The ROOT CAUSE Of Trauma & Why You FEEL LOST In Life | Dr. Gabor Maté & Jay Shetty

uh, the tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it go where it's soft, green and vulnerable? a health and wellness podcast on purpose with Jay Shetty Hello everyone, welcome back on purpose, the world's number one health podcast, thank you to each and every one of you who come back every week to listen, learn and grow, now I know that if you are listening right now you are here be

cause

you want to improve your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. I know that you are trying to heal from

trauma

, from stress, from pressure, you are trying to heal the challenges that you experienced in early childhood or those that you are going through today and it is my job and it is my duty and it is an honor and a It's my joy to introduce you to incredible people who I think have answers, have ideas, have helpful approaches to the challenges that we all experience and today's guest is someone.

I've been very excited to talk to him for a long time on purpose. I hope this isn't just his only time on the show. I hope he starts to become a regular guest on the show. I'm talking about none other than Dr. Gabor, man. While he is a cell-rated speaker and best-selling author, he is highly sought after for his expertise on a variety of topics such as addiction stress and child development. Dr. Mate has written several best-selling books, including the award-winning The Realm of Hungry Ghosts. encounters with addiction when the body says no the cost of hidden stress and Scattered Minds the origins and healing of attention deficit disorder today we are talking about his new book called The Myth of Normal Traumatic Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture and we have the link to this in the notes.

I want you to go and order this book right now. It will leave you speechless. This individual's insights into what we are going through as a culture and society will be truly powerful. the book is called the myth of normal

trauma

tic illness and healing in a toxic culture, welcome to the show, Dr. Gabor, friend, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure to be here, thank you. I love sitting with people who are deeply immersed and obsessed with ideas and observing human behavior. I deeply admire Obsession, I deeply admire and I admire the ability to sit with something for long enough, but I want to start with Broad and I want to go deeper and I think this is a question that I and my friends talk about often I think we hear the word trauma more frequently these days yes, it is used sometimes sometimes it is used effectively sometimes it is used in conversations about things that some people would perceive as small and insignificant sometimes it is used to describe things that define

life

In your In words, how would you describe trauma and why is it so misunderstood even though it is so widespread?

It's a deep question be

cause

, on the one hand, you promise that sometimes you refer somewhat vaguely and promiscuously to things that are not traumatic for people to have a difficult situation. experience to say they were traumatized no they weren't they just had a difficult experience and this is one of my colleagues points out that all trauma is stressful but not all stress is traumatic so sometimes people use the word to refer to difficult experiences, which it is not. the same as being traumatized and on the other hand what really matters is in the area of ​​health where you and I are concerned about whether it is a physical or mental health trauma, which is not understood enough or It is used enough that, in my opinion, many conditions of the mind and body are actually very closely related to trauma without the healing profession, particularly the medical profession, recognizing it, so trombadan comes from a Greek word to wound drum is a wound is a psychic wound that leaves a scar that leaves an imprint on your nervous system in your body in your psyche and then appears in multiple ways that are not useful to you later, and in its basic sense, the Trauma is a psychic wound and if you look at the nature of a wound, um On the one hand, if it is raw and open, it hurts a lot, so when someone touches that wound that you suffered a long time ago but has not yet healed, you will react as if they were tormenting you again.

This happens in relationships. all the time, on the other hand, wounds heal and scar tissue has certain characteristics, it is very hard, it is rigid, so it is not flexible, so people tend to be rigid when they are traumatized, it also does not grow, so That trauma very often stops emotional growth and development is very raw and painful, on the other hand it even lacks sensation because the scar tissue has no nerve endings. Trauma, then, simply ending, is not what happened to you, so trauma is not a difficult incidence, any more than trauma is war. In my case it is not the Second World War when I was born or what happened to me Brahma is not the abuse that people experienced the drama is not the pain they felt the trauma is the wound that was suffered as a result so the term was' For example, Thomas' sexual abuse was the injury that the person suffered as a result of being abused, that's the good news, Jay because he promised that the injury we suffered can be healed at any time if the trauma is what happened to me. me 75 years ago.

Or 78 years ago it happened, it will never have happened, you know, the partition of India hurt a lot of people, but it would never have happened, but if the hurt is what happened to the people inside, it is the result that it can be cure hmm, that's probably the best differentiator I've heard and you're right, that's good news because it means we can't exactly cure it, what do you think of the major going the opposite way? We are talking about a wound and I want to return to that, but going in the opposite direction, how would you define healing then?

Because that's another word like trauma that's also everywhere now. Well, self-healing, healing from this healing. I think healing is a very interesting concept. in itself, which again is rarely defined or made clear to us and based on your studies, I would love to hear your thoughts the same way you did with trauma, what healing is, for sure, so I you mentioned that you spent some time in my homeland, Hungary, where I was born and the Hungarian word for health actually starts with the word for integrity, so Salud literally means integrity and the English word for healing and health also comes from an origin Saxon animal meaning integrity, so for some reason the language is international.

I have intuited the essence of healing, which is a

feel

ing of wholeness and wholeness. Now what trauma does is it disconnects us, it separates us from our true selves and it disconnects us from our emotions, even from our bodies, so if that disconnection is the essence. of trauma, then healing is the coming together of the self to become whole again and, uh, healing is often used synonymously with healing. Fair enough, but quite strange from my point of view and not only from my point of view, people can be cured of an illness without becoming whole. Without healing, people sometimes also heal without healing, so in essence, healing is not the absence of a physical illness, but the integrity of a person who no longer spits on himself.

I think what we found is that the trauma is just like you said. A wound that is long-lasting can often be like that, yes, but healing is a process that we want to happen now, yes, today, yes, or tomorrow, yes. I'm intrigued by how time, as we've always heard, will heal well as if it were a whole cliché, it won't, yeah, so let's go back to the wound and talk about whether there is any relationship between time and wounds or the unhealed wounds and what that relationship is, how that wound is formed internally, as you said, trauma is not what happens to you it is what happens inside you what is happening inside you what is happening with that wound with The time when it is left, what happens is that it can remain asleep for a long time and then something happens that touches it.

This is when we talk about people who become active, for example, something touches someone who will do it, one inside you and you react. , you have just been hurt for the first time and I can certainly tell you that that has been the case for me, for example, in my marriage relationship. unhealed wounds you may think you have overcome them, but then something will happen that touches that wound and you react as if you are being tormented again for the first time and time does not automatically heal time maybe it leaves scars over time. perhaps it makes it less available to immediate memory, but if something happens to evoke it, it will appear in all its painful impact until you do a little work to heal time on its own does not heal no no spontaneously no automatically how we discover them because I

feel

that and maybe it's something that needs to be addressed, is that at least what I find is that a lot of our beliefs that we have about ourselves and about others are designed to try to make us feel safe to some degree, so I think and hypothetically I'm saying this.

I think I'm right in my opinion because that makes me feel safe and protected, but often to uncover a wound we have to accept the vulnerability of saying well, maybe I'm not right, maybe this response is coming from some wound that I gained in the past, so, for example, when you talked about your marriage, you provoked something in me. I discovered that a lot of the love I received when I was younger was followed by guilt, so when I received love when I was younger, the idea was that if I couldn't reciprocate that level of Love, it would make me feel guilty for not loving someone enough and I found that I would repeat that in my own relationship with my wife, where I would overlove and if she didn't match that level of love, then I would make her feel guilty and it took me years to really figure out that pattern and that's just a little pattern and that's it. whether it's trauma or difficult experiences, a different conversation, but the idea that detecting that pattern just came from me saying well, maybe I'm wrong, maybe wanting to make someone feel guilty is not the right thing to do.

How do we evaluate that? How do we obtain security vulnerability to create that future stability? It makes sense, it makes sense because vulnerability itself is absolutely essential for growth. So vulnerability, the word itself comes from the Latin word vulnerario, to hurt, so vulnerability is our ability to be hurt. Now the reality is that, as human beings, we are all vulnerable. from conception to death, but when we are hurt in childhood and the vulnerability is too painful for Bear, we will try to close our vulnerability and, for example, being right because if I am right then I am powerful and I cannot be. you know, but when we do that we stop growing, everything in nature grows only where it is vulnerable, so a crustacean animal like a crab inside a hard shell can't sing, it has to molt and become very vulnerable in order to grow.

A tree does not grow where it is hard and thick, does it go where it is soft, green and vulnerable? Vulnerability is absolutely essential for growth and for vulnerability you must let go of those defenses, like being right, that you developed as a child to protect yourself from pain. That's why we talk about growing pains because vulnerability is necessary for growth without vulnerability. there is growth wow what you just said is so beautiful you just said vulnerability is our ability to be hurt if that's what it means yeah I mean that's an incredible definition of the word.

I think we hear a lot of definitions of vulnerability, but that vulnerability I'm just going to say again everyone writes that vulnerability is our ability to be hurt, how do we develop? our ability, so actually, let's go back to Childhood, we'll go back to that, so if we go back to Childhood, yeah, what are the things that are happening currently that you perceive and I know you talk about this in your new book, The myth of normality, by the way? Everything we're talking about is in this incredible book The Myth of Normal Traumatic Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture.

If you don't have it, please go and order it now. What is happening in our childhood in society. I guess when you say things. they are not happening to us yet there are environmental impacts that are imprinting the potential for this wound to grow what are some of those things that are distorting our development in unhealthy ways in childhood the two things one is obvious like when children are mistreated, mistreated , abused sexually, physically, emotionally, when there is violence in the family or a parent is trapped in an addiction or when there is a grudge divorce and a lot of conflict in the home, children are simply hurt, but it is more insidious and more pervasive than That's because children have certain basic characteristics.

Needs now, if we understand humans, if you want to understand the zebra or the whale, where would you study those creatures in a zoo or aquarium or in nature? The same goes for human beings, so you have to look at what needs are determined by evolution. of human beings as it was instilled or instilled in us through ourevolutionary history and that's why we evolved with certain needs there used to be this belief that children or what's called the tabular rasa, you know, an empty blackboard, you can write whatever you want on it. child any way you want, that used to be the prevailing belief, it is not the true one, children are born not only with certain needs but also with certain inherent expectations, so to give an example, your lungs are an inherent expectation of oxygen because they developed in response to oxygen if there was no oxygen in the In this environment we would not have lungs, in the same way that the human child has certain inherent expectations and children can be hurt not only by mistreating them but by not meeting those expectations.

When I asked about expectation, I didn't mean conscious expectation. They mean an expectation inherent to the organism, so children need the unconditional acceptance of multiple adult caregivers, which is how we evolved in groups of hunter-gatherers and lived that way for millions and hundreds of thousands of years. Children need to not have to work to earn a living. the relationship with parents works, so a child doesn't need a break from having to fight for the relationship to be functional, so he doesn't have to be cute, cute, docile, smart, successful or any of those things, he just needs be and they do not have to make an effort to be accepted by the parents, that is an essential need of the child when I say essential, I mean, if it is not satisfied it will distort the child's development, the third need is really crucial and in our society it is hardly ever We have known that the child needs the freedom to experience all the emotions that nature has endowed him with, that is why we have certain brain circuits for anger, love, play or lust, to seek curiosity, all these circuits are there for a reason you share them with other animals, we share them with bears cubs and cubs and little whales, you know, elephants, they need to develop because they are there for a reason that evolution gave us in our society, parents are often advises and teaches to suppress certain emotional experiences. on the part of the child, that is a wound for the child that distorts his development and has significant implications for health later, the fourth need, the fourth essential need is free play in nature, free play, spontaneous creative imaginative play, but that is essential for healthy brain development. share that with other animals baby elephants play bear cubs play cubs play lion cubs play crucial for play for brain development we know that now in our society we put cognitive development before play and I will be deprived of what children can play by giving them devices that deprive them of their imagination, so we are actually undermining their brain development and their healthy development as human beings, so children can be hurt not only by bad things that happen to them, but also due to the fact that their needs are not satisfied and in our society. environmental conditions that undermine child health and development these environmental conditions in our society are adverse to healthy human development, it is no wonder that we have so many children with anxiety, ADHD and depression problems and that the childhood suicide rate is increasing and the number of children receiving high-potency medications; the multiplicity of medications is increasing; because the conditions for healthy development are becoming less and less available to them, not because parents do not love their children, not because they are not trying to do the best they can, but because of the conditions under which parenting in this society, yeah, just to share some of those statistics that are in the book that Dr.

Mate is referring to, in 2019, over 50 million Americans, over 20 percent of adults Americans suffered an episode. Rates of obesity and mental illness, along with the multiple health risks that come with them, are increasing in many countries, including Canada, Australia and, in particular, the United States, where more than 30 percent of the adult population reached criteria and then in this part millions of American children and young people. They are being medicated with stimulants, antidepressants, and even antipsychotic medications whose long-term effects on the developing brain have not yet been established, so you know you share all this knowledge, research, and work.

What interests me is, let's say, a child today. raised that way I find it fascinating that if you then migrate that child to the real world if everyone is listening I'm in quotes like the real world they enter this conditioned world that we currently have if we almost raise a village of children in one I don't know what the right word, but I guess in a more natural way, but then they evolved and had to get a job and work in the world, how would that work? What would be your opinion on how they would work?

I mean, is there any research on that or what would be your opinion on how they would deal with the then capitalist society that was focused on results and performance and being beautiful or small or cute? How would they react to that? That question is yes. she has been studied to some extent and they would not automatically accept the values, so they may need to get a job, but they would not identify with the job and they would not judge themselves based on the external values ​​of success. they would also enter the world with a sense of purpose and I know that your purpose is very important to you, so a sense of purpose can only arise from us if we are in contact with the real cells, so they would be in the world, but they wouldn't be of the world in a sense, they wouldn't identify with the values ​​that society would impose on them, so I think they would struggle, but they would do reasonably well and keep them to themselves in the process.

I don't live a

life

based on what other people think of me. Am I pretty enough? Do they find me attractive? Have I collected enough goods and objects to make me feel good about myself? They wouldn't accept all that and To the extent that this has been studied and it has been that those people who can be in this society without accepting its values ​​tend to be healthier and more emotionally grounded. The reason I love hearing that is because it's the first time I've connected these ideas. together that when I was born and raised in London I was born and raised with all the usual activities.

I have a good education, a good home, a good financial situation, etc., those were the ways I was raised and success was a big part of my culture, yes, and I pursued validation from my family and the external environment of my community and what my aunts and uncles thought of me and when that validation was unsatisfying or I didn't feel like I was really on my path and when I was finally introduced to the monks at 18, I then sought validation from the monks only to be They would teach that the problem wasn't who you're looking for validation from, but that you were looking for validation in the first place and then what did you just tell me?

It's just that in three years I received a crash course on what you're saying, where we spent more time in nature, yes, we were trained to unlearn the behaviors and habits that I had developed over 80, well, 21 years at that time, yes, and then when I returned to the world in the way you just described, that's exactly how I felt, I almost felt like a new person returning to the same world I left with a completely different approach and a different map of how to navigate it and you . Being right is still hard, it's not that it's perfect and easy and it's not that I've done it right, it's just that when I'm challenged I have a set of tools or I have some ideas, like you said, with a purpose that help me think.

The problem is different, you are not governed by the same thing, so when I entered the world of work and I just want to give people a practical example of what Dr. Mate says, it is accurate when I entered the world of work. In total, we had to be good at a list of 10 things to be successful, yeah, and I looked at that list of 10 and I thought I can do one of those things really well and I'm just going to focus on that one because these other nine are not my nature, they are not my purpose and it's very strange because that one thing made me extremely successful at the company I worked at and then it became the way I built my career and it's so true that if I had gone in and done what 90 people did, I would have become what ninety percent of the people were doing, which really resonates deeply with what the difference is and I can't wait to read some of that research on that.

I think that's fascinating when you have a culture where I think most people who read this book today, the myth of normal, will say that they can relate to having a traumatic illness and trying to be on the path of healing, especially our community, here they are absolutely. I'm going to love this book. This is exactly why we have this program, but I think we would all agree. I think if I asked everyone to raise their hand and say how many people feel like they experienced a traumatic environment at home, I think most people would do it.

Raise your hand if I ask you how many people felt as children that they had unhealthy relationships with their parents to some degree. I think most people would raise their hands. Yeah, the challenge I find is that I really feel what you're saying. with the book there is a difference between what you are saying and then the other extreme which is molly coddling so there is neglect and then there is molly coddling and I find that as humans our brains are programmed for extremes so if we have seen that, be abused or neglected is really bad for us, we go in the opposite direction and we are fine.

Now I'm going to make sure this kid has like 24 pillows around him. I would like to know. I like to answer that question. This is a very important question, but I just want to know exactly what you mean by Molly Carlin. What I see and I'm talking about people I know and people who will talk to me is that anyone who had a difficult childhood is trying to create a scenario. for your child, when that child is not experiencing pain, they are no longer responding to the child's needs, they come from their own anxieties, yes, then hugging has nothing to do with the child, it has to do with the anxieties of the child's parents.

That boy. download the anxieties of their parents so that mollycodile children become very anxious, very scared and very helpless in themselves. On the other hand, it is not possible to love children too much. In fact, it was a very interesting study in which they looked at a large number of mothers. and their babies in the first few months and most of the mothers in this study were seen as really good mothers and some were a little distant and to themselves because of their own traumas, they were not as available in a small group, we are considered super loving in how they took in their babies okay 30 years later they looked at these babies when I was an adult the ones that were most emotionally grounded and healthy were the ones that got the super love so there is a difference between you can't love To a child. too much what you can, then the so-called model that you describe is not a child who is loved too much, it is a child who has to enjoy the parents' anxieties and you know that there is a very famous example in world history of someone whose parents wanted to protect.

The Buddha took him out of suffering, he never saw death, he never saw illness or old age until he goes out and sees a dying person, he sees a very poor person, a very sick person, a very old person, he realizes that there is suffering in the world, so all the pampering he received from Molly could not ultimately protect him from the awareness of pain and vulnerability, although if I talk about Buddha I must also say that his own trauma is often not talked about because his mother died when he was a week or more old. after the birth, wasn't it?, wasn't it?, wasn't it?, wasn't it?, her, so even they tried to protect her, him, they couldn't, you know, but anyway, the coding of Molly has nothing to do with the needs of the child, yes that is a big differentiation, it has to do with the unmet needs of the parents and as soon as the parents project their needs onto the child they no longer see the child as it exists. , they see their own anxieties, they are in their fears and their own fantasies, naturally that is going to hurt the child, yes, that is so. a big differentiator, again, is a response to trauma, it is a trauma, yes, it is a response to trauma, how and when children, youth and adults should be exposed to pain to develop their vulnerability, as you said, the ability to experience a wound, how and when to allow it how we should what environment is required to allow us to experience pain in a healthy way or is it just going to come anyway it is the nature of life there is no reason to deliberately expose children to pain because it will goto experience in the moment The question is how do we support them and do they know why because their puppy is going to die because their grandpa is going to die because some friend in the neighborhood won't want to play with them because they're not going to get the toy they wanted because um it will happen some disappointment, you know, so pain is inevitable but it doesn't have to become traumatic.

If the child is supported to experience pain and overcome it, so that we don't have to impose it or bring pain into the child's life to train them. life is going to do that the question is how are we going to interact with them while they endure the pain, yes, and what would you say, obviously there is the love part that you talked about, but when a child is going through something like this, talk about loss because I think it's a great question, like are you using a parent or losing a puppy like you said or even if it's not losing a parent to death, it's losing a parent to divorce, you know, for example. right, yeah, so grief and loss doesn't have to be the end of life, it can be everything, what or the loss of a country, what are the steps someone should take to help guide someone through the law, he is not just a child.

Well, infinitely when I talked about these brain circuits that we share with those animals to play, love and search, we also have brain surgery for panic and pain, either because life brings loss and therefore pain is essential for life because the pain is coming to terms with the fact that something is gone it's not coming back, you know? I mean a child experiences pain and you know, I said that the child's need is to be able to experience all the emotions that he needs to be able to experience the pain as well, um, and it doesn't matter if from the eyes of an adult we see that loss as greater. or smaller, it's a matter of how the child experiences it, and for a young child, even what seem like small losses can be very painful, so we don't do it.

Don't make the kid wrong about it, we're not saying get over it, there's nothing wrong, think about all the other kids out there who are suffering from all that kind of relativistic, uh, embarrassing stuff, you say, oh, it really hurts, doesn't it? is that so? You really want it, grandpa. I would be here with you you really wish mom and dad didn't break up it hurts in other words you just validate their emotions by doing so you help them accept the loss and you have to move on and you help them learn that we can endure difficult emotions without having to fall apart so that we have a circuit for pain in our brain.

For the pain in our brain, it needs to be allowed to do its job. I think today many of us are reflecting on that inner child. I like that the language is more widespread again today or that the idea is growing that we have this inner child that has this wound or this trauma. What do you find is the difference between analyzing and overanalyzing or thinking and overthinking these experiences? you define the difference because I and I'm being very honest and vulnerable because it's the only way to really have this conversation. I often think about events in my life that happened that would generally be considered difficult or traumatic experiences, right? could look like any of them or there are some of them that I have worked through myself or with people I trust or with guides and and obviously throughout my life as a monk there were things that I observed and worked on, but there are certain things that I don't feel a need for, like I don't feel the desire to dive into the question I'm asking, should I dive into them or is it considered overanalyzing and overthinking and I ask that of everyone else who's listening?

This goes, oh my gosh, I've thought about everything that happened to me, I might be there for a while, uh, yeah, what's your take on that? Well, first of all, in my world there is no should, okay, there is no, there is no should, there is no, should, yeah, so, um. You would never see anyone, you should know that because that in itself is intrusive, so the question is whether or not it is useful to delve into the past depends on what is happening with that individual and if some of the effects of the trauma, as we said before , they are that.

The wounds of the past continue to appear in the present so from my point of view it is not so much about delving into the past and thinking about the past but rather dealing with how the past shows up in the present, which is a psychologist friend of mine, Peter Levine. It calls the tyranny of the past where the past dominates my present reactions no matter how many times I go back and think about my childhood story that is not going to help me what I have to deal with is what is happening in Mina Right now, in this very second, which is the shadow of the past, so thinking about it will not be of much help.

What will help is dealing with the emotions that are arising now as a result of what happened and how those emotions occur. it affects my life in the present moment so it's not about the past it's about the present yeah so it's really about the options that we have now exactly what's available to us now yeah what's available to us now because I feel like I don't We had a choice in the past because we were too young or too incapable of making a decision, but the choices that happen now can transform everything possible. Some people become victims, they identify with the victim rule.

This happened to me and therefore I can't do this or that or they will keep me or listen to me and I will never get over it. It is possible to misidentify with the victim. It is even possible to identify with survival. a survivor, well, no, that's not who you are, what you survived, but what you are is much bigger than that particular experience and what you've always

lost

, much bigger than your suffering, you know, and so That is why some people may identify with it. suffering and the past to such an extent that they stop moving forward.

Yeah, I think you just brought up a really important component of all of this on a deeper level, which is that what we identify with is just, even earlier you were talking about people who would be raised. in this hypothetical village that we were talking about, but even through research they will not identify with the values ​​of a capitalist society, yes, identification, you just said that people could identify as victims, they could identify as survivors, which Is it a healthy identification? there is no correct one because if you look again at the meaning of the words and I find the words fascinating, yes, the identification comes from a Latin word uh edem which means the same thing and date to do as soon as I do the same as something like if I I identify with my role as a doctor I immediately limit myself if you identify with your experience as a monk and I don't mean not learning from it or not growing from it but if I identify with it that is who I am Now you have limited yourself itself, so there is no healthy identification.

If I identify with a state or nation, I might be loyal to that state or nation. You could love that state or nation or any group, but if you identify with it, like it's a new you. you don't have an independent existence, you've already limited yourself, so when you say if there is a healthy identification, that's not really the challenge, I think we're all chasing some kind of identification like that, it seems to be a huge humanity. I need to support this football club or I'm a fan of this band or I'm a member of this car club or I go to this grocery store or I feel like we all want to be members like this It seems like a human need to want to be a member of a community, wanting to identify with something, it's a human need to belong and uh, but can we belong without identifying to the point that we don't have an independent perspective?

You know, in others. So can we be authentic? I talk a lot about this tension between the authenticity of being ourselves and attachment, which is belonging. Ideally, we can both be authentic and belong, yes, but that kind of identification often leads to suffering. I mean, it's what Buddhists call attachment. Isn't that right and let me give you an example? Then you mentioned the sports team, so at night you wouldn't know it, but in the 1950s the Hungarian football team was the best in the world, we never

lost

, that's what I don't love. football and I didn't, no, we went to Great Britain and beat Great Britain six to three at Wembley Stadium the first time we felt it, the British fans, yes, I'm sorry, but you know, it was a big national holiday in Hungary and A small country goes to Mighty Britain and beats them at their own game, you know, and the next year the whole country was happy and there's still one of the great memories from my childhood, the next year, when the world championships and We were the big favorites because I haven't lost in years and we faced the Germans in the final and we lost three to two, yes.

National tragedy. I'm telling you it still hurts. You know, it's just a football game played on the field by 22 guys in 1954. what you know, but when this ends with the identification, yes, then that in itself brings suffering, now you know that yes, you can support your team In Vancouver, British Columbia, where I live, it's a very quiet place, but Vancouver Connects, which is a local hockey team, did it. to the Stanley Cup Finals and lost, there were riots in the streets why because people had identified too much, you can enjoy the team and be a sports fan, but the identification that your joy or satisfaction depends on if your team loses or wins well why not It doesn't matter, yes I love that answer for many reasons because I have had to go through the pain of letting go of my past selves and adopting new selves and then having to realize that none of them were me as my identification, as you said when I took off the clothing of a monk when I took off my robe, it was really difficult because there was a part of my identity, especially at a young age, that was attached even to the outer cover and I had to realize that I had to remove the inner one. beliefs and leave behind the outer shell and the outer name and what that meant and even in my career today I've had to let it go and even now I don't even know how to identify myself in a sense every time I'm I'm sure you feel this too until At a certain point in your work, it's like when they say, oh, when you're on TV and they want to put like your title and they say, Jay, what's your title?

I'm like me, I'm more defined by my purpose than my profession, you know what I do for people and the service I want to offer in the world is much more important to me than author, podcaster, ex-monk or things So. things don't really define me well, I totally understand that. I am, yes, what I'm thinking is that you're telling me that when you left those monk robes, we talked about the crab, isn't it with the heart shell to grow? let go of the Shell at some point so that each of those moldings represents the point of growth, but if the moment is difficult, when I left Family Practice to go work with a highly addicted population in Vancouver and it was a loss of identity for Por for a while I was a little disoriented for a few days because all these people, these families who had trusted me to be the lynchpin of their health and all these people who came to me and trusted me and um, who I saw in the office and I suddenly left her, so I totally understand that no, the reality is that I am very grateful for having done so, but then I had the experience in the next field of work that helped me define my purpose even more. in life and it taught me a lot about myself and human beings, but at that time it was difficult to let go of that identification was difficult and there was really that feeling of okay, if I'm not that then what am I?

This is what happens when you identify with the rules, yes, if someone is listening to you and wants to find out what your subconscious response is, ask one of your friends, ask them and then have them ask you who you are, yes, and your response to that question is not an episode of When you ask someone who you are, they will say I'm a lawyer, I'm an accountant, I'm British, I'm American, you know, the answer is always on such a material level. Well, as one spiritual teacher said, I think unless they're making this up, but I think he said they said the problem is not not knowing who you are.

The problem is thinking you know who we are, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? It's just that the things that are truly safe feel unsafe to the mind, yes, and that intrigues me because you've studied the mind, you've studied addiction, you've studied healing, you've studied trauma, why do we seek certainty and stability? When you also said before that the only time we experience growth is the opposite, when we are vulnerable, why are we so addicted to things staying the same or things not changing like that? It seems to be a central human addiction, well, a therapist.

He once told me that this has to do with the nature of the Mind you refer to. A therapist once told me, but if your parents didn't know how to hold you, you develop the mind with which you hold yourself so that you can find security in their mind that you created and that's why the human mind, the ordinary egoic human mind, is basically a defensive structure, it isIn significant ways, it is a response to pain, that's not all it is, but in significant ways, it is a response to pain, it is a pain destination and it is designed to prevent you from experiencing pain, so it is worrying, anxious and defensive, so when it comes to change and vulnerability, the Mind wants to defend against it and it arises from fear that arises from the childhood experience where the pain that you had was not held back and therefore we develop these mental structures to avoid that you experience it and I mean one of them clearly is addiction and you know, Keith Richards, the world's most famous former heroin addict, Rolling Stone guitarist said about addiction by For example, his heroin uses that contortions What you go through just to not be yourself for a few hours, why wouldn't anyone want to be themselves?

Because at some point it hurts too much to be yourself and then the Mind comes in and tries to protect you. about that pain of being yourself with your ideas and your beliefs and your certainties and your endless desires and your artificial needs and it is your faith to let it go because if I let it go I will be a helpless child again but the big Mind is a defensive structure and then we often react that way, that defensive structure obviously prepares us for so much of what's going on inside that it makes two people react completely differently to the same thing, right, you could have a parent who's a drug addict and one of the children says: "I will never do drugs again because I saw what I did to my parents and the other person actually imitates the behavior and follows the same path.

What have you found or seen? That at a young age creates that trip different. Well, the first thing I want to say is that there are no two children who have the same parents and that there are no two children who have the same childhood even if they grew up in the same biological family because, first of all, one of them. arrived at a different age.time so they had a different set of experiences this is the birth order that affects how children experience parents so there are degrees of sensitivities so some people are born more sensitive than others sensitive comes a play on the Latin word sincere feeling so that the more sensitive The more we feel, if we are given the right environment, a nurturing and grounded environment, that sensitive child simply becomes an intuitive, a Creator, an artist, an actor, a leader, but in an environment where there is pain, that sensitive child suffers more pain than a less sensitive one, so you'll have more reasons to escape from pain, it's not so much that he imitates the adult's behavior, but that he takes the same escape route and, in In my opinion, the actions are always there, at least an escape route from the pain, so it has to do with the order of birth, with family circumstances, with degrees of sensitivity, having said that the other child who does not If you become an addict you haven't necessarily escaped, you may simply have developed different coping mechanisms, you may have become one of these people who are going to make great success in the world outside of themselves and they are never going to fail and they have to be the best and they are going to suffer too, they could just suffer in a different way, that sensitivity that you are talking about is probably one of the most important questions that I am asked right now and I want to ask it to you because I feel that your experience could offer some real light on this.

I feel like people are experiencing so much sensitivity and empathy that they just can't stand the world. where we live today there are people like that and I hear this over and over again where it's like it's the political climate or the economic climate or their family has addictions or friends like everything you talk about in the book and people feel like this can It won't be my home, this is not the place I want to live and like you were saying before, someone might think I don't want to be myself or feel like myself for a few hours, people say.

Well, this doesn't seem like the world I want to live in. I'm sure you've met many people who have felt that way, seen that way, or maybe even spoken that way. I haven't met people, let me tell you something. I worked with you I had an experience with ketamine a few years ago this is an academy and training for healers and they injected me with ketamine it took me where it took me and suddenly I found myself screaming I hate the world It was good that it came out of me so I totally know what you are talking.

I'm just saying that person, I personally know what you're talking about, is fine, so this is what I think has a lot to do with it. At first, the world is becoming more and more stressed, more and more divided, everyone sees that it is becoming more hostile in many ways, more and more unwelcoming and more dangerous, more alienating, on the one hand, on the other hand, We are increasingly alone. With this, isolation and loneliness are increasing, so if people experience pain and change and, um, stress or even danger in community, it's bearable, but when we're alone with it it becomes less and less bearable and so So, I think one of the main factors that drives sensitivity. what you're describing is how alone people feel, which is how not, not how we should be, for the capitalist values ​​of you to know aggressive, individualistic, uh uh, ruthless greed and competition against everyone else who doesn't it reflects human needs or even human nature, not how we evolve, but the world, the more the world becomes that way and the more isolated we become, the more vulnerable we are to being hurt by the world that we live in and I think that That's what people talk about.

I think one of the most important things for me was that I was very fortunate that the client-side coach and the people I work with had the opportunity to experience a lot of people who were vulnerable with me, but experienced loneliness and success. , and solitary success does not. It doesn't bring happiness and I know there is one thing that my wife and I always talked about, especially because we are in a country where we don't have family, we had to start from scratch in our friendship work and everything was. I heard you. say in a podcast how important families are to your wife, for example, for my wife it is huge, her personal family is everything to her, that is her greatest value, but here we had to build our family, yes, and I think One of the things that we constantly do is try to make a concerted effort to cultivate and heal our community in Los Angeles and it's fascinating to me because again the perception arises that most people tell me, well, La is a place very superficial, like La is a very fake place and Also good, I found some of my best friends and amazing human beings here.

How much more alone does that perception of a place, a space or a person make us? Because sometimes I find that loneliness is created by perception, as if we are afraid. From being vulnerable with someone, it is difficult for someone to be vulnerable with us, so what should we do to build deeper relationships for healing? And on this path that you are suggesting, first of all, it occurs to me that loneliness is an obvious perception that there is a difference between being alone and being alone alone is a fact and we can embrace and make decisions about loneliness, it has an emotional charge and that is largely a matter of perception, you can be alone and not be alone and you can be surrounded by all kinds of people and feel completely alone.

So how open am I? Will I be vulnerable? Am I really willing to be? What defenses have I erected around myself to protect myself and that prevent me from truly contacting other people? I think that without realizing it we generate loneliness there is also something else that happens and you referred to this before you talked about Elders so in our society we do not talk about Elders we talk about elders it is not the same in our society that defines people so much in terms of their economic value, we tend to discard people who are not perceived as having economic value, either as producers or consumers, so this society generates a lot of loneliness just because it has materialistic values ​​and in other cultures that work.

The elders are not only respected but they also have a purpose they have the wisdom they have the experience they have the vision they have let go of many of the attachments that the young invariably engage with, so they have a lot to offer, so the Loneliness is also created in a society that has a very rigid and limited set of values, yes, I love the change in the language of the elders and elders and I always go back to that time in my life because it gave me a lot, but I grew up surrounded by people who were the same age, younger, older, yes, and Elder gave you so many different visions of life and when I look back at my childhood or my youth, I was constantly surrounded by people who were older than me, younger than me, much older than me and wiser than me, yes, and being able to have everyone's point of view, yes, created a beautiful 360 degree picture of life, yes, but most of the day we only see one degree.

If you spend time only with people your age, you get a very limited point of view on life. compared to if you spend time with a much wider age range and tend to have a much less mature and well-rounded view of life, one of the books that I helped write the main word is called Hold on to your children, but parents They should matter more than their peers and the point made in that book is precisely what you just made, which is that for many people their world begins and ends with their own age group, which is a developmental disaster because again We evolve as creatures in contact with multiple people. of multiple ages and we have spent our time with people of multiple ages when you isolate people by age, as this culture largely does.

I mean, there are subgroups within subgroups within subcultures within subcultures in a society, all based on a very superficial identification with age, it just limits. our development and limits our possibilities and with that development, how do you see human nature? Do you see human nature as confusing trying to become pure or starting pure and then getting muddy and then trying to come back early? What do you think? Well, we. It turns out that there is a trap for human nature in this book, and as I reflect on the same question that Jesus asked, I always come to the conclusion that it's not like there is a definable human nature, you can't tell because I mean, look, Buddha was a human being Hitler was a human being, one is full of compassion and love and gives to others full of greed, aggression and hatred, both are human beings, so how can one talk about human nature defined?

However, I think we can say with confidence that there is a certain human potential based on human needs, if those needs are met, development would be healthy and that potential will be realized if those needs are thwarted, which was severely in the case of Let's say, later on, a terribly abused child, then what you get is the hatred, rage and murderous poison that characterize that personality now, when you combine it with political power, you see what happens, but that's not human nature, it is simply human nature frustrated because that child's needs were not met in a society that was completely incapable. to satisfy people's needs, in fact, we totally abuse them, so for me human nature is not a fact, what behaves like a human potential based on human needs, of these needs are satisfied, we can Being reasonably sure that people will be connected and generous, most people want to be kind.

I mean, it's interesting in a society when someone does something selfish or greedy, you say it's just human nature. Hmm, do we say that when someone is kind or generous? Yes, never, educator Alfie Cohen points out and if you ask most people when his body disappeared. feel more of this when you experience more peace when you have been kind and generous and given authentically not because you had no sense of duty but because it was just the impulse or when you are greedy and greedy when there is more tension and more inner discomfort, then that should tell us something about our nature, that our nature wants to be aligned with connection and generosity and giving, because our bodies will tell us that that is so true, that is so true, I mean, there is no moment in life where That You are bitter with someone or angry with someone, that makes you feel good inside, yes, also when it comes to the gut.

I'm not just talking about the hot space, but all the areas of your body, the tension, the stress, the retention, the adjustment, but. but since we were talking about a previous society created in a way for false identification and divisive identification, whether it is two groups of football fans who now hate each other or riot or whether it is well-known political parties or companies at war with each other another, like everything is set up in a way so that you identify with something so that you can be against something like that, that's what naturally ends up happening, even schools like I went to this school,you went to that school, we competed, competition seems to be something that has been carefully crafted by capitalist society and then when you see the rise of and by the way, I love competition, so health competition is great, so that I'm not badmouthing the competition, but it's interesting to see how again it's so It's hard to compete without identifying yourself because that's what you're worth, yeah, and that takes a lot of mental spiritual strength in my opinion to be able to differentiate between identification and attachment.

Well, it's really interesting because let's take the example of sports that you just mentioned, what is it called? the people who participate in those words we call them players what we call the process in which they participate we call it a game but we do not treat it as players we do not treat it as a game because they are real games and the real game has no agenda, there is competition in the process and you want to do the best you can, but in the end it doesn't matter if it's just for the process and the pleasure of doing it, that's genuine, play well when you think about these multiple games. -billions of dollars Sports Industries and the strategy and hype that comes with these are no longer players, they are warriors almost as if their commitments were some kind of battle and winning and losing becomes everything like the famous Vince Lombardi.

Winning is not the only thing. The only good thing, that's not true, people, that's true for the purposes of the game, as long as you recognize that you're just playing, as long as you don't confuse the game with life itself, but once it becomes a business and it becomes ruthless, that confusion. It's really prevalent and people take it very seriously, so when you think about it, you think about it like if you have these terrible conflicts in the world, like the war in Ukraine right now, the average person how long is it induced to spend thinking about those big issues?

Let's just say climate change that only the blindness of the blind or the evil of the most evil can at this moment deny as a reality, but how much of our lives do we actually spend reflecting and engaging with these larger issues compared to analyzing what marshal What field should I have played? what quarter of which particular NFL game do you know, so these so-called games and these so-called players have taken on a much greater importance in their lives in our lives, while the real things that we tend to ignore have simply sparked something to I was blown away by this experience.

I recently went to Rwanda and went there with Ellen DeGeneres in collaboration with the dying. Fosse's searchers opened a guerrilla sanctuary and Conservation Center. Yes, and we went there to go on a gorilla trek and learn about gorillas. learn about Rwanda and had never been to Rwanda before. I didn't know if I would have visited her if it wasn't for her and the most important thing I took away obviously was walking with gorillas and being in nature with a way of life that has no interest in us but we are totally fascinated by them, it was An incredible experience and I will do it again.

I talk about that separately, but the reason I mentioned it here is because I also took the time to go to the Genocide Memorial Museum, yes, and it was fascinating to me to know that, as I remember, it's been about 20 years a tenth of the country's population. country, so like a million people, like 10 million people died in the genocide, they were killed in the genocide, yeah, and most of the people who lived there today were their parents, it was their ancestors that did This was just 20 years ago, which is not a long time and I met some of the survivors.

I sat with them in the museum. I spoke with them. We talk to the locals. We spoke to people who were helping us with our travel and arrangements. And the hotels we stayed in. I was fascinated that people were so healed as if there was such a genuine and sincere conversation that they have now let go of this to the tribal culture, they have let go of the names, the identification that they are living by a principle that they call Ubuntu. I am. because you are, I think or you are because I'm like that, I'll do it right, but Ubuntu is the word they use and it was so special.

I was totally curious. I'm curious to ask if you went deeper into what it allows them to do. to do that, they said a lot of it came through leadership, like they said that's how they were being, is what you're saying, like when you said, like they were asked, you're saying we don't have time to focus on these big problems. because we are too busy wondering which player played which position, yes they didn't say it that way but that's what they said, that our leadership encouraged us to think this way and I couldn't. I think in 20 years, when your parents probably killed their parents, you were standing side by side without caring about the lineage that this culture was established in and it was the Europeans who established part of that anyway, but I just wanted to. to understand on your part what it takes to get to that level of healing because that's what you know, people would say okay, well, to me, that's a population of 10 million, that's still a huge victory for the world.

Yeah, I was wondering if you've seen it. cultures if you've seen even smaller groups or even lived through war where you've seen that kind of healing before. I don't know how the hearing in Rwanda happened. Yes, I was really encouraged by hearing what you describe here, I think that at the very least, the suffering had to be recognized and it had to be heard, and fully recognized, and then the hearing can take place, yes, without that, for It must be recognized now in my country, Canada, as when you were talking about Rwanda, of course, that tribal hatred did not arise out of nowhere or it is necessarily in the nature of those people to be like that, in large part it was the legacy of colonialism that quite deliberately and you would know something about British colonialism, um, quite, deliberately said one group against another whose legacy was often a tremendous struggle, hatred and violence in Canada as in the United States, the legacy of colonism falls much more particularly on our indigenous peoples. people then to this day suffer so much addiction became much higher among them fifty percent of the women imprisoned in my country are indigenous wow, they represent five percent of the population wow an indigenous woman is six times the rate of rheumatoid arthritis they were never used to rheumatoid arthritis before colonization there has been some apologies in Canadian history but there has not been enough recognition of what really happened and what continues to happen and I am saying that an essential condition for that healing would have that be the recognition then the wolf came to Canada just six weeks ago because the church cooperated with the state to kidnap children from their homes, indigenous children from their homes for over 100 years, until the 1990s, to these schools residential homes where our native children were not allowed to see their children. parents where their culture was eradicated they had pins stuck in their tongue if they spoke their tribal language they were sexually abused they often died they were physically abused they were starving and the pool came and apologized and you know what the apology was.

I'm so sorry for what some Christians did to their people well that's because they mean well as a person but that wasn't that was an apology uttered by an institution because it wasn't or should have been uttered by the institution but they said what some Christian It wasn't some Christians, it was the state and it was the church and what I'm saying is that it was a good first step, but until there is full recognition and we are fully willing to listen to the suffering of the people we hurt and that is. Why do they lose moral inventory in the 12 Steps, if they do?

How do we hurt someone and how can we do it without imposing anything on them? How can we recognize if that is appropriate? So I think for healing, whether it's for me or for people I've heard, it has to be like that. be a recognition, yes, of suffering itself. I think that is the essential first step. The challenge we have in society is, I totally agree with you, but for most people we will never get the apology we deserve because again we live in an unhealed environment where people don't come out of the woodwork and say "I'm so sorry." for what happened" and even if they do it is a bad apology or an incomplete apology or a 10 apology so how do we function in a world where closure often does not come from the person who hurt us or the person who created the wound or that we receive a wound from and it really comes down to us like no that's true yeah so I work a lot with indigenous groups in Canada um when they asked me. and first of all, I often say who the hell am I to offer you advice because there is so much healing wisdom in your Traditions that the best advice I can give you is to follow your own Traditions, but I often say to them like Well, don't expect recognition from the government or society because it will take a long time to arrive, but you must recognize your own suffering, you must recognize your own pain and then there are so many rituals, there are so many Traditions, the dance. and the chanting and the drumming and the sweat lodges and the sun dancing and the return to the land and the wisdom circles and restorative justice there's so much wisdom so what I'm telling people is to acknowledge your own suffering but look at the inner wisdom towards healing and that is where the wisdom to heal is within the cultures and people of society and also within individuals.

We both have to recognize suffering and not stay stuck in it, yes, but then seek the capacity for inner healing. Yes, and you certainly can't wait for the world to be nice, but you can't wait for it to be nice, otherwise you will be dependent on someone else for your healing. Yeah, and I feel like when you're healing, most apologies are unsatisfactory, like when you're healed or and we'll talk about what that means, but I feel like when you're further along in the healing process you can get an apology, you can get a vulnerable information about someone who may have hurt you or but.

When you're in the middle of the healing process, I find that validation and apologies rarely feel as good as you know and I say this for myself, I know this when I've worked when I've been in the middle of something like working really hard on my life or trying to make something happen and someone says yes, you're doing great, it doesn't feel like anything because you almost feel like you don't feel completely understood, it doesn't make sense. yes, seeing you, yes, and you don't feel seen, no, you don't feel seen, some aspect of you has been seen, yes, but we need to be seen, it's a human need, there is a psychotherapist here in California named Eve, yes, Absolutely, yes, I know.

She was on the same train, probably or very probably, on the same train to Auschwitz that my grandparents and their family were on. She is about 90 years old. She now describes it because they came from the same city in the south of Slovakia. Northern Hungary, her parents were murdered in Auschwitz. We were grandparents Edith describes in one of her books that she returns to the Burghoff, which is in the Burway in the Alps, where Hitler lived, to forgive Hitler, wow, which does not mean that what he did was right, but to free him from the cage. that she kept inside her own heart because it limited her so Forgiveness was not right what you did forgiveness was I was going to keep this hate in this resentment in me more because this limits me you know, so the work really is internal where Do you see the connections between what you talked about about Indigenous practices and healing?

Etc. To what extent do you see a connection between spirituality and healing and where it has gone right and where it sometimes goes wrong? So, first of all. Spirituality is one of those words that again gets used, yeah, gets used around who knows what someone means when they talk about it, so we can only talk about it in terms of what you mean by it, yeah, and what I mean by that. So yes, I liked what you said that there are Ancient Traditions, yes, that focus heavily on inner healing, yes, and I will explain my opportunity.

The challenge I see is that often even these ancient Timeless Traditions have now been externalized and institutionalized, so they have missed the purity of the inner healing that is required and become commodified, right, yes, that is what will happen in a material society. Yes, I spent time with some indigenous people earlier this year in a ceremony, what struck me is the depth. deep deep connection with nature in fact even the connection is inadequate one word I'm talking about Oneness as if they felt so alive David blade of grass and every tree and the mountain that overlooked our ceremony and the bison that were in the field so for To me, spirituality, if it means anything, means a sense of connection to something larger that is difficult to define and may be different for each person or for each group, but it is something beyond the limited limits of both the body and theegoic mind.

No, I think that's it. our nature as human beings, I can't prove it, but that's my feeling and I think that, and certainly, when you talk about Indigenous Traditions, they talk about the medicine wheel, which is, um, the quadrants involve our emotions, our physical bodies and our social relationships and our spiritual self and we have to be

root

ed in those four quadrants to be completely whole, so I think there's something about that spirituality that's really essential for us. What that is, I think each person has to discover for themselves. If they don't have a tradition that already bases them on it, yes, yes, you reminded me of the time I spent with some groups in Hawaii and they had a song for the sun and the sea and they had a beautiful ritual in which when a When the child, the umbilical cord is placed in the ground and then they carve it almost like a pattern.

There to remind the child that this is his connection to the Earth. I always thought it was such a beautiful ritual. I was wondering if you'd seen it. or if you have looked at a tool, some aspect of reincarnation or past lives or traumas in lives or seen any connection or study in that space. I've had people talk to me about their experiences and there's a rabbi I met once who told me that in ancient times he was a priest in Egypt, well, he was by no means Luna, a lunatic, you know, or a psychotic, he was a very grounded charming man, you know, and I was convinced that my mind doesn't go there.

I have read something about these Traditions, you know the Tibetan tradition of the Bardo and you probably know a lot more about it and I do, but I have not experienced it personally and my mind, as I have experienced it so far, has not found a space to know what what that really means I understand it intellectually yes, but there is nothing in me that resonates with that as far as I can recognize yes, now maybe at some point I will have a great Awakening uh or maybe after I die there will be a great joke for me, you know that you didn't believe friend, well here it is, but frankly right now, if you ask me, I would say nothing in me goes there or even wants to, that's my truth, that's my truth, no, I appreciate it, yeah, no.

No, I always find it fascinating for people who study trauma, especially when you, like you said, know that no, no child starts from a blank slate, they start with makeup to a certain point and that's why I was intrigued, but, Dr. Martin, it's It's been so lovely talking to you because I feel like I can ask you questions that I wouldn't often get answers to and the quality of the answers, the depth of the answers that you can give. I see you as a true elder as a wise person in our society and I respect you a lot for that and well, thank you very much.

I can honestly tell you that this is not an interview like I've had before. Thank you very much no, well, thank you and I hope this. it's the first of many uh and I want to make sure everyone has been listening and watching. I would love for you to order a copy right now of the myth of normal traumatic illness and healing in a toxic culture. We touch on the topic from within. In the book, we touch on ideas within the book, but as you can see, these are my favorite books. You know it's a really deep study book.

Please take a copy. I couldn't recommend this more. I will be posting the book as I read it deeper as well on my Instagram so if you want to see my notes or takeaways they will be there too and please follow Dr. Companion on Instagram we will also put the links in the show notes, Follow it and we will share all the ideas you got from this. If there's one thing that stood out, I mean, there were so many beautiful descriptions of word definitions. Clarity between the ideas that I think they have. just words that we use every day and we don't know what they mean, so if something caught your attention, tag Dr.

Mateo and I on Instagram on Twitter on Tick Tock, tell us what you've learned and what you've taken. away and I promise you this will be a great investment this year, Dr. Mata, is there anything I haven't asked you before we ask you the last five, which are our five quick questions? Is there anything you would like to share? that I have given you a chance Yes to God, I can't think of anything you could know. I love it. Well, these are five questions that must be answered in one word or one sentence at most, so you have a very tight like.

I almost thought about Twitter these are the last five the first question is what is the best advice you have received about healing or authenticity of trauma expand I'm going to ask you to expand because I want to listen now be yourself you know when I was a very confused young man and I misbehaved everywhere. He had an ant who, as a very traumatized person, was an ostrich survivor and came back weighing 80 pounds. She was an ophthalmologist and she saw that I was authentic. quoted, she sent me this passage from Hamlet, that famous phrase, be true to yourself and follow your tonight for then you cannot be false to any man, so be true to yourself without going into details that the Eastern mind could not Be honest. for itself because of the nature of this culture, but that advice has always been with me, yes, so authenticity has been a big theme in my life, it's amazing, I love it, that's a great answer, okay, question number Two, what's the worst advice you've ever heard? or received healing from a troll man, is it okay if nothing comes up for me?

Yes, if you've never received bad advice, that's good. What is something you once valued that you no longer value? This is almost true, what other people think of me. yeah, I'd be lying if I said, but at the same time I can do without it, it was still there, but I'm not attached to it. Yes, question number four, how would you define your current purpose in life? My purpose is for people to be free from the limitations of culture and also from the limitations of their own past and their own minds and also free politically, so my purpose is for people to be free, it's beautiful and Fifth and last question, if you could create a law that everyone in the world had to follow what would be a rule a rule a law a principle that everyone in the world had to follow if you were coercing and creating the impression that one has to do something that It would already defeat its own purpose because as soon as someone has to do it it's almost like you just lean forward for a minute, would you yes and extend your hand?

Yeah, what do you do as soon as I push your hands? Use this so that as soon as people feel it's necessary, there will be resistance, so I'm going to decline to answer that it's a great response, we've never had that on the show. I love that answer. It's a brilliant answer. Is fantastic. I love it. I love the way you think the myth of normal is out of control right now. a toxic culture Dr. gabo dude uh it's been an honor thank you so much it's been a lot of fun and we'll do it again absolutely thank you thank you thank you if you want more videos like this make sure to subscribe and click. in the boxes here.

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