Gabor Mate: The Childhood Lie That’s Ruining All Of Our Lives. | E193

Financial stress on parents translates into physiological stress on children. They didn't inherit anything in terms of a disease. They are simply reacting to the environment. People call Dr. Gabo

mate

. People whisper. Legendary thinker and best-selling author for whom he is highly sought after. his experience with addiction stress and child development the evidence linking mental illness and

childhood

adversity is as strong as the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer and the average doctor doesn't hear a word about it, it's surprising . I can give you the example of a Donald Trump, I mean, his father was a psychopath, you are the enemy of the people, go ahead, for him, these were not elections but survival techniques and that is the mark of a traumatized child, a denial of reality, what do I have to understand about your Since my early years, to understand you, my grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz and my mother and I barely survived and then my mother, to save my life, hands me over to a stranger in the sense that I guess I'm being rejected and abandoned because I'm no good.

How did that rear its ugly head throughout your life in various ways? They are the traumas that I define. It is not about what happens to us, but what happens within us as a result of what happens to us. It's costing us in terms of our physical health our relationship our mental health and so on, how can that be corrected, first of all, it's a multi-layered response before this episode begins? I just want to say a huge thank you to all of our new subscribers, 74 of you, who Watch this channel, you didn't subscribe before and now we're around 71, which helps us in a number of ways that are quite difficult to explain, but just the bigger it gets the channel comes back, the bigger the guests get, so if you haven't.

I'm still subscribed to Diary of a CEO, if I can get any favors from him, if you ever watched the show and enjoyed it, it's just to hit the Subscribe button without further ado. I am Stephen Butler and this is the Diary of a CEO I hope no one is listening to me but if so please keep it to yourself my dear little man, only after many long months do I take pen in hand so I can briefly sketch for you the unspeakable horrors of those times, the details of which I don't want you to know that those are words your mother wrote in her diary in the 1940s during the Holocaust in April 1945, three months after the Soviet army expelled the Nazis from Budapest, which is where we live, so he was referring to the previous year. and the beginning of that year, the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945. and in those diary entries, she addresses many of them directly to you like a baby, surely Dairy speaks directly to me, as if it were like a story of my life addressed to me.

There's a lot in all of your books, um, and a lot of your work about the importance of that early context that's really been. I am referring to the central point of all the writings I have read recently and I know it because it is so evident in everything. what you have done that has been the key your own initial context has been a key inspiration for why you have become so interested in these topics what was your initial context what do I have to understand about your early years to understand you So it's a fact about human beings that the model that forms us will affect how we see the world, how we understand ourselves, how we relate to other people and, um, the initial model is the first months, even in Europe, already in the womb in the that we are. affected by the environment, but certainly in the early years, when our brain is forming and our personality is taking shape and that forms our worldview, now my worldview in my sense of self was shaped by the fact that at two months old, when I was two months old when the German army occupied Hungary Hungary was the last country in Eastern Europe where the Jewish population had not been exterminated and that was our turn the day after the German army entered Budapest, which was on March 19, 1944.

A day later my mother called the pediatrician to say please come see Gabor because he cries all the time and the doctor said of course I will go but all my Jewish babies are crying and so the fact is that when mothers are stressed or in pain, the baby feels all that and takes it personally and it becomes part of their model of how they see the world, so that was that year when it started that year in the one where my grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz and my father was in forced prison. I gave birth and my mother and I barely survived and it's a story I've told many times but that's where my brain is developing and that's when I'm forming my sense of self and then my mother to save my life gives me to a stranger and I don't see her for six weeks, the feeling I get is that I'm not loved, then I get rejected and abandoned and because I'm not good enough, that's how my life started, so your mother gives you away for five or six weeks. weeks, yeah, to save you from starvation and you know, in the ghetto, that she was going to do the right thing, that's right, this is after your grandparents were murdered in our switch by yeah, the Nazis, um, how do you know in Hindsight that moment?

Of those six weeks they created that feeling of abandonment in you. I wouldn't say it's just about that moment where children see themselves through their interactions with their parents now, first of all, I didn't have a father because he was gone. He hadn't had I didn't see him except very briefly. I'm a month old, but there was no father in the photo. My mother was heartbroken and terrified and full of pain and worry about what will happen to us and just the task of surviving. every day she doesn't play with me she doesn't smile at me much she's worried looking she's stressed looking at the baby she takes everything personally that's the nature of the baby since the babies were narcissistic we think it's all about us so when things are going well Hey, we're great, but my mom is unhappy, it's because she doesn't love me, I can't make her happy, or I'm inadequate, so my mother's separation certainly set a template for some of my interactions with my spouse decades later. . but the feeling of not being good enough and of being responsible was instilled in me throughout that first year of life, to such an extent that in this book The Myth of Normality I talk about an experience with psychedelic mushrooms in the therapist.

This was not long ago seven years ago maybe when I'm at least 70 years old and I'm in this therapeutic session with the cytocybin, the medicine and the therapist and I know I'm 78 70 years old and I know this is a therapy session and I know his name and I know who am I in the world but at the same time I am experiencing myself as a one year old baby and she is my mother and I start to cry. I get in his face and say, "I'm so sorry I made your life so difficult just now." That was an unconscious memory of my perception of myself when I was one year old, that I made life so difficult for my mother because that's how baby interprets it like that, even if your mother loved you, which mine did. she did infinitely, not that she always treated me in the best possible way, but she did love me and can you imagine what a great act of love it would be to even give me to a stranger on the street?

I have been for her, you know? But because of their own unhappiness I can only conclude that I'm not good enough and it's my fault that it's 70 years of having that experience with psilocybin, coming to that conclusion or having that kind of um, having that response to your therapist where they assume the role of your mother and you are one year old, how can someone who is 70 years old correct that type of interpretation that you had of that early traumatic event by bringing it to the conscious level? them and I noticed that feeling of guilt or responsibility in me, I say oh, that's what it's about, so it's a meaning, seeing traumas, I define that it's not about what happens to us, but what happens inside us as a result of what happens to us. us and then the wound in my trauma means wounds, the wound in this case is my feeling of deficiency or not being good enough, not being worthy enough once I realized that oh, this has nothing to do with with nothing except this interpretation that I made with my own experience all those years ago and when I realized it I can't believe it anymore.

I no longer have to be subject to that interpretation of myself in the world, so awareness is a step, it is not adequate but it is an essential step. Towards letting go of that belief that you weren't good enough, yeah, how is that weird? The ugly head of it throughout your life turned me into a workaholic doctor because they had to keep proving my worth and it doesn't matter, no, no. I don't know if you've ever had an addiction, but the nature of it is that we're trying to get from the outside something that can only arise and satisfy us from the inside, so when you look from the outside it's addictive because you get it.

It's temporary, but that emptiness inside, That hole never goes away, so you have to fill it over and over again. It can only be done temporarily, so it becomes addictive. So, you know, work becomes an addiction because I keep trying to get better. my worth and no matter how many times you know I can show up in a positive way at the beginning of summer's life, at the end of someone else's life or any time in between, it never fills that void that my sense of lack of dignity creates, so that's an important thing that shows up, another way it shows up is if in my relationship I don't feel as satisfied, I don't like my wife like I like her too, then I get angry, but why am I angry?

I'm getting angry because it's my feeling of not being good enough that's now being revealed it's discovered this this this this this self-accusation um but I'm getting angry at her because her job is to make me not feel like you know we have In this relationship there are four types of reasons some of them are conscious some are not some are positive some come from a trauma in my case I want that relationship to show me how good I am, so when it doesn't prove it then I understand I am upset with my partner, you know that well, except Gap is inside me, not inside, it doesn't come from her, so it shows, it should have been my paternity, it shows up everywhere.

I mean, I think both examples sound a lot like me. especially the first one, yes, the second one too, but yeah, what a sense, in the sense that I'm definitely a workaholic and I thought, I think in the early phases of my life I like to sacrifice everything in this quest to become a millionaire and and having all of these things and really getting this validation sacrificed meaningful connections, all in the pursuit of this. Well, part of the toxicity of the culture that I talk about in this book is that it actually rewards that kind of emptiness or that or that desperation.

Looking to fill that void because you know you are rewarded and make a lot of money. Many people admire you. Do you feel good about yourself. I guess that good feeling is only temporary, at least if my example. Is there a guy you know who feels good because someone outside values ​​you? He's just a temporary self because of the wound inside, but the world actually rewards him, you know? So you are a workaholic doctor. Great, you make more money and everything. these people respect you while you hold firm from the inside and you're not available to your family, you know, that's part of the madness of this culture and it's like the hedonistic treadmill in this in a sense because it's never enough, it's never enough When you say yes, then the last achievement must be surpassed by a greater achievement for me to receive a clap or a clap.

I've never really made the connection that the reason I'm a workaholic is because I'm trying to prove to the world that I'm enough, but I think it's completely true, yeah, so in your class, like race and class in this society of inequality, are certainly traumatic and potentially traumatic contributions, as I pointed out in this book. and you know to the extent that it affects people's physiology, you know, but I also don't know your family version or what kind of relationship you have with your parents, but there may also have been a feeling like the one I had with my mom during you know the reasons and whatever happened in your family, maybe you also had the feeling that even in your family background you weren't good enough in some way for my mom to yell at my dad for like seven hours a day, my dad.

I just sat there okay, so my first memories of looking at my mom and dad are this verbally violent, not physically, these incredibly stressful screams of one person yelling at the other, that's what I remember, but reading it What you've written in this book and from what you've said now, I actually could have learned that I was the problem to some extent, your kids interpret it that way, that's the point, that's what I mean by Children are narcissistic, and I am not. I don't mean that in the negative sense, I just mean that they actually think it's all about them, so if your mom isn't happy, it's your fault, you know, and you're not good enough, then you have to get out. and work to prove your worth.

Prove to the world and to yourself that you are good enough that, going back to your first question abouthow these things appear in our

lives

, that's how they appear and then at 12 years old you emigrate to Vancouver, yes, at 28. I joined the medical profession, yes, and you spend the next 32 years working well, at 28, I actually went back to medical school. I took a detour. I was a high school teacher and um and then I was 27 28 years old when I started medical school at 33 years old. I think I started my medical career 32 years ago and in those 33 years, what was your practice?

What did you specialize in? What did you focus on? So I was a family doctor, which meant I delivered a lot of babies and took care of people's problems from the beginning to the end of life. I also worked in palliative care. I was the director of a unit in the hospital that took care of terminally ill people and I did that for about 22 years of my practice 28 22 years and then I completely changed gears and went to work in the east center of Vancouver, British Columbia, which is the largest city in North America. constant area of ​​drug consumption we have more people who come from any part of the world they are surprised by what they see there are thousands of people in the streets injecting selling using inhaling ingesting drugs of all kinds and people have suffered the consequences of drug consumption in a society that doesn't understand drug use so it punishes and excludes it, it also sizes it up so that people get HIV from dirty needles and hepatitis C, so this is the population, they are often homeless, so that's the population I worked with for 12 years until the end of my medical work, that experience was working with patients who were in palliative care, so that's for anyone who doesn't know that they are patients nearing the end of their

lives

, who have terminal illnesses and who are aware that they are going to die.

What did that experience teach you? It was necessary to accept one's lack of omnipotence as a doctor because you go into the you want to cure people, you want people to heal and now it takes tremendous exceptions to say, you know, we. We've reached the limit of our knowledge and that doesn't mean we can't help people, but we certainly can't cure them, you know? And that taught me how to be with the inevitable and when you work with people who are in the process of dying, I mean, by the way, who are not in the process of dying, you know, but people whose time is more limited than that of the rest of us.

Acceptance, you learn a lot. Acceptance. It challenges you to do it. Do your best when you know that your best will not be to save anyone's life, but to help people live a life with as little suffering as possible and as much dignity as possible, so it really challenges the best parts of yourself to show patience and acceptance. um, intuition personally taught me a lot about listening to people, interesting enough, people really want to be heard when they're dying, they want to make sense of their lives, they want to tell their stories, so I want their stories to be heard, like that. that I heard them.

A lot of times I sat by the bed, so I don't know if it's not, and all that when you listen, did you hear any topics related to regret or things that really mattered because I always imagine if they gave me that news? that my life was coming to an end and that there was an approxi

mate

date, it would be a pretty powerful way to finally realize what really matters and that you've never met people who react to their impending death in different ways, so there was some people who just fought to the end, you know, didn't really want to accept it, but most people were more along the lines that you describe, where they can really see what's important, so I mentioned this several times, it sounds strange and No I don't recommend it but I have had patients who call me doctor, I don't know how to tell them and maybe I can't even explain it, but this disease that is going to take my life is the best thing that has happened to me. me and but by men they meant a couple of things, they meant what you just said about finding out what's really important in life in this book The Myth of the Normal Lie, a young man named Bill Pie wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor in a Hot Hog What kind of blessing is that?

So I asked Will what the blessing is and he said that he made me appreciate every moment that meant every time he talked to someone. I knew this might be the last conversation I would have. I'm going to have with them, so it better be a genuine human interaction, so there was that aspect, the other aspect was that again my view is as I pointed out in this book and in previous works, who gets sick and who doesn't. . It's not exactly accidental, it was certainly personal patterns based on traumatic experiences from their

childhood

that make illnesses more likely and people very often realize that throughout their lives they had abandoned who they were and lived a life that was not meaningful. for them and they are in that they reconnected with themselves in an authentic way and that seemed to be worth a lot to people again.

I don't recommend that way of reconnecting with yourself, but people have certainly seen it, so those are the two big lessons after your 33 years in medical practice. um, you described that you were a little in tune with a creative calling which was to write well. I started writing when I was a doctor, so my first book about ADHD after I Was Diagnosed was published in 1999, so that was 23 years ago, so I started writing and even before that I wrote. Because I wrote cons for newspapers, but yes, there was a time in my life when the impulse to write that had been with me all my life was stifled and and and and and and and and and and and and I also because I had this frustration in fact they had the feeling that there was something that I needed to express. but I didn't know what and they didn't know how and at some point I realized, oh yeah, I needed to write, so that started before I finished medical practice, but it certainly has been essential to my continued development as a human being.

I felt so compelled by that when I read about it because um. I've begun to really understand the value of creativity in all of our lives, whether we have the luxury of being called artists or not, and what, in your opinion, is the importance of, "Well, you're singing my tune." Here, if I may put it that way, because in this book I called a great Hungarian-Canadian stress researcher named Janus celi a c-l-y-e and Celia is the one who actually coined the word stress in the sense that we use it today and he is the one that showed in the lab how stress lowers the immune system and this organizes the hormones and ulcerates the stomach and all that kind of stuff, but now you also said so I quote it here, what is in us must come out of what is there In us.

The most important thing is that we all have to follow our key to our impulses in the way that nature prepared for us, otherwise we can be desperate, hopelessly surrounded by frustration. I'm paraphrasing it very closely so that we are created in the image of God, I mean, like you. I know what religious views are, but that sense that we create images of God means that we are creators because the essence of God is creation, in fact, we call God the Creator and we call the result of that creation if we are created, so if we are, if we are offspring of that creative dynamic in the universe, then it means that it is up to us to create and whatever form that takes, I mean, you know you don't want to see me make art, you know, unless you can do it. a pretty good stick figure, you know, but I'm married to a nurse, so the community doesn't have to take the formal art form, but it does if it requires some flow of something that's inside you that needs to come out .

Otherwise, as Celia says, frustration inevitably corners you and, in that sense, everyone has that creative impulse and that can take the form of social relationships, it could take the form of gardening. I don't care about communion with nature, athletic expression. I don't mind. No matter what, but there is someone, everyone has it and if people don't realize they have it it is only because life is their demand and they are too busy and sometimes they are trying to make a living or trying to survive or also. disconnected from themselves, but it is in all of us and to the extent that we do not give it expression, we suffer one of the things that really limits it is the perspective that maybe we are not good at it because we think about expressing it. we ourselves creatively join a kind of competition and that's a trap we can fall into, so if I'm going to be a DJ I need to become a good DJ, yes, but in social comparison, or I don't want to, but what I do .

What I've learned is actually the act of DJing alone in my kitchen at midnight, it's the reward regardless of the outcome or if there's a crowd there, it's just me and my dog ​​listening, that's the expression, it's the reward, not the achievement or the medal. that I might have, although yeah, not the outside look, well, the look, I went through that writing this book, so here I am, this is the writer who writes about trauma and healing, and suddenly I'm. I panicked because I was writing a book and I realized that the problem was that you were talking about identifying with your work, so I had identified with this book, so the problem was not a book because let's say I write the book and not is. a hit, I mean, okay, a big headline in the Sunday Times book, it's not a big hit, you know, how important that is in the history of the universe, but if I identify with the book and it doesn't do well , then if the book fails, then.

I feel like a person who then goes back to my first concern about not being worth it, you know, so once I disidentified I said no, this is just a book, it may be a good book, it may be an important book, maybe a book that misses the mark, but it's just a book and how it goes doesn't say anything about me or my worth once I was able to detach it then I was able to write it again with confidence and much more comfortably, but I reached that crisis. It seems a bit paradoxical that this lack of self-esteem motivates someone to create great things because he wants approval, but at the same time makes the process so agonizing because his self-esteem seems to be in danger. line, yeah, his whole sense of self-worth is in the line, well, Dynamic was on me once I realized I let him go, you know, so it didn't, it didn't overpower me in the end and, honestly to God , When I finished the book, I'm not just saying this in retrospect, it's the best seller now in several countries, but I actually said to myself and I meant it now that I made the book, that's what matters.

I have said what it was. I can't control how the world reacts and it doesn't really matter on a fundamental level, it's not that I don't want this book to be accessed, I mean success of course I wanted to sell 10 million copies but that doesn't define my self worth or an important function in the world, how I feel about myself, honestly, it doesn't and I understood that when I finished working on it, so once it's done, it's either going to be out there doing its job or not. it works, but I don't have to rely on how the book works because at that point that's an outcome that you can't control, so trying to control that would be yeah, anxiety and yeah, oh yeah, well, you can.

I don't control it, no, 10 years, this book, yes, it took you to write it, it took me to prepare it, it took me about three years to write it, yes, it describes it as a vocation, yes, the myth of normality, yes, what four words to attract people in some way. summarize uh 550 odd page book why those four words why that phrase can I post from one to find a quote on my cell phone 100 yeah, yeah, just so this is, are you familiar with the rokovic artoli? uh Echo, totally, yeah, okay, yeah. Tony lives in Vancouver like me and, in one of his books, he says that the normal mental state of most human beings contains a strong element of what we might call dysfunction or even insanity, you know, in medical language, normal means healthy. and natural, then there is a normal range of blood pressure, normal temperature, it is a range outside that range, there is no life, there is no health, whether it is too high or too low, you are gone, then normal means it is equivalent to synonymous with healthy and natural, however we make it.

The same assumption that the society we are accustomed to what we call normal is also healthy and natural, which is a myth because I am saying that in this society what we consider normal is neither healthy nor natural, in fact, It is harmful to us. That we're using the word normal in a way that doesn't apply in the strict medical sense is accurate, but in a broader sense, what we're used to in this society considering normal just isn't good for us, you know? and Norm is some kind of statistic or he's some kind of average, so if everyone had a dog, if everyone in London mistreated their dog and if they didn't, then it would be abnormal, you know, so it's a myth to say that. what is normal is healthy and natural, that is what I mean by the normal method.One thing, I mean, the other thing I mean is whether we understand that the real science of the unity of everything.

I'm not talking about spiritual perception here. I'm talking about you know, the physiological sciences, which are physiology and psychology, are greatly affected by our life experiences, such as birth in the womb, early childhood and throughout life, it also follows that the Illness and health are not individual attributes, they are actually manifestations of our relationships and our situation in the world and our history, that also means that when circumstances are abnormal, you expect people to get sick, you know, like you give them to animals something that was unhealthy for them, they would get sick, that would be what I would expect this idea that people who are sick, whether physically or mentally, are abnormal.

I say no, these are normal responses to an abnormal set of circumstances and instead of being those abnormal people and the rest of us, it's really a spectrum that everyone was pretty much everyone on it, so in those three senses this The idea of ​​normality is a myth and it is something that prevents us from seeing reality and we are all abnormal in some way, yes, so if maybe my attention is different maybe you already know that my interpersonal relationships are abnormal but somehow way I'm going to be abnormal when it comes to treatments, how do you think the medical profession and the psychological profession would respond differently if we eliminated this? idea that there is something normal, how would our approaches to treating people change?

Hmm, well, it's a multi-level answer. First of all, we would recognize that our diagnoses are not explanations for anything, so you know, I've been diagnosed with ADD, you know? legitimately, since my first book was about that, um, but it doesn't explain anything, so I don't understand it easily, very easily, you know, and sometimes when I don't do it often and I don't want to, but you know, unless this. highly motivated then you could say that this person has ADD, how do we know? because it disconnects a lot why this happens a lot it is because it turns out a lot so first of all we have to understand that our understanding of what is normal and what is out of the normal does not explain anything that they can, can describe if it describes my functioning mental as that of someone who has an automatic tendency to disengage, would be accurate, so the description is useful as an explanation. why this person doesn't behave in quotes normally doesn't explain anything, not if you understood that I spent my childhood in very difficult circumstances where I was very stressed about all the things I had already talked about and that disconnecting was a normal response to those circumstances as a way to protect myself from the stress of all of this and this is happening when my brain was developing, so you understand that there is nothing abnormal about disconnecting, in fact, it is the normal response to an abnormal set of circumstances.

So that's the first point and you could go through the same kind of dialectic with all kinds of physical and mental illnesses because of the way it's called the second point is why do you say that? Well, look, the disease model is as long as we understand a model to be, okay and we think it describes reality completely, but it doesn't, for example, because you talk about mental illnesses and we assume that there is a defined type of pathology there, just as in rheumatoid arthritis, which you can describe. joint inflammation and blood levels of certain antibodies are abnormal and hormone levels are altered.

You know, we're making the same assumption in mental illness. There is no such evidence. In mental illnesses there are no physiological parameters that allow us to say that someone has a mental illness. A few months ago a study was conducted of thousands of band scans of people diagnosed with mental illness. There is nothing diagnostic in them about brain scans. It's not like you can take an x-ray of a lung and say this is this lung. I have what we call consolidation or fluid that indicates inflammation, there is none of that and mental diagnosis, there is no blood test you can do etc, so the illness is a model, I mean, maybe yes, someone is really depressed , even suicidal perhaps and they might need a pharmacological intervention that actually saves their life, that may be true and in that sense they can be said to be sick as long as we realize that this is a construct that we are applying here, but there's no real measurement of that. that is not at all similar to what we call physical illness, but even in a physical illness we make certain assumptions, um, for example, someone has rheumatoid arthritis, no, there is nothing wrong with that statement at first glance, but there is an assumption, the assumption is that this thing exists.

It's called rheumatoid arthritis and there's a person who called me and this person has this thing no, you know, the example I give often here is my cell phone, I have it in my head I have a cell phone, it's not part of me, it doesn't say anything about me it's just a discrete object its nature doesn't depend on my nature nothing is true about rheumatoid arthritis or is it more true to say it when I discovered that this is a condition that appears in people with certain life experiences and certain forms of functioning in the world and that due to science documents the unity of mind and body and the impossibility of separating the activity or emotional apparatus from seeing our immune system because it is all an organic unit therefore, when the immune system turns against the body like what it does in the rheumatoid arthritis damage system actually attacks the body is something that has a life of its own or is a process that is happening within that person due to certain aspects of their lives now if I say it is something that happens to you then that thing has a life of its own and that's why most doctors see it, they see someone with rheumatoid arthritis, they say, okay, this is the type you have, this is what's going to happen, this It's the only thing that we can do.

This is to mitigate the symptoms. I find that not true. I find that the rumor that because of them not only I find it, science discovers that rheumatoid arthritis is very related to stress and trauma, and the more stress there is, the more likely it is. It's breaking out and if people deal with that stress, if they know how to prevent it, their illness decreases, which means it's not something separate, it's a process that happens within them. This is a subtle concept, although I wonder if I'm explaining it clearly, no, you are and it really makes me wonder to what extent we misunderstand the relationship between the mind and the immune system, yes, because that is the real connection, that is the important connection you must understand if you want to accept all the things you have.

I just said yes, which we don't understand. I don't think we normally understand that my mind and my immune system have such a close relationship. Well, there's a whole new science that studies those relationships. It is called psychoneuraminology, which studies. the interconnected unit of the emotional apparatus of our brain and body with the immune system with the nervous system and with the hormonal apparatus I mean, it is so obvious that I could change your hormonal state in this fifth second right now without touching you by just yelling at you and threatening you that would necessarily create a change, I mean, it's clear that your emotions are inseparable, you know, and the other curious thing is, well, several curious things, how do we treat most conditions in medicine, by the way, inflammations if you're going to a dermatologist? with infinite skin if you go to a rheumatologist with inflamed joints you should go to a gastroenterologist with inflamed intestines if you go to a respirologist with inflamed lungs if you go to a neurologist with an inflamed nervous system it is in multiple sclerosis they go to give him steroids, the constant inflammation , water steroids, they are stress hormones and you would think that as doctors we would wonder, God, we are treating everything with stress hormones, stress maybe has something to do with this condition, so when you look at the scientific literature yes, yes and yes, so there is a great Canadian doctor, actually joined by Queen Victoria, one of the great teachers of medicine of all kinds, Sir William Osler, and he said in 1890 that rheumatoid aristritis is a stressed disease during the neurologist French Jean.

Matan Charbón, who first described multiple sclerosis, said that it is a stress-driven condition and since then there has been a lot of research, so what I am saying is that this way of looking at what we call disease is a process, It is much more scientifically accurate. actually understanding the Mind-Body unity and then naturally you know that when people are traumatized, that has a big impact on their physiology, their psychological trauma has a big impact on their physiology, it's just science, but it's science that They don't teach doctors, they teach doctors, uh, doctors. just for some strange reason, well, the average doctor never hears a single lecture about, say, trauma and its relationship to illness, and yet studies internationally, thousands of them, show those relationships, so there's this strange gap between science and medical practice, but it would change. medical practice for the better because what if you went to a doctor and presented your symptom and they said okay, look, we'll give you medication to treat your symptoms and then look at your life in the context in which you live it and see how The stress you may be taking on from the traumas you may be enduring may be affecting your body's physiology.

No, they don't all have to be trauma therapists to do that, they just have to do it. They ask the question and they begin and then they begin the research that will mean a big change in the life of that person and in the process of their disease and clearly in the lives of their children also because I remember reading in your book about the study with the rats. , yeah, um, and how could you tell me about that study, how the stress study with the rats and how the parents, the treatment of a child, affected their stress response and then they also approved what I thought was, yeah, that it was very interesting.

The study was done in Canada, at McGill University, I think it was maybe in the last 20 years, early 2000s, I think, and they looked at their mothers, the rats interacting with their offspring, their newborns, and some , and this is a process called grooming in which the mother radically licks, the baby gained apparent, very perennial, a perineal area, you know, in the genitals, this is shortly after birth, this mother rat begins to lick their babies, some others did so in a more efficient and affectionate way than other mother rats, those who If they had the best kind of care, the best kind of care would be calmer and respond to stress in more functional ways than those little rats that when they were newborns they had not received the same type of efficient and affectionate care, foreign to the brains of adults. rats that had been prepared in one way or another when they were babies, the stressed apparatus was different, certain receptors for stress hormones, so one of them could call itself more easily than the other, the interesting thing is that I could well say that she is genetic, the calmer mothers passed on their genes to the babies, no, they did not, because if you took the babies of mothers who groomed themselves wonderfully and placed them with mothers who did not and, Conversely, you took the baby Rats from mothers who did not groom themselves as well, but you put them with the mothers, who changed it, changed the brain of the adult, changed the brain, changed the genetic functioning, not the genes, but the genetic functioning, this is called epigenetics, how the environment turns genes on and off and then that mother and those rats that are doing well as babies it doesn't matter what the original mother was, but they are actually doing well, they continued to prepare their babies exactly the same way they had been groomed, this is how we pass on our nurturing things from generation to generation, both in behavior and through the activation or deactivation of certain genes, so, in essence, the loving What our parents were has a huge impact on our own ability to handle stress positively or negatively, oh absolutely, and then we pass it on.

Answer how they reacted to their own stress as babies. You know that has a lot to do with your brain handling stress later on, which is why some people just don't handle stress very well. They don't handle frustration very well. You should have seen it. Me this morning at the hotel when the pool didn't open on time, you know, but it was a lot better than it could have been years ago, you know, but yeah, our stress responses are very programmed by our early developmental experiences. about our early experience is the first word in the kind of subtitle of your book is the word trauma um it's a word that I've talked about a lot on this podcast and you know I've had a lot from people here who have opened up about their traumas, How is trauma defined?

I know that society has defined itits way, but how do you define the word? I. I define it very specifically. um it's not something bad that happens to you, it's not something No, it's not like you know I went to see this movie last night and I was traumatized. No you weren't, you were just sad or had some emotional pain, but you weren't traumatized. Trauma means a wound, that is the literal meaning of the word. It's a Greek word for wound, so trauma is a psychological wound that you suffer and it behaves like a wound, so on the one hand, everyone, if it's very raw, if you touch it, it really hurts, so yeah I have a wound, they don't want me. then or the belief that I won't be decades later, if something reminds me that it hurts as much as when I originally got the wound, so in a sense, trauma is an unhealed wound that when touched activates us, that is what it means to activate. by the way, an old wound is activated or touched and the other thing that happens to wounds is that they heal and the scar tissue has certain characteristics, it is thick, it has no nerve endings, so there is no sensation in it, so what people get traumatized disconnected from their feelings, um.

The tissue of the sky is rigid, it is not flexible, so we lose the type of flexibility of response, so when something happens we tend to react in a stereotypical, predictable and dysfunctional way because of the rigidity and the scar tissue does not grow like flesh healthy, so traumatized people tend to stay stuck. in emotional states that characterized their development when they were traumatized. So when someone tells you not to miss a baby like that, it doesn't sound very pleasant, but there is some truth in it, it means that you are probably reacting along the lines of someone who you held when you were a baby and now are you reacting as if that injury is happening again?

This is what one of my friends in the trauma world, Peter Levine, calls the lawyer of the past, so something happens in the present and we react as if we were there again. in the past when this first happened and we're not in the present moment at all and I was trying to figure out how many people, as a percentage of the population, have trauma, but then, you know, I read this statistic with 60 of the adults They say they've had traumatic early upbringing or whatever or traumatic events from their childhood, but then I thought maybe everyone has trauma, it depends on how we understand trauma, so if we understand trauma it's just the really terrible thing. things that happen to people that happen to people you meet in the book.

I talked about a British friend of mine who doesn't live in Canada. He's a yoga teacher, a meditation teacher, a psychologist and an artist, actually, and he grew up in some orphanage here in Britain where they were racially taunted every morning, you know, words that are in the book with his permission and that I'm not going to quote here publicly and they gave you a sense of deficiency, a sense of self that I'm just not good enough to not belong and so on, there are those obvious traumas or the obvious trauma of being sexually abused, so the men who are sexually abused according to a Canadian study have tripled the rate of heart attacks in adulthood, you know, and all kinds of physiological reasons well, that should be the case, then there are those obvious Lord Big Tea traumas that we call Big Tea Terminal Cat TV the capital T trauma with a capital T there is a certain percentage of the population much larger than we think subject to that if you include um All known factors, such as physical, sexual or emotional abuse spanking, for True, they have not proven to be as traumatic as the harsher forms of physical abuse spanking that are still recommended by so-called experts who should be named remain nameless for the moment. moment uh the death of a parent violence in a family violence parental violence against each other an imprisoned parent depending on a mental illness I said apparent being an addict a divorce of resentment these are the great traumas identified The great traumas of the T no, without mention poverty, don't mention extreme inequality, war, etc., but if you remember that trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you, this is the wound that people can get hurt not only because of the bad things that happen to them, but young children can be hurt in loving families. where the knees don't meet, I mean, that's obvious in the physical sense, if a child doesn't get proper nutrition, their body will suffer, their mind will suffer, we are also creatures with emotional needs as important as our physical needs. when the emotional needs of the child are not met, that child is hurt and that is what we call a small trauma, which is not the major events like I described, but simply the child's need to be loved unconditionally, to be held when is distressed and to respond to him. to be seen, to be heard, they are allowed their full range of emotions without being trampled in the name of so-called discipline, um, the right to play creatively, spontaneously, in nature, not with these damn digital devices that subvert and They kidnap the child's life. imagination but spontaneous play.

That is essential for the development of the band, so what I am saying is that when these needs are not for an unconditional loving attachment relationship, when those needs are frustrated, children also feel hurt and I also call that trauma because appears later. life as the impact of painful wounds, so drama in this Society, for all kinds of reasons, is much more common than we imagine when we sit here and talk to I don't know somewhere, more than 100 different people who They come from all walks of life, but specifically people. who are successful in their industries and you talked about knowing how an abnormal early education can create some kind of abnormality in an adult.

Many of the people I sit with here are successful because of some kind of abnormality or at least their interpretation of some kind. from an early event that caused them to have some kind of abnormal belief about themselves that they are not enough to become billionaires or gold medalists or whatever, yeah, one of the things I thought I could predict is that I thought I could if they told me what I thought after doing 100 episodes, if they told me the traumatic event they had gone through, I could predict the outcome in them, but there's a disconnect there because you know I would sit here with a guest who went through one of your capital-T traumas, like domestic violence, and one of them could become incredibly angry, yes, and one of them could become the most peaceful loving person I've ever met, yes, and that taught me that there is something between the event which is what you call interpretation, yeah, and I found that I really found that makes it really difficult to diagnose, well, no, look, so the two examples that you gave, that really peaceful person can be really peaceful for genuinely good reasons, like them.

They have found the milk of human love flowing through their veins and have had some spiritual reconciliation with the world where they may have kindled a genuinely learned compassion for themselves and others, but they may also be very kind and peaceful because they are suppressing their feelings. healthy. anger because they are actually unconsciously sitting in their rage, which will manifest in some kind of health manifestation. I guarantee it later so that you can't know it from the outside without asking some questions, or I can give you the example of a Donald Trump who had a really traumatic childhood, I mean, his father was a this as described by his psychologist niece Mary Trump , her father, Trump's father, who is Mary's grandfather, was a psychopath and really demeaned and treated his children harshly, so Trump decides.

Unconsciously, by the way, I'm not talking about his politics here. No, this is not a political debate and in the book I point out that his opponent was also traumatized. Hillary Clinton said this is an ecumenical vision. about trauma and politics and not choosing sides I'm just saying that you can see his trauma every moment he opens his mouth his grandiosities they need to get bigger more powerful aggressive and eat as much as he says in his autobiography that the world is a horrible place, a place for dogs where everyone was chasing you, everyone wants your wife, your house and your wealth, and these are your friends, your enemies don't matter, but that is the world he lives in, although that world he lives in reflects the home of his childhood that he developed.

That world that he came to honestly you could say because that's the world that he lived in and he becomes very successful in this crazy world, you know, financially, although people ask, you know, do you know if he was really as successful as he was? says? but he certainly had political success if by success you mean obtaining power. His brother, on the other hand, Mary Trump's father, Trump's niece's father crawled to his death and they were both responses to the same thing, you can never say it's exactly the same for two children. but there was a toxic home environment, one ends up dead as an alcoholic, the other ends up at the top of power and when I look at them both I see dysfunction, there is significant dysfunction here, so one of those consequences of that early upbringing was that it materialized as a kind of addiction and the other received the same psychological reinforcement or what is missing in power, work and money.

Donald Trump learned that the way to survive is to be aggressive, tough and competitive and get others before they get to you, which is a faithful reproduction of his early childhood experiences, so for him these were not choices but techniques of survival and, when they talk about him lying, well, I don't know when he lies or when he doesn't, but my feeling is that often he really believes what he says and he is actually a biographer or the person who co-wrote his cause, the autobiography, the art of the deal, this writer says he has never met anyone who is so capable of believing something that is not. true it's true if he wants it to be true now that's the mark of a traumatized child you know a denial of reality it's an inauguration there were a certain number of people who came today he couldn't stand that there wasn't the largest number of people who attended At Barack Obama's inauguration there were a much smaller number of people there.

He created this reality where many more people attended his inauguration. What is the old behavior? That's a four-year-old boy, but more children came to his party. that my party that cannot be true, but that is the way Donald faces reality, it is not a moral failure as such, that is how he survived and these survival mechanisms for them come to form our personalities and again in this world Sometimes they pay off in certain cases. Many times this is the case of pathological lies, they have learned to lie as a way to survive. Oh, absolutely, German writer and philosopher Nichi Friedrich Nietzsche said that people who lie their way out of reality have been hurt by reality, and so me.

I've lied, you know, like when I had my shopping addiction, I confided in Every Day to my wife, you know, and even later, when she tried, when she stopped trying to change my behavior, I said, just tell me if you're going to show up. I'm going to spend another thousand dollars on music, just tell me I still couldn't because I was too ashamed of it and then lying became a form of survival for me, defense against reality, it's a defense against reality and it's defense against um be. judged you know well that says something about my childhood you know that no one is born a liar as we say in this book there are nice liars but there are no congenital liars no one day old baby tells lies no wonder your baby pretends something if we end up pretending somehow in The extent to which we do so is because we have to learn that is what we must do to survive.

You said something at the beginning when I gave the example that I have this. I sat down with a guest here who stopped by on domestic matters. abuse, yeah, and they're the calmest person and then you said well, maybe they're repressing it and actually the moment you said that it reminded me of something they said, which is they told me on this podcast that they had outbursts of gonna. all the time, so sometimes their kids come up to them, yeah, um, and they want to play when they're working, and they snap, yeah, and they try, they're trying to deal with it, yeah, that's what I wanted say.

They're sitting in this um creator of a volcanic crater of anger that sometimes bubbles up out of them, so their behavior is like a really developed, repressed way of managing anger, which as a child, if they had expressed it, would have got into more trouble. suppress it suppress it became his survival, it's about survival, you see, so it became his survival mechanism. No, that person, as long as they keep it up, is at risk for a mental health diagnosis like depression, because what is depression? you're pushing something down that's what it means to be pushed down our natural emotions why we push them down because we have to survive so that person I don't know noI can predict what is going to happen to them but if they do not resolve it in general, they run the risk of suffering some type of physical or mental manifestation.

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A quick one from our oldest sponsor hero. I can't tell you the last time. In the last few years, it's actually been about two and a half years, it was really after the pandemic how much my health has become such a big priority in my life. Huel has probably been the most important partner in my health journey because I've been in their offices dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of times I've seen how they make their nutrition decisions and that's why It's so wonderful to be able to talk to this audience about a brand and a product that is incredibly linked to my values ​​and the place I occupy in my life: valuing the gym, exercise, movement, my mind, my breathing and all those things, and most importantly my nutrition, that's the role he plays and therefore every time I get to read these ads I do it with a lot of passion because I truly believe every word I say and I absolutely love the brand so yes you haven't done it yetI tried Hill and you've resisted my nagging, so give it a try and let me know how it goes, you talked about expressing emotions and something you've talked about in this book, but also previously is the idea that there is such a thing as healthy anger, yes, it is one of the seven A's of your healing, as you say, the first is the theme, a theme that we have already talked about, which is acceptance, yes, the next is awareness, awareness, hopefully we would have put it in this book but we didn't not in this book uh in this book I booked Four A and uh I left that conscience and that was an omission on my part really yes, it was, I'm sorry, but that's how it was in the book that you have authenticity anger acceptance an agency yes and yes acceptance yes then awareness you have said before before this book that awareness is the starting point yes I found that to be very true in my life but it is not very easy I feel that awareness is a luxury or a hard-fought privilege, yes, because you're guessing, yes, you're guessing based on pattern recognition, so I guess I'm 25.

I can't get into a relationship every time a girl comes up to me, yeah, even if I... I've chased her down, ran away and to find out why she was doing that, even to identify the pattern of behavior and say that's not useful, that's not going to make me feel complete, yeah, where does that come from? It took me 25 years and much more. introspection, but most people live unaware of the puppet master of trauma that is driving their life. That's a very good analogy. Trauma really is like a puppeteer behind the scenes in the unconscious pulling your strings and you are not aware.

Know? Do you remember Pinocchio? Yes, remember what Pinocchio says at the end, when he finally becomes a real boy. Yes, yes, he says how stupid he was when he was a puppet and to the extent that we are being activated by these unconscious threads that are traumas pulling behind the scenes and reacting in our lives and we think that we are free autonomous beings but in reality we are being controlled by something in the past that we haven't resolved we are puppets, puppets of reality, there is No, there is not much freedom in the sense that there is no freedom at all, so I guess the opposite of trauma if you want to revisit that question is whether liberation is interesting.

Liberation and by reconnection by reconnection of Liberation of the inexorable power. of the unconscious, which is like cutting the strings, in some ways it leads me to think that there are two ways to approach that, but the first question I have about trauma and the puppeteer analogy is: do we ever do it? We actually cut the strings or simply learn to pull on them when they try to tell us to do something with more Force than they exert in the opposite direction. That doesn't work very well pushing against them because you're still reactive, you're not in charge yet, you're just in automatic resistance mode to something, there's no freedom in that, you don't know that either, so yeah, but the awareness that you mentioned is huge. because weren't you aware that this exists? about these strings you may not Fray right away, but once you use them, ah, this reaction of mine is not about what is happening right now, there is something old that is activated here and consciousness alone weakens and loosens the strings a little, no, you know, they're not anymore.

We teach that they are no longer automatically able to attract you, so ultimately we have to start with awareness of them if we realize that this Puppeteer is just a desperate little person trying to get you to survive the only way he, she. They knew that when you were little, when they were little, if you become friends with him, but we think it's his duty, we thank you very much, but I can handle it now, eventually he becomes his friend instead of kind of our Master, you know. , you know. That first step of simply recognizing, simply understanding that there is a puppet master that is controlling us and exactly what strings that puppet master is pulling in our lives, how can consciousness be addressed?

The process of consciousness is, I mean, is it introspection? a daily therapy, what is it, all I want to say is everything or anything, but even when you ask how do you do it, what is good for you to say how to do it? You must already have a certain degree of awareness if you did it. You wouldn't even be asking the question, so that's the first step to realizing that there's something here to work on, there's something here to work on, it doesn't have to be like that, that's already the biggest step of the Buddha.

He said that recognizing the source of your suffering is the first step in alleviating suffering and as soon as you ask how you do it, you have already taken a big step because many people don't even know that there is And if they just think that this is a reality, that That's life, so we're realizing that it doesn't have to be that way. That is already a big step beyond that yoga, meditation, nature, therapy of all kinds. Body work of all types of somatic experiences or um or um cranial sacral treatments or even massage therapy. It's amazing what can be revealed simply through body work like that.

So all kinds of forms of therapy, the ones that I teach, the ones that other people teach, journaling, um, certain exercises in this book that we recommend is just asking yourself if you're going to have trouble saying no in life to things that you really don't want. do and solve it on a regular basis, so there are many ways, once you open the door, you know that I have a Chapter on psychedelics here, which again is not like a panacea or for everyone, but it is surely a useful modality for many people, So some people may benefit from taking pharmaceutical medications if their situation is serious enough, but not as the final answer. but as a way to get a break that allowed them to work on the real issues that are causing them depression, anxiety or disconnection, you know, any and all of these things other people don't even want to open those doors. because there's so much pain associated with maybe going back or revisiting a previous experience that they just think it's better to keep the doors closed, yeah, and get to tomorrow, that's true, to which I have two answers, one is that it's true , it's painful, because all the pain that you didn't want to feel and that you've been running away from through your compensatory behaviors as if your addictions were nothing more than an attempt to escape the pain, that's all they are, you don't know, They are not a disease.

They are not genetic, whatever they are, addictions are simply an attempt to escape from pain, which could create more pain, but that is what they are, that is why we become addicted to work, to sex, to porn, to gambling, the Internet, shopping, food, power. I find that point so quickly that when you mentioned in your previous book that you know that you classify things like food, yes, social media, yes, shopping, yes, pornography and work as types of addiction, that was, that in itself was a bit of a revelation to me because I never saw work as an addiction at the time you said it was and I relate it to heroin addiction, which provides some physiological psychological benefit for me, yeah, temporarily, temporarily, yes, of course it is. an addiction, of course, work is an addiction because they have that addiction, well, it can be an addiction, yes, or it can also be sacred, it can also be satisfying in the manifestation of your creative impulses, but it is like that, it is not like that , but it's strange to say no.

I recommend it but it is even possible to use heroin in a non-addictive way. I personally don't understand it and would never want to, but addiction is never in the behavior itself, it is in its relationship to the behavior, so if the particular activity gives you temporary relief or pleasure and therefore you crave it but it causes harm long term and you can't leave it. You have an addiction and I don't care what the activity is, it could be drugs and everything else. Other things we mentioned and it employs the same brain circus, by the way, the workaholic seeks the same brain chemical that the cocaine addict seeks dopamine, you know, and people can even be addicted to their own stress hormones. , like adrenaline, so... called adrenaline junkies, there is such a thing, you know, so almost anything can be addictive if it serves to temporarily relieve some distress, but cause long-term damage, escapism is the right word to use, so yes we do it because that's how it is.

It doesn't sound so much like we're escaping rather than searching for something. I'm looking for relief from a certain state of mind like I just gave you a definition of addiction so I guess I don't know what addictions you have. I had it happen or I didn't, plus you know, but what did that do for you temporarily? um and give you something that made me feel like I was valid and I was chasing a sense of accomplishment and validation and a good sense of worth, yeah, it was. worthy, yes, no, it's something people need or not, yes, that's a good thing, but the real question is why did you ever have the idea that you didn't have the words?

Why did I understand? I didn't have the word. what trauma comes because a kid at school called me the n-word when I was exactly eight and then I know myself because your mom yelled at your dad, yeah, yeah, you know that and all of that together and that's emotionally painful. . like what it feels like to not have a sense of the word that is painful and that's why my Mantra is don't ask why the addiction is why the pain and if you understand why the pain you have to look at that person's life and what is the benefit of addiction, that's something you say in the previous book that I found, it's a change of narrative where you say that we should ask ourselves what the benefit of addiction is and in your case, yes, it gives me a sense of value Well, I'll tell you if you come to me because you say I'm broke or it's causing some damage in my life, it's stopping me from having intimate relationships, it stresses me out and makes me tired, whatever it is.

The first thing I would ask you is what is it doing for you and you say a sense of the word and I would say you know what you deserve to have a sense of birth. I totally understand why you would want to engage in an activity that gives you that, but since it is causing you harm, let's look at why you don't have a sense of worth and how else you could develop it that isn't harmful to you. You know it, but you start. with what's good about it, what you're looking for and what you're looking for is always valid and how would you go about it, how would you go about getting that sense of value and asking for a friend, well, that would be a matter of, um.

Some form of work, people who meditate often deal with that problem through meditation, it's not always therapy, you know by also recognizing that what you're doing to get a sense of where it's really not serving you just by being honest. In this regard, you know, there are all kinds of ways, but the first step is recognition. That's the first step that you say is missing from the book, which is that kind of awareness. The next thing I've been about is really being out front. mind in my life recently because I have beenI've asked this several times on stage and I've been trying to find the words to really articulate the importance of it and this is one of your forays into this book on how to heal.

It's authenticity, yeah, a really interesting concept because I've been trying to articulate why the fact that I just shared all this stuff with you, yeah, and the fact that I do this every week, yeah, I'm getting closer and closer. to that kind of authentic self where the mask is really falling off why that has been so healing for me why authenticity is such a good way an important way for us to heal is so much more than the way we heal ourselves. we heal is actually what we are what you're really asking is why is it important for a creature to be true to its own nature because that's what we're meant to do, we're meant to be here as ourselves, you know, and and when we nod because we had to abandon or betray ourselves, disconnect from ourselves in order to survive, we lost connections with our essence and, I mean, what does it feel like to be a successful CEO and you know better than making your financial dreams come true, to be a workaholic? and not being available to yourself in areas of your life that really matter to you instead of being honest about your stuff sharing with other people uh, dropping the veil, dropping the I want to answer your question, what does it feel like?

You feel the difference in your body, it feels lighter, well, yes, expansive, exactly, that's the answer, yes, that's why it's so important for many of us, many of us live authentic lives because, like you said, it's because from an early age we were escaping some kind of reality to help us survive or then the other thing that happens a little later in life is that we develop an identity that becomes a career that becomes a social circle that it becomes a prison of our inauthentic selves we get trapped there, you know, because I was good at something or because, you know, I felt accepted in this job as a lawyer, so now I'm living inauthentically like this robot in this prison, um and it's a, there's often a real perception of risk and loss in danger of trying to get out of that prison and trying to get closer to our authentic selves we feel like we're going to lose our friendship.

Circle, we will feel that we will disappoint our parents. He wanted us to become lawyers. You know all these things. I guess you see it a lot in your life. Well, in your job there is that risk and, but here's the problem, when you were a child you had no choice but to seek acceptance and be approved and received under any conditions, no matter what you had to give up of your authenticity. to give up your authenticity, you had no choice in the matter, at a certain point, as adults, we learn that this lack of authenticity, this connection with ourselves, this separation from our instincts, is costing us, is costing us in terms of our physique. health, our peace of mind, our relationship, our mental health, etc., you will never again be as vulnerable as when you were a child, you will never be as helpless, as dependent as, um, without resources, no, it is true that if you develop the whole Set of relationships based on your authentic and inauthentic Persona.

Some people in your life may not like it if you gradually move towards authenticity. They may not like it. It's not what they wanted from you. You are going to discover who your friends are. I'm really going to fight because your real friends will be like oh I'm so happy for you, we were waiting for this, other fans will be like, uh, that's not what I signed up for. You know, the question is, you still have to decide when you're a baby. Child, I had no agency in choosing your you know, authenticity and attachment, no, I know, which one do you want to go with?

What is the cost of being authentic? I can't make that decision for anyone else, no one can make that decision for anyone else. otherwise, but most people will find that choosing authenticity is a benefit far beyond what they may lose, that's what I find and you said the word your agency, which is the second of the four A's, yeah , about how to heal now, agency, when I read that word I I I heard as personal responsibility taking personal responsibility, yes, over my life exactly, which also means not letting you know that you don't use it, try, you don't use trauma as a badge, it You know, or you don't use it as a get-out-of-jail-free pass. in a game of Monopoly, oh, I was traumatized, so I can't, I can't be any other way, you know, I mean give all the power to the Puppet Master, yeah, yeah, exactly, so agency actually means that I take responsibility, not for what happened to him.

Not even how I interpreted the world as a result going back but how I interpret the world from now on. Do I still want to interpret the world and my role in it based on some decision I made when I was a year old? That's where agency comes into play. Agency also means that if I have some kind of dysfunction or illness it is not just that I put my hands in the hands of a doctor or a healer, but I also do what I can. decisions I listen to your advice I accept some I do not accept some but I am the one who makes the decisions along with what seems correct to me to decide first thing in your work throughout your work you use alliteration a lot as a way to summarize and make the ideas are really memorable it really helps it's an old trick it's a trick it's a writing trick well it also works you know before or almost before but no, I don't know what to say you know what I am, I'm denigrating my work if I say it's a trick no it's just kind of how I come up with things that's all it's one of the alliteration devices you use it also relates to limiting beliefs and how we can undo self-limiting beliefs with the five R's yeah relabel relabel refocus , re, value and recreate, yes, now, from what I understood from those relabeled, it is the history and the belief that limits us, um, well, you know something like that. um eurocologist, yes, I need to go to work.

I need to do this actual construction work, since I don't need to do this work. I just have the belief that I need to do this job well, so the actual construction only requires one degree of separation. by behavior and in fact it's true, it's not that you need to do all the circuits, you have this belief, so the relay building just tells it like it is. By the way, I have to admit that these five Rs are the only ones in your Keep in mind that I stole the other four from a psychiatrist. I only mentioned it in the book, but I find it to be a very useful technique, but it was developed for people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so the new etiquette is not that I have to wash my hands 100 times.

I have the belief that I have to wash my hands many times, that is the context in which it developed. I think it works for all kinds of dynamics and then if I've relabeled it, I don't. I don't have to work hard to feel a sense of validation, but I believe that I do the right thing and then I reattribute it, which is the second R, which means I'm clear about where it's coming from, yeah, so let's say you have to believe that. you're not worth it it's not too worth it so I'm not worth it I just never believed that I'm not worth it well or maybe I'm not too worth it so I'm not worth it but I have the belief that I'm not worth it.

The re-um attribute means that this is an old brain circuit sending me an old message. It has nothing to do with reality. It has to do with some experience I had a long time ago. It is an attribute. You just say where it is. It actually comes from there being a circuit in your brain that is wired to the message "you're not worth it" and it will keep repeating that message, well you say, okay, that's where it comes from until it refocuses, which is the photo, yeah , so refocusing is just to give you some space so if you ever say uh, I need to go to work uh, okay, refocus means okay for five minutes, maybe in five minutes I'll go to work, but in five minutes No, I'm going to put on something listen to music or go for a walk or meditate or whatever to refocus, you put your attention somewhere else just to prove to yourself that you actually have some control over your brain, even if it's just for five minutes. , if you have this belief that I'm not worth it, you can come back to it in five minutes if you want, just for five minutes, although consider all the ways that they have made a contribution, consider all the ways that people have recognized your benign presence in their lives. that people have told you they loved you or that you told someone else just for five minutes hang up with it five minutes later you want to go back to this belief or if you can't help but go back to this belief You know, I said it right, okay, but at least it creates some space.

It's about creating a space between yourself and these beliefs or these behaviors and in those five minutes you're basically accepting that new evidence is true or you're proving that other evidence. It's true I didn't need to go to work well you are also showing that you don't have to spend all your time subject to those beliefs you can take a break at least for a while and they are not you Aren't you, yes, and then you reevaluate it? you actually revalue it, what it should mean or maybe, more accurately, you devalue it because you say what has been the real value of this belief that I'm not worth it, what has been the real value of this in my life. or this tendency of mine to be a workaholic, which has been a real asset, has tired me out, alienated me, or kept me depressed, so it keeps me desperately trying to prove something that I will never be able to prove to myself anyway. external activities, so that you actually look at what it means actually has an impact on your life what has been its real value um sometimes the value is positive, although it's true, as I think about my own work addiction, workaholic , if that's the term, I think there are some, there are some positives here, yeah. a lot of negatives, yes, well, is it the positive, workaholism or is it due to your ability to work hard and in the name of a goal, they are not the same.

The new ability to work hard to achieve a certain goal is simply a gift that you have and something that perhaps requires some discipline an application on your part that doesn't work that's just a strong positive work ethic the memory and you are driven to work you don't actually need it it's funny because it reminds me of an analogy that I've been talking about in the last few episodes of this podcast about the distinction between being driven and being dragged, yeah it's like which side of the truck am I flying down the highway? Am I tied to the front and am I running? and pull the truck or I just have my ankles tied to the back of the truck as it flies down the highway because I get dragged, but if I may, I would say that neither of those things is particularly desirable, but, but, but it's the distinction which I did before between being driven and being called, yes, because if you call it is if I call you, say Stephen, would you come to dinner with me?

You can say yes, you can say no. I just called you and you could literally say. I'm talking about calling, you know, phone call, you know, you can say yes, you can say no, it's a decision now, but you're the one making the decision, yeah, when you're dragged or pushed or pulled, you're not making the decision. . decision I'm a slave to the decision to that, that's right, to the activity, one of the really interesting things I wanted to talk to you about is ADHD, yeah, I've had some of my friends and close people. Friendship Circle recently diagnosed ADHD and then I looked at some of the statistics on ADHD and found this statistic that said that in the 1980s one in 20 American children were diagnosed with ADHD today the number is about one in nine, yeah, and in general you know, around me it feels and this could just be because of my small tight circle or it could be because of something broader that's going on in society, it feels like there's been an increase in the diagnosis of mental illnesses and things like ADHD and the causes when I talked to my friend about what he thought was the cause of his ADHD and he posted this on LinkedIn and talks about it very publicly now it seemed to indicate that he seemed to believe it was related to some type of heredity genetic or heritable um Factor now the problem that I've been dealing with with myself and why I talked to Johann Hari about this and to others about this is if I should accept that then I feel like I'm accepting it that we are being born somewhat broken and this is almost what Johann Hari talked about in the early stages of his adolescence, when he was made to believe that there was a chemical imbalance in his brain and therefore he was born broken and here is the medication to fix it yes, but I don't want to, I don't think so, I personally don't think we were born broken, well, um and anyone interested in the topic, my daughter, I think.

Joanne and actually this is to read my book and it's called Scattered Minds and I was diagnosed when I was 50 and so were a couple of my children, but I never bought into the idea that this is a genetic disease or that it's a disease in all genetic or otherwise, um now, in terms of the increasing number of people being diagnosed, there could be two reasons, at least one is that we have a better diagnosis,lecture in his medical training about the impact of trauma on physical or mental health, which is surprising given that he was a British psychologist.

Dr. Richard Benthal, who pointed out not many years ago that the evidence linking what we call mental illness and childhood adversity is as strong as the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer, and the average doctor doesn't listen to a word of the regard. It's an amazing education. Teachers if they understood child development, brain development, the developmental factors that children need that I cite in this book, and if they understood how trauma affects their ability to learn to pay attention and behave functionally. The Daily Telegraph here in London isn't that a long time ago I was bemoaning the fact that children are no longer spanked in schools, I mean they were, but they were, but they were complaining that we no longer traumatize children with as hard as before, that's what he does, that's all he does. if teachers understood that behaviors on the part of children are actually manifestations of emotional dynamics of frustration and unmet needs and, very often, trauma that would change the educational system if the legal system understood that most people facing the criminal justice system are actually traumatized people, they could actually be rehabilitated and healed if we understood that instead of simply exposing them to harsh punishments, we actually treat them as human beings who may have done things that are unacceptable but come from trauma. that they couldn't.

I have helped and can be helped to return to healthy functioning, as we know from much experience, just that little information about trauma would change society, so that is what I can offer as a doctor, what about the parents, what need to know? Yes, well, yes Parents really understood, first of all, that the first three years are all that, if they follow the correct model in the first three years, they can hardly make a mistake later, but, on the other hand, if we are not present emotionally for our children. We do not understand them if we do not see them if we do not tune in to their emotional states we are going to hurt them and if you understood what the needs of the children are when I mentioned some of them to play to experience all the emotions for an unconditional loving attachment so that the child can take a break from having to work to make the relationship work, so that the child doesn't have to be good, nice, beautiful, successful or just have to be approval and acceptance in them if the parents would just understand that and if they would understand what was important which is to take care of their own emotional needs so that a child doesn't haveTaking responsibility like perhaps he did for parents emphasizes that his parents understood all of that and if society really understood the importance of parenting and supported parents who They needed the support to be there for their children, it wouldn't be financially costly, it would save us. a lot of money not to mention we live much happier kids who don't need to take medication so yeah and lastly the schools are fine again like I said about the educators if the educators here's the thing if you look at how the human being. brain development I'm quite an article.

I quote an article from the Harvard Center on Child Development that appeared in an official Pediatrics journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in February 2012. The article said that humans developed it to carry out a complex process that begins before birth. and continues into adulthood. Well, that means we take care of the emotional needs of pregnant women. Number one. Number two. If this conditions adulthood, it continues into adulthood. So the job of schools, if they understand it to be correct, is not to teach children. What year did the Battle of Australis Ball take place or the Battle of Waterloo Ball um or do you know algebra any of those things the most important job of schools is to promote healthy brain development in a child who has a healthy brain In reality, its development will be naturally curious.

They will want to know about the history we came to in order to absorb algebra skills. They will want to know how to use a computer and they will want to know how to type correctly. You will want to do it spontaneously because mastery and learning are human hungers that human beings need, so in other words, the most important job of schools is not to stuff children with information, but to help them develop healthy brains. What does that require for security? above all lack of pressure, healthy relationship with loving adults and if the children are not going to spend their time with the adult but rather with the parents, which they cannot in this society as they used to do through human evolution, let them spend their time. with adults who nourish them emotionally and penetrate them emotionally and who are attentive to the needs of the child, we will now have schools in which the children will actually teach the children something and where the children will want to learn and it is very simple, it does not require more training. and nothing more is needed, maybe they need some training, but not more than what teachers receive now, so that is a kind of vision of education.

I was thinking about the importance of doing certain psychological tests on certain teachers because if they too go through a generational cycle, yes, of their own, at a time when my brain is still developing, they can have a great positive or negative impact on my life, the same way my parents might, uh, it's pretty remarkable that teachers don't. I don't know how much power they have because of the vulnerability of the young brain and well-intentioned teachers, sometimes they behave in ways that are really harmful to children just because they don't understand it, not because they don't have good intentions, so I think He I've had many adults sitting in my office tearfully talking about something a teacher told them three decades earlier like in the classroom, class will continue and Johnny returns to Earth, this kind of sarcastic little dig can hurt the dignity of my child and sense of self so easily, so if teachers understood how powerful they are and how important they are in helping to promote healthy brain development, I think the profession would take on a whole new meaning that would be much more satisfying to what is now. it's the fault of individual teachers, we're talking about a system that's not toxic, okay, but we have a closing tradition on this podcast, oh, okay, where the previous guest asks a question for the next guest.

I couldn't see it until I opened the book, so there is a question written here for you before I ask you this question. I had a question of my own, which was: You know you're 70 now, what are you still working on in terms of your own traumas? Is there anything even though you're at a later stage in your own life that you're still struggling with in relation to that Puppeteer pulling the strings and that kind of analogy that we gave earlier? Yeah um it's a feeling of peace when I'm not doing anything I just have the ability to be um that's something I'm still looking for no well I'm not looking like I'm looking for a lost puppy but I'm still looking for myself myself.

And where exactly does that come from in your own diagnosis? Oh, what if I tell you when I find out? I mean, I can give you a textbook answer, but it wouldn't be authentic, okay, so you don't really know. I have some senses. having some ideas and then um, it's weird, it really means being okay with my mind the way it is and not needing it to be different, that's what it would mean, which means if I'm sitting there for five minutes, I don't know how. I have to reach for my cell phone to occupy my mind and now, in the midst of this busy book tour and all the talking I don't do, I don't do enough to take care of that still little voice inside me, I don't do it. t I think it would require a little attention I can't either although I can't sit for two I can five minutes I can't sit for five seconds without grabbing my phone That's weird I noticed the other day that I was like I was going to the bathroom and I didn't have intention to use my phone in the bathroom, yeah, but I went to get my phone because you can't be alone with yourself, yeah, I can't be alone with myself, yeah, I can't sit for 30 seconds.

I know my brain is because they have built these algorithms to stimulate my dopamine or it is because there is something in me. I guess it goes back to a point about addiction, well, they're both, I mean, they're certainly creative. algorithms to stimulate your brain and get you hooked on that dopamine head, are you sure if we should call it neural marketing, neural marketing, can you understand it? Yes, they work on your brain to let you know and get you addicted, but it also comes from an earlier discomfort with yourself that predates any cell phone use, going back to earliest childhood, where it might not have been comfortable to be alone with you. same because of interesting circumstances, interesting, yes, because I have friends who don't have the same addiction as me with their cell phones, they can take it or leave it, they put it outside their room when they go to bed carrying it on the kitchen.

I think I have to hold mine like my pillow, yes, exactly right. like your little security pillow and what's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning. I catch him with one eye open and all that dirt in his eye. I'm like trying to do it. You know, yeah, yeah, we'll have if both. You and I work, we don't do that much, okay, I'll give you my number, let us, man, we should, we shouldn't argue on the phone how we're going about this, that's just another reason to use my phone, but next time I talk to you, okay, in person, you can let me know how that goes for you.

I'm, I'm, I'm working on it. I'm working in it. I think I have to be more aware of the cost of that addiction well exactly to I really know that one of the costs is meaningful connections and presence with them with and in the cost of interpersonal relationships, but maybe I haven't had the cost, um, it shocked me enough yet, maybe the question was left for you, but I don't know the signature, so I'll have to find out later, but what is your selfish dream? Know? I'm not sure how to approach that question because I'm not trying to get out of it, but just don't look at my own reaction to it. um, you know, right now I don't have too many ideas about what selfish means, by the way, let me ask you what that means to me. something that is for me at the expense of others I don't think I have any dreams like that left.

I may not have had it. I may have had it at some point, but if I have a dream for myself in that sense of a dream of self-improvement, something that improves my ego or something good, yes. This book sold a billion copies, well, it would be a nice selfish dream, you know, but I don't know how else to answer that. I have dreams, but they are more about the state of the world that I like to see. the world I would like to see Future generations in Arabic Selfless dreams yeah, well I don't know what this self-love is because it certainly involves my own story and it would certainly make me feel better, you know, in that sense, it's selfish.

I could say but they are not, they have nothing to do with the personal, I have enough, you know, I have done enough and I have enough, so I lack nothing, I lack nothing, I need to dream of all our Selfless currents are also very selfish and selfless in that sense and will help themselves in a different sense. I mean whatever dreams I have or for a better world, they certainly or certainly have the function of making me feel better or maybe even. The things that happened to me or the things that happened to you would mean a lot to me if they didn't happen to more kids, you know?

So in the sense that it would mean a lot to me, you could say it's selfish, but it's not exclusively about me, it's about something bigger. I'm not trying to present myself as some kind of altruistic saint. I'm just saying that it would make me feel better if I really knew that the children of Gaza don't have to face anything. more bombings if children in Israel did not have to face more danger of terrorist attacks if not I see inequality there, but I like that for both if children in Ukraine need to live under the threat of falling missiles if People in Russia I didn't have to live in fear of perhaps a nuclear conflict or of young people being drafted into war.

If the children in Britain you know didn't have to live in poverty, wouldn't it do that to you? feel better, you know, to the extent that it makes us feel better, you could say it's selfish, but is that nonsense? Thank you, it is a pleasure, thank you very much, thank you very much for writing such an important book. I think my only wish is to be able to I discovered this book earlier because I think that a lot of my things would have liberated me, that's a good word, it would have liberated me from a number of things that would have helped me live a much better life and understand myself same, that is the point of awareness that We talked about that, I know that your Advanced stage is over, isn't it?

Yes, I think everyoneWe want the answers even sooner because we reflect on some of the consequences or the mistakes or the ones we made. Not that those are. I am imprisoned. by any of them, but you already know it, and that's why it's so wonderful that this book exists now. Young people were messaging me and asking me to have a conversation with you about the topics we talked about today, things like ADHD and its trauma and so much more, and you know, I sit here every day talking to a lot of people in this podcast and I think my understanding of trauma has been forever redefined by both this conversation today and your book and I'm really very grateful to you because I think that will help me talk about the topic more accurately. um and so I hope to help other people understand their own trauma in a more meaningful way.

It is a very important book. Well, thank you very much, thank you very much for giving me the platform to talk about my work and the opportunity. meet you thank you very much and it's written in a very accessible way, yes, which is very important because that means it can reach more people. Thank you so much. That's fine thanks.