or food activities and so on, and
that's all good and wonderful and necessary, but there also
or some unmet needs. And those unmet needs made me
that you want somebody to feel an emptiness inside yourself
that you don't know how to feel yourself, or you
(24:11):
want somebody to make you feel unconditionally loved no matter
what you do and how you show up, or you
want somebody to make you see the important because you don't.
And then to the extent that they don't fulfill those needs,
(24:34):
then you blame them for it. So once you through
the once you through the animoon period, then it's all
these unmet needs start showing up now. It also means
that when we find a partner, we usually find a
partner who is at the same level of woundedness that
we're at, so that their childhood may have looked different externally,
but internal wounding is at the same level. So we're
(24:58):
looking for somebody to heal our wound, and they're looking
for me to heal their wounds and so on. So
that means we can grow up together or we can
blame each other for not meeting those unmet needs.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
You know, you've said so many, many, many, many powerful things.
When you get triggered, that's a good time to learn
something about yourself. And certainly nobody triggers you more than
the people you look to for support and love.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Thirty years thirty years?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Why is that?
Speaker 4 (25:41):
And what do we need to understand about those moments?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So, if you look at the word trigger, it's a metaphor.
It comes from a weapon. Now, how big a part
of the weapon is the trigger? It's really small, the
piny little part. The reason the trigger sets off anything
is because there's ammunition there and explosive material there. So
if you trigger me, it's not because of what you
(26:08):
said or I said it, It's because I carry this explosion,
explosive material and ammunition inside me, which is my unresolved trauma.
So let's say that you called me a name. If
I'm confident in myself, I might just say to you,
I don't want you to talk to me that way,
(26:29):
or curious why you would even say that. But if
there's some unhealed wound inside here, then I'll explode like you,
or I'll take it personally and I'll believe you know,
well that's inside me. So in other words, now, why
is it the people who are closest to us. It's because,
(26:55):
again are expectations for validation and acceptance and being seen
and understood or transposed from our parents to the ones
closest to us, which is often our spouse, sometimes our friends,
and sometimes even our children, and then when they don't
(27:18):
meet those needs, then we explode at them. So that's
why the people that you know, there's a book about
marriage written decades ago called Intimate Enemies. It's because and
it's because our expectations for those unmeet childhood needs are
(27:39):
projected onto our partners, so when they don't meet them,
we're all the more likely to explode. And so that
which also means but in my case, my family has
often noticed this. I can be very different out in
the world than I can be at home then, and
(28:01):
I don't think I'm the only one that way, And
people will say, how can you be one way out
there in the world and be a totally different creature
at home? You know, well, it's because this part of
us that we haven't integrated.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
One of the things I've also seen you say, and
you expressed it in your book that had a huge
profound impact on me, and Candily has changed my life
in ways it's hard to explain. Is I used to work,
you know, sixteen seventeen hours a day out of his
sake of feeling a need for importance. And you said
something in your book that if you can just extrapolate,
(28:36):
you wish looking back, you hadn't worked so hard. Can
you just explain that to us as well.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I was in Australia speaking to it in February this
year and I met a woman there called whose name
is Brownie Ware and Bronnie Ware. It was I used
to work with dying people in palliative care, and I
used to do that as a physician for seven years
I worked in pallative care. And Brownie wrote a book
called the Five Top Regrets of Dying People. These are
(29:04):
people that had often died before their time and beth
really wakes you up, you know, or the impending that
really wakes you up. It concentrates the mind. I had
some very deep conversations with my dying patients. Anyway. One
of the top regret of dying people was guests going
back to attachment authenticity, I wish I had the courage
(29:26):
to be myself. But one of the top five regrets
was I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish
I had played more. I wish I had my joy
to shine more in the world now when I look
at my own life. When my kids were small and
this granddaughter of mine, the husband is at home with
(29:46):
the mother, both of them looking after the baby. When
my kids were small, if you'd ask me what was
your most important value, I would have said, well, the
happiness of my family. But you know what, if you
want to know what somebody's values are, don't look at
what they say, look at what they do. And what
(30:09):
I did, my high value was being important in the world,
being a busy doctor, being respected, making the money, building
a career, being popular, which means I worked so much
I wasn't available to my own family, let alone for myself.
So when I say I wish I hadn't worked so hard,
(30:29):
I literally mean that I wish I had had the
self confidence to know that I didn't have to prove
to anybody that I was important, and therefore I would
have been at home for the people that I really
was important to, which is my own children and myself
and my spouse. So that's what I mean.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Well, now you're writing a book with Daniel, your adult son,
and it's called Hello Again. A fresh start for parents
and their adult children. So I want to know what
it's like working on this book together and what are
you both learning about repair and forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
So Daniel helped me write The Myth of Normal, and
with all his assistance, that would not have got written.
It was just too big a project. He's a wonderful
writer and very bright, and he can also tell me
when I'm off base or two academic or pedantic, or
too inauthentic that for that matter. So it was a
(31:32):
good partnership. But that book was still based on my work.
This one, Hello Again is based on our mutual work.
It's a work when I see mutual work, both in
the sense of it's a workshop that we've given together
for parents and adult kids. But it's also a mutual
work in terms of our own relationship, which is what
your question is about. And we've had to work on it,
(31:53):
you know. And because here's the thing, consider this, when
you concede your one celled organism for a few seconds,
your father has got thirty eight trillion cells, your mother
has got about twenty seven trillion cells. How do you
(32:13):
ever get to the point of equality? And the child's
nervous system. If you look at how the brain developed,
it's actually shaped by the parents nervous system. So if
you look at the science of brain development, Wow, the
circuits of the brain are shaped by the environment acting
(32:35):
on the genes, and the most important aspect of the
environment is the child's relationship with the nurturing adults. So
then this little nervous system that was shaped by you,
not that you meant to it, but that's what happens.
Not then, as to become an equal adult, there's quite
a challenge, and in the stressed culture, there's a lot
(32:56):
of alienation between adult kids and parents. So I always
used to say that I wasn't worried that my kids
would be angry with me. I was worried that they
wouldn't be angry enough, because I really wanted them to
feel and to know and to heal from these traumise
(33:16):
that unwittingly I passed on to them. That's on them,
But it doesn't mean there's a lot of repair, like
you suggest that has to happen. So the good thing
is that repair and rupture is a normal part of
human life, and it's a part of growth. So when
(33:36):
there's willingness on both sides and a willingness not just
the willingness to actually look at oneself and its own
contribution to this situation. Then there's all kinds of repair possible. Forgiveness.
I don't want advise forgiveness. I think it's more important
(33:57):
to be real, and so I think forgiveness actually happens
as healing happens. But I don't advise forgiveness. I don't
advise against it, but I don't make it a priority.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
So you're saying that forgiveness happens only if healing happens.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Exactly, Yeah, genuine forgiveness happened. If I say to you
I forgive you, you know what it means. I haven't.
It's usually a statement of the opposite, because it really
means I still believe that you hurt me and you
wounded me, but I'm going to be large enough to
forgive you. When you heal and the woundedness is no
longer so cute, then you realize, well, then there's nothing
(34:36):
to forgive, you know. But that's a slow process. So
I don't push forgiveness. I to gate healing that to
forgiveness happens when it does.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
And speaking of healing, I know that there are so
many of us because addiction is it touches just about
every family that there is. And so what would you
say to someone who loves someone that is facing addiction?
Speaker 1 (35:06):
As you probably know, for twelve years, I worked in
North America's the most concentrated neighborhood of drug use, which
is the downtown East side of Vancouver, British Conia, and
so I works with people severely addicted to cocaine, opiates, heroin,
phentomyl wasn't around yet it is now, you know, codeine, heroine,
(35:30):
delauded and alcohol of course, nicotine, everything. And when you
ask me what to say with families, it depends how
we understand addiction. So if we understand addiction is a
bad choice, is a moral failure, is the weakness of will,
then we impose a lot of judgment and narscracism. I'm
(35:53):
the addicted person. Even if we see it as a
medical disease. There's genetics, which is a step forward because
at least we're going to treat somebody and not ostracize
them and not punish them. I mean, you don't send
people to jail for having room with the littritis. Why
do we send people for jail for having the so
(36:15):
called disease of addiction, you know, so that's a step forward.
I'll define addiction. I'm giving you my definition and those
people interested in addiction can read my book in the
Realm of Hungry, Ghosts, Coast and Currents with Addiction or
The Myth of Normal, where we talk about addiction. So,
an addiction is defined as manifested in any behavior where
(36:36):
a person finds temporarily really for pleasure and therefore craves
but then suffers negative consequences and doesn't give it up
despite the harm. So craving pleasure, relief in the short term,
harm in the long term, difficult to giving it up.
Those are the criteria for addiction. Now, I said, any behavior.
(37:00):
It could be drugs, could be alcohol, could be legal
ways to kill yourself like alcohol or nicotine, or could
be the illegal ways like heroin and copain. Or it
could be pornography, sexual acting, out shopping, eating, gambling, extreme sports, work,
(37:25):
cell phones, scrolling on Instagram. Anyone. As long as there's
temporary pleasure or relief and you create it causes time,
you don't give rep you got an addiction. So my question
now is I'm not going to ask any specifics, but
if any of you have had an addictive pattern in
your life according to my definition, would you kindly raise
(37:47):
your hand? All right? So here's when I asked the
three of you. I'm not going to ask you what
you were addicted to. I don't care, not for this
conversation or when. What I'm going to ask you is
what did they give you in the short term? What
did you like about it? What did you what did
you what did it give? What was wrong with it?
(38:08):
What was right about it? So who would tell me
what did they give you?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Distraction?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Distraction?
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Okay, so pleasure from the pain. So it was a
distraction from the.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
Perception of temporary relief received from what relieved from what?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
From pain?
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yes, yes, yes, yes okay. Hence my mantra, don't ask
why the addiction, asked why the pain, because the addiction
wasn't a primary disease. The addiction was you attempt to
solve the problem of emotional pain of distress, and that
emotional pain and distress was rooted in trauma. And so
(38:49):
what I'm saying to people is understand that the person
in your life is addicted is not a moral weakling.
And although they behave like a disease, primarily it's not
that David disease. They're trying to escape from some pain,
and that pain is rooted not in the individual, but
(39:10):
in the family history, in fact, in the multi generational
family history. So there's no way to blame. So first
thing is, don't blame anybody. Number one. Number two, there
are three things you can do. Two of them are
healthy and sane. One of them is insane. You can
(39:31):
say to the person, I understand that this behavior in
your part, you're trying to soothe some pain. You're trying
to relieve some distress in your soul. And I love you,
and I'm not gonna blame you, and I'm here for you.
(39:53):
I can't do the work for you, but I'm here
for you. That's legitimate. All you can say, I understand
that what you're doing is you're trying to really, really
relieve some pain in your life. I don't blame you
for it, but it's too stressful for me. It's too
painful for me. I can't be around it. I'm sorry.
(40:15):
I love you, but I can't be around it. I
don't have the resources to handle it. So I can't
be with you. That's also clear. That's also saying. The
insane thing is I'm going to try and change you.
Beg you, cojoy you, force you, co urge you, bribe you,
(40:38):
convince you to be different because I need you to
be different so I can feel better. That's the insane part.
So I'm saying, do one of the first two, but
not the third. More powerfully, even more powerfully, you could say,
(41:00):
I get that you're the canary and the mine. You're
the one who's carrying or I'm exhibiting the pain of
the whole family and the multigenationial family, so this whole.
So thank you for pointing out to us that the
family needs healing and we're going to embark on that
healing path and we invite you to join us. But
if you're not ready, that's okay. We're going to do
(41:22):
it anyway. So that's what I would So that's what
I would say to you.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
Yeah, we're just on that concept of healing. Just from
a personal note, you've certainly helped for me to heal
my relationship with my mother, our mother, my brother Craig
and I. You know, she grew up in a very
significant poverty from Windsor, Ontario. Father was an alcoholic, died
when he was young. Mother raised four children under the
(41:50):
most extreme circumstances. Literally they were homeless. She was not
given a lot of love. Candidly, she was loved, but
wasn't told she was loved. And we grew up in
a household where we weren't told we were loved, like
literally not said those words until we were in our twenties.
And I remember, distinctly for me was when I was
(42:11):
about seven years old, my mother threw a toy at
my head when she was very upset one day, and
that was the moment I remember when I realized I
was no longer safe and ended up having to be
somebody different than myself. Yes, and it was reading your
books that I've had a profound impact on me. I
just want to say thank you again. And my question
to you is, how do we move from being a
(42:32):
sense of a victim to having compassion for the person
who hurt us?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
First of all by having compassion for yourself. Look, that's
a frightening thing to happen to a seven year old,
and it may have been the first time that you
consciously realized that you weren't safe, but it's not the
first time you experienced not being safe. Yes, what does
it mean to be a victim? A victim is somebody
(42:59):
who is at the effect of somebody else's behavior and
they're helpless and resourceless. Now, as soon as you realize,
by the way, is it that's surprising that you and
your brother went to work on helping kids around the
world to say, you know, at a certain point, when
(43:21):
you realize that you're not resources or helpless and you
start to heal, then actually compassion actually opens and then
you can say, well, what happened to my mother? You
know what happened to my mother? And my mother bitter
her best under the circumstances of her life, but that
(43:42):
was her best, and that best was constrained by what
she experienced as a child, which is tremendous loss and
tremendous anxiety and geminious insecurity. And so there's an old
English expression I forget where it's from. It it says
to understand is to forgive. So once you really understand somebody,
(44:08):
then you say, well, I get it they did that
because that's what they that's how they were programmed. And
you know this is true in the States as well,
But suddenly here in Canada Mark you have this terrible
legacy of child abuse and Indigenous communities, and those communities
(44:31):
prior to the coming of the Caucasians, they knew how
to parent much better than we did. They held their kids,
they didn't hit their kids, they cherished their kids, they
honored their kids. And then under the impact of the
residential schools where generation after generation were abducted from their
families and beaten and abused and coursed and all this,
(44:54):
then they became parent they did the same thing to
their children. So if you understand the history multi generationally,
one realizes there's nothing to forgive. But you have to
get past that victimhood because as long as you see
yourself as a victim that you know, yes, your mother
threw something active when you're seven, But sitting there today,
(45:18):
can you say that you're a victim or can you
say that you're somebody who had a wound and you've
healed it. Then you've got some power and you've got resources.
You know, neighbor's victim.
Speaker 5 (45:29):
But it was your work that pointed out to me
in the most effective way possible, and it was how
you articulated that relationship and looking at the perspective from
somebody else who is the person that's causing the wound
in the first place, and understanding empathy from them of
where they've come from, shifted my relationship with my mom.
So I just wanted to say thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Oh well, I'm so glad that happened. Yes, there's a
book by a family therapist called Mark Woolen. It starts
it didn't start with you, and it's about the multigenerational
transmission of trauma.
Speaker 4 (46:01):
You said that people want to see themselves not as
broken or irretrievably damaged, but it is actually fundamentally whole
with some stuff to work through. What's the difference between
seeing yourself as broken versus seeing yourself as whole but wounded.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
So when I asked a question about is anybody had
an addictive pattern? What you say to somebody? What's the
word that we use when somebody's healed from an addiction?
What have they done?
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Recovered?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Or here, yes, recovered? Okay, now let's look at the
English language again. What does the word what does it
mean to recover something.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
To uncover it, or to find it, find it again,
to find.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
It again, yeah, to find it again, yeah, But if
you've found it again, it means it was never destroyed
in the first place. Otherwise you couldn't re covered. So
what is it that people recover themselves, that recover themselves.
The true self was never destroyed. They got it, got suppressed,
(47:12):
they've got lost, they've got fogged over arm, but it
never was destroyed. If you see, if he was broken
or damaged goods, then that means that you're seeing yourself
as less than who you actually are. And and you
see this all the time. I mean, I'm sure all
(47:33):
three of you, you know, all kinds of people who've
behaved in difficult self harming, maybe selfish, maybe even hurtful,
maybe even criminal ways, but then they've become fully realized
and compassionate and productive and loving people. Well, they just
(48:00):
found their true selves. That's all that happened. Sometimes, people
who work with people on death row, these are people
that have been committed some terrible crime, usually in their
late teens, under the influence of trauma and gang culture
or whatever. But then they in prison the undergo this transformation.
(48:25):
I've met with them and other people I have met
with them, and it's not a romanticization to say that
they can be some of the most compassionate, sweetest people
in the world because they found themselves. Now, the legal
system doesn't recognize that you did this thirty years ago.
You know, we're not going to believe that you've changed,
(48:48):
but I've seen it, and I'm sure so have you, kay.
Speaker 5 (48:53):
But this has been the most remarkable and profound conversation
We've had icons, celebrities, actor, actors, as sports heroes, and
you're the one that we've been most excited to listen
and learn from. And you've done that with us today.
You spent your life shaping and helping us understand that
our wounds do not define us, but they do of
course shape us, and with compassion, curiosity, and courage, we
(49:17):
can heal. You reminded us that trauma is what happens
to us and what happens inside of us, and freedom
comes when we stop running away from that and start
understanding it. You reminded us not to ask why the addiction,
but instead ask why the pain, And of course you've
also reminded us that not every pain is traumatic if
(49:38):
we have the love and support around us. Thank you
for your wisdom. Thank you for your honesty, thank you
for your compassion, but most importantly, Gabor, thank you for
your love.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
And I want to thank you so much for your
gift of having so many of us feeling seen and
validate it and all of the work that you've done
within marginal lized communities.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Well again, thank you. It's moving to be with you,
and thanks for your curiosity and interest. Thanks very much.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Thank you for joining us. New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a moment.
Hosts And Creators
Craig Kielburger
Marc Kielburger
Martin Luther King III
Arndrea Waters King
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com