Gabor Maté: The Childhood Wounds That Shape Everything

0:02Lemonada.

0:05Trauma literally means a wound. So know what happened to you, but what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you. If you're not already familiar with Gabor Maté, prepare to rethink everything you think you know about how our childhood shapes our adult lives. When people don't have memories, there are two reasonable explanations. One is that nothing happened, that too much happened. And the way people deal with it is just to dissociate, to put that beyond level of consciousness. Gabor is a world-renowned physician and best-selling author who has changed the way the world thinks about trauma, addiction, ADHD, and even parenting.

0:48I've listened to him speak so many times, but this time I got to interview him. And let me just say this, it's an intense experience. I am not enough is not a feeling, it's a belief. What do you feel when you believe that you're not enough? I guess anxious, sad. How about shame? Shame, yeah, shame for sure. Big one. I really dealt with that a lot, especially in some of my relationships. After surviving the Holocaust as a young child, Gabor dedicated his life to understanding the ripple effects of pain and trauma. And I was a Jewish infant in Budapest, Hungary. I spent my first year under Nazi occupation.

1:29And for anyone thinking, oh, this doesn't apply to me, I had a great childhood. I think you'll be surprised by what you hear. I certainly was. Does our sense of being enough depend on what we do out there? Or is there a deeper sense of who we are that's not related to what we do? There's no mind-body connection. It's a unity. And for all the parents out there, Gabor's insights are nothing short of revolutionary. He actually helped me navigate my own child's ADHD diagnosis with care and consideration. So the idea of dealing with ADHD, whether in childhood or adulthood, is not simply to control symptoms, but behavior regulation or medications, or change the environment, and that can have a huge impact within months.

2:20No matter who you are or what happened or didn't happen to you as a kid, Gabor Mate will give you a completely new perspective on how to live your life. When these challenges, depression, anxiety, illness, whatever comes along, we can ask that question of what is this trying to teach us? And usually I found and I've seen in so many people, there's a teaching there and then that's also what you found out as well.

2:55I checked in with myself this morning and I found myself actually, I've been doing the podcast now for several months and I haven't really been stressed or anxious before any of them. And this morning I woke up and I felt that way. And I think it's because I realized in order to go really deep into your work, I'm going to have to be really open and vulnerable about some things that have happened in my life. and so that just kind of made me feel a little bit more intense about this so I'm just going to put it out there in hopes that it will help others as they navigate some of the things that I've had to navigate and I think we'll start with trauma a lot of your work centers around trauma especially those that we experienced in our childhood and for our audience that might be new to your work how would you define trauma?

3:45Let me refer back to your work I checked it out and read the article in Forbes magazine that was published on my birthday this year, January the 6th. Great. And you talked about your wound of this feeling that you're not enough. Yeah. Now, I'm not addressed the issue of feeling in a moment, but that's actually a good formulation the way you put it, because people think of trauma as things that happen to them. Mm-hmm. whether it's neglect or abuse or family stress or family violence or a bad divorce or children not being seen, appreciated for who they are. That's not the trauma. Those are the traumatic events.

4:32The trauma is actually a wound. And your wound was that you had this belief that you had that you're not enough. So trauma is not what happens to us. Trauma literally means a wound. That's the meaning of the word. And so it's a wound that isn't healed. Yes. It's a wound that isn't healed. So not what happened to you, but what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you. Okay. I really appreciate you defining it that way. So when I've been talking publicly about a core wound, what I have been talking about is a trauma that I carried for 40 plus years that was basically a wound that was never healed.

5:15Right. And for a long time, having read some of your biography, you were a great achiever out there and almost everything you touched turned to gold in a certain sense, certainly in a financial sense. But more than that, even in the sense of what you're giving to others and so on. But none of that healed your wound. So that when you give up those activities, all of a sudden you get depressed. and sense of lack of purpose and lack of belonging. And that's the core wound there that shows up that you're able to keep at bay with all these activities. And when you stop the activities, guess what? The wound shows up.

6:02In a very, very big way, yeah. Well, before we talk about the wound, I'm curious, how do you think this wound happened for me? Because it's something I've been trying to figure out for a couple of years now. Well, it's obvious. And you have children. Yes. Do you think any of them were born with the belief that they're not enough? No. Do you think any of them had an hesitation about expressing their needs when they were one day old? No. All right. So something happened. or it shouldn't have happened or something didn't happen that should have happened. Now, let me ask you this question. And I don't know anything about your childhood.

6:51I know your parents obviously loved you and they were successful in their own way. But did you ever feel lonely or upset as a child? That's not a predominant memory that I have. Ever? I mean, I have a couple memories that I've worked with my therapist to identify as possible contributors to this wound, you know, being rejected by a girl who I wanted to date. Okay, that was when you were an adolescent already. Yeah, yeah. That was probably junior high school. So I'm just asking you, as a smaller child, did you ever feel upset, lonely about anything at all? I just, I don't have many memories from my, from my really, really young childhood.

7:40I mean, four, five, six. Yeah. Well, look, like when people don't have memories, there are two reasonable explanations. One is that nothing happened, that too much happened. And the way people deal with it is just to dissociate, to put that beyond level of consciousness. So look, you talked about this feeling of not being enough. That's not a feeling. Feelings are, I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm sad, I'm angry. It's a wound. No, I'm not enough is not a feeling. It's a belief. Okay, yes. What do you feel when you believe that you're not enough? I guess anxious, sad. How about shame? Shame, yeah, shame for sure.

8:36Big one. I really dealt with that a lot, especially in some of my relationships. So nobody's born with shame. Yeah. Shame happens in a relationship. And it happens in a relationship when the child is left alone with their emotions and the parents aren't able to receive, validate, understand, mirror, and soothe the child's emotions. That's when shame happens to a child. So I don't know what happened in your childhood, but my guess is that your parents, as much as they loved you, in some ways were emotionally not there to meet your emotional needs. Now, which is what gives you the sense of not being enough.

9:31Or maybe they had their own. I mean, look, as a parent, I totally relate to this. I'm not criticizing anybody else. I'm just saying what happened. It could be that your dad was an orthopedic surgeon. I don't know what kind of a personality he was, but when I was a practicing doctor, I was really a workaholic. All my attention was on my, not just my career, but my calling, which meant that emotionally I wasn't there for my kids, which gives them a sense of not being enough. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That hits home right now for me because that was one of the things that I was excited to ask you about. It's like, I feel right now mentally better than I felt in years because I feel like I have purpose again in building this nonprofit and helping share this message that we are all enough and sharing my story.

10:21But it also has caused me to start traveling more and being away from my kids more. And I don't want to create the same, I don't want to create any trauma for my kids. And so, you know, how would you say to parents, because there are probably a lot of parents and high achievers listening to this show, how do you balance the need to fulfill your purpose and do something that you're contributing to the world, which I think is good for your kids to see you having purpose, but then also that it pulls you away from your kids in terms of the amount of time you spend with them? Well, again, in that Forbes article, you talk about the entrepreneurial identity.

11:03Yeah. Now, you mentioned that you spent time in India, and that time in India, meditation and spiritual learning was very important to you. Yeah. Now, I just happened to be reading the great Hindu classic, The Bhagavad Gita. Great book. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, finally discovered it, you know? there's another great book on that that i'll send you later and it's a it's a kind of an explanation of the bhavigad gita but um through finding your true purpose in life and it's a commentary on it i really love it so um in the gita they talk about identity and uh one of the features of the mind is what they call the aham kara aham means i kara means maker so it's the eye maker.

11:54It's all the ego identifies. When you talk about having purpose in life and you talk about it in this article, you talk about it in terms of performance, who would you be, can I ask you, Blake, if all of a sudden, God forbid, you're in an accident, you became disabled, you couldn't do what you're doing, then who would you be? in other words does our sense of being enough depend on what we do out there or is there a deeper sense of who we are that's not related to what we do oh i think for sure what i've what has helped me a lot in the last couple years i've worked on this on this wound is recognizing that i my intrinsic worth is not how good of a parent i am or whether I start something or whether I accomplish something.

12:56My worth is just because I exist. And I've started to feel that in my body through all the meditation work I've done. Exactly. So that's great. So in the answer to your question then, parents want to give their children the sense that they're enough, not because of what they do. and so it's far more important if that's your highest value is that a person should know like you've come to know after some deep suffering a person should come to know their true selves that's not related to achievement then your question about parents answers itself because if the parent's identity does not depend on what they do out there in the world then they're going to be there for their kids and what they do in the world for a first few years of the child's life might be less yes yes you know and and so um it might much of it has to do with what they identify with.

14:07Again, identify, the Latin word, idem means the same for chera, to make. So identify comes that we make ourselves the same as. Now, if you're the same as your work or your contribution to the world, that's already getting away from who you actually are. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that doesn't mean we don't want to contribute to the world, you know. And the Gita is very clear on that, you know. that we heard to give to contribute. But the Gita also says, you're entitled to your work, but not to the fruits of your labor. So do what you do because who you are is you want to make a contribution, but not because you want to succeed.

14:55Yeah. Wow. Oh, man. That hits hard, and that's something I need to spend more time really meditating on is like how much of what i'm actually doing day to day is just to continue to construct that i that ego identity versus being connected to the why and the why is you know wanting to contribute and help other people not suffer as much as i did but if that takes time away from my kids in a way that is not meeting their needs, then I have to ask myself, is it me focusing on the why or the I? Because I can still be very committed. And I think all of us listening can be very committed to our why.

15:45But like you said, in these early years of their childhood development, the amount of time that we focus on that might just need to be less. yeah yeah and that's probably something really hard for high achieving and driving parents to hear and it's hard for me to hear right now because i have such a desire to help others but i think mother teresa said it best if you want to make a difference in the world start at your home well you know what um this is advice i wish i had heard and had heeded when i was much younger you know yeah yeah that's um that really i appreciate that and i think that's exactly kind of what i need to hear is i'm getting ready to make some pretty big decisions about different commitments because since i've been being more public about my mental health and what has worked and what has helped me i've gotten more people coming to me wanting me to help them with different you know mental health initiatives and all these opportunities are exciting but but but if i really slow down like you've caused me to do this morning they're not near as important as um the way that i raise my children and and what they experience in these really important formidable years so you know um if somebody had asked me when my kids were small what is your highest value i would have said the happiness of my family if you had asked me and I would have been sincere but you don't tell somebody's values by what they tell you you tell somebody's value by how they behave and if you want to what my highest values were by looking at how I behaved it was success as a doctor it was being somebody who was important to the world who was giving and making a difference so if you want to know what your values are anybody who's listening, don't ask yourself because you're going to tell yourself a really nice story.

17:45Just look at how you live your life and where you spend your time and energy and thought patterns. That's how you can tell what's actually important to you. Well, already this has been a very deeply important and meaningful conversation for me and hopefully others listening because you just, as you always do, you just got straight to it. and um okay that'll be 150 bucks thanks very much i was i was saying i just need your venmo so i can send to you hello everyone i decided not to take advertisers for this first season of no magic pill instead i want to use a break to talk about a few things that have had a huge impact on my mental wellness journey the first thing i spoke about in my episode with michael pauline it's an ai therapy app called sonia now i was super skeptical when i first heard about this but i I met the founders at a mental health conference.

18:39They encouraged me to try it. They said it was HIPAA compliant, totally secure. I've been using it for six months now. I still have my therapist, but I don't know about you, but like at 4 a.m. when I wake up with a ton of anxiety, or I'm up late at night ruminating about something I wish I hadn't said, like my therapist isn't available at those times of day. So that's when I go with Sonia, and it has had such a huge impact on my mental health. So the company just launched, It's in the Apple App Store and they let you try it free for a couple of weeks. So whether you have a therapist or not, it can be so helpful.

19:13I've told all my friends about this. My dad's using it, my sister-in-law, and I'm even using it like a life coach as well as a therapist. Like I tell it like, hey, send me a text on Mondays and Wednesdays and make sure that I'm actually in the gym. So I want to show a real short clip of me actually using Sonia so you can get a feel for it. Come here. What's on your mind right now? Oh, I'm just feeling a little stressed about things right now because I feel like I've got so much going on and I really don't know how to prioritize it. When everything stacks up at once, it can blur what actually matters and make that old not enough story get louder.

19:51Let's slow this down by picking one thread to start with what feels most pressing in this moment. The important reframe is this. The projects did not cure the depression. They arrive because you healed. And when you overwork to prevent relapse, you actually undermine the things that keep you well, like sleep, presence, movement, and connection. When that edge shows up, it is a signal to reduce load and restore choice, not to push harder. Maybe for people who don't know your work as well as I do, just I would love to get a little biographical here. your early childhood experiences, how did that shape your desire to, you know, kind of study what you studied and then share what you've shared?

20:34I mentioned that your Forbes article appeared on my birthday, which appeared 82 years ago that day in 1944. And as a Jewish infant in Budapest, Hungary, I spent my first year on the Nazi occupation. And you know what happened to the Jews of Hungary? Larger, they were exterminated. My mother and I came very close to that. And I was very ill. My mother was very stressed, barely ensuring my survival. At some point, when I was 11 months old, she had to give me to a stranger to save my life. Of course, I had no recollection of that because there's no recall memory for that early, but there's emotional memory.

21:17And guess what the message a child gets who's given to a stranger in the street? that they're not improved, that they're normal. That they're not. You know, and of course, on my mother's part, it was a heroic act on the part of the Christian woman who took me, the strange Jewish baby in the street. Yeah, wow. Kindness and love. But that's not what I experienced. What I experienced is abandonment. Yeah. Many years later, as a doctor, driving part of what I'm, driving part of my behavior significantly is this desire to prove my importance and that I matter, that I belong here, that I'm wanted, which fuels a lot of workaholism and anxiety and so on.

22:05And for all the success and respect that I received as a physician, there's a deep sense of lack, just what you've experienced, actually. So at some point, I had to start looking at what the source of that was. So that was one source of what I've come to understand But the other was that as a physician, I kept noticing that people's issues, whether they're physical issues such as autoimmune disease or malignancy or mental health issues from depression, anxiety to ADHD to psychosis, whatever, had significantly to do with their childhood experience. Yeah. And I wasn't going to discover that. We've been researching on that for decades, but they don't teach any of that to you in medical school.

22:51No. So, right. And the mind-body connection, that's not even accurate. There's no mind-body connection because even the word connection denotes that two separate objects are connected. It's not. It's one. It's mind-body. It's a unity, you know, which scientifically is not even controversial or which physicians don't learn. So, we deal with things in a biological sense, the biological side of things, What we don't see people, as to quote an American physician, George Engle, in 1977, who said that human beings are biopsychosocial creatures. Our biology is inseparable from our emotions and from our social relationships.

23:35And we're biopsychospiritual creatures. In other words, there's a sense of belonging to something greater than just a little ego. So I began to deal with that stuff in myself, my own depression, my attention problems. I wrote my first book after I was diagnosed with ADHD. So I began to deal with these issues in myself and recognizing and addressing it in my patients. So let's talk about ADHD. Sure. You said you were diagnosed. When were you diagnosed as ADHD? As an adult? Do I mind if I grab my book on a surgeon? Yeah, please. Scattered Minds? Yeah. Great. So the book is called Scattered Minds.

24:16and it's the world's, it's in the top three best-selling books in the world on ADHD. I wrote it in 1999, but science has since then only confirmed what I said then. But there's plenty of science then already. So I was diagnosed in my 50s and the medical mantra was that this is a genetically determined disease of the brain. And I never bought that. Intuitively, it made no sense to me. The tuning out, the absent-mindedness is not a disease. It's actually a coping mechanism. When there's a stress in the environment, when the parents are stressed because of work or politics or economics or their own relationship or their own result traumas or whatever it is, sensitive children, genetically sensitive children, pick up on that stress.

25:06And how they cope with it is they tune out. Yeah. But the tuning out happens when the brain is developing. And here's the thing. Most psychologists and most physicians never learn about brain development. If you look at how the human brain develops, it was sung beautifully in an article from Harvard University, and nobody's ever heard about it. That's what's astonishing. All this stuff is published in major journals, and it just doesn't penetrate. But the article pointed out that the brain develops through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues in the adulthood. And it sets the template for all the learning and behavior and health that follow.

25:53I'm quoting the article verbatim. And so what I'm arguing is that in the case of these genetically sensitive kids, when there's stress in the environment, they pick up on that. And how they deal with it is they tune out which thing is wired into the brain because the brain is developing. So that's, it also means that this is not a disease inherited or otherwise. And people say, well, it runs in the family. Well, yeah, sure. And if you're one of your kids becomes a podcaster, does that mean that podcasting is a genetic disease? I mean, there's all kinds of ways of passing on traits. that has nothing to do with genes.

26:37But the point is, because these kids are so sensitive to the environment, that's their nature. I mean, no, they're highly sensitive because they tend to have more asthma, more allergies and so on. And those are also hypersensitivities. When you change the environment, the brain can develop new circuits. So the idea of dealing with ADHD, whether in childhood or adulthood, is not simply to control symptoms, but behavior regulation or medications would change the environment so the child's brain is a different template for development and that can have a huge impact within months on the child. Change the environment, change how you relate to the child, that child will change and their brains can develop in healthier ways.

27:23That's called neuroplasticity. The capacity of the brain to develop new circuits. And I can tell you personally, so when I wrote Scattered Minds, which is my first book, I took medication, stimulant medication, to help me focus. And it really helped. It helped me write that book. I probably couldn't have written it without it. Now, fast forward to, you know, 20-plus years later, and I write my most recent book called The Myth of Normal. And it's a much more complex book. It's much more research, much longer. I took no medication. they didn't need to. Why not? Because my brain has changed. Yeah.

28:08Even as an adult. Yeah. Wow. I can, you know, so, and I've seen this with kids all the time. You change the environment, they change. Yeah. So, my son is now 11. Back four years ago, we decided not to do medication. Instead, we worked on the environment, as you suggested. We saw some improvements, but now there is more stress in his environment. He splits his time between me and his mom, and we've noticed some of the tuning out and some of the symptoms of ADHD again. what do you recommend to parents especially those maybe who are divorced which creates some natural tension in the environment that might not be able to control the environment as well as you know a family that is you know a singular unit do you recommend medication in that situation if if it's hard to change the environment are you still a proponent of doing other things environmentally before medication?

29:16Well, so first of all, in the story of your son kind of goes along with my thesis that this kid, the highest sensitive kid, grew up in a stressed environment because people don't decide to get divorced because they're happy. No. Yes, exactly. And the unhappiness and the stress goes on for a long time before the divorce actually occurs. Your son picked up on that and that's partly what contributed to his ADHD And if you look at statistics, in ADHD families, there's more divorce, more stress than in other families. In general, not always, but in general. That's number one. Number two, I would still do as much as possible.

30:01I would advise you and your ex-wife, if you can be, be aligned in how you parent. Yeah. In other words, the family no longer lives under the same roof, but it's still a family. Yes. And the parents are not at odds and they're not undermining each other and they're not competing for the child's love and they're not bad-mouthing the other parent. And as much as possible, you're aligned with a harder parent, if that's possible. Okay. Now, coming to the question of medication, I used to prescribe medication to kids, and I've never been against them. All I say is, A, they're not the first answer. They should never be.

30:49They should never be the only answer. At best, they deal with symptoms, and only temporarily. There's no evidence that in the long term they do that much good. I'm talking about latest research. having said that here's how I'd medicate the kid if I were to I'd say to him so first of all I would try to minimize the stress as best as you could yeah first of all if you spend more time with him that would help to minimize the stress yeah yeah same with your ex-spouse yeah so give him give him all the attention that you possibly can yeah calm attention yeah had he said that medication no child should be given the message that is acceptable to the adults only if he's medicated that's a terrible message talk about not putting up terrible message i mean i when i read that before i was like wow that really hit home yeah so if you if you are considering medication how what is the message how is it i'd say to the child you have trouble sitting still paying attention does that bother you and does that create a problem for you and if it does if there was a pill that you could take that might possibly help you would you be interested in trying it and if you don't like it it'll be up to you that will stop it right away in other words i'd involve the child in the decision yeah beautiful say we can try this it's helped some people, doesn't always help everybody.

32:26Sometimes there's side effects, sometimes there's no side effects, but there's no harm in trying if you want to. That's why I would approach it. And if it helps settle down in a classroom and pay more attention, well, good, you know? And so if it works and there's no significant side effects, but I'd start very slowly with a low dose and checking constantly about how you're feeling with this, what is your own sense of what's happening. In other words, the child should be very much part of the decision-making process. So that's what I would suggest. Yeah, that's really helpful. And I really appreciate that.