"Women In Unhappy Marriages Are 4x More Likely To Die" We're Talking Trauma with Gabor Maté

0:00This week, we're featuring possibly one of my favorite guests of all time on We Need To Talk. and that's Gabor Mate, world-renowned for his approach to mental and physical well-being. Mate is one of the leading voices on understanding trauma. In this episode, he tackles what exactly trauma is and its connection to our child development. But before we get into it, if you like this conversation and what we do here, then please hit that subscribe button and bell icon. It's a small gesture that helps us grow this channel and keep bringing you fascinating conversations like this one with Gabor. Speaking of which, let's get into it.

0:53First, how do you define trauma alone? Yeah. Because I've heard different definitions. Sure. So that's important. It's one of these words that so much depends on what we mean when we use it. Like if I used the word God, so many people would understand so many different concepts. So for some people, God is the universal ground of all being and meaning and purpose and existence. For others, it's an old guy in the sky with a beard. So it all depends. Now, trauma, in my definition, is very simple. If you look at the word origin, it's a Greek word for wound or wounding. So trauma is a wound that hasn't healed.

1:41Okay. Which also means that trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. So I sustain a blow on the head. That's not the trauma. The trauma is the concussion that I develop. because that's the unhealed wound. So there are traumatic events that can wound people, but the trauma is the wound itself that hasn't healed. Two people break their legs. In one case, the leg doesn't heal. That's the trauma. If it heals, it's not a trauma. It's just a painful experience. So not everything that's painful is traumatic. Everything that's traumatic is painful.

2:27Not every stress, not every pain is traumatic. If it doesn't heal, it is. And I'm talking not psychologically. Okay. So it must be unhealed. It's the unhealed. So it's the unhealed wound, and then our attempted defenses against the unhealed wound. So, for example, unhealed wound, in one case, it might be that they perceive themselves as abandoned in childhood. that's not the wound. The wound is not that my mother gave me to a stranger. The wound is that I therefore came to believe that I wasn't lovable. And that's what I'm carrying. And then I have my defenses against not being lovable. One of my defenses against not being lovable is to try and make myself perhaps powerful and unassailable, you know, grandiose.

3:22Yes. and then I go into politics. Then I run for president. Or it might be that I try to be a people pleaser. Yes. And I try and take on everything and try and help the whole world while ignoring my own needs, you know. So trauma is the wound and our defense is against the wound that later on create more problems. So that's my understanding of trauma. How many adults, what percentage of adults are living in trauma? Well, in our society, I would say a large percentage because we can be wounded in two ways. We've already touched upon some of them. Some of the ways we can be wounded is overt suffering, such as being physically abused or emotionally abused or sexually abused or a parent dying or a divorce where a parent kind of disappears or a parent being jailed.

4:30certainly racism, poverty are traumatic experiences for a lot of people. It impacts on the body, impacts on the brain.

4:42A parent being addicted, a parent being mentally ill, all of those things can be traumatic. But there's another subset of trauma that isn't due to bad things that were done to you, but the good things that were not done that should have been done. for example your parents if they had to go to work they should have been alert to your sense of isolation and dealt with it they didn't mean to hurt you they loved you, in fact as you said they adored you, but they didn't see you and not being seen is a source of a wound because that's the need that we have we have this need to be seen for who we are as we are So in our society, because of the stress on parenting and the erosion of extended families, the loss of community, the increasing isolation, the tremendous pressure on parents, a lot of kids are wounded in loving homes.

5:44Yes, yes. What is the answer around how we go about healing ourselves? And everyone's quick to say therapy. That's the way. But we know therapy is not always accessible. Not everyone's going to go to it. So how do we heal our trauma? Well, again, the first point is, and the most important point is recognition. So then rather than believing, oh, there's something wrong with me, you say, well, something happened to me. And that, what happened, had certain impacts. Not information is not hard to get these days. Just to mention myself, there's so many of my talks on YouTube that millions of people have seen.

6:28And they tell me that just watching them helps them. It didn't cost a penny. I don't have a YouTube channel yet to subscribe. You can just put my name in there. But not just myself. Other trauma healers. Bessel van der Kolk. Yes. The books that I've written, the book that Bessel has written, which is a perennial bestseller. It's called The Body Keeps the Score. my various books, The Myth of Normal, When the Body Says No, Scattered Lines, you know, my book on addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, but other books by people that I've learned from, like Bessel, or Peter Levine and his books on trauma, or his lectures on YouTube on trauma, and many, many, many, many others.

7:12Those are easily accessible to everybody. Number one. Number two, each of these books will have certain exercises in them that you can actually regularly do and follow. Number three, you can develop self-awareness practices such as meditation. Again, lots of instruction on that on YouTube or simple to get books on meditation where you learn to observe your emotions and your body without reacting to what you observe. So you develop the sense of awareness and presence with which to hold yourself. None of that costs money. No, not at all. Then are there friends you can talk with intimately? Can you say to somebody, look, there's some stuff here that's been bothering me.

8:06I don't need you to give me advice or tell me what to do. In fact, I don't want you to. Can you just listen to me? So just being received by another human being. If you're in a relationship, as we've been saying this entire conversation, the relationship can be a beautiful ground for healing. Now, having said that, ideally, if you can also afford some therapy, some good therapy, because there's lots of bad therapy out there. How do we then become more authentic? How do we increase our authentic selves? Yeah. Well, the awareness is the big thing. Now the second thing is to be really compassionate with yourself.

8:46So that rather than berating ourselves, I'm not being authentic, I'm a phony, forget all that. Nobody is a phony. You became that way as a way of survival. It's the past running our present. So when you say, how do you give it up? You recognize the impact and you recognize its source. and then you do, is it really true right now? I could actually be free. Now, some people in this unequal, unjust world, it's certainly true, they have limited room for action because they might really be poor, they might really be having to do jobs that they don't like with bosses that are not fair, but given the economic situation in this world of inequality, that may not have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

9:40So I don't want to generalize. But for many of us, this inability to say no is not demanded by our present circumstances. It's old programming. And so how do you become more authentic? Learn how to say no. Yes. And by the way, let me ask you another question when it comes to authenticity. have you ever been in a situation I mean I have where you're in some social scene and afterwards you feel a bit ashamed because I wasn't really myself yes okay now what is the feeling in your body when you admit to yourself that you weren't yourself that you know I kind of pretended or I gave myself up disappointment yeah Yeah, there's a kind of something here that's not pleasant.

10:33So listen to your body again. So when you say, how do you become authentic? Listen to your body. Yes, yes. So learn how to say no, listen to your body. And there's one final question. Are there areas in your life where you have ambitions or intentions or passions or a calling, but you're not saying yes to?

11:01there must be well let's see yes there are that I'm not saying yes to yeah well that's costing you as well because that creates frustration so on the one hand we're too busy not saying no and then we don't have time to say yes to what really matters to us right so it's a huge this yes and no is the best way to find out about your authenticity Where am I not saying no? Where there's a no that wants to be said? And what's the story behind it? And then where am I not saying yes? And what is that costing me? And, you know, I really had to learn that. Yeah, it's a practice. It's a practice. It's a practice, and thank you for that.

11:48Thank you for that. I will apply that. I will apply that. And certainly going back to relationship, both my wife and I had to learn is to say no. and trust that the relationship will still endure, the other person being authentic, yes. Now, this applies to all genders, but women particularly, because women are particularly programmed not to say no in this culture. It costs them hugely in terms of mental and physical health. That brings up stress. Yeah. Because there was a study that you had talked about where these were women who were in relationships all having challenges in their relationship.

12:33One half talked about that too. Yeah, yeah. Well, that study is in the book The Myth of Normal, and it was done in Massachusetts. They looked at 2 ,000 women over a 10-year period. This is it. And those women that were unhappily married and didn't express their feelings were four times as likely to die as those women who were also unhappy, but they did express their feelings. So the issue wasn't happiness. The issue was authenticity. Yes. Self-expression. Yes. That is profound. It's frightening. It's frightening. But why are we not talking about this? I mean, this is, that is, so you should say, four times more likely to die by simply not expressing.

13:15Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, we live in a society which very much is dependent on roles. And roles depend on how other people see you. So we all want to be seen in the best possible light. And society punishes us for being authentic. You know, they don't know. You're a troublemaker or you're different or, you know. So basically there's a huge social pressure to conform. And in relationships, of course, we have this fear of being ourselves for fear of being rejected. So it's very common. It is. Let me ask you something. When was the last time you really thought about how you love? Not who, but how? Most of us don't.

14:14We're moving fast, doing life, hoping love just shows up and sticks. But that's not how real connection works. So I've created something different. It's called Love Better, and I'm taking it on tour. A live experience for anyone who wants to build deeper, more meaningful connection. We'll unpack the lessons from the couples you've seen me coach. I'll share stories I've never told on camera. And you'll walk away with tools you could use right away. This isn't a show you just sit back and watch. It's a night of honesty, insight, music, and connection designed to make you walk away with something real.

14:53Come solo, bring a partner, bring your crew, everyone's welcome. But seats are limited, and they will go. Tickets are on sale right now at livenation.co.uk. I can't wait to see you there. Can we move to attachment? Yeah. Because you mentioned that's one need, attachment. But if we go back to attachment styles, what I notice is this is probably one of the most popular topics right now. And I think it's for good. But many of us still misinterpret exactly what attachment styles mean, but more so how they impact us as adults. Yeah. So how does our attachment as a child show up when we're an adult in adult relationships?

15:45Yeah. These are based on studies that have been done with young children and their mothers in a laboratory situation. What happens is you bring a one-year-old into a room with the mom, and then the mom will may maybe be there for a while and then leave. There might be a stranger in the room, the examiner. The mother comes back. This is just one example. Then in a secure attachment, the infant will have been upset by the mother's leaving, but when the mother comes back in, the infant comes to the mother, is soothed by the mother, is easily soothed, and becomes calm again and starts playing again.

16:27That's a secure attachment. then there's various forms of insecure attachments. So for example, the mother comes back in and the child won't go to the mother to be soothed. Or will go to the mother but can't be soothed by them. What's really frightening here and interesting here is there's something called the adult attachment interview where you ask an adult about their attachment relationship with their parents. You could do this adult attachment interview with this adult before they have children, and the result of that will predict how the yet unconceived child will behave on this attachment experiment three years later.

17:11Goodness. Because it was passed on generationally. Now, the example that I gave for myself, and I opened the first chapter of the myth of normal with this anecdote, and I've often told it of me arriving home from a speaking trip and my wife's supposed to be at the airport to pick me up and I get a text saying I haven't left home yet and I go into a total rage. And when I go home, I take a taxi home and I'm not even looking at her. This is at the tender young age of 72, okay? And after 40 years of marriage, you know? And so what that's about, so I'm feeling a deep sense of abandonment. Now, nobody abandoned me.

17:59My wife's an artist. She's in the studio. She's painting. And when she's in her painting, the world disappears, including me. I've only known this for four decades. But what's triggered in me is a deep sense of abandonment because when I was 11 months old, my mother did abandon me. Not that she abandoned me. She gave me to a stranger to save my life during the war in Hungary and didn't see her for five or six weeks. And when I saw her again, I wouldn't even look at her, which is called an avoidant attachment. It's a defensive response of the organism, the message being, I was so hurt when you abandoned me that will not make myself so vulnerable ever again, so I won't reconnect with you.

18:5171 years later, the same reaction gets triggered in me, and I come in the house, won't even look at my wife, and barely even talking to her, until she finally said, after 24 hours of this cold shoulder, she said, knock it off already. So I knocked it off. You know, just step forward, because years ago, might have taken me days to knock it out. So that's an example of an early template. This is called implicit or unconscious memory. I have no recollection of my mother giving me to a stranger because at 11 months of age, the circuits of explicit recall memory aren't even online yet. But the circuits of emotional memory, of the emotional impact of experiences, is in me already in the third trimester of pregnancy.

19:46So deep in my nervous system is wired a sense of abandonment. When something vaguely resembling that occurs in the present, I'm triggered and I'm not a 72-year-old international author and speaker, physician, all that. I'm a one-year-old infant. One-year-old, yes, yes. So this is how early attachment templates then show up and vex adult relationships. And it's almost universal. According to the research I saw here is that 30 % to 40 % of adults have either, you know, have a non-secure attachment, avoidant or anxious. So what can we do as adults if we fall within that group to become secure, to earn a secure attachment?

20:39Well, again, it's a matter of awareness. And by the way, I've seen those same kind of figures, and I think they're underestimates. I think that much higher percentage of relationships, if you actually look at it, carry some degree of insecurity, which is why there's so many problems in marriages. But what do you do? for decades, you know. My response has been if this tension in the relationship is to withdraw. Hers is an anxious attachment, so she comes in and tries to bring me on board, you know. So what if I communicated? What if I said to her, look, my wife's name is Ray. When you didn't pick me up at the airport, I had this deep sense of abandonment.

21:32then she might say oh i'm so sorry but you know what i was in the studio and you know what happens when i'm in the studio that would have been the end of it so for one thing communicate okay go and just um stew in your own um troubled attachment brew communicate it number one number two when you look at it retrospectively obviously i knew it even at the time My reaction, as I could recognize, was way out of proportion to the stimulus. So look at your reaction and see how proportionate it is to what actually happened. And when it's out of proportion, it's always about the past. What about if you are not yet in a relationship, but you've noticed that you are anxious or avoidant and you want to try to become secure before entering a relationship?

22:28What are things that you could do? Well, then you need help. I mean, again, recognition is the key. A lot of people don't recognize it. They just bring this anxiety into the relationship, and then they wonder why the relationship doesn't work. So those that are fortunate enough to have generated some self-awareness, they can get help. But the other thing they can do is when they do meet somebody, they can say, look, I've got to tell you about something about myself. I'm not proud of it, but I'm also not ashamed of it. I tend to have certain abandonment fears. I'm not going to make that your responsibility, because it isn't, but I just want you to know that about me.

23:17Now, most partners, some partners say, okay, well, thanks very much for telling me, and goodbye. But most of the time, that's not what happens. most of the time the other person appreciates the vulnerability and the openness and the desire for intimacy and does share something about themselves. Yes. I think that's what happens most of the time. Yes, yeah. I always say that intimacy drives intimacy, which drives intimacy, which is what you want. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's beautiful. Gabor is truly a huge inspiration to me, and having him on this show was a real pleasure. I hope his insights on trauma and attachment styles is something you can apply to your own lives and help you to understand your own mental well-being.

24:02Gabor Maté's The Myth of Normal is a great book to delve into if you liked this conversation. If you'd like to hear more conversations like this, search for We Need to Talk on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.

24:23Thank you.