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

33:34Because when you try and push help, you're just going to get resistance. So if you can handle it, you can be around them and be open. but not insist or try and prove to them that they need help, life will teach them. When I meditate these days, I do the compassion meditation, which says, you know, may I face and overcome all of life's inevitable setbacks and challenges and failures with patience, understanding, strength, and determination, and may I rise above them with compassion and morality and integrity and wisdom and mindfulness. If we can stare on people compassionately without trying to prove to them that they need something that they don't believe they need, then at some point, life will bring a challenge that may prove to them that, yeah, they need help.

34:29And if you're still around, open, then they'll reach out to you. If you try and convince them, bring them over, prove it to them force it on them and I believe I've done that I've done it with my own family I've done it with others you just invite resistance so the best way to help people is not to help unless the help is invited and that's almost what most of us don't want to hear because we want to again going back to our earlier point we want to fix and solve and make everything nice and perfect right now. Yeah. And I guess that is also a form of trauma. There's something there as to why we want that.

35:16And when I write about people who are prone for chronic illness, it's often people, like autoimmune disease, for example, it's often, and this is not just my own finding, other researchers have found this as well, that there are people who tend to ignore their own emotional needs and are compulsively concerned with the emotional needs of others. and they tend to believe that in the metanormal, I quote an obituary, and obituaries are really interesting to me because they often highlight as laudable qualities the very things that I think contributed a person's death. Let's talk about those. Yeah.

35:55There was a book written by an Australian nurse 12 years ago now called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People. And she, like I used to work in palliative care, working with dying people, as you mentioned in the introduction. And for seven years, I was the medical coordinator of a big palliative care unit, dying people at Vancouver Hospital. And this nurse, also a palliative care health worker, wrote this book, The Top Regrets of People Who Die Before That Time. You know what it is? That they weren't themselves. That they spent their whole life trying to please others. That's the top regret. Now, this obituary, you have to believe that I'm not making this up.

36:38This is a physician in Canada who died at age 72 of cancer. And the obituary says, Sidney and his mother had an incredibly special relationship, a bond that was apparent in all aspects of their lives until her death. As a married man with young children, Sidney would have dinner with his parents every day. Then he would go home as his wife Rosalind and their three children waited for him with yet another dinner to eat and to enjoy. Not wanting to disappoint either woman in his life, Sidney kept eating two dinners a day for years until gradual weight gain began to raise suspicions. Now this man suffered from two fatal beliefs, and when I say fatal, I mean fatal.

37:27One is that he was responsible for how other people feel. And the other is that he was never disappointed in anybody. Now, so many of us go through life like that. You know? Now, actually, I'm not responsible for how you feel. I'm responsible for how I act, for how I speak, what I do and what I say. I'm not responsible for how you feel in response. When you were in Vancouver and you contacted me, and if I hadn't feel like seeing you but I hadn't slept all night say because I was up with some other duty or looking after somebody and if I had said yes and still come make you for coffee because I had fear of disappointing you and because I didn't want you to feel disappointed what would that have meant for me it would have meant for me more fatigue and probably I would have resented the hell out of you even though I was pretending to be that you know you know Thank God.

38:26And you, on the other hand, if I said no, if I was authentic and I said, look, Jay, I'm sorry. So glad you're in town, but I was up all night. I just, you know, if you had felt hurt and perceived yourself as rejected by me, that's not on me. That's your interpretation of my behavior. Nothing to do with me. I just said what was true for me. So, but that fear of disappointment, had I been afraid to disappoint you because I don't want to lose your friendship and I don't want to lose your friendship, but if I believe that if I'm authentic, I'm going to lose Jay's friendship, that's going to keep me inauthentic.

39:04And you'll never know me. And even when you like me, there's still going to be a fear in me. What if he really knew me? So it doesn't even work. But we're so afraid of disappointing others. and then one day I may feel we have an inauthentic friendship because I can notice that you're not being fully yourself. Yeah. And then I can even feel that way. You can let me down even by trying to be everything I wanted you to be. That's what I find so fascinating in life is that you can let someone down even after becoming everything you thought they wanted you to be. Well, exactly. Well, go back to that example of coffee.

39:44if I said to you Jay I'm sorry I can't do it today which honors you more if I believe that you're so weak and vulnerable that you can't handle no or if I honor you by telling the truth which shows you more respect definitely so that I can be everything you want me to be and still not honor you yes it's fascinating how we can be so opposite in our perceptions and viewpoints. Yeah. And a big part of that comes also, we talked about fear, but I wanted to talk about guilt because - Yeah. Oh yeah, guilt. Guilt. What do you want to say about guilt? No, well, I want to hear from you about guilt, but when I think of guilt, I think it's such a strong driver for so many actions in the world today.

40:39It is. We're guilty of something in the past. and therefore we do something strange in the future or the present that we wouldn't have done. We feel guilty right now, and that makes us say something that we don't mean or something that we... Exactly. How do we untrap ourselves from the trappings of guilt? Great. Well, let me tell you a story. So, you know, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, Moses is a Hebrew boy born at a time when the Pharaoh's soothsayers declared that some Hebrew male born around this time will rise up and challenge the Pharaoh. So they decide to kill all the Hebrew newborns by throwing them into the Nile River.

41:32But Moses' mother, rather than throws the boy into the river, but in a wicker basket. And so Moses flows down the river and he gets plucked out of the water by the Pharaoh's daughter who adopts him. So this Hebrew infant is adopted into the royal court to be like a prince. That's why Walt Disney could make a film called Prince of Egypt. All this happened just so Walt Disney could make a film. In any case, There's an extra biblical legend. It's not in the Bible, but it's an ancient legend. And you think, what the heck is this guy talking about? I just asked him about guilt and he's talking about - No, I love this.

42:16This is my favorite type of answer. Okay. Is when I'm curious and I'm following because I don't know where you're going. Okay, great. But believe me, I'm gonna come back to guilt. I believe it, I believe it. I trust you. So the legend is that Moses is a toddler and the Pharaoh's soothsayers divine that he might be a danger. which eventually he proves to be. So they decide to put him to a test. They put in front of him two sparkling objects. Now, I don't know if you remember, but in the Bible, Moses is a speech impediment, and it's his brother Aaron who has to do the speaking for him. How does he get the speech impediment?

42:51Well, the pharaoh's soothsayers say, well, this boy needs to be examined, and they decide to put him to a test. And they put in front of him two sparkling objects. One of them is a royal diamond of Egypt, and the other is a sparkling ember of, glowing ember of coal. Now if Moses reaches for the royal diamond, it means he's got oil ambition and he needs to be killed. So there's this little toddler delightedly looking at these two scintillating objects and his hand starts moving towards the diamond, at which point standing behind him is Gabriel, which is the Hebrew version of my name, Gabor, by the way, and grabs his hand and takes it away from the diamond and puts it to the coal.

43:40Now Moses, finishing the motion that kids will do, picks up the coal, puts it to his mouth, and burns his lips. And that's how he develops the speech impediment. Now here's my question to you. Is the angel Moses' friend or enemy? Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Have you ever brought your magic to Walt Disney World like, hey, we came to play? Did you tip your tiara to a Creole princess or get goofy officially?

44:22Step up like a boss and save the day? Or see what life's like under the tree of life? Did you? If you could. Would you? When we come through, it's true magic. Because we came to play. Bring the magic at Walt Disney World Resort.

44:42So, your AI agents, they make the team that uses them more productive, right? But if they aren't connected to other agents, or your data, or your existing workflows, how productive can they really make your teams? Any business can add AI agents. IBM connects your agents across your company to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

45:11He's trying to be a friend, but... But he hurt him. Had to hurt him to save his life. Right? He was a friend. Guilt is that kind of a friend. Okay? Guilt comes on in early childhood. not because you did anything wrong, but because you sense that whatever you did displeased your parents, and you can't afford to do that. So there needs to be an internal mechanism that keeps you close to your parents. That says, for example, if you're authentic, and you're sure you're anger, you won't be accepted. There better be an internal mechanism to keep you on track. So guilt comes along as this friend that says, no, take your hand away from where you want to put it.

46:00You have to stifle your real desires. So guilt comes along to maintain a relationship, not because you did anything wrong, because a two-year-old, three-year-old, they can't do anything wrong by definition. They may do things that are not good, and they need to be taught not to do it, but it's not wrong. There's no guilt there. There's no, I'm going to do something evil here. So guilt is totally not appropriate. And there's ways of teaching children without guilt. But guilt comes along to keep you in line. Now, is that your friend or your enemy? It's your friend, but it's hurting you. The problem with these early friends, and I call them, sometimes people don't like this word, but I say call them stupid friends.

46:47The stupidity comes in the fact they don't realize that you're an adult. You can make your own decisions now and look after yourself. You don't need to be controlled by their advice that was meant for a two-year-old. So that's where they're just not educable. So when I say to people these days, now most people who feel guilty when they act a little bit on their own behalf, I say to them, for God's sakes, have a party, celebrate. I've done something for myself. Call your friends, you know, have a celebration that you were so quote-unquote selfish. Like Sheryl Crow said, all these voices that always told her that she has to ignore herself and serve others.

47:29Now she doesn't listen to them anymore. That's the guilt. So, you know, recognize the guilt, say hello to it, thank it. Now, is there such a thing as health remorse? Yeah. If I promise to meet you for coffee and I don't show up because I find something more pleasurable to do, I should feel some remorse. So remorse is about specific, that's healthy remorse. You know, if I break my word, if I hurt somebody, I should feel remorse. But that's not a long-term thing. It's not the chronic guilt that you're talking about. That's not something about what happened a long time ago, and now it limits me or controls me.

48:12It's a healthy remorse for some specific thing. that's different from guilt guilt is this old friend that's long outlived their usefulness and the challenge is that we still treat it like a today friend exactly it's almost like we're so scared of breaking that dependence as well we are thinking well i feel guilty that i'm not around so I'll stay around this individual this group of people whatever it may be but there's a part of me that wants to to depend on them as well yeah and I don't want to break free completely as well because yeah I don't even know what that looks like like you're saying like as an adult you can take care of yourself you can walk your own path but you're actually scared of doing that yeah and so you accept the pain of guilt yeah because it allows for dependence well that's a That's a good point, and I often say to people, you're gonna have pain one way or the other.

49:11Yes. Which pain would you like? Mm, mm. Because sometimes in life there's no pain for your options. Mm-hm. You can have the pain of suppressing yourself for the sake of being accepted, or you can have the pain sometimes of being yourself and not being accepted. Mm-hm. You can have pain one way or the other. Mm-hm. And I have my own bias that the pain of not being ourselves ultimately is by far the greater and more chronic pain. And that the pain, the short-term pain of being ourselves, brings liberation. And genuine independence, which means I can have genuinely independent relationships with other people who are willing to accept me as independent.

49:55But in the short term, which pain do you want? There's no pain-free option. Yeah, for sure. You reminded me of this beautiful idea that Thich Nhat Hanh shares that there's familiar pain and unfamiliar pain. And these are our two choices. And the challenge is we're so scared of unfamiliar pain that we would rather choose familiar pain and go through the same pain because we know how it's going to feel. Exactly. And we think, oh, at least I'm aware. At least I am conscious of how bad it can get. But hearing you speak, being independent or being dependent both has pain. Yeah. But the pain of dependence far outweighs the pain of independence.

50:48Well, just put a bit of a nuance in there. Ultimately, I mean, Thich Nhat Hanh also talked about interbeing, how we all inter-are. So in a certain sense, we do depend on each other. you know and that's okay the question is do we depend on any each other authentically or inauthentically the fact that i'm independent doesn't mean that i'm not going to reach out for help or that i won't offer it but it does mean that i will be honest with you and i won't pretend to be somebody else that i'm not so that you'll accept me you know so there's anything interesting word difference between two phrases that sound very familiar.

51:31One is called individualism and the other is called individuation. Now rugged individualism is I don't need anybody and it's me against the world and this is the North American capitalist ideal. Well human beings never would have evolved had we been those rugged individualists. The rugged individualists wouldn't last more than one generation. But individuated means that we can be ourselves, truly ourselves, in genuine relationship with others. Not rugged individualists. I mean, the most boring people are rugged individualists because they all look the same. You know, so you can be individuated and be truly yourself and still belong and still vulnerably desire human contact, you know.

52:29Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think there's a lot of rhetoric around, well, don't care what anyone else thinks and it doesn't matter and you just do your own thing. and that's almost a bitter response as well because we do have to care what people think. If we lived in a world where you didn't care what anyone thought, it wouldn't be that healthy because we would do all sorts of obscene, horrific things. I'd phrase it differently. I'm intrigued, yeah, I'm intrigued. Yeah, I don't care what anybody thinks, but I do care what I do and how it affects other people. You know, so there's another spiritual teacher, Gunnar Rotana, he wrote a book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I've just been working through recently.

53:17And he's talking about a higher morality that comes from being true to yourself and in touch. And he says, well, you don't need rules anymore because it's like St. Augustine said, love and do what you will. So if you actually love the world, you don't have to give yourself rules. because that love will dictate how you'll act towards other people. I can't worry about what other people think. Look, if I were to what other people think, I would not have written any of my books, because each of my books challenge the reigning orthodoxy in, say, medicine, you know, or whether it's under tension deficit or stress and disease or addictions.

53:55Every time I write a book, I'm saying something that, I'm not saying that I invented it, but that I've come to understand and fervently believe and want to communicate. But I can't worry about what other people think. Or when I make a political statement, I'm responsible for what I say, how I say it, but not what other people think about it. But that doesn't mean that I can ignore other people's experience. So as long as my intention is purely to speak the truth, and I do so with integrity, I can't worry about what other people think. I can't. But that doesn't mean I'm going to go around just doing terrible things because I don't care what you think.

54:36As long as I'm convinced that what I do, if I've done that kind of inventory, and I haven't always, but if I do an inventory about, well, what is my intention here? Is there a hierarchy of pain or hierarchy of trauma? What do you mean by hierarchy? I feel like people feel like, well, this trauma is worse than this trauma and this trauma is better than this one. We often hear about that as a conversation. Is that accurate? So one could say so because if you look at a child who stays sexually abused as opposed to a child whose parents just can't honor and accept and validate their emotions, well, my God, you're talking about two different set of experiences so that there's certainly horrific things happen to some people, to wound them and other people suffer wounds in a very different way.

55:37But the question is, is it useful to make that distinction? It's one thing to recognize it, but let's say you're my four-year-old. You come to me and you say, God, I'm afraid of so-and-so. And I say, snap out of it, only cards are afraid. Get out of here and take care of yourself. and then you went to your mom and said, I tried to talk to daddy, but, you know. Would it be helpful for your mother to say, oh, snap out of it. Think of all the kids that are being sexually abused. Think of all the starving kids. Think of all the kids that are being bombed. What are you complaining about? Would that be helpful?

56:14No. So that it's not a helpful game to play. I don't compare people's traumas. Trauma simply means a wound, and people are wounded in all kinds of ways. When I try to help people, the least helpful thing I can do is to tell them that somebody else's trauma is much worse than mine or much worse than yours so objectively yes practically it's not a helpful distinction people are wounded and you have to tend to the wound whatever it is if you came to me with a cut on your arm and you asked me to stitch it up it wouldn't be helpful for me to tell you that oh what are you worried about There's people with broken arms out there or people with broken, you know.

56:55So no, it's not a helpful thing to engage in, even though there's truth in it. Yeah. What's really fascinating every time I speak to you, Gabor, is that there's such nuance, subtlety, and there's a quote that I want to share with you to get your thoughts on. I want to bring it up here. Yeah. So this quote is from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Okay. who famously wrote, the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.

57:43Absolutely. So that's brilliant. And what Fitzgerald is talking about there is what is called integrative intelligence. And integrative intelligence is when you can say, on the one hand, on the other hand, both things can be true. And I need to somehow come to some conclusion about them without rejecting the one truth or the other. Now, little kids are totally incapable of integrative intelligence. So a three-year-old will either say, I hate you, Daddy, or I love you, Daddy. But they can't say, I love you, Daddy, but I'm very angry with you, which is really what's going on. It's either love or hate.

58:24So integrative thinking is a capacity of intellectual and actually emotional maturation. A lot of people are completely incapable of it. It's one or the other. He talked about the deadness of the heart and the moral apathy. And all my life since I've been conscious of the horrors including and beginning with the Holocaust that nearly killed me and killed my grandparents, nearly killed my parents and I. When I became conscious of that at age 11, what happened was that my parents had a book on a high shelf they didn't want me to read and when i was 11 i climbed up on a chair and it was a book called the scourge of the swastika and it was about it was the first book about the nazi horrors and i saw photographs and i read the story and for years j afterwards literally every day my head would be dizzy i'd spin say how is this possible how is our heart not broken every day I'm asking you now because I I'm wrestling with this question I suppose I have an intellectual answer or more to the point maybe along the lines of what Shujel says how can our heart be broken and not be broken at the same time because I think both are necessary yeah and I find everything all across the world that occurs I feel like people's hearts are broken, but they break and ache for different things.

1:00:03And I think that that's why the words of Fitzgerald resonate so strongly with me. Yeah. Because just to repeat those last two lines, one should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise. and you know what you're saying it's how I was trained in the monastery as well the goal was always how can you be a helper how can you be a server how can you be useful how can you help heal like that's what you look for in moments of tragedy whatever they may be and I just think that not much unites us on the heart level is equals across the world i don't think there's many things that we look to globally as the human race as we were once referred to or called to that creates a sense of connectivity and there's genuine fear that makes us feel well if my break my heart breaks for this, then what if, what will happen to my heart?

1:01:21But the grief might be too much to bear. Yeah. Or not that. I mean more so that, well, if my heart breaks for this event, some part of it is, yes, there's too much to think about, for sure. It's overwhelming. And then the other side is, well, if it breaks for this, then is it allowed to break for that as well. You know, this idea of holding two opposing ideas seems to be such a need in the world, like just generally, like even the belief of, I have to work on my health, but I'm happy I'm alive. Like these are two opposing ideas. Like we're not looking at it from I'm unhealthy or I'm healthy. Well, you know, what's interesting there is that when I was working palliative care, sometimes people would say to me and this is amazing I don't recommend it but they'd say they'd be dying, they'd actually be dying they'd have a couple of weeks left they'd say, dog I don't explain this exactly but this disease is the best thing that ever happened to me I don't wish it on anybody but what were they talking about?

1:02:25Now there's a guy quote in the myth of normal wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor Blessed with a Brain Tumor young Australian guy who who was diagnosed as a brain tumor, did have surgery, did accept treatment. He also had a spiritual transformation. Has lived longer than his prognosis. I don't know what his current status is, but wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor. And by the way, he developed a brain tumor in exactly the same spot that he used to point at with an imaginary gun to shoot himself in the head when he was thinking of suicide. I said, what do you mean, blessed with a brain tumor?

1:03:08And he said, well, knowing that I'm going to die, or that I might, means that every moment is precious. He says, that means that when I'm talking to you or anybody else, I'm fully aware that this may be the last conversation we'll ever have. That means that every moment is absolutely precious. I've never been so engaged with life. And that's what people meant. and so that even the disease that was going to take their lives, they'd say, and why? Because the disease taught them to be authentic for the first time in their lives and they found out that was much more precious than anything else. Now, that's not a bargain I'd recommend to anybody.

1:03:48Totally, yeah. I'm just telling you that I've witnessed it and it's quite astonishing how many people do find authenticity, to go back to our previous theme, they value that over anything else. Or even longevity. Now most of us would probably run the other way. Again, I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying, I've seen it. Yeah, but it's always those opposing ideas, that feeling of I'm good and I want to be better. Yeah. I'm a good husband or a good dad or a good mom or I'm a good whatever. At the same time, I'm not good enough. Like, you know, whatever it may be. not that that's negative but the idea of i i i know i can do more and i want to do more so there's such a need for this dichotomy almost to be held well is there well the ability to hold those two opposing ideas is needed right like because you don't i don't want to live in a world where i think i'm perfectly healthy everything's amazing because then i may miss certain challenges and i also don't want to live in the other world of oh my god like everything's falling apart and I'm dying every second of the day.

1:04:59But what if we just looked at it in a unitary way? Then it's a matter of growth. Then I'm not as fully grown as I might be. But there's nothing wrong. Yes. So, you know, I'll be 80. You know, let me talk about... You said 80? 80, yeah. I know it's a big number. You're doing great. This is amazing. Well, do the numbers. I was born in 44. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always forget. Yeah. I forget when I'm with you. Yeah. And there's this expression, I've been thinking about this recently, this expression growing older. So we could just say being older or becoming older or getting older, but we say growing older.

1:05:36Now that's an interesting phrase, isn't it? Because actually as we get older, we shrink. So what are we talking about growing older? Well, because growth, being an emotional and spiritual process, that continues, that can continue forever. so for me it's not a matter of i'm good but i can be better it's a question of can i continue to grow not whether there's anything wrong now but can i continue to grow which is really the essence of life as long as there's life there's growth isn't there you know and the growth may be at some point purely physical at some point physically there might even be contraction, but spiritually and emotionally, they can always be growth.

1:06:26So it's rather than a dichotomy, it's more like a unitary process. I do appreciate that. I do feel that. What is, you just sparked something for me. You were giving this example, this story just told about how the gentleman, when he thought he was going to commit suicide, he would hold his, almost like a gun to his head. Yeah. And that's the place he developed the trauma. Yeah, the tumor. How does trauma intercept the body in that way? Like that feels such like a physical example of that. I can give you other examples. Yeah. When I was working in palliative care, I was looking after a young woman.

1:07:07She was 38 with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is a disease in the nervous system. You basically get paralyzed. the muscles that, or the nerves that activate your muscles just die, they harden. That's what sclerosis means. So they become rigid and they become unable to move. This woman, she was a dancer, a beautiful woman, and we talked a lot in her last weeks. She told me that all her life she used to have this dream of being being buried alive. Brockstein unable to breathe, unable to move. She was a dancer and she began to notice that on the dance floor she couldn't execute the movements anymore, something was wrong.

1:07:57So she was diagnosed with ALS. And she went to the office of the ALS society and on the wall there was a poster that said having ALS is like being buried alive. Wow. The cellist, Jacqueline Dupree, who was a great British classical cellist, died in her 40s. She was a big international rocket star in the classical music world. She died of MS, multiple sclerosis. She couldn't move anymore. By the time she was in her early 20s, she couldn't play a cello anymore. when she was eight years old she said to her sister Hillary don't tell her mommy this but when I grow up I won't be able to move or walk now all of these people these three people the guy with the brain tumor the woman with the ALS Jacqueline Dupre they've been deeply traumatized in childhood I'm not going to go into how but they had been that woman's dream that she couldn't move or walk was literally an expression over emotional experience in her family of origin.

1:09:04In her deathbed, nobody came to see her from her family. She was all alone, like she had been all her life. She couldn't be herself. She couldn't speak or move or get enough air to be herself. So that dream was metaphoric to start with, then became a physical reality. Now, how does the metaphor or how does the emotion, how does the trauma translate into physical reality? that has to do with the scientific little secret. Don't tell any doctors this because they're, they might not know what to do with it, but, well, some of them don't. They're not taught in medical school. Mind and body are inseparable.

1:09:45Our emotions, our nervous system, our emotional system in our brains and our bodies, our nervous system, our hormonal apparatus, and our immune system are actually one system, all serving survival and growth and reproduction. And so they're not separate. Even to say that they're connected is a bit false because it's one. Yes, yes. No, which means that what happens emotionally can have a significant impact on the nervous system, on the gut, on the heart, in the immune system, and on hormones, just obviously. So without going into the mechanisms of how trauma affects, but trauma can affect genetic functioning, how chromosomes function, trauma can affect our immune system.

1:10:35Actually, for example, a study that I quote, women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer, according to a Harvard study a few years ago. Well, that means that the severe emotions endured by the woman with PTSD can declare in the form of malignancy because they affect the immune system. And the milder the symptoms, the less the risk of avarian cancer. So mind and body being one unit, obviously our emotional lives and emotional traumas and wounds can show up in our physiology, which is why autoimmune diseases are much more common amongst racialized women, both in Canada and the US because they're heard a lot more as women and as racialized people.

1:11:26So it's just all one thing. And again, is that a new finding or is that something, or is that an ancient wisdom? And it's both. It's both modern science, not taught in medical schools for reasons that are interesting but rather distressing. and it's ancient wisdom as well. It's all one. And with that approach, I mean, we can't minimize the number of steps and the uniqueness of those, but the hope is that people can work medically and mentally to be able to release that trauma. I have photographs on my cell phone, on my computer, of a woman that I met five years ago. I gave a talk in London on this subject of mind-body unity and how stress and trauma can lead to autoimmune disease.

1:12:18And autoimmune disease is where the immune system attacks the body itself. And this woman sent me photographs a year ago. Now, when I met her, she'd been diagnosed with autoimmune disease called systemic lupus, which has got a typical presentation of what's called a butterfly rash. So her face is red, like here, like the wings of a butterfly, with the body of the butterfly as a red rash over and over. It's called a butterfly rash. It's typical of that disease. and she sent me a picture of her fingers when she was diagnosed. They were like yellow as wax because the blood supply had been constricted.

1:12:52She was told that you got this disease. We don't know what causes it. Can't cure it. Probably it'll get worse and you'll be on medication for the rest of your life. I could send these photographs. You could actually show them because she's given me permission. She sent me pictures a year ago. Face totally beautiful. Pink as anything. No rash. fingers are as pink as mine and yours. No medication, no treatment. She just dealt with the emotional part of it. All her life she had suppressed herself, just along the lines I've been talking about. She dealt with her trauma. She's become fully, authentically, and vigorously herself.

1:13:29The disease is gone. Doctors would say, or some doctors would say, well, that's just an anecdote. Yeah, it's an anecdote, but it has to be a true anecdote. I pay attention to anecdotes. Not only that, this has been studied systematically by others. and there are people who once they deal with the emotional side of things and take charge of their lives they recover from diseases that are supposed to have been hopeless and if you just look at the example of um stephen hawking the great physicist who was diagnosed with als at age 20 he lived another 55 years now the disease progressed but he outlived his prognosis by a good half a century folks I hate to tell you this we doctors don't know everything and especially we don't fully understand I should say as a profession the wondrous workings of mind and body and the spirit and how they all interact so when you look at the indigenous healing practices like the North American natives they got this medicine wheel the four cardinals which is the physical and the mental which means also the emotional and the social and the spiritual.

1:14:38And those four quadrants have to be in balance for us to be healthy. No, they didn't have the science we do. And they didn't have the amazing achievements of Western medicine, which are truly miraculous. But they did have a wisdom that if only we adopted and combined it with the incredible achievements of Western medicine, boy, what a health system we could possibly have. That's definitely what you're helping try and build for the future. And all of our platforms are dedicated to that. Hopefully we can get to a place for that integrative, holistic viewpoint. And there are more and more physicians practicing that way.

1:15:16You know, there are people, functional medicine and integrative medicine, not as holistic as I'd like them to be, but far more holistic than mainstream medicine. And these are medically trained physicians like I was. So there's not like some fly-by-night alternative of weirdo cult. I mean, these are just doctors who, like myself, at some point, came to terms with the limitations of their education and needed to infuse some more ancient wisdom into how they practice the arts of healing. Yeah, but I'd love to end with, I'd love to hear from you what your wish, your prayer, your hope, however you'd like to word it for humanity is right now, today, at this time, if there's some words that come from your heart?

1:16:03If we could just wake up to our possibilities. You know the famous story of the Buddha where he's walking along the road and somebody sees him with his radiant face and confident gait and he says, who are you, a God? And the Buddha says, no, I'm awake. And if only we could be awake to our possibilities. Like in every conflict, on the deepest human level, it's so unnecessary we could actually be a human race together we could be that we don't have to hurt ourselves we don't have to hurt others we don't have to take from them demand from them we could be this is actually possible for all of us and it's possible for all of us as individuals and for all of us as creatures let's just wake up to our possibilities it's beautiful Gabor thank you so much again for your time your energy your presence and everyone who's been listening or watching at home if you don't already please do grab a copy of the book Myth of Normal because our first and second conversations were very different and I guide you towards the book for the deeper resources the step-by-step guide it's what I try and avoid doing in these interviews is minimizing the amount of work it takes or oversimplifying what Gabor's beautiful work does in his deep books, because I believe he and everyone else would want you to take those steps.

1:17:40So I wish you all the best in your journey of trauma, illness, and healing. And Gabor, I thank you for your work and your contributions today as well, and forever to humanity. Well, it's always so peaceful to be with you and believe me these days I enjoy an oasis of peace so thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. If you love this episode you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past. Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable so a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick does it?

1:18:17It grows where it's soft and green and vulnerable. This episode of On Purpose is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. I believe that travel is one of the greatest gifts that we've ever been given. And Chase Sapphire Reserve has been my gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. When I use my Chase Sapphire Reserve card, I get eight times the points on all the purchases I make through Chase Travel. And even access to one-of-a-kind experiences. Experiences like music festivals and sporting events. And that's not even mentioning how the card gets me into the Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide.

1:18:54Travel is more rewarding with Chase Sapphire Reserve. Trust me. Discover more at chase.com forward slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA. Member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Have you ever brought your magic to Walt Disney World like, hey, we came to play? Did you tip your tiara to a Creole princess or get goofy officially?

1:19:39Step up like a boss and save the day? Or see what life's like under the tree of life? Did you? If you could. Would you? When we come through, it's true magic. Because we came to play. Bring the magic at Walt Disney World Resort. This is an iHeart Podcast.