E538 Dr. Gabor Maté

32:57So on the one hand, I was highly functioning.

33:02And, but on the other hand, I had all this unseen stuff that erupted later on. Yeah, it's funny, you don't even know it's there, especially when you're a kid, you don't know. No, you don't know. Yeah, you don't know. You don't know that it's there. and then later you have to, it's almost like a fire that starts when you're young, but you don't, the smoke doesn't show up. For me, it wasn't until my 30s. And I was like, where the, is all this smoke coming from? That's exactly right. That's what happened to me. And then I had to go back and look at it. Yeah, it's like, yeah, unprocessed trauma. It's like, yeah, it's like a fire.

33:38Like imagine starting a fire, but no smoke comes out of it. Yeah. That's unprocessed trauma. Well, the. Does that make sense or it doesn't? No, it makes total sense because what happens is, like when you said earlier, you were fine, the heck you were fine. You thought you were fine. And that's because we pushed down all the rage that we never expressed as kids. We pushed on the pain, we pushed on the isolation, we pretend, and we can function in the world in ways that the world can give you and respect and reward. I mean, look at, we're talking here in Hollywood, but look at all the figures here that were great successes, idols to millions, and they had these miserable inner lives.

34:23I mean, you can list 100 of them. Yeah, I've got 50 of them in my phone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's funny that if it's not the foundation isn't there, then you'll go find it in the world, right? And sometimes what you go find, even though you're just trying to replicate what you didn't get when you were young it can be detrimental to you which is why people get into um unhealthy relationships because where did we most want love when we were kids when we most wanted to be seen by whom by the people that couldn't do it therefore we will repeatedly look for people who can't see us and hoping that this time they will they will you know and uh it's so funny i have this i have this thing that came into my head like i could jump off of a cliff right yeah but if i heard a mom come home from work back on the top of that cliff i would find a way to get or if i heard like high heels if i heard a woman's footsteps i'd find a way to get back up there and and and look towards her because you for the month.

35:37Cause I'm just, yeah, it's like, it may sound crazy, but yeah, just like, yeah, it's like, if I can't help, but look, I can't help, but wonder does, is that woman accept me? You know, even with dating and all my relationships, I see it now. It's like, you know, I'm always kind of, I'm all, even, even in just any relationship, I'm just, or any moment, I'm just looking, do you accept me? I can feel this. Do you accept me?

36:08And unfortunately, it really gets in the way of male-female relationships. Oh, yeah. Because a lot of us, I mean myself included, in my relationship with my spouse, in some ways I just wanted to be mothered. You know, not just loved as an adult, but actually mothered. On the one hand, on the other hand, I would resent it. because I don't want to be controlled. So it puts the woman into an impossible situation. Oh, yeah. I would never date me. Yeah. Oh, jeepers. Yeah, I wouldn't. Even now? It's getting better, but it's still, we still, it's getting better. Yeah. You know? Yeah, those relationships are tough.

36:55Yeah, I have trouble committing in a relationship. You know, I did some ayahuasca ceremonies. People do plant medicine. well hey you haven't read the chapter there's one in here oh yeah fuck yeah dude chapter I think it's chapter 31 so you had experience with it I used to lead retreats with it no way bro yeah and dude that's amazing dude what were you gonna say about it I was gonna say that when I did a plant medicine retreat that I realized one of the reasons why I've had trouble getting in relationships is cause I'm still waiting for this original relationship. The perfect mom. And it's no blame.

37:35It's not a blame on my mom. I don't do that anymore. I lament some of the feelings from my youth, but I don't, you know, I love my mother and I'm grateful that she did the best that she could and I believe that she did. But yeah, I realized like I can't, there's just a part of me that is just still like, I feel like it's like a kid like standing on a dock, like waiting for a boat to come. That's how I envision it a lot of times. But so there's a deep longing. Yeah. I totally understand that. And then you try to get someone else to fill it and they don't even know what to do. And for years, I didn't even know I was trying to get somebody to fill it.

38:14It just nothing, I couldn't figure it out. There was that emptiness. Oh, it was wild, man. And my life was still okay, but just below, right below the surface level of my life, there was, it was a precarious foundation. I totally understand. I found out about ayahuasca after my book on addiction got published in 2009. It's called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and it's about how addiction is not a genetic disease, it's a response to trauma as it affects the brain and the psyche. But after I published that book, I go on book tour and people got asking me, what do you know about addiction and its healing with ayahuasca?

38:57I know nothing about it. next visit, next stop. What do you know about it? I said, leave me alone already. I mean, you just spent three years writing the book and you're asking me about the one thing I don't know anything about. And then finally said, somebody said, you know, you could experience this up here in Vancouver because there's a Peruvian shaman who came up there. So I did the ayahuasca and I experienced pure love for the first time in my life. There's a little baby in the tent whose father had done a plant, and the mother was there with the baby, and the baby started cooing and wooing and aahing, and these tears of love just flowed on my face.

39:37Wow. And my heart just opened. And I realized how close my heart had been, because it was so bruised so early that I closed it down. Not that I deliberately closed it down, but as a way of protecting it. and that, right away, said, okay, I can work with this to help people who are addicted. Now, I'm not here to advocate its use, it's not for everybody, it's certainly not a panacea. You know, psychedelics is a whole other conversation. Yeah, same, I'm not saying anybody should. They have their place, they're not the answer and that's certainly not for everybody, but in the right context, with the right guidance, the right preparation, they can really help people open up to parts of themselves that they weren't even aware that they were there.

40:35Yeah. You know? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's fascinating and I hope that that, the knowledge of that evolves over time, you know? But that can also be scary because some people go and get addicted to that. I've seen that happen with people. I've seen it too because what people get addicted to is not so much the substances, because nobody's gonna get addicted to IOSC. Yeah, it's nasty. You can't just have some at a club. But what they get addicted to is the heightened experience. And if they don't know how to integrate what they've learned into their lives, then they keep looking for that elevated experience that takes them out of their ordinary self.

41:13And so I really think that that's one of the risks of psychedelic use is that you start looking for that elevated, heightened, or deepened experience that's missing from your life where the whole thing is,

41:30the experience can open the door. But you gotta walk through it. And you have to keep walking through it. Not when you're under the influence of the medicine. Right, the integration. The integration, yeah. It's so key. Yeah. Yeah, we've lost, that's a huge part of our society that's kind of, now we just kind of get a piece of information and then we're like oh we have the information but we don't take as much time to um to integrate something into our life like uh that's one thing i've noticed for myself anyway i don't want to pin on everybody but i'll notice that sometimes i'll learn something i'll learn a fact or i'll learn like a way that i've oh i know this about me now or this is something i've learned but unless i integrate the solution to that or the um the information from that the positive information instead of just shouting it out that I know it, actually integrating it and taking time to integrate it, you know?

42:20Even taking time, like if you go to a church sermon or a mosque sermon or a synagogue sermon, yeah, Jewish church, that's what I was thinking of, synagogue sermon, and you can hear a message, right? But then you can just go on about your day. But taking time to integrate a message in your life, well, what did I hear? How does it make me feel? That's right. What do I think about it? I think we used to have a lot more time to do that just because our society wasn't so, our lives weren't so frenetic. Well, I think we're addicted. Particularly, I think the United States is addicted to the quick fix.

42:56Yeah. You know. Yeah, that Earl Scheib. Yeah. The paint, the spray paint it. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Have you struggled with addiction before? Have I struggled with addiction? I know you struggled with work addiction, I think you talked about. I have had. two major addictions. One is workaholism. And again, I have to make a distinction here. I mean, I did good work and I did work that had meaning and made a contribution. That's good. That's the calling. But then there's another part of it, which is being driven. I mean, you're being driven, you're not in charge. You're like a leaf being driven by the wind.

43:40And I was driven to work because I have to keep proving my importance and that people should like me, people should respect me. And why? Because I didn't respect myself and because I got this message early in life that I just wasn't important. And I believed it. The trauma is not, for example, the trauma is not, for example, that my mother gave me to a stranger when I was 11 months old to save my life. That wasn't the trauma. That was the traumatic event. Trauma is what happens inside you. the trauma inside me was that I concluded from that that I wasn't lovable I wasn't important now that drives the work addiction right because you have to keep proving to yourself the other addiction I had and people often laugh and I can call that an addiction but really it was was shopping for classical compact discs CDs CDs hell yeah but I could drop three four thousand dollars a day on them gosh you know and I would you can't even smoke them No, you can't smoke.

44:41And no sooner would I leave the store, but I'd have to run back to get some more. So it wasn't about the having and the enjoying. I love the music, but it wasn't about that. It was about getting more and more and more and everything enough. And so I would lie to my wife about it. I would sometimes neglect my work. I mean, I don't think I mentioned this in this book, but in my book of addiction, I talk about how I left a woman in labor once to go get a compact disc. Wow, what album was it? That I don't remember anymore. I think it was a Mozart symphony, but I don't remember anymore. So I'm not talking about my passion for music, I'm talking about my drivenness.

45:21And sometimes people say, well how can you compare your addictions to your heroin addicted, cocaine addicted, HIV ridden clients? And I said I don't. I said the differences are obvious. it's the similarities that are interesting. And when I told my patients in the downtown Eastside who were using the heroin and the cocaine and whatever, but I got these - These Boyz II Men albums, yeah. Yeah, and they never said, how can you compare stuff? You know what they said? Hey, Doc, you're just like the rest of us, aren't you? Yeah. And my point is, we are all just like the rest of us. Right. We all find some chronic escape.

46:04Not all of us. Most people, whether it's drugs, pornography, sex, internet, cell phones. Gambling, there's so many. Gambling, self-cutting, eating, shopping. Running, working out. That's a huge one. Extreme working out and all that. And we're running away from ourselves. Yeah. And so when I ask people not what's wrong with your addiction, because that's obvious, but what's right about it. like for example I mean you've had alcohol or drug issues I've heard you say what did they do for you in the short term I think it just it gave me a break from how I wanted to feel it gave me a break from me it gave you a break from how you felt yeah yeah it gave me a break from my feelings yeah yeah and it just gave me a break from me I was just but that's because you were really uncomfortable with yourself yeah and and because you had feelings that were painful so So my mantra on addiction, which I mentioned in this book, is don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.

47:07And if you understand why people have pain, don't look at their genes. Look at their lives. Yeah. What happened to them? Yeah. Yeah, you say, or I've heard you, in your book you talk about addiction, if you recognize the harm it's, or I think it might have been in an interview you did, if you recognize the harm it's doing and you keep doing it. Yeah, so addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and they don't give it up. So pleasure, craving, relief in the short term, harm in the long term, refusal and inability to let go of it, that's what an addiction is.

47:52So it's got nothing to do with drugs. Well, it could have to do with drugs. Could have to do with any of the things we already mentioned. but any of the things were mentioned and but why the pain that's the question the question is why the pain yeah what are we running away from right yeah i had uh like once i saw like uh pornography and stuff like that it was like and i could do masturbation or jerking off or whatever people call it but um once i that was the first way that i realized oh i can make myself feel good and it was like the first time that I like yeah I could make myself feel good and so then it just became yeah it became a way that I always I mean I would just but yeah I would just the only way I knew how to make myself really feel good even though it was just for a moment that I would take it should I tell you something scientific about that?

48:46Yeah so cocaine addicts and crystal meth addicts or any stimulant addicts in fact, all addicts, amongst the things they're looking for is a head of dopamine. Dopamine is the incentive, motivation, chemical in our brain. It's what makes us feel vital and alive and ready to go. And without it, we can't survive. Now, cocaine, crystal meth. Without it, we can't survive. No, we can't. That's cool to hear. It's interesting. Oh, no, because dopamine flows in the brain when we're exploring a novel object or a novel environment, when we're seeking food, when we're seeking a sexual partner. We can't survive without that stuff.

49:30You can take a mouse in a laboratory and put food in front of him and he's hungry, but he won't eat, why? Because genetically you knocked out his dopamine receptors and he doesn't have the motivation. So it's the motivation chemical, it's absolutely essential. No, cocaine, caffeine, nicotine, crystal meth, they literally give you a direct hit of dopamine. So does pornography. When you do a brain scan of some people, they get repeated spikes of dopamine. It's not the pornography they're addicted to. It's that hit of dopamine that they get in their brains. Wow. And all addictions, shopping, I mean when I went to the record store, it was the dopamine.

50:13Like I've been diagnosed with ADHD. The first book I wrote was on ADD. And spacing out, absent-mindedness, all this kind of stuff. Oh yeah, daydreaming, they used to call it. Daydreaming, yeah. But when I was in the record store, I was present. Wow. I was focused. I could almost remember which records I bought at which store at what time. Yeah. because the dopamine was flowing like crazy. And that's why I needed to go back. It wasn't because I needed more music. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trunk's full. I was after that. I was hiding the discs on the porch and in the attic so my wife wouldn't call me.

50:56But I was after that. The ceiling caves in. It's just a bunch of Van Halen. Yeah. And I was after that dopamine. Dopamine, wow. Which is what you're after with the pornography. Yeah. Yeah, it just was. And it was a way to make me feel good. and it was the first way that I could interact with a woman where it felt like I could, and I know it's not real interaction, but it was like, this is the safest, closest I can get to interacting with a woman and it being like, okay, because I would get so nervous around women or like if women looked at me, I would like, my whole body, like I just, I couldn't handle it.

51:31But yeah, that dopamine is, it's interesting to hear. So yeah, no matter what it is, it's the dopamine behind it. It's the dopamine. I mean, no, and there's another chemical that's involved in many addictions, like the heroin addicts or the opiate addicts, the fentanyl addicts. Those are opiates, which come from the opium plant. But why do they work in the human brain? Why would an opium plant work in the human brain? Because we have receptors for them. We have molecules that receives the opiate molecule. Now, why do we have receptors from a plant that grows in Afghanistan? We don't. We have receptors for our own internal opiates.

52:11So we have an internal opiate system. And they are called endorphins. Endorphin means endogenous internal opiate. So our endorphins are our own opiates. Opiates. So we manufacture our own opiates. Not only we do, plants do, animals do, everybody. Now, the question is what do the opiates do in the human brain? Well, they do a whole lot of things. but three importantly, they relieve pain, physical and emotional pain, because pain is necessary for life, otherwise I could smash my hand on this table. Yeah, you jump out of a window and you wouldn't care. But I also have some pain relief. That's the endorphins, number one.

52:50Number two, what they do is they give you a sense of pleasure and reward. So when people go bungee jumping, they get this high level of endorphins. That's what they're after. Ah, that's why they keep doing wild stuff like that. That's right. And the third thing is the most important. The endorphins help to make possible this little thing called love. And if you not caught the endorphin receptors of little mice in the laboratory, they will not cry for their mothers on separation. What would that mean in the wild? It would mean their death. So endorphins connect people to each other, especially parents and children.

53:33And so we're each other's opiates in a way. We're each other's opiates, especially in a healthy parent-child relationship. And they both have endorphins flowing in their brain when they're looking into each other's eyes. And when I ask heroin addicts or opiate addicts, a sex trade worker I asked once, what does the heroin do for you? She said, when the first time I did heroin, it felt like a warm soft hug. What was she talking about? Connection. Connection, yeah. And in this book I talk about it and so many of the addicts like a very well-known recovery leader and fearless advocate is Jamie Lee Curtis.

54:18And she told me. Is she? Sorry? She is. Oh yeah, she's a big 12-stepper. I didn't know that. Oh no, she's a huge 12-stepper. Oh, that's awesome. And very forthright. about her addictions and also her recovery. Wow, that's fascinating, I'd love to talk with her. Yeah, I've seen her eating lunch in the Palisades before, Pacific Palisades before. But she told me that what the opiates did for her gave her a sense of warmth in the belly. That warmth is what we're all after. Yeah. That comes from human connection. And when we didn't have the connections we needed early in life, then we keep looking for that warmth from other sources.

54:54so these people that are addicted to opiates that's what they're looking for a bunch of hug hunters I want to go back a little bit to trauma and isolation and I wanted to ask what is it about not being emotionally about not being emotionally isolated that allows one to process a trauma yeah so I did a day long event here in LA just a day before we were recording this. And I worked with a woman called Kimberly Shannon Murphy who is one of Hollywood's top stunt women. She just got a lifetime achievement award. Nice, congratulations, Kim. And she worked with Cameron Diaz and Uma Thurman and Tom Cruise and all these people.

55:44A lot of hotties. No, she was sexually abused by her grandfather all throughout her childhood and adolescence.

55:55And of course, the family was in denial. Nobody noticed it. If they noticed it, they kept silent about it. She was totally alone with it. So that's what induced the wound. And had she been able to talk to somebody and say, this is happening to me, please help me, she would not have been traumatized. So the trauma happens when a child suffers and has nobody to share that suffering with. whether it's the extreme suffering or sexual abuse, or the milder, you might say, suffering or just not being seen for where you are, if you're alone with it, you can't process it. So what happens later on, to answer your question, when you meet somebody where you feel safe, and now you can express what's happening with you, that's what helps to process the trauma.

56:45Got it. So it requires compassion and safety. and ideally, I mean, I criticize the 12-step groups not for what they do, because I love what they do, for what they don't do. I don't think they talk about trauma enough. That's my view. But a 12-step group that's properly run will offer you support and safety. So now you can share yourself and be seen by others. Amen. Yeah, I mean, I've gotten even into like the intimacy disorder groups and those are a lot more potent with people talking about their emotional disorders and like, you know, traumas and things that happen. And it's not a crybaby group either.

57:34You know, like sometimes we talk about trauma, but I don't talk about it from like a crybaby place. I like to talk about it from like, this is important and it's important to learn about. And I like to share what I learn about from it, you know? It's not about people victimizing themselves or trying to present themselves as victims. It's saying, this is what happened to me, and it's my responsibility to learn from it. That's the truth. And it's my responsibility to grow from it, not to wallow in, oh, look what happened to me, and I can't help it. That's nonsense. Oh, I'll tell you this, Mr. Mate, that a thing I realized I was addicted to a few years ago, self-pity.

58:12Yeah. And I didn't even know it. I kept always thinking, man, what's wrong with me? I have to fix this. Every day, nothing was enough. I kept, and then I realized that even though it seemed like I was trying to make myself better, the truth was that I was always seeing myself as less than because those things have to both be present at the same time because I can only get better if, you know, I'm never enough. and by never being enough though

58:46I'm trying to figure this out I got addicted to self pity I got addicted to like can I jump in with a thought? yes please thank you dear God please it did something for you it took away responsibly from you human beings have a hard time taking responsibility I mean you know I have a hard time taking responsibility you know we all have a hard time taking responsibility so when you're in that self-pity mode you're suffering but you don't have to take responsibility I'm suggesting that's what it did for you yeah I think yeah maybe there was a part of me that wanted to keep it around because it always let there be something wrong with me too that's right you know like if I never solve this if I'm never enough then there will always be something wrong with me yeah does that make any sense?

59:37it makes sense because again it takes away the challenge of growth. I mean, we talk about growing pains. Growth is painful. Oh yeah, people go from damn seven inches to seven feet, so six and a half, six one or whatever. Yeah, and emotional growth is also painful. And so when we don't grow, at least we avoid the growing pains. Right. you know yeah i used to whenever i used to smoke i used to be like part of me didn't want to quit smoking yeah because i wanted to have an excuse for why i wasn't doing other things right that makes sense it makes total sense little sense is enough i'll take it some things never go out of style like trust reliability and driving a toyota take the legendary tacoma and tundra perfect for work and adventures hurry in offers and september 30th toyota let's go places um does blue chew work i can answer it yep i chew on them things baby get that diving board baby make your own pool if you're asking that question does blue chew work we want you to know that blue Chew is putting their money where their mouth is by giving you a month free.

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1:01:56And we thank Blue Chew for supporting the podcast. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When your mental clarity or your focus or your ability to process something in your life is not where it should be. If you're struggling showing up for your family or yourself, you may need therapy. I've gone. I recommend it. Better help can help. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge.

1:02:45therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself so you can take off the mask take off the mask with better help visit betterhelp.com slash t-h-e-o today to get 10 % off your first month that's better help h-e-l-p.com slash theo and we thank better help for sponsoring this episode. Oh yeah. What else did I want to talk to you? Oh, this is really fascinating stuff here. So trauma fosters a shame-based view of the self. Yeah. Um, I'd love to talk a little bit about shame, man, because that was a huge part of my life. Well, tell me about it. I just felt ashamed of myself. Yeah. I felt ashamed of like, yeah, I felt ashamed of how I looked.

1:03:35I felt ashamed of like my ears, my nose, my my face, my, the way I stood. I felt, uh, yeah, I felt ashamed of my family, of my home. I just, I, everything I, I, I just felt a ton of it. I'm not, I'm not whining about it right now. I'm just thinking back, but yeah, I just felt a ton of shame. You know, I felt like, I felt like, I think I felt ashamed of who I was at like the first molecule almost like the first cell of my, you know the dirt under the roots it felt like i just there was a part of me that felt like i was me or anything that had to do with me was gross i understand you know and i used the word gross because that's it felt like gross no the only thing i'll say is um

1:04:29it's not that you felt you were gross it's you believed you were right yes yeah you're right i didn't feel it It wasn't like a feeling on the surface of me. It was like a knot someone had tied a long time ago in the beginning of my time. And in that knot, it was in there somewhere. And I couldn't really even access it. But shame, yeah, I want to hear about shame. Did you feel it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. How'd you feel?

1:05:02Well, growing up in Hungary, in Eastern Europe, and I lived there until I was 13. There was a lot of antisemitism and my grandparents had died in Auschwitz. I almost died as an infant, my mother, my father. That's when your mother gave you to someone else to save you? That's right, yeah. Wow. When I was 11 months of age. But even after the war, there was antisemitism. And so I'd feel ashamed of being Jewish. I don't anymore, but I did as a kid, so I would kind of, then I'd have, I was ashamed of my Jewish looks. Oh, so you have to hide or you have to feel like, yeah. Yeah, there's something different about me that isn't quite right.

1:05:47And you know, there was a lot of antisemitism and taunting in the school that I went to, you know, when I look back on it now. So, yeah, and then I developed body shame, you know? I mean, to this day, it's kind of, it's interesting.

1:06:08But every day I judge aspects of my body. Oh, yeah. You know, this is not big enough, or this is too big, or whatever, you know? Yeah, this is too big. Yeah, so shame, but shame, nobody's born with shame. Really? No infant is born ashamed of themselves. They're totally there. Yeah, that's true, huh? if you saw a little infant that was ashamed of yourself, ashamed of himself, it would break your heart. Yeah, no. They wouldn't even know how to do it. How infants get shamed is when they're not seen. Yeah, and what happens then? Well, or if they're mistreated. Well, let's say a child is not seen, or worse, is being hurt.

1:06:51Now, they can make two assumptions. One is, these adults are stupid, they're incapable, they're incompetent, I'm all alone in the world. Or the child can believe there's something wrong with me and maybe if I can work hard enough, I can fix it. Now which belief do you think is more acceptable for the child? The second one. The second one. So then they develop this deep sense that there's something wrong with us. We just have to work hard enough or look good enough or something and then maybe we can fix it. So even that shame which comes out from being cut off from human contact the way we need it, has a kind of protective value.

1:07:36Really? Because it makes us at least think that there's something we can do. Ah, it gives us hope in a weird way. It gives us hope in a weird way, yeah. But here's the thing, children are narcissists, young children. When I say narcissist, I don't mean in a pathological sense. I mean in a sense they think it's all about them. Right, and they don't have any other choice. They're all they know. That's all they know. So if the parents are happy and connected and there's an atmosphere of loving acceptance and so on, then the child thinks, hey, I must be pretty good. I must be good. Yeah, everything's good.

1:08:18I'm okay. Yeah, but if the parents are stressed, depressed, traumatized, racially challenged, economically challenged,

1:08:32or such terrible things as the children in Gaza are experiencing right now with the daily bombings and all this kind of stuff. What can they think? That there's something wrong with me. Oh, imagine some kid over there in Gaza looking up, and there's a bomb, and they think, man, I'm so horrible, I deserve to be bombed. Well, you know what? there was a study done of guys and children. Man, that's crazy. I hadn't thought about that. Like really look, imagine that though. There was a study done of children in Palestine 21 years ago. And 95 % of those, 95%, this is long before the current horrors. Long before October the 7th.

1:09:12Long before the aftermath of October the 7th. 95 % of those, 5 % of those kids showed traumatic symptoms. High percentage with their beds, like you and I did. they expressed aggression towards their parents. They had panic attacks, anxiety, fears. Can you imagine what's gonna happen to that generation? Years from now? Years from now. I mean, it just breaks my heart every day when I think about it. And I know a lot of my fellow Jews don't agree with me, but as a Jewish person, I'm not the only one who feels that way. it especially breaks my heart yeah when you put it in that sense imagine a kid like you know yeah because what are they going to think they don't know they just think man something is so wrong with me I deserve to be killed you know or something I don't know it depends if the adults are able to hold them and keep them feeling loved but 19 ,000 kids have been orphaned.

1:10:22And when I say orphaned, I don't mean just that their parents have died. Their extended families have been wiped out. What's going to be the future of those kids? And anyway, it's just a terrible - No, it's heartbreaking. I mean, it feels like a genocide is going on over there and you don't know what to do. It's like, you know, I mean, you can pray, you can speak up about it. And I know that there's like a more political aspects of it. And we've had different people come on to talk about Israel and Palestine on here. And it was very knowledgeable for a lot of our listeners because you hear about it a lot, but you don't know the history and everything.

1:10:58Well, I've been there. I went there two and a half years ago to work with Palestinian women tortured in Israeli jails. Wow. And they had post-traumatic stress disorder. I've seen it with my own eyes. and who's the black American writer, Tanahasi Coates? Tanahasi Coates. Yeah, he's just written a new book and he talks about visiting Palestine and he says, yeah, Tanahasi Coates, yeah. In his new book, he says, once you go there and see it, you can't unsee it, you know, and I'm the same way. Yeah, our media doesn't cover it super fairly. Yeah. I feel like our media doesn't cover it super fairly. that'd be interesting to speak with him then thank you for bringing his name up oh yeah yeah i mean it's heartbreaking anytime something's happening to a child you know that should be the one thing that we can all figure out this shouldn't happen no it's also the truth that it's also happening to kids in israel there's bombs and rockets and so on i don't know if this is the time to go into of the politics of it, it's not a question of valuing or sort of esteeming one suffering over another.

1:12:10We don't compare traumas, but the degree and the scale of suffering in Gaza is unprecedented. You know, and look. It seems like it. When my wife walks into a room, I'm 80, I'm typing away, I'm reading a book, she walks into the room and I don't hear her, and all of a sudden I hear her, I go like this. No, this is the startle response of an infant. If you take a three month old who's sitting there, he's lying there and you go like this, it's called the startle reflex. That's built into me, because when I was three months of age and throughout my first year, Budapest was being bombed by the allies.

1:12:52Wow. Quite apart from the anti-Semitism and the genocide, there was the war going on. so I'd be thrown into a laundry basket and they'd rush me down to the basement. So when I hear a noise, I still go like this. Yeah. Now this is eight years later. Or when you see a load of laundry go by, you know? Man, so we can stay with, so what you're saying is it can stay with you that long? It can stay with you that long. It gets locked in you, in your cells, really. It's actually literally locked into your cells and into your chromosomes. Yeah, I mean, it's heartbreaking for those children on both sides of that.

1:13:23And just anywhere, anytime you think like, Like, and even a kid, when they think like, even in America, it's like, in America, it's like, we're bombing each other. Like, we can't figure out a way. There's a huge planet here. We can't figure out. How can we not figure out a way that we can do, live, all God is asking us to do is be alive and do it without war? That seems, it seems unreal that we can't figure that out, man. Well, that, I mean, the great spiritual teachers have been addressing that insanity for thousands of years. Yeah, but how does shame cause us to lose compassion for ourselves?

1:14:10Yeah. Let me tell you a story. I mentioned this in The Myth of Normal. After my book on addiction came out, but in the realm of hunger goes, I got an email, not an email, a letter from a guy in Seattle. And he said, I really appreciate your book and showing how trauma causes.

1:14:38Addiction is not the only outcome of trauma, but it's one of the outcomes of trauma, one of the potential outcomes of trauma. And he's really appreciate all that, but he says, I can't play my mother. It's my own fault that I'm a shit. And I thought, oh my God, you poor guy. You still see yourself that way? But lack of compassion. Because if he actually understood, fully understood, that he was just a baby at some point, needing and wanting to be loved and held and seen and valued just for being a human being, and that didn't happen to him, and that caused so much pain in him that he escaped into some drug addiction.

1:15:22he's not a shit, he's just a hurt human being. But that lack of self-compassion, I see it all the time in my workshops when I do therapy work with people. One of my main tasks is to help them to notice, not to criticize them for it, but to help them to be aware of how they lack compassion for themselves. Yeah. It's hard to even notice that you're getting in the shame circle. It's so hard to even notice that you're in it. You could be living in the center of it. That's how I was with self-pity. I was living it. I just didn't realize it. And the self-pity was manifesting itself like, oh, you can figure this out.

1:16:01But by trying to constantly help myself figure it out, all I was doing was focusing on my own being not good enough, which in a way is really just self-pity. But it's also like with self-compassion. Yeah, not giving myself some grace. I remember the first time somebody said, hey, man, give yourself some grace. I'd never even, I was like, wow. Because people find themselves accusing themselves and talking to themselves in ways that they would never talk to others. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That most people wouldn't. Yeah. Some would. Yeah. But most wouldn't. Can you notice characteristics or actualities in your life today that you can directly correlate to side effects of childhood trauma?

1:16:46My own? Yeah.

1:16:51Well, my capacity to get triggered, but you see, triggered is an interesting word because we keep using it, but what does it mean? Well, it means a reaction that's way out of proportion to the actual stimulus. Now when you actually look at where the metaphor comes from, comes from a gun. Now how big a part of the gun is the trigger? Small. Small little part. What makes the trigger work is that there's ammunition and an explosive charge. So as long as I'm full of explosive charge, which is my unresolved trauma, some of you will say boo and I'll go, you know, so my capacity to get triggered, my difficulty believing that I was really loved and accepted in my marriage relationship, even though I was.

1:17:44Wow. You know, my tendency to blame others for my own reactions rather than taking responsibility. We mentioned the addictive behaviors. Certainly, the first book I wrote in ADHD is called Scattered Minds. My scattered mind is certainly an outcome of early stress because I mean, that dissociation, that tuning out, it's just an escape mechanism you know so the way i was unable to see my kids for the beautiful sensitive creatures that they were you know um in my workaholism oh it's shown it's shown up in so many ways you said that not believing that people love us yeah that's dude that's huge man yeah What is that?

1:18:41Why do we sometimes, you'll be in a marriage, in a relationship, and we'll still believe that person, they don't love me, or we won't believe their affections. What did you say? Yeah, we won't believe we're loved or accepted. Well, Peter Levine, who's one of the great trauma teachers, he talked about trauma being the tyranny of the past. The attorney of the past? The tyranny. The tyranny of the past. So we're in the present moment, but we're actually reacting to the past. Now, throughout the first year of my life, given our situation, my mother was really stressed, unhappy, even terrorized. She couldn't give me that calm, attuned, loving attention that I needed.

1:19:30She did her best, for God's sakes. what could be greater love than for a 24-year-old young woman to give her baby to a total stranger in the street? But how do I experience it? I experience it as a rejection. So the person that ought to be loving me is giving me away. I can only conclude from that that I'm not lovable. Now once I don't think I'm lovable, I'm not going to believe that anybody actually loves me no matter what they manifest or what they show me. Yeah. You know, and then I'm blaming them for my own sense of unlovability. This is unprocessed trauma we're talking about. 100%. You know?

1:20:15Yeah, I've almost even thought it, sometimes I thought like, oh, you're dumb for loving me. Yeah. Yeah, but that's the other side of it. Yeah. It's like Garcho Marx said, that I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me as a member. So anybody would love me. They can't be very bright, can they? They must be out of their minds. You talk also about not parent blaming, which I think is really important. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah. Well, look. I mean, your story right there about your mother gave you away because it was the, yeah, I mean, imagine the terror, the pain in her of like, But the most loving thing I can do is put my child somewhere else away from me right now for its own safety.

1:21:03That's exactly right. Right. Well, all parents, we're born with a caring instinct. We're born with certain emotional systems in our brain. Play is one of them. Curiosity, seeking, the dopamine circuit is another one. Caring, loving is another one. We're just born with that. We are. It's instinctual. all mammals are born with it no mammal infant would survive without it so I don't I never doubt that parents love their kids that there's at least an impulse in them to do so but the love that the parent feels is not that the love what the parent child receives what the child receives is the quality of the parent's presence are they calm are they attuned Are they emotionally present?

1:21:58Are they preoccupied, stressed, depressed, traumatized, overworked, whatever. Any of those conditions, the child does not experience the love in its whole sense. So even though you might know that your mother loved you, and I'm sure she did in her own way, and she did her very best, but she was not able to give you those qualities that you would really in your heart experiences love. You know, and so in this society where, as you said earlier, parents have to go to work just to put bread on the table, and where so many people are economically insecure, with so much stress, so much division, so much angst, so much aggression, so much suspicion.

1:22:47What's it like to be a parent? It's really, really difficult. And don't forget, we didn't evolve in nuclear families. We evolved in groups where kids are around nurturing adults the whole day, including their parents, but not only their parents. So in today's society, parenting has become almost an impossible task. Why would I blame any parent? And I'll even say this, and I'm not trying to excuse anything, because there's no excuse. That's not the point. But if you look at parents who abuse their kids, what happened to them as kids? They were abused, for sure. It's multi-generational. It's not that they grow up, it's not that they decide I'm gonna abuse my kids.

1:23:33They just act out what happened to them. Yeah. So I think blame,

1:23:42now responsibility is one thing, blame is another. I think blame is totally unscientific, it's cruel. and it's totally inappropriate. So as much as I point out the impact of early experience, there's obviously no room for blaming parents. And Theo, what's really interesting to me is after I wrote my book on addiction, occasionally some strange person will come up to me and said, my child died of an overdose, and I thank you for writing the book. And I always find that a bit startling because in the book I'm saying that it's childhood experience and trauma that ultimately result in addiction. And they say, you know what?

1:24:24Because I finally get it. I finally understand what happened. And I get it that it's multi-generational. That it's nobody's fault. There's nobody to be blamed here. The question is, in each generation, can we take responsibility so we don't pass it on to the next one? But blame, there's no room for it. Yeah. And Robert Sapolsky The scientist I quoted He said there's just no room for blame Yeah it's not Yeah you can have Discussions about responsibility and things like that And share hey I think You could have been more responsible about this Or seeing something that was Somebody's responsibility but yeah And you can even be angry Without blaming Right Because why wouldn't you be angry when those things happen to you?

1:25:17So it's not a question of telling people don't be angry. But having anger and owning it is not the same as saying you did something deliberately that you shouldn't have done, and you should have known better, and you said terrible, so there's anger, healthy anger, necessary anger, and then there is

1:25:40the expectation that people take responsibility yeah each for ourselves and then there's blame which is a whole other bag of monkeys yeah we don't it's a zoo we don't we don't need to be involved in no we don't need that um what what makes you laugh like is there like shows you like to watch or a thing you like? Sometimes what makes me laugh is my own ridiculousness. Yeah, sometimes me too. I know it's going to be a good day if I find that I'm laughing at myself. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's so many, you know, like the little human ego is, I mean, on one end we can be compassionate towards it, but on the other end it's so ridiculous.

1:26:23Yeah. So we can laugh at ourselves. My wife and I laugh a lot. Oh, you do? Yeah, yeah. that's one of our saving. It's been 55 years in a month. And I tell you, we've laughed so much together at ourselves, at each other. That's adorable. You know, what makes me laugh? Usually absurdity. Yeah? When things are absurd, they make me laugh. You know, they're so out of touch with reality. Yeah.

1:26:57Those are the things that make me laugh. Is there like a film that you like? Like what's a movie that you like? I'm just trying to just know a little bit more about you. Yeah. A movie that made me laugh. Or just a couple movies. A Fish Called Wanda. Oh, yeah. Talking about Jamie Lee Curtis. That I wrote my head off about that one. I don't have such a good memory for that kind of stuff. A funny book will make me laugh. You know? Yeah. Do you have a favorite, one, just a fiction book that you like? I tend to go for the classics. So I keep rereading the Iliad by Homer. Wow. With the Trojan War. I keep rereading Dostoevsky.

1:27:45I just reread The Brothers Care of Myself last year. Because it's such a deep, such a deep understanding of the human soul, the darkness and the lightness, both, of the human soul. It's fascinating. Yeah. So I tend to go for the classics myself. I read some modern novels, but not that often. By the way, you know what made me laugh? Catch 22. Yeah? I reread that a couple years ago. I split a gut. Who was it? Not John Steinbeck who wrote that? Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller, Catch 22. I think it was Joseph Heller is his first name. We had to read that, I think, in school. Well, by modern standards, there's some parts of it that are really sexist and misogynist and in some places even racist.

1:28:41So I'm not making any excuse for that. It was the zeitgeist at the time. Yeah, sure. But it's just reproingly funny about the absurdity of war and the self-puffery of important people. Yeah. I'll have to check it out, man. I think I had to read it sometime, but maybe in college we had to read it. Did you ever read John Irving, any of his books? Like The World According to Garp, remember that book? You know, I started reading that decades ago. I never finished it. Yeah, it happens. Some of his books, his latest book is, I don't even know what it is. It's very long. I mean, you need to bring a tent with you.

1:29:22Recently there was a book that's got a lot of attention, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. And she wrote The Poisonwood Bible. That's her most famous book. But Demon Copperhead is a kind of a modern take on David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. And it takes place in Appalachia. and I just saw an interview with her yesterday how she goes after J.D. Vance because she's in Appalachian right so they're both from that area they're both from that area and she's saying buddy you don't represent us and Damon Copperhead takes on the hillbilly image of Appalachians and plays with it beautifully wow I'd love to check that out she seems like an interesting woman She's a very interesting woman.

1:30:16She's very thoughtful, very forthright. That'd be cool. Yeah, maybe I can, maybe after I read the book, I could see if she would want to come and visit. Sometimes I always feel like I have to explain my intentions. There's a part of me that always feels like I'm manipulating somebody. Do you know what I'm talking about? That's not a feeling. So what is it? It's a thought? It's a belief. It's a belief. Yeah. No, and there's a reason why you have it.

1:30:47Like even if I'm just doing something nice, there's a part of me that's like, oh, you're... Yeah, you think you're a fake. Yeah. It's called the imposter syndrome. Okay. And it has to do with the fact that you couldn't be real as a kid. In some ways, you had to pretend.

1:31:06And it's really hard to let go of that, of that sense that I'm still doing it. Yeah. It's what you grew up with. So you could be kind to that part of yourself. The part that you could actually, because it's not a feeling, Theo, it's a belief. And the beliefs can be, you don't argue with feelings, but beliefs you can challenge. Is it really true that you're manipulating? Like when you're talking to me now, are we having a genuine conversation? I believe that we are. Or is it true that you're actually manipulating me in any way at all? No, I don't think I am. And furthermore, give me some credit.

1:31:44maybe you can't manipulate me even if you wanted to. So that fear of yours is both lack of compassion towards yourself and a lack of, in a sense, trust in the other person's capacity to look after themselves. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, it's just funny. I was just talking with my brother yesterday because we had similar childhoods and we were thinking of, well, what are some things that I could think about to talk with them about? And we were talking about that, that sometimes we always feel like there's something, like we're manipulating ourselves or that our ability to manipulate would be so powerful that we wouldn't even know what we're doing, which is pretty crazy too.

1:32:31It's a lack of self-trust. Lack of self-trust. Now, you know what? Have I manipulated? Yes, I have. Yeah, sure. You know, but - Same. This is not a question that one never does it, but I know when I'm manipulating. and usually it's because I want something that I don't know how to state directly where I'm afraid that I might not get otherwise. And then I'm afraid to show up with my vulnerable request. Which would make sense as a child, there was something you wanted that you didn't think you were gonna get otherwise. That's right. So you didn't show up. Makes sense. Children manipulate out of a sense of weakness.

1:33:10and that's pretty much all they can do if otherwise they don't get that easement. A lot of your book that I've read so far, it's about, it's getting to the part where it's like that Western medicine doesn't always take into context as much that the body and the mind, like us as an entire thing, as our society, as, you know, it's almost like, and like if say if like the whole world and time and culture and everything were a car instead of the doctor looking at the car they just look at the human which would just be one part of the car yeah and so they're always just working on this one part instead of looking at the whole car which could also be a cause of why the part isn't doing well that's the whole point And see, we have to make a distinction here.

1:34:03There's Western science. Then there's medical practice. The two are not the same necessarily. So I was trained as a medical doctor. Nobody ever taught me about the mind-body unity. But physiologically, you can't serpate the mind from the body so that our emotional circuits and the immune system and the hormonal apparatus and the nervous system are actually one system. They're not separate systems. So when things happen emotionally, naturally they have a physiological effect. You know, so I could give you 10 ,000 examples. Children whose parents are stressed are much more likely to have asthma.

1:34:45Children of what? Children whose parents are stressed are much more likely to have asthma. Okay. So their airway is narrow and they get inflamed. There's a study that showed that black American women, the more episodes of racism they experience, the higher the risk of asthma. Wow. It's been shown that women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer. This is a study out of Harvard University. Adults who experience the loss of an adult child have a higher risk of malignancy of the bone marrow and the blood. Grief. Grief. A Danish study, parents who lost a child have doubled the risk of multiple sclerosis.

1:35:35There are hundreds of studies showing the physiological impact of stress and trauma and loss on the physiology. So manifesting itself in our bodies as a disease or contributing to... Contributing the onset of the disease. Got it. Yeah, because cancer, it's like you say in the book people get cancer. A lot of times you hear like the guy got cancer, he died three weeks later. You hear that all the time. But the cancer had been there forever, and it just enough had happened, I guess, that it turned over into being – Well, we know that stress, for example, can turn off genes that protect you against cancer and turn on genes that can cause cancer.

1:36:22Really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's not even controversial. And we know that people that repress their healthy anger, they're actually suppressing their immune system. And this stuff has been studied over and over again, and great clinicians have been recognizing this forever. And 2 ,400 years ago, Socrates, the Greek philosopher, said that the problem with the doctors of today is that they separate the mind from the body. Wow. 24 years ago. Now, I can name you any number of great medical pioneers. I mentioned some in the book who 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 80 years ago, 40 years ago, pointed out that mind and body can't be separated.

1:37:10That in fact, we are biopsychosocial creatures, which means that our biology is inseparable from our psyche or emotional apparatus and from our social relationships. Wow. So all of it. It's all one. It's scientifically it's all one. The problem is medical practice doesn't recognize that oneness. So most of the time you go to a physician with rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis, for both of which there's plenty of evidence about the role of trauma and stress, but the doctor's never gonna ask you about any of that stuff. They're just gonna deal with the physical aspects of it, which they should deal with, but they also need to look at the whole.

1:37:51What happened in this person's life? And what's stressing them now? And how can we help with that part of it? So medical practice, as a doctor, I don't know if to be told how miraculously effective the achievements of modern medicine can be. But at the same time, there's a huge piece that we're missing. And that piece is not just intuitive or spiritual woohoo. it's science, but they don't teach that mind-body unity science in the medical schools. Yeah, in fact, the peace is a whole. That's what they're missing. They're missing the wholeness. Now, if you look at indigenous medicine, there's the medicine wheel, which consists of four quadrants.

1:38:38There's the physical, our physiology. There's the mental, which is our emotions and our thoughts. There's the social, which is our relationships with other people and other creatures. And then there's the spiritual, which is our connection with something greater than just a little ego, however you define that. And health, they say, depends on the balance between those four quadrants. Scientifically, that's totally true. But unfortunately, that science is largely ignored in medical training. I'm sure, yeah. Well, especially now, a lot of our medicine has kind of been compromised, or I think our industry has, you know.

1:39:20Oh, yeah. Maybe, I don't know. And I don't know your industry, and I'm not trying to offend it. But it certainly seems like just, you know, it's been, most industries have been compromised, you know, the fact to have better, you know, balance sheets than... But look, if you come to me with depression, by the way, that's another diagnosis that I've had. So I've actually taken medication for depression. so I'm not here to you know just guessing you know to dismiss them but if you look at the word depression what does it actually mean to depress something hold it back is to push it down now what gets pushed on in depression your feelings why would a person push down their feelings one of the needs of the child one of the essential needs of the child as I point out in this book I don't make this stuff up I just reported, is to be able to experience all their emotions, anger, grief, fear, panic, love, playfulness, curiosity, lust for life, and just hunger for life.

1:40:36The child doesn't need to express all those emotions when they arise and have that understood, accepted, and validated by the adults. Now, if I'm in an environment where the parents can't do that, you've had guests on this program, I won't mention them by name, who teach that an angry child should be made to sit by themselves until they come back to normal. No. A two-year-old kid gets frustrated, they get angry. If you give that kid the message that if you're angry you can't be with me, the child is in an impossible dilemma. Am I gonna serpate myself from the person on whom my life depends, or will I push down my anger?

1:41:21Well, give that message to the kid often enough, what are they gonna do? Depress their feelings. 30 years later they're diagnosed with this disease called depression. Now, if you come to me with depression, I might decide that temporarily it might be a good idea for you to be in antidepressants. And I've taken them. They helped me for a while. But it's not enough. Let's also look at what made you push down your feelings, what happened to you. Now, prescribing the antidepressant takes me three minutes. Talking with you about what actually happened to you that made you push down your feelings, that takes a long time.

1:42:09And doctors are not even trained to raise that question. So even if as a physician, I don't have the expertise to deal with that question, at least I could refer you to somebody who does. But no, most of the time, it's just the industrial model. You come in, I got five minutes with you, here's the prescription, goodbye. Well, that doesn't deal with the underlying problem. It deals with the symptom, which may sometimes be helpful, sometimes it isn't but whether it's helpful or not it does not deal with the underlying dynamic yeah oh yeah it's just and it's just where our society is too we've gone so far down this road and it's just like how do we yeah back in the day it's like it seemed like if you were like maybe this is crazy but if you were like just a small group around a campfire you could you could see if somebody was hurting you there was everything was right there you couldn't hide anything not only that you know what you would do you'd do ceremonies healing rituals yeah you would drum you would dance you would chant you would shake a stick he'd be communal yeah a friend of mine who i quote in the book he's a part lakota um physician and psychiatrist his name is lewis smell Madrona, and he said in the Lakota tradition, when somebody gets sick, the community says, thank you.

1:43:40Your illness represents some imbalance in our community. Wow. You're like the canary in the mind. So your healing is our healing, so let's do this together. Now that makes so much sense. Yeah. Both scientifically and emotionally. We don't do that. We sort of isolate the individual, and then we separate the mind from the body. so we say it's just a brain problem no it isn't it's a life problem and that life is lived in an environment in a multi-generational family in a certain culture let's look at the whole thing that's all do you think we can start to head more in that direction or how do you think this changes because we are pretty far down the well here i think um because sometimes you even said roar like sometimes i feel like our whole planet just wants to fucking roar you know it's like it just like I feel like everybody just wants to go in the yard and just scream at the sky.

1:44:37It's like, I don't know. It feels like there's just something trapped in us that is, does that make any sense, man? Oh, yeah. And it's had some cultural expression as well. What was that movie where somebody yells, I'm fed up and I can't dig it anymore? And he starts yelling. Oh, Falling Down, Michael Douglas? Is that it was? I don't know which movie it was, but it was somebody just starts yelling, I'm fed up and I can't take it anymore. And everybody starts yelling, I'm fed up, I can't take it anymore. You know, I think there's a deep sense of frustration in this culture. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to be able to take this anymore.

1:45:16Yeah, it's Network. Oh, yeah, Network. That's a great movie. If you've never seen it, it's a great movie. I'm mad as hell and I'm with it. No, that was decades ago. I think the level of frustration in our society has increased. why are people frustrated? Because their needs aren't being met. And that scream, look, I travel all over the world. I just came back from a three-week, six-country tour of Europe. I talked to 12 ,000 people. That sense of frustration, that sense of longing that we talked about, it's so universal these days. It is. Yeah. Yeah, is it? Yeah, that's what, it feels like this, are other people feeling this?

1:45:58That's what I wonder a lot. Are other people feeling the same way? Well, some people are not because they escape. And this society is absolutely brilliant at creating escapes through mass media, mass sports, consumption, and so on. But I'll say something here. And this is particularly true of comedians I have found. Some people are just born more sensitive. That's a great point too, and I have to take that into account. We all do. And more sensitive means, sensitive is from the Latin word sincere to feel. But some people are genetically born more sensitive. They feel more. That means when things go wrong, they feel it more than the others.

1:46:47So the same thing can happen externally to different people. But if one of them is more sensitive, they're going to feel it all the more. so it's especially the highly sensitive people who are feeling that scream that you talk about yeah that's a great point that it yeah yeah that's what it's just like I just feel like we've just gone so far off the path of but if I can say something your sense that we've gone off the path what in you knows that

1:47:32Like what part of me you mean? What in you, who in you knows that we've gone off the path? It's the part that hasn't gone off the path. It's the part that actually sees. So that, I don't want to create too much doom and gloom here. There is this self here, there's this trueness here that's never been damaged, never been destroyed. there's nobody's damage goes that way it's always in here it's a question of can we connect with it right you know and that yeah how do we get back to connecting with that sort of thing because our society our culture is not going to do it for us it doesn't feel like we might have to start with it as individuals does that make sense we do begin as individuals but you probably realize I mean, just for example, in your AA group, there's a community there.

1:48:20Right. Who have a lot of shared experiences and who are very vulnerably open in sharing their experiences. And that's a source of support. When you share about yourself, that's a source of support to others. When they share about themselves, that's support for you. So that ultimately, no, we don't have to do it by ourselves. It begins as an individual process, but pretty soon you find that we're not alone. yeah do you think we can get out of um of this toxic culture do you feel like there's a way out of where we are or do you feel like that humanity is just i believe in human beings um that's a great statement i do too you know i believe that there's an essential goodness there a desire to connect um a desire to belong desire to celebrate life.

1:49:14You know, I think that's, we're endowed with those capacities. And as difficult as things may look, and especially these days with these terrible wars going on and the suffering that we've talked about, I still believe that there's so many examples. Everywhere I go, I meet such good people. People are trying to make a difference. People are trying to do their little bit or their big bit to reduce the suffering in the world, to speak the truth, to offer some love, compassion to the world. I really do believe in humans. Now we have the potential to be monsters. We have the potential to be angels.

1:49:58But that good side never totally disappears. Some people it's covered over so much that they might never get in touch with it. most people I think are quite capable of getting there once they decide that they want to. Yeah. I think what scares me, I think is that in order to be a human being, we have to have the present moment, right? We have to be able to still have like the ability to reflect and recognize and think. And our society or our culture has created a lot where we're so many distractions so that if we never even take the time, if we can be distracted enough from being able to really think or feel, feel really probably starting with feeling, then we'll be trapped forever in a way.

1:51:00Well, does that make sense at all? it's interesting how you say all these really insightful things then you keep asking me if it makes sense or not sorry don't apologize i can't think and talk sometimes at the same time i can't feel and speak at this it's just no but i'm just telling you that yeah i'm not i'm not i'm just noticing something yeah i don't feel like you are appreciated thanks yeah so here's the thing we're born as feeling creatures. Right. We feel before we think. Yes. The feeling apparatus is present in us before we're even born. The thinking apparatus doesn't start developing until much later on.

1:51:41That's true. So that if there's a scaffolding of healthy feelings, then our thinking will be aligned with reality. but it's the feelings that we're feelings we're feeling creatures before we're thinking creatures so what you said makes absolute sense from the evolutionary and physiological point of view like animals feel but they don't necessarily think in fact they don't think but without thinking without feeling they wouldn't survive and we think we can get by our thinking. We got it backwards. Yes. That's what it feels like these days. Yeah. It feels like everybody's just thinking. It's like, even with like, like autonomous inventions and technology, I'm like, at a certain point, I don't want any more technology if it's not helping us.

1:52:40I know. Like, stop. Like, you're killing what it means to be me or not me as a, but just us. It feels like, we don't need to get faster. It's just like you're going to take jobs. If a guy doesn't have a job, he doesn't have a purpose. Having a job isn't only your purpose, but it's what gives people some sense of purpose. And a sense of meaning. And a sense of meaning, right? And once you don't feel like you have any of that, then what are you? It's like we're almost just, I don't understand why our society wants that. Well, first of all, I totally get where you're coming from because when we talk about AI, my mind glazes over.

1:53:19I don't care. I don't want one more piece of technology I'm much more interested in what happens with human beings Man thank you dude That's how I feel I just care how people feel And I just like I don't know And when you talk about meaning If you look at the

1:53:41Diminishing lifespan Of Especially White American men It's that loss of meaning when they hollowed out the industrial heartland of America and they outsourced all the cheap labor to other countries. Well, you can see that from the profit motive, it makes sense. But from the point of view of human lives, you just deprive people of the sense of meaning. And that sense of meaning, which a psychologist in front of mind calls dislocation, is a major source of distress and a major source of self-harm and addiction. Well, I even think like it used to be, and I say this many times, but like somebody worked in your area and they worked at a factory and they made like a table and they brought it.

1:54:35And you even had one of the tables at your house and you were proud of your dad because he worked there and he made it. And then, but now you have somebody in another country mailing something over here. they don't care about it that they're making it yeah their kids don't know even what they do probably you know and it just it's just like where is the vict i don't understand what level of this we're going to get to that is healthy well i think now what we're talking about here is the good old profit motive because profits don't care about human values you know and and and most companies, that's what they're interested in is what will maximize profits.

1:55:18And if they have to throw a thousand people out of a job in some town, they'll do it. Yeah. You know? I don't understand that though. Well, work I think is very important to people. I mean, we're creatures who work. Yeah. I just read a really interesting book by the way. It's called The Continuum Concept, published 40 years ago or so. This woman goes to the Venezuelan jungle, six weeks away from civilization, and she watches how these Stone Age people bring up their kids. That's the book I did, The Condition Concept. How they bring up their kids, while they hold them everywhere, like we said. They don't punish them, they don't yell at them.

1:55:58These kids grow up really happy and comfortable with themselves. But the point I'm making is, this tribe, they don't have a word for work. they have a word for cutting wood they have a word for planting they have a word for fishing they have a word for washing but there's no word for work in other words they just do what they do but there's no alienation from it whatever they're into they're just into it that's what they're doing but they're only here we talk about work life balance now look at that phrase what does that imply that here's life and here's work and the two are not the same yeah it's almost like we enslaved ourselves what we have and then also our society as you're saying creates so much stress and uncomfort because say if you took something that's supposed to be somewhere and you put it somewhere else it's going to always feel stressed because it's not like in its home right it's not in its natural spot funny you should say that because I often say you can study a zebra and you could conclude that the zebra is an animal that mostly lies around all day, gets up a few times to eat or to defecate or something, and then lies down again, walks around a little bit.

1:57:21And it would be true if you observed a zebra in a zoo, in a cage. But if you observed a zebra out there on a savanna or wherever she lives, you'd see a totally different creature. Oh, they're turnt out there. And the human beings in a sense, we put ourselves into a zoo. We were so far away from our natural evolution and environment. It's not a question again of going back to Stone Age, but it's a question of recognizing what we've lost. In a certain sense, we've put ourselves into a zoo and we're studying ourselves totally out of our elements and then we're wondering how come things are going so badly.

1:58:00Yeah, that's crazy.

1:58:05It's almost and I hate to even laugh at it but you're saying it's absurd it's absurd we're literally living in a theater of the absurd yeah um in your book you also talk about like the history of humanity that yeah uh what we call civilization is less than five percent of our existence as a species right that for the entire span of the human genus that it represents less than one percent yeah of that time yeah like our civilization right we're such a small piece of how long humans have been alive. And we have learned that such groups a long time ago held values emphasizing hospitality, sharing, generosity, and reciprocal exchange for the purpose not of personal enrichment, but of connection.

1:58:48These values were intelligent, time-tested guidelines for mutual survival. Yes, there was violence and bad behavior and all the rest. We have never been perfect. But we knew something about setting the collective context for our humanness to flourish fruitfully. That it was a group effort. It was a group thing, and people never saw themselves as separate from the environment or from animals or from other human beings. And in British Columbia, excuse me, where I live, the indigenous people used to have a ceremony called a potlatch. And the potlatch is they would invite all these people, neighbors and other tribes and so on, and they'd give things to each other.

1:59:35So it wasn't about getting, it was about giving. When the British Colonials arrived, you know what they did? They outlawed the potlatch. Damn. Because they wanted to kill that spirit of communality that the indigenous people thrived on. So they knew how to do it. So they forbade a lot of the practices that gave the indigenous people meaning, including the giving. and until very recently, decades ago, it was outlawed. So people had to do stuff in secret. They outlawed the chanting. They had to chant in secret. Because they knew the healing power of the chants. And the chants really connected indigenous people to their traditions.

2:00:27Now the colonists did this everywhere. They did this in the States, they did it in Australia, in New Zealand, they did it in Canada of course, parts of Africa, and so that a real effort was made to divorce people from their essential communal drives.

2:00:50Yeah, that's what it feels like. That's what it feels like inside, like we're not supposed to be doing this. You know? One woman that you mentioned, Darcia Narvaez. Yeah, Darcia Narvaez. Darcia Narvaez. Said that we have become species atypical, a sobering idea when you think about it. No other species has ever had the ability to be untrue to itself, to forsake its own needs, never mind to convince itself that such is the way things ought to be. Or to destroy its own environment. Yeah. You know? Yeah, I still wonder if Mother Nature's mad about, like, if some of the diseases we have now are because of, like, what happened to the indigenous cultures, you know?

2:01:34If some of that just, like, is, like, you know, because Mother Nature remembers, you know? And so it's, like, are we still just suffering the sins of, like, what's happened a long time ago? We are. Yeah. And the problem is we haven't learned from it yet. Like, actually, I work a lot with indigenous people in Canada. They often invite me to talk about addiction and stress and trauma and so on. Some of them, we did a show in Vancouver. Some of them came out to the show. Did they? And they gave me some gifts. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, it was really, really beautiful. Beautiful, isn't it? Yeah, it was awesome, man.

2:02:10Yeah, it was great. It was really nice of them. But...

2:02:16So I do a lot of that work, but I get so much from it because they have such deep wisdom. Like even with all their trauma, and all the dysfunction, all the addiction and mental illness amongst them, which is strictly a result of colonial trauma. But there's still such gentle wisdom. There's still such connection. I remember doing a ceremony with some indigenous friends two years ago, Art and Nature. They talk to every plant. They're so connected. Such deep wisdom. and I actually believe that when this society starts getting its head screwed on right, we'll be very humbly willing to learn from the indigenous people.

2:03:05Yes. You know, like yes, civilization has brought many amazing things, not to forget that, but what if we could meld our technological know-how and scientific brilliance with indigenous wisdom? what a world we could actually create. And maybe that is where we're headed, right? I think that has to be the hope. Well, I believe that's certainly a possibility. Yeah, I think that has to be the hope that we take away. Yeah, because if I were ever a leader, I think we would get back to some of the things that were important. You know, one of my favorite times when I was a kid, the power would go out sometimes.

2:03:46And so we'd all have to like, mom would put a couple candles out and so we'd all have to be right there. Together. Yeah, and it was just like, I don't know, all that mattered was just like, like you could joke, but it was like, I don't know. Like we just all needed each other. You need to know where everybody was, everybody here. I don't know. There was something special about that. But you can see it even now. When there's disasters, people really come together. Right. They tend to come together to support each other. Yeah, yeah. they'll go out of their way to give and to support oh for sure you've seen it with the flooding and stuff in the southeast right now many places all over the world yeah um yeah i think there's so much to learn from our natives from uh from the indigenous people of the land you know just as we learn from animals and all parts of nature well darshan was the the scientist the psychologist that you mentioned she's written a book called the evolved nest and she's talking about our of commonality with other animals, and how they rear their young, and what we could learn from them.

2:04:53Oh, wow. Yeah, that's an amazing little book. I wrote the foreword for it. Darsha's done some amazing work on the actual needs of human beings. Really, she's a pretty fascinating woman? Well, she's very interesting, very interesting. If you ever wanna talk to her, I'm happy to connect you. That would be really cool. You Canadians are dang interesting, man. Well, Darsha is American. Oh, she is? Yeah, yeah. All right, we'll take it. No, no, she's a retired professor at the University of Notre Dame. Wow. And she's still very active. And this book is called The Evolved Nest. It's just a slim little volume.

2:05:29Yeah. But you should learn about how penguins bring up their kids, or wolves. When a mother dies, then wolves, who haven't even been pregnant, start lactating to feed the young ones. Wow. You know, and how, when the baby elephant is born, you know what happens? All the other mothers... Elephants put their trunks on it. Yeah, all the other mothers, you know, they stand around, they touch the baby. They know the need for touch. I mean, there's incredible wisdom in animals as well. And Darsha and her writing partner, Gay Bradshaw, they really show us the lessons we could actually derive just from watching our animals bring up their young.

2:06:16We still have a lot to learn. Is that the best message to take away from your book, do you think? We still have a lot to learn and we need to be humble. We need to realize that for all our achievements and our intellectual brilliance, we've come disconnected from our hearts, from our gut feelings, and that we need to really be curious about what our hearts and our guts are telling us, not just our intellects. Amen. Yeah. We need an emotional revolution. That's a good way to put it. Before you go, and thank you so much for your time. My pleasure. Yeah. There's a part, Rafi. There's a guy in the book, Rafi.

2:06:59Oh, Rafi. Rafi. No, Rafi's a children's singer. A children's singer. Oh, yeah, that guy? That's him. I'd like to be him. I'd like to see. Yeah. Is that him? No, no, that's Ringo Starr. you're singing Octopus's Garden but Rafi used to sing Baby Beluga Apples and Banone that song and Banana Phone but he says we discover who we are from the inside you wrote that on your book and Rafi actually played in the White House at the Clinton inauguration oh sweet and he's like the children's troubadour of the world yes when I was a child we listened to Yes, they had all of it. So, Raph is a friend of mine.

2:07:42Oh, excellent. And at some point, some years ago, he wakes up in the middle of the night and the word child honoring comes into his head. And he says, what would the world look like if we honored children and the needs of children? So, he started this child honoring institute. Now, the thing about his singing for children is it's not condescending. He really plays with kids and really gets them. And his heart is really so childlike. So he says, whatever the quote was, that we - We discover who we are from the inside. We discover who we are from the inside. And he's actually talking about how human beings develop, which is through our feelings first.

2:08:34And those feelings begin in the uterus, So already when a mother is stressed, the child really feels that in the uterus, and that stresses the child, and that interferes with the child's brain development. So that actually we develop our sense from our feelings first, and as I said earlier, then the intellect comes in. Right. But if the emotional circuits are out of balance because of early stress, then it's hard for us to even think straight. Right. And our society we have is women, so many mothers have to work. It's like we've just, yeah, we've, we're a little misconstrued. Well, the United States, 25 % of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth.

2:09:24And what nature would prefer, scientifically and physiologically, is for the baby with the mother for at least nine months. but actually for years.

2:09:38Or, if not the mother, but at least the mother for at least nine months, but ideally well beyond them, but with other nurturing adults. Right. So it's not just caregivers who give you food. Right, it's the mother, the grandmother, the aunt, the neighbor, the sense of community, your whole genes being right there. Exactly. Yeah, how did we get off on such a different tangent then? If we were supposed to be in these tribes, these groups, it's just evolution and there's nothing we can do about it? Well, that's civilization. Right, civilization. Which has obviously brought all kinds of benefits, but also look at all that we've lost.

2:10:25So again, it's for me, can we value our achievements and our knowledge and try to remember what we've lost and try to reconnect with those parts of ourselves that we've kind of got divorced from? Yeah. Yeah. And your children, just look into them, pour into them what you want out of them, you know? Yeah. Pour into them as much as you can. and yes, some kids don't know how to feel sometimes. You have to also talk to them about their feelings. No, you don't. They know exactly how to feel. They don't have the words for, so they know how to feel. It's our job to give them words for their feelings.

2:11:11Right, it's our job to give them words for their feelings, right? So yeah, if you're not doing that, it's not a judgment and I don't have any children, but that's what I could have used when I was young. It was like, how do you feel? let me help you with this. Not even how you feel. You're really angry with daddy right now because you wanted a cookie before dinner and daddy said no cookie. So now you're really angry, aren't you? Yeah. So it's not even, we don't have to tell them how to feel. They're feeling creatures. We have to accept their feelings. Okay. That doesn't mean we give them the cookie.

2:11:43Yeah. But it means that we do understand. Hey, I understand you want that cookie. Yeah, right now you're really mad at daddy. Okay. I get it. I get it. Yeah, you know, that's all. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't mean you're allowed to hate your brother, but I get that you're angry. So we're not talking about permissive parenting. We're talking about authoritative parenting, not authoritarian, authoritative, where the child is understood and held and guided, and we give them words for their feelings, but we don't ask them to suppress themselves. We may not accept certain behaviors or put limits, but we know how to do that.

2:12:27If the child trusts you and is looking to you, like natives, the indigenous people, like we said earlier, never hit their kids because the kids trusted the adults for guidance. Right. You know, so which all comes from connection. 100%. And now we're learning so many things. We learn them like, you know, through a YouTube video or through, we learned so we I mean now most people learn about sex through pornography it's just like yeah yeah yeah yeah we need each other to yeah we need each other and our we're create we're creating more and more that we don't that's right and and we're creating more and more that if you have needs there's something wrong with you yeah if you have emotional needs you're weekly, you know.

2:13:18Oh, one day our feelings will be in a museum. You'll go visit them there. Like, hey, remember this? They used to have that. Dr. Monte, thank you just for putting all this together. It's really fascinating. I mean, you have so many other like therapists and scientists and philosophers and doctors and everything that you've quoted in here to really put together a beautiful piece of work here. Thank you. It's really fascinating. And it's not all like Debbie Downer stuff either. And I don't mean to be, and I don't think we were that much in this conversation. It's just looking at things and saying, hey, well, let's take a look at where we are.

2:13:58Possibly, how did we get here? Well, that's my intention. And my intention is to promote healing, actually. It's not just to spread doom and gloom. And actually, the healing part of the book is the longest part of the book. I'm not there yet. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, yeah. I hope you get there someday. I think I will. Yeah. I've been reading that a good clip. I'm enjoying it. Well, I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. It was, if I can boast, can I boast? Sure. I would love for you to. It was 19 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list. Let's go. For a year and a half, it was a Canadian bestseller.

2:14:28It's been published in 41 languages now, internationally, and it's been a bestseller in a whole lot of countries. So I think there's value in this book. Well, I think also that it's good to know that enough people are starting to recognize in some of the same thought, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Because that in itself, those numbers itself, and that prolificness is a source of hope, I think. I think what's happening, actually, is that as society in some ways goes more into crisis, also more and more people are waking up. Yeah. And they're starting to ask questions. And I see that as a good thing.

2:15:03Yeah. I do, too. Thank you for letting me ask you questions today. Thank you for, yeah, just for your time. So many of my friends love you and look up to you. but I had my own therapist was like, he's asking, I'm like, well, you're my therapist, but he was excited that I was getting this down with you. So yeah. Thank you so much for your commitment to curiosity. And thanks for your time. Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take...