Gabor Maté: Why Your Trauma is Showing Up as Guilt, Fear, and Shame & How to Untrap Yourself from the Past

Why does trauma manifest as guilt and shame? How do we untrap ourselves from the past? Today, we welcome back renowned speaker on addiction, stress, and childhood development, Dr. Gabor Maté. They dive into the core of human identity and explore the delicate balance between being yourself and seeking acceptance, discovering the liberating truth that authenticity is the ultimate path to self-discovery. Gain insights into the complexities of the human emotional landscape and learn how to navigate and process fear, a powerful force that often holds us captive. Gabor talks about the top five regrets of dying people - a profound insight that serve as a compass, guiding us to live a life aligned with our deepest values and aspirations. He also talks about the intricacies of guilt and shares wisdom on how we can untrap ourselves from it, the universality of pain and trauma, the synergy between logic and creativity in problem-solving. In this interview, you'll learn: How to live with fear and anxiety How to deal with deep-rooted trauma How to handle grief and pain How to improve your personal growth Together, let's explore the infinite possibilities that unfold when we awaken to our true potential and embrace a mindset of continuous growth. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 03:56 How Do You Heal a Broken Man? 07:34 Tell Me Who You Are 11:33 The Small Still Voice Within Us 13:19 Be Yourself or Be Accepted But not Both at the Same Time 17:10 What Are the Most Common Emotions We Feel Everyday? 20:26 How Can We Process and Heal From Fear 28:11 How Can You Help Someone Who Refused to Be Helped? 31:06 The Top Five Regrets of Dying People 36:09 How Do We Untrap Ourselves From Guilt? 43:03 There’s No Path Without Pain, So Choose Which Path to Take 46:53 Embrace Your Freedom Responsibly 48:46 There’s No Hierarchy in Pain and Trauma 51:07 What is Integrative Thinking? 59:27 The Book “Blessed with a Brain Tumor” 01:02:00 Can I Continue to Grow? 01:04:15 How Do Emotions Translate to Physical Reality? 01:13:13 If We Could Just Wake Up to Our Possibilities Episode Resources: Dr. Gabor Maté | Website Dr. Gabor Maté | Instagram Dr. Gabor Maté | Twitter Dr. Gabor Maté | YouTube Dr. Gabor Maté | Facebook The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 2:48Jay Shetty?

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• 3:29Gabor Maté?

  You can be yourself or you can be accepted, but not both at the same time. At some point, you start wondering, who the heck are we anyway?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  We know him as the bestselling author of a number of books.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  His work on the relationship between addiction and childhood development.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  Please help me welcome Dr. Gabor Maté.

• 3:45Gabor Maté?

  The top regrets of people who died before that time, you know what it is? That they weren't themselves. They spent their whole life trying to please others. That's the top regret.

• 3:53Jay Shetty?

  How do we fix broken people?

• 3:59Jay Shetty?

  Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  The number one health and wellness podcast.

• 4:23Speaker 06

  Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty.

• 4:29Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast in the world, thanks to each and every one of you that keep coming back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Now, today's guest is someone that you absolutely adore, that you love, that I admire so deeply. I feel honoured whenever I'm in his presence. I'm a huge fan and follower of his work. And I would also like to say that we've been developing a little bit of a friendship behind the scenes, which I'm very grateful for as well. I'm speaking about the one and only Gabor Maté, who spent 20 years working in family practice and palliative care experience, and worked for over a decade in Vancouver's

• 5:10Jay Shetty?

  downtown east side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. Gabor is the bestselling author of five books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction. Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker, highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. And Gabor's latest book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, remains a bestseller globally, and I highly recommend you get a copy if you haven't already. If you have a copy, grab one for a friend. And really, this would be my recommendation, make it your book club pick for your local

• 5:55Jay Shetty?

  book club, for your online book club. Make it a book that you discuss and share. Please welcome back to On Purpose, Gabor Maté. Thank you for being here. I am fondly remembering not only the last interview we had, but the last time we were together in Vancouver, when I saw you just before my show, and we spent a few moments together. And I genuinely look forward to seeing you whenever I can. So thank you for doing this.

• 6:20Gabor Maté?

  Well, it's such a pleasure. And I remember bicycling down to your hotel.

• 6:25Gabor Maté?

  I wasn't in a great state. And we talked and that helped to ground me. And then I think it was my idea that we should meditate together. And we did, and that was just so helpful for me. So it's just good to sit with you in any capacity.

• 6:39Jay Shetty?

  Now, well, I remember I walked away from last time's conversation, both times. The first time we recorded and second time from that. And I always feel you create tiny, mini shifts in my mindset through very subtle points you make. And it takes someone who's deeply studied their subject, not just theoretically, but practically to be able to do that. So, thank you, but let's, let's dive straight in. I wanted to ask you this question. I've been, I've had the burning desire to ask you this question. So I read this quote the other day, and it says, it's by Frederick Douglass. And the quote goes, "It is easier to build strong children than fix broken men."

• 7:23Jay Shetty?

  And my question was, how do we fix broken people?

• 7:27Gabor Maté?

  There's a wonderful song by Leonard Cohen called Come Heal or Come Healing. So it begins, "Oh, gather up the brokenness, bring it to me now. The fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow." And then he says at some point, and here's the answer to your question. "Oh troubledness concealing an undivided love. The heart beneath is teaching to the broken heart above." So this poet, prophet, poet, visionary, saying we have two hearts. There's the brokenness above and the undivided love that's below. That's underneath.

• 8:09Gabor Maté?

  He's saying, there's the broken heart above, and then there's a heart beneath that teaching the broken heart. So that implied in that is that nobody's broken. Then underneath the brokenness, there's wholeness. So, and that's not only Leonard Cohen, any spiritual teachers you know, will tell you the same thing. So it's not a matter of fixing anything broken. It's finding the wholeness that's underneath the brokenness. Now Douglass is totally right. Studies have shown that if you get children who...

• 8:47Gabor Maté?

  Suffer for first three years and then things get okay for them. They do much worse than those children who are well-treated and have a good life for three years. And then everything goes to pieces. The latter group does much better. Because as Wordsworth says, "The child is the father of the man." So that what happens early in life shapes our worldview and our sense of ourselves. So yes, Douglas is totally right, but ultimately, when I look at people, whether they agree with me or don't, or whether they are suffering or not, or whether they, even when they do terrible things, there's a wholeness, there's an undivided love underneath it, isn't there?

• 9:32Gabor Maté?

  There's a show right now in Los Angeles by somebody who's in a death row prison in Texas. And his name is Obi, sentenced to death. And he's on death row, has been for the last 20 years. All these appeals wind their slow way through the courts. If he wins the appeal, the best thing he can hope for is life without parole. And he's in love with life. He's had a transformation. He's dealt with his addictions. He's dealt with his brokenness. He learned meditation. He's an artist. And some of his artists being shown in Los Angeles right now.

• 10:13Gabor Maté?

  Unfortunately, I can't go see it because it's only open certain days of the week and I'm not here. But there's somebody who came from a totally broken childhood and found a kind of presence. If you saw him, you and I could only envy the kind of presence and, at least to speak for myself, can't speak for you, the kind of presence and the kind of engagement that life that he's got in a death row prison. Well, if that can be healed, if that brokenness, the wholeness can be discovered underneath, there's no be broken.

• 10:44Jay Shetty?

  Very well said. I would agree to, at the core, at the root, at the essence, none of us are broken.

• 10:51Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Jay Shetty?

  And our engagement with that which is broken and imperfect often rubs off on us. But what would you say are the most detrimental experiences that people have in those three years that end up creating...

• 11:16Jay Shetty?

  Horrific ripple effects, long term.

• 11:18Gabor Maté?

  Anything that makes them disconnect from themselves, from their true selves, from their gut feelings, from their connection to their bodies, anything that deprives them of hope. I remember taking part in a retreat once, it's called an enlightenment intensive, where you do intensive spiritual work, I won't go into the details, but...

• 11:40Jay Shetty?

  Please go into the details.

• 11:41Gabor Maté?

  Well, it's diads, and it's two people at one time, sitting across from each other in the meditation posture, putting a question to one another. First, the question, one person asks, the other one listens, and then they switch places for four times, and then you get a different partner. And the question is, "Tell me who you are." The original question comes from Ramana Maharshi, whose work I'm sure you know, one of these Indian Rishi's and gurus, who just asked everybody, "Tell me who you are." And the idea is that by emptying your mind and saying whatever's in your head, clearing out the mental space, the direct experience of who you are will come to you.

• 12:26Gabor Maté?

  A direct experience, not a thought, not an emotion, but a direct experience. No, I never had a direct experience. And I was embittered at the end. And at the very last diad, the person says, "Tell me who you are." And I just started shaking. And my whole body was tingling. And instead of paying attention to that, I plunged into bitterness. And I said, "Is it my fault? They turned off the light in me, they killed the light in me so early." So I truly believed that the light in me had been killed by what had happened to me as an infant.

• 13:09Gabor Maté?

  And for much of my life, even after I became a healer, and even after I became a healer that was respected by so many people, I thought, "I could help heal everybody else, but I can't be healed myself." So, to go back to your question, whatever early experience kills your faith in your own possibilities, that's what's so damaging. And for that, it could be evidence or experiences of severe abuse. It could also be a very sensitive child.

• 13:44Gabor Maté?

  Who the world doesn't see for who they are, who the world doesn't permit to express themselves, so they shut off from themselves in order to be accepted by the world. So any really experience that deprives you of yourself, and that happens to a lot of us. So trauma is a huge spectrum, but anything that breaks your connection to yourself and your genuine, not your false egoic belief in yourself, but your genuine belief in your wholeness, that'll do it, and that happens to a lot of us.

• 14:17Jay Shetty?

  I've always personally experienced it as the volume of my inner voice.

• 14:23Gabor Maté?

  Yes.

• 14:25Jay Shetty?

  So I found at that a different point in my life, my inner voice was extremely loud and clear, and not only could I hear it clearly, but the direction was clear.

• 14:42Jay Shetty?

  And then I've had moments in my life where, as you're referencing, disconnected from yourself.

• 14:47Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 14:48Jay Shetty?

  That voice is extremely quiet, maybe even nonexistent, or it's screaming out for help.

• 14:58Gabor Maté?

  You mean the voice of you and yourself is very quiet?

• 15:00Jay Shetty?

  Correct, it can be.

• 15:02Gabor Maté?

  Well, the Bible talks about the small, still voice. They actually call it that, the small, still voice. And it really takes attention to notice it because there's so much noise in the world and so much noise in our heads. And there's all these other voices that are much louder. You know, the singer Sheryl Crow, she had breast cancer. And she said afterwards, and this could be, and I quote this in The Myth of Normal, and it could be right out of my own work, but she doesn't know about me. She just came to this awareness because the disease started or something. And she said that she always used to be serving other people and trying to meet other people's emotional needs.

• 15:40Gabor Maté?

  The breast cancer, now she's actually listening to herself. And she says, there used to be these loud voices inside myself telling me that whatever I did wasn't right enough. She says, now I've still those voices. You know, so on the one hand, the voices of self disregard and self loathing or self seduction are very loud. And that true voice for most of us is just so quiet. So it takes a lot of attention to notice it.

• 16:11Jay Shetty?

  A lot of what you're saying, today we experience it as this idea of people pleasing, shape shifting, mediating, wanting to make peace often in our families, in our friend circle, all of which are, can be good noble things. But often we find ourselves disconnected from ourselves, trying to play these different roles. Not only does that seem to be stemming from a form of trauma, of being disconnected from yourself early on, what steps can one take to regain one's connection with oneself?

• 16:54Jay Shetty?

  So that we're not running around shape shifting, people pleasing, but at the same time have genuine connections with others?

• 17:01Gabor Maté?

  In the book, we talk about this tension between authenticity and attachment. And authenticity being connected to our true selves or gut feelings, which is necessary. Nature gave us gut feelings for a good reason, gave us emotions for a good reason. Attachment is our need to belong. And if we can be authentic and belong, that's ideal. So if you can find relationships in which you can be our true selves and be accepted and loved, that's ideal. But a lot of our families of origin, our parents just couldn't give that to us. They had their own limitations, they couldn't see us, or they had their own traumas. Like I did as a parent. And so kids then get the message that you can be yourself

• 17:45Gabor Maté?

  or you can be accepted, but not both at the same time. At which point, for sheer survival's sake, for sheer survival's sake, we go with, well, what do we need to do to get accepted? And then we get that message reinforced in school and on the playground and with our peers and at our work. And at some point... You start wondering, "Who the heck are we anyway? And whose life am I leading anyway?" Well, how to get back to it? Here's the question. Prior to your awakening, and I'm sure that for your awakening, it was probably both a series of unique events, but also it was a long-term process.

• 18:30Gabor Maté?

  For me, it was mostly process rather than distinct experiences. But say, prior to awakening, did you sometimes know that you're not being authentic? Because I sure did. I didn't know why I was choosing not to be authentic. I wasn't even choosing it. I just wasn't... But something in me knew. Well, here's the question. Who inside us knows? Only that authentic self. That's always there. And so, I say to people, "Don't try and look for the authentic self. Just notice when you're not authentic. Just notice when you're not saying no. When there's a no that wants to be said, just see where you're not saying yes.

• 19:16Gabor Maté?

  But there's a yes that wants to be said inside you. Notice the impact on you when you don't assert your true self. How do you feel afterwards? Resentful, ashamed, or tired, or whatever? So, notice the difficulty being authentic and ask yourself, "Well, what is the belief that I'm carrying? That if I'm authentic, then what?" So, in other words, all that noticing, what does that do? Who's the one that's noticing? It's the authentic self. So, just by asking those questions, you're strengthening, you're empowering that authentic self. And...

• 19:57Gabor Maté?

  Just going back to that, the heart underneath is teaching the broken heart above. Well, that wholeness is teaching the disconnection. It's always there.

• 20:08Jay Shetty?

  I find that in between those two hearts and in between those two layers, there's almost a layer of guilt and shame. So when we go against our authentic self, we do it because we're scared of, whether we feel guilty or we may feel shame or fear.

• 20:28Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Jay Shetty?

  And if we act authentically, we then sometimes feel guilt for acting that way because of how it impacts others or shame and fear. So walk me through the construction of fear and guilt and shame, which seem to be such, like if you thought about the emotions we all experience most on a daily basis. I mean, let me ask you that, actually. What do you think? What are the emotions that you believe people are experiencing most often, most repetitively on a daily basis?

• 21:02Gabor Maté?

  I was gonna give you an easy answer to the shame, guilt, fear question, but then you threw a curveball.

• 21:08Jay Shetty?

  Sorry, I went off. I was, I'm following my, I'm following my authentic voice.

• 21:12Gabor Maté?

  No, I love curveballs. I just have to think about it.

• 21:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, please.

• 21:15Gabor Maté?

  So what are the emotions people experience most often? I think anger, rage and resentment. I think there's a lot more of that than being acknowledged. Often unacknowledged, experienced but not acknowledged for fear of consequences. I think also love, that we also are often afraid to acknowledge because it's so vulnerable. And we might see, if I want you to love me, but I'm afraid to be vulnerable, then I may try to impress you, which may be the closest thing I can get so that you will pay attention to me.

• 21:58Gabor Maté?

  You know, so that emotions, shame, I think is very frequent for a lot of people. That has to do with trauma more than anything else. Fear is something that people experience a lot, much more than they can admit to themselves. Joy, people are not so afraid of it. Well, you know what? That might be. Joy has been very difficult for me in my life. And I think some part of, actually, some part of me used to say, what right do I have to feel joy when there's so much suffering in the world? Now, that's logically a good question, but it's a nonsensical question.

• 22:33Jay Shetty?

  Why?

• 22:35Gabor Maté?

  Because there is a lot of suffering in the world and there's a lot of joy in the world. And one doesn't negate the other. So for me, it was like, what right do I have to experience joy when my grandparents died in Auschwitz? I quote this in the Metanormal, my friend and colleague and teacher, Bessel van der Kolk, psychiatrist who wrote the book, The Body Keeps the Score. He said to me once, Gabor, you don't have to drag Auschwitz around with you all the time, which means that you don't have to allow, not to forget about Auschwitz, but not to let that control your consciousness, which means you do have the right to feel joy.

• 23:19Gabor Maté?

  You do have the right to be happy, even as the world suffers, not because the world suffers and not ignoring the suffering in the world, but there's no contradiction.

• 23:29Jay Shetty?

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• 24:14Jay Shetty?

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• 24:57Jay Shetty?

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• 25:40Jay Shetty?

  Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Let's dive into some of those emotions because, and I love how they were easy answers for you and then the curve ball, but I think, as you said, fear is a repetitive, daily emotion thought for so many people.

• 26:00Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Jay Shetty?

  A lack of safety, emotionally, mentally, physically, on so many levels, we feel unsafe.

• 26:08Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Jay Shetty?

  How does one process and heal through and with fear, because it seems to be so consistent?

• 26:16Gabor Maté?

  The way that fear shows up in most people's lives is in the form of anxiety. See, we are wired for fear. There's a great nurse psychologist died a few years ago before his time, Dr. Panksepp, and he identified all these emotional circuits that we share with other mammals. And fear was one of them. We have a circuitry for fear, a good thing. We're not afraid we die out there in nature, you know? But that can become anxiety. So let me tell you a story. I want to show you this bracelet that I'm wearing.

• 26:50Speaker 07

  Hmm, it's beautiful.

• 26:52Gabor Maté?

  It is beautiful, and I never thought I'd ever be wearing a bracelet. But I was given this just shortly after the time that I met you. And this comes from a place called Haidegwa. In Haidegwa's islands in northern British Columbia where I live, they used to be known as, well, they used to be known as Haidegwa. Then with the British colonization, they became known as Queen Charlotte Islands.

• 27:15Gabor Maté?

  That's really funny, because I was speaking in London once, or actually, a couple of months ago, to an audience of twenty-one hundred Britishers. And I said, "Does anybody in this audience know who the hell Queen Charlotte was?" Nobody knew.

• 27:30Speaker 07

  No, I knew, yeah.

• 27:31Gabor Maté?

  Well, apparently she was some German princess who married King George, the mad King George, who was King of England when America became independent. Anyway, so the British came, they named it Queen Charlotte Islands. All of a sudden, these indigenous people, whose ancestors have been living there for something like thirteen thousand years, all of a sudden, they were living on, not on Haidegwa anymore, which means land of the people, but they were living in Queen Charlotte Island. So I was giving a trauma workshop there for Haide people. That's when I gave him this bracelet. And the meaning of the carvings means these words matter. At the end of two days, almost at the very end of the trauma workshop for the Haide people,

• 28:16Gabor Maté?

  a woman in her seventies at least comes up. And she said, "I used to speak perfect Haide until I was five years old.

• 28:27Gabor Maté?

  And then I forgot my language. And even when I've gone back to school as an adult to learn my native language, the words don't stick in my brain." And I said, "What happened to you?"

• 28:40Gabor Maté?

  Well, what happened to her? She went to these residential schools. Residential schools are where the indigenous kids were forced to go, run by the churches mostly. And she dared to speak her native language. And the teacher took a stick and beat her mercilessly, in her body, in her head, in her limbs. Oh, native kids in my own lifetime is when I was a teenager in British Columbia. A four-year-old Indian, they're not Indians, indigenous Canadians, First Nation kid, spoke their own language. They had a pin stuck in her tongue. So, they literally, as I said to her, "Look, you're losing your language. It was your organism protecting you.

• 29:25Gabor Maté?

  It was your fear system telling you that if you do that again, you might not survive." Because she hated herself for it. She hated herself for the anxiety. She hated herself because "I was so passive," she said. I said, "That passivity was your organism's only way to protect you." Because had you fought back, or had you asserted your right to speak your language, much worse would have happened to you. So that fear protected her. But it translates into anxiety, where it's no longer fear of a specific thing, it's just fear of the world.

• 30:10Gabor Maté?

  Now, the rate of anxiety, so we have a system for fear. And the greatest danger to a young child is the loss of relationship. Because without relationship, we can't survive. I mean, we're protect, we're defenseless, we're vulnerable, we're helpless. So the loss of protective adults is the biggest fear that the child has. In this society, a lot of parents can't be there for their kids the way they need to be, the way they want to be. Because of the stresses, economic, social, racial, political, whatever they're going through. Just the nature of the disconnected culture that we live in. Parents are not there for their kids the way the children need to be. The fear becomes chronic anxiety,

• 30:54Gabor Maté?

  that we're never safe. And now that becomes part of our sense of self. So what you say, "But this lack of emotional safety," what it actually is... Is that early childhood fear? Because when a child is afraid, they will ask for help. But when repeatedly the help is not available, and the adults don't come, because they're too busy, too stressed, too traumatized, too preoccupied, too downtrodden, or too propagandized by parenting experts to ignore their kids' cries, the child gets the message that there's no safety. So that original fear that's meant to result in a cry for help, now becomes chronic anxiety.

• 31:38Gabor Maté?

  So fear not dealt with gets ingrained as anxiety. It's no longer about anything specific.

• 31:47Gabor Maté?

  It's just being in the world is a source of fear, which it shouldn't be.

• 31:53Jay Shetty?

  It almost feels like, as you were saying, that what should result in a cry for help externally

• 32:00Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Jay Shetty?

  becomes a perpetual cry internally.

• 32:05Gabor Maté?

  That's exactly it.

• 32:06Jay Shetty?

  Without a feeling of being able to help yourself.

• 32:09Gabor Maté?

  Exactly. You know that Beatles song, "Help"?

• 32:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Gabor Maté?

  "Help, I need somebody, not just anybody." And John Lennon sings, and he was a very traumatized child, as you know, whose father left him when he was born, and whose mother abandoned him a few years later.

• 32:26Gabor Maté?

  And then he sings in his song, "When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody's help in any way. But now, those days are gone, I'm not so self-assured. So I open the door, you know, please help me."

• 32:41Gabor Maté?

  No, that's not the way it was. When he was younger, so much younger than today, he needed everybody's help in every way. But because the help wasn't available, he had to shut himself down and make himself sort of like a self-created, self-sufficient person. And only later on, as they realize, you know what, I actually do need help. But he was never that person who didn't need help. He just believed he didn't need help. Why did he believe that? As an adaptation, because the help wasn't there. So, so many of us. One of the biggest things that people are afraid to do is to ask for help.

• 33:14Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:15Gabor Maté?

  When I give workshops, and I myself is, my automatic reaction when somebody asks for help, "Oh, no, it's okay. I'm fine," even though the help would be very welcome, you know?

• 33:26Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. How do you find that? Because I feel so many people today have someone in their life who's closed off from help.

• 33:35Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Jay Shetty?

  It might be your partner, it might be a child, it might be a parent.

• 33:38Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Jay Shetty?

  We all have someone in our life who, in our limited capacity, but a little bit of awakening, we can notice that someone is really closed and won't receive help.

• 33:52Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Jay Shetty?

  How do you help someone who is rejecting help or not accepting that they may need it because of the position they've experienced, based on what you just said?

• 34:05Gabor Maté?

  I myself used to believe I was one of these people. I actually used to believe, can you believe this? I used to believe that everybody else could be stressed, but I couldn't be.

• 34:12Jay Shetty?

  Hmm. I used to feel like that, too.

• 34:14Gabor Maté?

  Yeah, I used to believe that I can help, I can help everybody, but I don't need help myself, you know?

• 34:19Jay Shetty?

  There used to be a time when I used to feel that, too.

• 34:21Gabor Maté?

  So, how do you help someone like that? You help them by accepting that that's how it is for them right now, and not trying to push your help on them. Because when you try and push help, you're just gonna get resistance. So you, if you can handle it, you can be around them and be open, but not insist or try and prove to them that they need help. Life will teach them. When I meditate these days, I do the compassion meditation, which says, you know, that, "May I face and overcome all of life's inevitable setbacks and challenges and failures with patience, understanding, strength and determination, and may I rise above them

• 35:01Gabor Maté?

  with compassion and morality and integrity and wisdom and mindfulness." If we can stare on people compassionately, without trying to prove to them that they need something that they don't believe they need, then at some point, life will bring a challenge. That may prove to them that, yeah, they need help. And if you're still around, open, then they'll reach out to you. If you try and convince them, bring them over, prove it to them, force it on them, and I believe I've done that. I've done it with my own family, I've done it with others. You just invite resistance.

• 35:43Gabor Maté?

  So the best way to help people is not to help unless the help is invited.

• 35:50Jay Shetty?

  And that's almost what most of us don't want to hear because we want to, again, going back to our earlier point, we want to fix and solve and make everything nice and perfect right now.

• 36:03Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Jay Shetty?

  And I guess that is also a form of trauma. There's something there as to why we want that.

• 36:11Gabor Maté?

  And when I write about people who are prone for chronic illness, it's often people, like autoimmune disease, for example. It's often, and this is not just my own finding, other researchers have found this as well, that there are people who tend to ignore their own emotional needs and are compulsively concerned with the emotional needs of others. And they tend to believe that, in the Metanormal, I quote an obituary. And obituaries are really interesting to me because they often highlight as laudable qualities the very things that I think contributed to a person's death.

• 36:48Jay Shetty?

  Let's talk about those.

• 36:49Gabor Maté?

  Yeah, there was a book written by an Australian nurse 12 years ago now called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People. And she, like, I used to work in palliative care, working with dying people, as you mentioned in the introduction. And for seven years, I was the medical coordinator of a big palliative care in the dying people at Vancouver Hospital. And this nurse, also palliative care, health worker, wrote this book, The Top Five Regrets, The Top Regrets of People Who Died Before That Time. You know what it is? That they weren't themselves, that they spent their whole life trying to please others. That's the top regret. Now, this obituary, you have to believe that I'm not making this up.

• 37:33Gabor Maté?

  This is a physician in Canada who died aged 72 of cancer. And the obituary says,

• 37:40Gabor Maté?

  Sidney and his mother had an incredibly special relationship, a bond that was apparent in all aspects of their lives until her death. As a married man with young children, Sidney would have dinner with his parents every day. Then he would go home as his wife Rosalyn and their three children waited for him with yet another dinner to eat and to enjoy. Not wanting to disappoint either woman in his life, Sidney kept eating two dinners a day for years until gradual weight decay and began to raise suspicions.

• 38:17Gabor Maté?

  Now, this man suffered from two fatal beliefs, and when I say fatal, I mean fail. One is that he was responsible for how other people feel,

• 38:26Gabor Maté?

  and the other is that he was never disappointed anybody. Now, so many of us go through life like that. You know, now, actually, I'm not responsible for how you feel. I'm responsible for how I act, for how I speak, what I do and what I say. I'm not responsible for how you feel and response. When you were in Vancouver and you contacted me, and if I hadn't feel like seeing you, but I hadn't slept all night, say, because I was up with some other duty or looking after somebody, if I had said yes and still come, met you for coffee, because I had fear of disappointing you,

• 39:06Gabor Maté?

  and because I didn't want you to feel disappointed, what would that have meant for me? It would have meant for me more fatigue, and probably I would have resented the hell out of you, even though I was pretending to be that, you know?

• 39:19Jay Shetty?

  Thank God.

• 39:21Gabor Maté?

  And you, on the other hand, if I said no, if I was authentic and I said, "Look, Jay, I'm sorry. So glad you're in town, but I was up all night," you know? Now, if you had felt hurt and perceived yourself as rejected by me, that's not on me. That's your interpretation of my behavior. Nothing to do with me. I just said what was true for me. So, but that fear of disappointment, had I been afraid to disappoint you because I don't want to lose your friendship, and I don't want to lose your friendship, but if I believe that if I'm authentic, I'm gonna lose Jay's friendship, that's gonna keep me inauthentic. And you never know me.

• 40:02Gabor Maté?

  And even when you like me, there's still gonna be a fear in me. What if you really knew me?

• 40:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Gabor Maté?

  So it doesn't even work.

• 40:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Gabor Maté?

  But we're so afraid of disappointing others.

• 40:13Jay Shetty?

  And then one day I may feel we have an inauthentic friendship.

• 40:16Gabor Maté?

  That's right.

• 40:16Jay Shetty?

  Because I can notice that you're not being fully yourself.

• 40:19Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Jay Shetty?

  And then I can even feel that way. You can let me down even by trying to be everything I wanted you to be. That's what I find so fascinating in life is that you can let someone down even after becoming everything you thought they wanted you to be.

• 40:35Gabor Maté?

  Well, exactly. Well, go back to the example of coffee. If I said to you, Jay, I'm sorry, I can't do it today. Which honors you more?

• 40:45Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:46Gabor Maté?

  If I believe that you're so weak and vulnerable that you can't handle no? Or if I honor you by telling the truth?

• 40:55Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:55Gabor Maté?

  Which shows you more respect?

• 40:57Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm. Definitely there.

• 41:00Gabor Maté?

  So that I can be everything you want to be and still not honor you?

• 41:03Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yeah. It's fascinating how we can be so opposite in our perceptions and viewpoints.

• 41:12Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Jay Shetty?

  And a big part of that comes also, we talked about fear, but I wanted to talk about guilt because...

• 41:18Gabor Maté?

  Oh, yeah, guilt.

• 41:19Jay Shetty?

  Guilt.

• 41:20Gabor Maté?

  What do you want to say about guilt?

• 41:21Jay Shetty?

  No, well, I want to hear from you about guilt, but when I think of guilt, I think it's such a strong driver for so many actions in the world today.

• 41:33Gabor Maté?

  It is.

• 41:34Jay Shetty?

  We're guilty of something in the past and therefore we do something strange in the future or the present.

• 41:40Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Jay Shetty?

  That we wouldn't have done. We feel guilty right now and that makes us say something that we don't mean or something that we...

• 41:49Gabor Maté?

  Exactly.

• 41:50Jay Shetty?

  How do we...

• 41:55Jay Shetty?

  Untrap ourselves from the trappings of guilt.

• 41:58Gabor Maté?

  Great, well, let me tell you a story. So, you know, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, Moses is a Hebrew boy, born at a time when the Pharaoh's soothsayers declared that some Hebrew male born around this time will rise up and challenge the Pharaoh. So they decide to kill all the Hebrew newborns by throwing him into the Nile River. But Moses' mother, rather than throws the boy into the river, but in a liquor basket. And so Moses flows down that river, and he gets plucked out of the water

• 42:39Gabor Maté?

  by the Pharaoh's daughter, who adopts him. So this Hebrew infant is adopted into the royal court, treated like a prince. That's why Walt Disney could make a film called Prince of Egypt. All this happened just so Walt Disney could make a film. In any case, there's an extra-biblical legend. It's not in the Bible, but it's an ancient legend. And you think, what the heck is this guy talking about? I just asked him about guilt and he's talking about...

• 43:10Jay Shetty?

  No, I love this. This is my favorite type of answer, is when I'm curious and I'm following because I don't know where you're going.

• 43:16Gabor Maté?

  Okay, great, but believe me, I'm gonna come back to guilt.

• 43:18Jay Shetty?

  I believe it, I believe it, I trust you.

• 43:20Gabor Maté?

  So the legend is that Moses is a toddler, and the Pharaoh's soothsayers divine that he might be a danger, which eventually he proves to be. So they decide to put him to a test. They put in front of him two sparkling objects. Now, I don't know if you remember, but in the Bible, Moses is a speech impediment. And it's his brother Aaron, who has to do the speaking for him. How does he get the speech impediment? Well, the Pharaoh's soothsayers say, "Well, this boy needs to be examined", and they decide to put him to a test. And they put in front of him two sparkling objects. One of them is a royal diamond of Egypt, and the other is a sparkling ember of, glowing ember of coal. Now, if Moses reaches for the royal diamond,

• 44:04Gabor Maté?

  it means he's got royal ambition, and he needs to be killed. So there's this little toddler, delightedly looking at these two scintillating objects, and his hand starts moving towards the diamond, at which point, standing behind him is Gabriel, Gabriel.

• 44:24Gabor Maté?

  Which is the Hebrew version of my name Gabor, by the way. And grabs his hand and takes it away from the diamond and puts it to the coal. Now Moses, finishing the motion that kids will do, picks up the coal, puts it to his mouth, and burns his lips. And that's how he develops the speech impediment. Now here's my question to you. Is the angel Moses's friend or enemy?

• 44:50Speaker 08

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• 45:20Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in store or online. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life.

• 46:04Jay Shetty?

  State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. He's trying to be a friend, but...

• 46:30Gabor Maté?

  But he hurt him. Had to hurt him to save his life. Right? He was a friend. Guilt is that kind of a friend.

• 46:38Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 46:38Gabor Maté?

  Okay? Guilt comes on in early childhood, not because you did anything wrong.

• 46:46Gabor Maté?

  But because you sense that whatever you did displeased your parents, and you can't afford to do that. So there needs to be an internal mechanism that keeps you close to your parents. That says, for example, if you're authentic, and you show your anger, you won't be accepted. There better be an internal mechanism to keep you on track. So guilt comes along as this friend that says, "No, take your hand away from where you want to put it. You have to stifle your real desires." So guilt comes along to maintain a relationship. Not because you did anything wrong, because a two-year-old, three-year-old, they can't do anything wrong by definition. They may do things that are not good,

• 47:31Gabor Maté?

  and they need to be taught not to do it, but it's not wrong. There's no guilt there. There's no, "I'm gonna do something evil here," you know? So guilt is totally not appropriate. And there's ways of teaching children without guilt. But guilt comes along to keep you in line. Now, is that your friend or your enemy? It's your friend, but it's hurting you. The problem with these early friends, and I call them... Sometimes people don't like this word, but I say, "Call them stupid friends." The stupidity that comes in effect, they don't realize that you're an adult. You can make your own decisions now and look after yourself. You don't need to be controlled by their advice that was meant for a two-year-old.

• 48:16Gabor Maté?

  So that's where they... They're just not educable. So when I say to people these days, now, most people who feel guilty when they act a little bit on their own behalf, I say to them, "For God's sakes, have a party, celebrate. I've done something for myself." Call your friends, you know, have a celebration that you were so, quote-unquote, selfish, like Sheryl Crow said. All these voices are always told her that she has to ignore herself and serve others. No, she doesn't listen to them anymore. That's the guilt. So, you know, recognize the guilt, say hello to it, thank it. Now, is there such a thing as health remorse? Yeah. If I promised to meet you for coffee, and I don't show up

• 49:01Gabor Maté?

  because I find something more pleasurable to do...

• 49:06Gabor Maté?

  I should feel some remorse. So remorse is about specific, that's healthy remorse. You know, if I break my word, if I hurt somebody or I, you know,

• 49:18Gabor Maté?

  I should feel remorse. But that's not a long-term thing. It's not the chronic guilt that you're talking about. That's nothing in what happened a long time ago, and now it limits me, or controls me. It's a healthy remorse for some specific thing. That's different from guilt. Guilt is this old friend that's long outlived their usefulness.

• 49:39Jay Shetty?

  And the challenge is that we still treat it like a today friend.

• 49:44Gabor Maté?

  Exactly.

• 49:45Jay Shetty?

  It's almost like we're so scared of breaking that dependence as well. We are thinking, well, I feel guilty that I'm not around, so I'll stay around. This individual, this group of people, whatever it may be. But there's a part of me that wants to depend on them as well. And I don't want to break free completely as well, because I don't even know what that looks like. Like you're saying, like as an adult, you can take care of yourself, you can walk your own path, but you're actually scared of doing that. And so you accept the pain of guilt. Because it allows for dependence.

• 50:23Gabor Maté?

  Well, that's a good point, and I often say to people, you're gonna have pain one way or the other.

• 50:28Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 50:29Gabor Maté?

  Which pain would you like?

• 50:32Gabor Maté?

  Because sometimes in life, there's no pain-free options. You can have the pain of suppressing yourself for the sake of being accepted, or you can have the pain sometimes of being yourself and not being accepted.

• 50:46Gabor Maté?

  You're gonna have pain one way or the other. Now, I have my own bias that the pain of not being ourselves ultimately is far the greater and more chronic pain. And that the pain, the short-term pain of being ourselves, brings liberation and genuine independence, which means I can have genuinely independent the relationships with other people who are willing to accept me as independent.

• 51:12Gabor Maté?

  You know, but in the short term. Which pain do you want?

• 51:16Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:16Gabor Maté?

  Not, there's no pain-free option.

• 51:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, for sure. That you reminded me of this beautiful idea that Thich Nhat Hanh shares, that there's familiar pain and unfamiliar pain. And these are our two choices. And the challenge is, we're so scared of unfamiliar pain.

• 51:37Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 51:37Jay Shetty?

  That we would rather choose familiar pain.

• 51:40Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Jay Shetty?

  And go through the same pain because we know how it's going to feel.

• 51:44Gabor Maté?

  Exactly.

• 51:45Jay Shetty?

  And we think, oh, at least I'm aware. At least I am conscious of how bad it can get.

• 51:51Gabor Maté?

  Exactly.

• 51:52Jay Shetty?

  But hearing you speak, being independent or being dependent, both has pain.

• 51:58Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Jay Shetty?

  And, but the pain of dependence far outweighs the pain of independence.

• 52:05Gabor Maté?

  Well, just put a bit of a nuance in there. Ultimately, I mean, I mean, Thich Nhat Hanh also talk about interbeing.

• 52:11Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:12Gabor Maté?

  How we all inter-are.

• 52:13Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:13Gabor Maté?

  So in a certain sense, we do depend on each other, you know? And that's okay. The question is, do we depend on each other authentically or inauthentically? The fact that I'm independent doesn't mean that I'm not going to reach out for help.

• 52:27Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:29Gabor Maté?

  Or that I won't offer it.

• 52:30Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:31Gabor Maté?

  But it does mean that I will be honest with you. And I won't pretend to be somebody else that I'm not, so that you'll accept me.

• 52:39Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:40Gabor Maté?

  You know, so there's anything interesting, weird difference between two phrases that sound very familiar. One is called individualism, and the other is called individuation.

• 52:52Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 52:53Gabor Maté?

  Now rugged individualism is, I don't need anybody, and I, you know, it's me against the world. And this is the North American capitalist ideal, you know?

• 53:03Gabor Maté?

  Well, human beings never would have evolved had we been those rugged individualists.

• 53:07Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:08Gabor Maté?

  The rugged individualists wouldn't last more than one generation.

• 53:10Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:12Gabor Maté?

  But individuated means...

• 53:15Gabor Maté?

  That we can be ourselves, truly ourselves, in genuine relationship with others. Not rugged individuals. I mean, the most boring people are rugged individuals. Because they all look the same, you know? So you can be individuated and be truly yourself. And still belong and still

• 53:42Gabor Maté?

  vulnerably desire human contact, you know?

• 53:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think there's a lot of rhetoric around, we don't care what anyone else thinks and it doesn't matter and you just do your own thing and it's almost, that's almost a bitter response as well because we do have to care what people think. If we lived in a world where you didn't care what anyone thought,

• 54:07Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 54:08Jay Shetty?

  it wouldn't be that healthy because we would do all sorts of obscene horrific things.

• 54:14Gabor Maté?

  I'd trace a different.

• 54:14Jay Shetty?

  I'm intrigued, yeah, I'm intrigued.

• 54:16Gabor Maté?

  Yeah. I don't care what anybody thinks. But I do care what I do and how it affects other people. You know, so there's another spiritual teacher, Gunarwatan, he wrote a book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I've just been working through recently and he's talking about a higher morality that comes from being truly yourself and in touch. And he says, well, you don't need rules anymore because it's like Saint Augustine said, "Love and do what you will." So if you actually love the world, you don't have to give yourself rules. Because that love will dictate how you act towards other people. I can't worry about what other people think. Look, if I worried about what other people think,

• 55:00Gabor Maté?

  I would not have written any of my books because each of my books challenge the the reigning orthodoxy in, in say, medicine, you know, or whether it's around attention deficit or stress and disease or addictions. And every time I write a book, I'm saying something that I'm not saying that I invented it, but that I've come to understand and fruently uh believe and want to communicate, but I can't worry about what other people think.

• 55:25Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:25Gabor Maté?

  Or when I make a political statement, I'm responsible for what I say, how I say it, but not what other people think about it. But I, but that doesn't mean that I can, that I can ignore other people's experience.

• 55:37Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:38Gabor Maté?

  So as long as my intention is purely to speak a truth and I do so with integrity, I can't worry about what other people think.

• 55:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Gabor Maté?

  I, I can't.

• 55:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Gabor Maté?

  But that doesn't mean I'm gonna go around just doing terrible things 'cause I don't care what you think. As, as long as I'm convinced that what I do, if I've done that kind of inventory.

• 55:59Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 56:00Gabor Maté?

  And I haven't always.

• 56:01Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:02Gabor Maté?

  But if I do an inventory about, well, what is my intention here?

• 56:06Jay Shetty?

  Is there a hierarchy of pain or hierarchy of trauma?

• 56:11Gabor Maté?

  What do you mean by hierarchy?

• 56:12Jay Shetty?

  I feel like, people feel like, well, this trauma is worse than this trauma and this trauma is better than this one. We often hear about that as a conversation. Is that accurate?

• 56:22Gabor Maté?

  So, one could say so, uh, 'cause if you look at a child who's sexually abused as opposed to a child whose parents just can't honor and accept and, and validate their emotions, well, my god, you're talking about two different set of experiences. So that there's certainly horrific things happen to some people, to wound them, and other people suffer wounds in a very different way. But the question is, is it useful to make that distinction? It's one thing to recognize it, but let's say, let's say you're my four-year-old. You come to me and you say, uh... That I'm afraid of so and so.

• 57:07Gabor Maté?

  And I say, snap out of it. Only cards are afraid. And they get out of here, take care of yourself. And then you went to your mom and said, I tried to talk to daddy, but you know. Would it be helpful for your mother to say, oh, snap out of it? Think of all the kids that are being sexually abused. Think of all the starving kids. Think of all the kids that are being bombed. What are you complaining about? Would that be helpful?

• 57:30Jay Shetty?

  No.

• 57:31Gabor Maté?

  So that it's not a helpful game to play. I don't compare people's traumas. Trauma simply means a wound and people are wounded in all kinds of ways. When I try to help people, the least helpful thing I can do is to tell them that somebody else's trauma is much worse than mine, much worse than yours. So objectively, yes. Practically, it's not a helpful distinction.

• 57:53Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 57:55Gabor Maté?

  Uh, people are wounded and you have to tend to the wound, whatever it is. You know, if you came to me with a cut on your arm and you asked me to stitch it up, it wouldn't be helpful for me to tell you that, oh, what are you worried about? There's people with broken arms out there or people with broken, you know. So, no, it's not a helpful thing to engage in, even though there's truth in it.

• 58:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. What's really fascinating every time I speak to you, Gabor, is that there's such nuanced subtlety. And there's a quote that I want to share with you to get your thoughts on. I want to bring it up here.

• 58:31Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 58:32Jay Shetty?

  So this quote is from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

• 58:37Gabor Maté?

  Okay.

• 58:37Jay Shetty?

  Who famously wrote, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise."

• 59:00Gabor Maté?

  Absolutely. So that's brilliant. And what Fitzgerald is talking about there is what is called integrative intelligence.

• 59:10Gabor Maté?

  And integrative intelligence is when you can say, on the one hand, on the other hand, both things can be true, and I need to somehow come to some conclusion about them without rejecting the one truth or the other. Now, little kids are totally incapable of integrative intelligence. So a three-year-old will either say, "I hate you daddy," or "I love you daddy." But they can't say, "I love you daddy, but I'm very angry with you," which is really what's going on. It's either love or hate. So integrative thinking is a capacity of intellectual and actually emotional maturation. A lot of people are completely incapable of it. It's one or the other.

• 59:52Gabor Maté?

  You talked about the deadness of the heart and the moral apathy. And all my life, since I've been conscious of the horrors, including and beginning with the Holocaust that nearly killed me and killed my grandparents, nearly killed my parents and I. When I became conscious of that at age 11, what happened was that my parents had a book on a high shelf, they didn't want me to read. And when I was 11, I climbed up on a chair, and it was a book called The Scourge of the Swastika. And it was about, it was the first book about the Nazi horrors.

• 1:00:36Gabor Maté?

  And I saw photographs and I read the story. And for years, G I. Thor was, literally every day in my head would be dizzy. I'd spin, saying, "How is this possible? How is our heart not broken every day?" I'm asking you now, because I'm wrestling with this question. I suppose I have an intellectual answer, or more to the point, maybe along the lines of what Shujal says, how can our heart be broken and not be broken at the same time? Because I think both are necessary.

• 1:01:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And I find everything all across the world that occurs, I feel like people's hearts...

• 1:01:13Jay Shetty?

  Are broken,

• 1:01:16Jay Shetty?

  but they break and ache for different things. And I think that that's why the words of Fitzgerald resonate so strongly with me.

• 1:01:26Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Jay Shetty?

  Because just to repeat those last two lines, one should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise. And

• 1:01:42Jay Shetty?

  you know, what you're saying, it's how I was trained in the monastery as well. The goal was always, how can you be a helper? How can you be a server? How can you be useful? How can you help heal? Like, that's what you look for

• 1:01:58Jay Shetty?

  in moments of tragedy, whatever they may be. And I just think that not much unites us on the heart level as equals across the world. I don't think there's many things that we look to globally as the human race, as we were once referred to or called to, that creates a sense of connectivity. And there's genuine fear that makes us feel, well, if my heart breaks for this, then what if, what will happen to my heart?

• 1:02:38Gabor Maté?

  But the grief might be too much to bear?

• 1:02:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, or, or not, not that. I mean more so that, well, if my heart breaks for this event,

• 1:02:47Jay Shetty?

  some part of it is, yes, there's too much to think about, for sure. It's overwhelming.

• 1:02:51Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Jay Shetty?

  And then the other side is, well, if it breaks for this, then is it allowed to break for that as well? You know, this idea of holding two opposing ideas seems to be such a need in the world, like just generally, like even the belief of

• 1:03:10Jay Shetty?

  I have to work on my health, that I'm happy I'm alive. Like, these are two opposing ideas. Like, we're not looking at it from, I'm unhealthy or I'm healthy.

• 1:03:19Gabor Maté?

  Well, you know what's interesting there is that when I was working in palliative care, sometimes people would say to me, and this is amazing, I don't recommend it, but they'd say, they'd be dying. They actually be dying. They'd have a couple of weeks left. They'd say, Doc, I don't want to explain this exactly, but this disease is the best thing that ever happened to me.

• 1:03:38Gabor Maté?

  I don't wish it on anybody, but what were they talking about? Now, there's a guy, a quote in The Myth and Normal, who wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor. Blessed with a Brain Tumor. Young Australian guy, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor, did have surgery, did accept treatment. He also had a spiritual transformation. Has lived longer than his prognosis. I don't know what his current status is, but wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor, and by the way, he developed a brain tumor at exactly the same spot they used to point at with an imaginary gun to shoot himself in the head when he was thinking of suicide.

• 1:04:21Gabor Maté?

  I said, "What do you mean Blessed with a Brain Tumor?" And he said, "Well, knowing that I'm gonna die, or that I might, means that every moment is precious." He says, "That means that when I'm talking to you or anybody else, I'm fully aware that this may be the last conversation we'll ever have." That means that every moment is absolutely precious. I've never been so engaged with life. And that's what people meant. And so that even a disease that was gonna take their lives, they'd say, "And why? Because the disease taught them to be authentic for the first time in their lives, and they found out that was much more precious than anything else." Now, that's not a bargain I'd recommend to anybody.

• 1:05:04Jay Shetty?

  Totally, yeah.

• 1:05:06Gabor Maté?

  I'm just telling you that I've witnessed it. And it's quite astonishing

• 1:05:12Gabor Maté?

  how many people do find authenticity, to go back to our previous theme, they value that over anything else, over even longevity. Now, most of us would probably run the other way. Again, I'm not recommending it.

• 1:05:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Gabor Maté?

  I'm just saying, I've seen it.

• 1:05:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, but it's always those opposing ideas, that feeling of... I'm good and I want to be better.

• 1:05:34Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Jay Shetty?

  I'm a good husband, or a good dad, or a good mom, or I'm a good whatever. At the same time, I'm not good enough. Like, you know, whatever it may be, not that, that's negative. But the idea of I, I, I know I can do more and I want to do more. So there's such a need for this dichotomy almost to be held.

• 1:05:57Gabor Maté?

  Well, is there?

• 1:05:59Jay Shetty?

  Well, the ability to hold those two opposing ideas is needed, right? Like, because you don't, I don't want to live in a world where I think I'm perfectly healthy. Everything's amazing, because then I may miss certain challenges. And I also don't want to live in the other world of, oh my God, like, everything's falling apart and I'm dying every second of the day, like.

• 1:06:16Gabor Maté?

  But what if we just looked at it in a unitary way? Then it's a matter of growth.

• 1:06:20Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:21Gabor Maté?

  Then I'm not as fully grown as I might be.

• 1:06:22Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:23Gabor Maté?

  But there's nothing wrong.

• 1:06:24Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:06:24Gabor Maté?

  You know, you know, so, you know, I'll be eighty, you know? Let me talk about.

• 1:06:30Jay Shetty?

  You say eighty?

• 1:06:31Gabor Maté?

  Eighty, yeah. I know it's a big number.

• 1:06:34Jay Shetty?

  You're doing great. This is amazing.

• 1:06:36Gabor Maté?

  Well, do the numbers. I was born in forty-four.

• 1:06:39Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, I always forget.

• 1:06:40Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:41Jay Shetty?

  I forget when I'm with you.

• 1:06:42Gabor Maté?

  Yeah. I mean, there's this expression, I've been thinking about this recently, this expression, growing older.

• 1:06:47Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:48Gabor Maté?

  So we, we could just say being older, or becoming older, or getting older, but we say growing older.

• 1:06:53Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:53Gabor Maté?

  Now, that's an interesting phrase, isn't it?

• 1:06:55Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:55Gabor Maté?

  Because actually, as we get older, we shrink.

• 1:06:59Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:59Gabor Maté?

  So what are we talking about, growing older? Well.

• 1:07:03Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:04Gabor Maté?

  Because growth, being an emotional and spiritual process, that continues, that can continue forever.

• 1:07:10Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:10Gabor Maté?

  So for me, it's not a matter of, I'm good, but I can be better. It's a question of, can I continue to grow?

• 1:07:17Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:18Gabor Maté?

  Not that there's anything wrong now, but can I continue to grow?

• 1:07:22Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:23Gabor Maté?

  Which is really the, um, essence of life.

• 1:07:26Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:26Gabor Maté?

  As long as there's life, there's growth, isn't there?

• 1:07:28Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:29Gabor Maté?

  You know?

• 1:07:29Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:30Gabor Maté?

  And the growth may be, at some point, purely physical.

• 1:07:35Gabor Maté?

  At some point, physically, there might even be contraction, but spiritually and emotionally, there can always be growth. So it's rather than a dichotomy, it's more like a unitary process.

• 1:07:47Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm. I, I, I do appreciate that. I do feel that. What is, you just sparked something for me. You were giving this example, this story just told about how the gentleman, when he thought he was going to commit suicide, he would hold his, almost like a gun to his head.

• 1:08:03Gabor Maté?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Jay Shetty?

  And that's the place he developed the trauma.

• 1:08:06Gabor Maté?

  Yeah, the tumor.

• 1:08:08Jay Shetty?

  How does trauma intercept the body in that way? Like this, that feels such like a physical example of that.

• 1:08:18Gabor Maté?

  I can give you other examples.

• 1:08:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Gabor Maté?

  When I was working in palliative care, I was looking after a young woman, she was thirty-eight, with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is a disease in the nervous system, you basically get paralyzed. The, the muscles that, or the nerves that activate your muscles just die. They harden, that's what sclerosis means. So they, they become rigid and they become unable to move. This woman, she was a dancer, a beautiful woman, and we talked a lot in her last weeks. She told me that all her life, she used to have this dream of being buried alive,

• 1:09:01Gabor Maté?

  boxed in, unable to breathe, unable to move. She was a dancer and she began to notice that on the dance floor, she couldn't execute the movements anymore. Something was wrong. So she was diagnosed with ALS. And she went to the office of the ALS Society and on the wall, there was a poster that said, "Having ALS is like being buried alive."

• 1:09:25Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 1:09:26Gabor Maté?

  The cellist, Jackton Dupree, was a great classic, British classical cellist, died in her forties. She was a big international rocket, star in the classical music world. She died of MS, multiple sclerosis, she couldn't move anymore. By the time she was in her late twenties, she couldn't play a cello anymore.

• 1:09:51Gabor Maté?

  When she was eight years old, she said to her sister Hillary, "Don't tell her mommy this, but when I grow up, I won't be able to move or walk."

• 1:10:00Gabor Maté?

  Now, all of these people, these three people, the guy with the brain tumor, the woman with the ALS, Jacqueline Dupree, they'd been deeply traumatized in childhood. I'm not going to go into how, but they had been. That woman's dream that she couldn't move or walk was literally an expression of her emotional experience in her family of origin. In her deathbed, nobody came to see her from her family. She was all alone, like she had been all her life. She couldn't be herself, she couldn't speak or move or get enough air to be herself. So that dream was metaphoric to start with, then became a physical reality. Now, how does the metaphor, or how does the emotion, how does the trauma,

• 1:10:45Gabor Maté?

  translate into physical reality? That has to do with the scientific little secret, "Don't tell any doctors this," because they they might not know what to do with it, but, well, some of them don't. They're not taught in medical school. Mind and body are inseparable. Our emotions, our nervous system, our emotional system in our brains and our bodies, our nervous system, our hormonal apparatus and our immune system are actually one system,

• 1:11:14Gabor Maté?

  all serving survival and growth and reproduction. And so they're not separate. Even to say that they're connected is a bit false because it's one.

• 1:11:26Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:11:27Gabor Maté?

  No, which means that what happens emotionally can have a significant impact on the nervous system, on the gut, on the heart, on the immune system and on hormones. Just obviously. So, without going into the mechanisms of how trauma affects, but trauma can affect genetic functioning, how chromosomes function, trauma can affect our immune system. Actually, for example, a study that I quote, "Women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer," according to a Harvard study a few years ago. But that means that the severe emotions endured by the woman with PTSD can declare themselves in a form of malignancy because

• 1:12:12Gabor Maté?

  they affect the immune system. And the milder the symptoms, the less the risk of ovarian cancer. So, mind and body being one unit, obviously, our emotional lives and emotional traumas and wounds can show up in our physiology. Which is why autoimmune diseases are much more common amongst racialized women, both in Canada and the US, because they're hurt a lot more as women and as racialized people. So, it's just all one thing. And again, is that a new finding, or is that something... Or is that ancient wisdom? And it's both. It's both modern science, not taught in medical schools,

• 1:12:57Gabor Maté?

  for reasons that are interesting but rather distressing, and it's ancient wisdom as well. It's all one.

• 1:13:07Jay Shetty?

  And with that approach, I mean, we can't minimize the number of steps and the uniqueness of those, but the hope is that people can work medically and mentally to be able to release that trauma.

• 1:13:20Gabor Maté?

  I have photographs on my, um, on my cellphone, on my computer, of a woman that I met, um, five years ago. I gave a talk in London on this subject of mind-body unity and how stress and trauma can lead to autoimmune disease. And autoimmune disease is where the immune system attacks the body itself. And this woman sent me photographs a year ago. Now, when I met her, she'd been diagnosed with autoimmune disease called systemic lupus, which has got a typical presentation of what's called a butterfly rash. So, her face is red, like here, like the wings of a butterfly, with the body of the butterfly as a red rash over and over. It's called a butterfly rash. It's typical of that disease. And she sent me a picture of her fingers when she was diagnosed.

• 1:14:02Gabor Maté?

  They were like yellow, as wax, because the blood supply had been constricted. She was told that you've got this disease, we don't know what causes it, can't cure it. Probably it'll get worse and you'll be on medication for the rest of your life. I could send these photographs, you could actually show them because she's given me permission. She sent me pictures a year ago. Face totally beautiful, pink as anything, no rash, fingers are as pink as mine and yours. No medication, no treatment. She just dealt with the emotional part of it. All her life she had suppressed herself, just along the lines I've been talking about. She dealt with her trauma. She's become fully authentically and vigorously herself. The disease is gone.

• 1:14:47Gabor Maté?

  Doctors would say, or some doctors say, "Well, that's just an anecdote." Yeah, it's an anecdote, but it has to be a true anecdote. I pay attention to anecdotes. Not only that, this has been studied systematically by others. And there are people who, once they deal with the emotional side of things and take charge of their lives, they recover from diseases that are supposed to have been hopeless. And if you just look at the example of Stephen Hawking, the great physicist, who was diagnosed with ALS at age 20, he lived another 55 years. Now, the disease progressed, but he outlived his prognosis by a good half a century.

• 1:15:25Gabor Maté?

  Folks, I hate to tell you this, we doctors don't know everything. And especially, we don't fully understand, I should say, as a profession, the wonders workings of mind and body and the spirit and how they all interact. So when you look at the indigenous healing practices, like the North American natives, they've got this medicine wheel, the four quadrants, which is, you know, the physical and the mental, which means also the emotional, and the social and the spiritual. And those four quadrants have to be in balance for us to be healthy. Now, they didn't have the science we do. And they didn't have the amazing achievements of Western medicine, which are truly miraculous.

• 1:16:07Gabor Maté?

  But they did have a wisdom that if only we adopted and combined it with the incredible achievements of Western medicine, boy, what a health system we could possibly have.

• 1:16:17Jay Shetty?

  That's definitely the, what you're helping try and build for the future. And, and all of our platforms are dedicated to that. Hopefully, we can get to a place for that integrative. Holistic viewpoint.

• 1:16:31Gabor Maté?

  And there are more and more physicians practicing that way.

• 1:16:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Gabor Maté?

  You know, there are people, functional medicine and integrated medicine, not as holistic as I'd like them to be, but far more holistic than mainstream medicine. And these are medically trained physicians like I was. So there's not like some fly-by-night, alternative weirdo cult. I mean, these are just doctors who, like myself, at some point came to terms with the limitations of their education and needed to infuse some more ancient wisdom into how they practice the arts of healing.

• 1:17:07Jay Shetty?

  Gabor, I'd love to end with, I'd love to hear from you what your wish, your prayer, your hope, however you'd like to word it for humanity is right now, today, at this time, if there's some words that come from your heart.

• 1:17:20Gabor Maté?

  If we could just wake up to our possibilities.

• 1:17:25Gabor Maté?

  You know, the famous story of the Buddha where he's walking along the road and somebody sees him with this radiant face and confident gait. And he says, "Who are you, a god?" And the Buddha says, "No, I'm awake." And if only we could be awake to our possibilities. Like, in every conflict, on the deepest human level, it's so unnecessary. We could actually be a human race together. We could be, we could be that. We don't have to hurt ourselves. We don't have to hurt others. We don't have to take from them, demand from them. We could be. This is actually possible for all of us.

• 1:18:08Gabor Maté?

  And it's possible for all of us as individuals and for all of us as creatures. Let's just wake up to our possibilities.

• 1:18:16Jay Shetty?

  It's beautiful. Gabor, thank you so much again for your time, your energy, your presence. And everyone who's been listening or watching at home, if you don't already, please do grab a copy of the book, Myth of Normal, because our first and second conversations were very different. And I guide you towards the book for the deeper resources, the step-by-step guide. It's, what I try and avoid doing in these interviews is minimizing the amount of work it takes or oversimplifying what Gabor's beautiful work does in his deep books. Because...

• 1:18:52Jay Shetty?

  I believe he and everyone else would want you to take those steps. So I wish you all the best in your journey of trauma, illness and healing. And Gabor, I thank you for your work and your contributions today as well and forever to humanity.

• 1:19:07Gabor Maté?

  Well, it's always so peaceful to be with you. And believe me, these days I enjoy an oasis of peace. So thank you so much.

• 1:19:15Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much. Thank you, Gabor. Thank you. If you loved this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Maté on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.

• 1:19:29Gabor Maté?

  Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it? It grows where it's soft and green and vulnerable.

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