MOMENT | How to heal your deepest wounds with Gabor Maté

0:08Do you think this is the hardest time to be a mother? Right now? Yeah. I know we're not at war. We're not at war, and I don't know what it's like to be a mother during Britain as industrialization times with long hours at factories and all that. But let me tell you this, that since the Second World War, this is the hardest time to be a mother. Because after the Second World War, there was for a while a sense of joint purpose and communality, and there was much more of a social network to support people. But since the 70s, with the increasing neoliberalization of the economy, the austerity, the cutback on social programs, the cutbacks in education, the loss of support, this is the hardest and the increasing stresses on people and the need to fulfill these multiple roles has become very hard to be a mother.

1:02Absolutely, and that's the experience that I hear time and time again. And from, you know, I work with hundreds of mothers on this sort of stuff. So I just wanted to loop back around about some of the things that we were talking about. It just piques my personal passion so much, which is around these adaptations and meeting our children's needs. And if there's someone listening who is thinking, I want to change this, I want to become more conscious in myself. My belief is that we have to do that for ourselves first before we can give it to our children. Simultaneous. Okay, so could you explain that?

1:33And I know you talk about it in your book, Hold On To Your Turn, but can you talk about what that process looks like? Where does someone go with this? Well, let me talk about one aspect that we didn't talk about in Hold On To Your Kids, which is, as I said just a moment ago, women have always carried the role of being the stress absorbers of their families, including their husbands. So in my marriage, I was a very needy little boy when I was 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years old, you know? Who becomes the mother? The women automatically take on that mothering role towards their spouses, which means that if I have two children, then the mother has not three babies to look after, the two little ones and the big baby who's 30 or 40.

2:16And women automatically very often take this on. That's immensely stressful. So first of all, look at your marriage and ask yourself, how much mothering am I? I'm not talking about genuine spouse-to-spouse support, which is meant to be reciprocal. And that's, of course, why we connect. But how much one way emotional support and parenting I'm doing to my spouse, because everything I do that way is taken away from my children. That's brilliant to hear. So you have to look at that first. And then secondly, you really have to understand the attachment needs of the child and how does the child manifest those attachment needs?

2:51Very often through behaviors that we then punish them for. So we use this phrase acting out. and by acting up we mean a kid who is obstreperous or disruptive or rude or aggressive that's not what acting up means acting up is a really good english phrase what does it actually mean in a game of charades when you're not allowed to speak what do you have to do you have to act out if i landed in england and spoke not a word of english but i was hungry be flailing your arms everywhere well i might be pointing to my belly or my mouth and making eating motions i have to act it out. So when children act out, that's exactly what they're doing.

3:28But what they're acting out are their emotional needs. They're showing us. They're showing us something that's lacking because they don't have the words to say it in language. They're throwing it through behavior to get our attention. But any child who acts out, whether they're aggressive or whether they're bullying their younger siblings or bullying other kids in school or they're throwing tantrums, whatever they're doing, they're acting something out. Now, the parenting experts will tell you, control that behavior and get rid of it. Yeah. Which is to say, let's ignore the child's emotional needs so we get them to comply with us.

4:02This is what the parenting experts say. And what should really happen is the parent needs to be taught to understand. And parents instinctively, if they pay attention to their gut feelings, you know that that child is in pain. You know that that child is in distress. You know that that behavior is a marker of distress. you don't do it by trying to squelch the behavior you respond by oh you're very angry right now you must be very hurt right now something's going on for you oh and your nervous system relaxes and your heart opens and it softens and then the child immediately can you become vulnerable yeah the tears come up the tears come up and as my brilliant co-writer on hold on to your kids Gordon Ufalt says, we shall be saved in an ocean of tears.

4:47So there's two kinds of tears. The tears of frustration, which don't help. But then there's the tears of vulnerability and genuine grief, which do promote growth. Not that we make kids suffer grief deliberately, but when they're sad about something, we help them experience that sadness without making them wrong for how they're acting it out. So really, we have to understand what children are telling us through their behavior. And of course, mothers also need to look after themselves, which we already talked about.

5:22Well, what disconnects? I'm sure, you know, we talked about some of it, but just to really underscore the point, what disconnects someone from that instinct? So we talked about society, the stress, presumably. Well, what disconnects from our instincts is when early in childhood, we are taught that to belong and to be acceptable and accepted we have to suppress ourselves so we actually even the disconnection is not a mistake it's a survival strategy it's as you say an adaptation so that disconnect doesn't happen for no reason it's a brilliant survival technique but it's unconscious and here's the generational stuff right so we get taught yeah i certainly got taught yeah disconnect from your instincts and our parents are disconnected because my parents were disconnected because what happened to them you know and then and then we parent our children in the same way and then they'll parent their children in the same way exactly that's the past time and nobody does it deliberately and actually we're doing something that goes quite contrary to our best intentions only because we don't know any better and unfortunately this social structure and the so-called experts you never lose money by writing another book on how to discipline kids how to force them into this small these are always best sellers because they're so expressive of what the society expects so they always get big media play and parents are desperate and they're frustrated so they need you with these quick solutions well because it can be so triggering yeah i found it very triggering when i first was still what i still find it triggering by triggering you mean you know when jesse has that's my she's three and a half when she has a tantrum has taken me loads of work with a therapist to not want to shut that down it brings up so much my own pain well exactly and triggering do you mind if i ask you a few questions yeah i'd love you to okay so what did you feel when jessie was having a tantrum i felt that i wanted her to be okay my instinct was to shut her down hold on let me interrupt you i felt i wanted to be okay that's not a feeling okay okay that's an intention yeah what did you feel and to shut her down wasn't an instinct it was an emotional reaction your own things are actually to love her and to support her okay so what did you actually feel i felt sad you felt sadness what did you feel sad about that she was feeling sad that she was so unhappy in that moment what made you angry i don't know because you were angry as well weren't you when she was showing a tantrum Yeah, I wanted her to stop for sure.

7:53I still want her to stop. What made you angry? Maybe the feeling of sadness or the feeling of... You didn't want to feel sad? Yeah. What she was doing made you feel sad? Yeah. And so you wanted to make her responsible for how you felt? Yeah. Okay. Now, when was the first time in your life that you wish somebody else wasn't sad? Oh, early. Okay. My mom. In other words, you made your daughter into your mother. Mmm. this is why it triggered you so much. You didn't do this deliberately, but this is what happens. All you had was an unhappy kid. And all she needed was for you to say, oh, you're really unhappy right now.

8:30You know, come here. That's all she needed. Now, let's look at that word that you used, triggering. Metaphorically, it's a very interesting, very telling word. How big a part of the weapon is the trigger? Tiny. Tiny. what makes up the weapon is ammunition, explosives, a whole barrel and a mechanism to deliver the ammunition to the intended target. The trigger is a very small part. So instead of looking at the trigger, let's look at all this explosive stuff that we're carrying inside ourselves, which is the work that you did with your therapist. Yeah, thank God. To your child's benefit. But really, your reaction said nothing to do with your child.

9:10No. it's all about you and all about what happened to you as a kid and again as we keep pointing out what happened to your mom as a kid absolutely yeah absolutely and this links around right full circle to the start of this interview which is and that's an example of i guess me attempting to by then taking that to my therapist look after myself first that's right yeah that's right as soon as you get curious your instinct was i don't want to be this way with my daughter No. I want to be loving. Yeah. That's your instinct. Yeah. It's that instinct that took you to the therapist. And I knew the theory.

9:44I mean, I was already with the therapist and I knew the theory, right? Because I'd listened to you for years. I knew the theory of to be with her and let her have exactly what you were just saying. You're having big feelings. But something was going on in me. Well, listen, it was even more revealing, perhaps. You listened to me, so you knew this. I teach this stuff and I know this. I still have a hard time, you know. That makes me feel better. Because it's, there's different parts to us. There's the conscious, the aware, adult part. But we all carry this wounded child inside of ourselves, and that's what gets triggered.