gabor maté – attachment & authenticity
unconscious patterns that come very directly from childhood.how to compensate – by making yourself indispensable22 min – our coping mechanism.. if we’re not loved, we become charmingsuppress yourself.. lose your personality26 min – the emotional states of the parents program the brain of the childsuppress my pain – because i better not create more noise, more stressnot blaming anyone.. unconscious implicit memories and patterns that are automaticnone of these are our first nature…you weren’t born suppressing yourself…children (people) have 2 needs:
attachment – invited to exist
authenticity – to be ourselves
everyone knows what it’s like to betray yourself – to not be yourself..what happens when authenticity threatens attachment…the attachment will trump the authenticitywhich means i’ll be stressed the rest of my life
maté basic needs 2018
gabor on authenticity & attachment – 2023
gabor on addiction/trauma/needs – (9 min video)
maté basic needs (video) – 1 min
wisdom of trauma (doc) – 2021 (haven’t seen yet.. just the trailer)
(gabor on) pain – across the board
gabor on missing the boat
myth of normal (two books)
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books:
myth of normal; realm of hungry ghosts; when body says no; scattered; ..
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because that’s our essence.
authenticity – be you.
attachment – be us.
let’s just chill and work on that – no?
… no micro-management needed… no training… no prep.
we’re learning as we’re learning.
actually prepping for the only certainty – uncertainty.
hold on to kids
the real relationship doesn’t depend on words it depends on the capacity to be withparenting psychology in this culture has become anti child
More of this sentiment here.
Though adolescents may want nothing more than to be able to define themselves, they discover that high school is one of the hardest places to do it.
References Brene.
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resources on his site:
his tedx:
addiction
i’m not afraid of dying, i’m afraid of living
addicts get relief from pain, sense of calmness, et al, why are these qualities missing from their lives?
not why the addiction, but why the pain
keith richards… biography –
the addiction was all about looking for oblivion, for forgetting, the contortions we go through just enough to be ourselves for a few hours
afraid of death, other people, selves
looking at why people are in pain – can’t look at their genetics, have to look at their lives
drugs are not by themselves addicted
when abused as children – those circuits don’t develop – in the brain – lack of love and attachment
then brains feel normal when they are getting it from heroin, et al
babies picking up on the stress of the mothers – shapes the child’s brain – if mother not happy around me – my mom – the world – doesn’t want me
we judge the drug addict because we see they are no different than us
in order to get power – we are quite willing to fight wars, et al
the addiction to power is always about the emptiness you try to fill from the outside
let’s not look at the people in power to change things, often they are the emptiest ones..
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dec 2013 Gabor on democracy now – adhd
DR. GABOR MATÉ: …Secondly, to make the assumption that even if somebody has these traits, and even if they have them over a lifetime, that the significant or the only answer is medication is to ignore, again, the complexity of the human brain and human behavior. So, what we have here is a vast oversimplification of what is a fairly sophisticated problem. And it’s that oversimplification then that the pharmaceutical companies exploit to their great advantage, as Alan has documented.
ALAN SCHWARZ: .. when I heard that high school kids were snorting Adderall before the SATs, I questioned: How much pressure are we putting on these kids? I don’t think they want to do this. And so the first story that I did was in the context of academic pressure and what some kids will do in order to deal with it.
Gabor: Number two, there’s a lot of other reasons why kids might have difficulty paying attention. And the question very often is: Do they grow out of ADHD, or do they grow out of school? In other words, do they just grow out of an artificial environment, where human beings were never meant to sit for eight hours and behind a desk, and not be able to run around and play and not be able to create and express themselves and do art and be noisy? All the things that the human child naturally wants to be, and is, are suppressed, and very often in the school setting. So, we’re creating an artificially induced problem by the environments that kids are reared in. And so, when kids leave those environments, naturally they don’t have those symptoms anymore.
So, there’s all kinds of reasons why that psychiatrist who stands in front of a group of doctors and asserts that once you’re diagnosed, you have it for the rest of your life, is completely scientifically inappropriate.
Gabor Maté, physician and best-selling author of four books, including Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It. His latest book is In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.
Alan Schwarz, an award-winning New York Times reporter who has extensively written about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. His most recent article, “The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder,” looks at how the number of diagnoses soared amid a 20-year drug marketing campaign.
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Nature VS Nurture
it seems like the greater the harm, the more respectable the addiction
life experiences (rather than dna) are what make people susceptible to addiction
on touch – whoa.
This is a segment from Moving Forward (2011). Watch the full documentary online here. by Peter Joseph
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july 2014 –
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nov 2014 on rage –
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If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I’d design exactly the system we have – @DrMate #chasingthescream
she was a success, because she knew she was loved
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article (gwen gordon) – on restoring the playground to get restore attachment):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gwen-gordon/play_b_4436044.html
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feb 2015 – recovery 2.0 conf:
Movement Toward Wholeness: The Evolution of The Human Being – @DrMate recovery2point0.com/videos-day-1/ (free for next 24 hrs)
attachment dynamic – a force of gravity that pulls two people together – necessity of life
when healthy attachment is not met – then we get attached to surviving – substitutes – that cling to things –
identities become just as addictive as substances
the reason we get addicted to substances: they almost work – ie: relief of pain, joy, but they are temporary –
the more they don’t work, the more committed we are to them
the human mind – desperately clinging to (unhealthy) attachments at the peril of the host (authenticity)
human possibility is always there.. but it isn’t always realized
ceremony: opens you up to conscious ritual: an escape from conscious
if we don’t find meaning in the present moment.. we have to find it in (temporary) attachments
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april 2015 – interview
http://www.addiction.com/8389/addicts-deserve-more-compassion-gabor-mate/
For 12 years, until his recent retirement from medicine, the Hungarian-born physician ran a clinic treating Vancouver’s most serious addicts, most of whom suffered from other health issues as well, including HIV and hepatitis C. The clinic, Insite, remains the only place in North America that allows addicts a safe injection site, meaning they can come to the clinic to use clean needles and have their injections medically supervised.
Maté, author of the best-selling book, “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction,” believes the origins of addiction stem from childhood trauma and that addicts should be treated with more compassion. He argues against the two prevailing views of addiction: that it’s a choice people make to seek out hedonistic, self-destructive pleasure due to a lack of willpower, or that it’s an inevitable result of inherited genes.
[..]
Addiction, he believes, represents a failure of crucial brain circuits to develop early in life under the influence of a nurturing environment. “Seeing addiction itself as the problem doesn’t deal with the fundamental issue, which is a person’s attempt to solve the distress and suffering lingering from a past trauma,” he explains. “That’s why it’s not sufficient to simply try to treat the addiction.”
[..]
“Once we acknowledge that addiction is not an inherited disease — that we’re not genetically wired to become addicts — we can provide the conditions needed to help people overcome their conditions, since the brain is neuroplastic and can change with new habits,” explains Maté.
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Most addicted people use no drugs at all and addiction cannot be understood if we restrict our vision of it to substances, legal or illicit.Addiction is manifested in any behavior that a person craves, finds temporary relief or pleasure in but suffers negative consequences as a result of, and yet has difficulty giving up. In brief: craving, relief, pleasure, suffering, impaired control.[..]“I’m not going to ask you what you were addicted to,”..Only, whatever your addictive focus, what did it offer you? ..universally, the answers are: “It
helped me escape emotional pain… helped me deal with stress… gave me peace of mind… a sense of connection with others… a sense of control.”
Such answers illuminate that the
addiction is neither a choice nor a disease,
but originates in a human being’s desperate attempt to solve a problem: the problem of emotional pain, of overwhelming stress, of lost connection, of loss of control, of a deep discomfort with the self. In short, it is a forlorn attempt to solve the problem of human pain. Hence my mantra:
“The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.”
[..]
source of pain is always and invariably to be found in a person’s lived experience, beginning with childhood.
Childhood trauma is the template for addiction—any addiction
the same brain circuits involved in all addictions, from shopping to eating to heroin dependence
a psychological and physiological response to painful life experiences
[..]
trauma is not restricted to horrific experiences. It refers to
any set of events that, over time, impose more pain on the child than his or her sensitive organism can process and discharge.
Therefore, trauma can occur not only when bad things happen, but also when the parents are too stressed, too distracted, too depressed, to beset by economic worry, too isolated, etc. to respond to a sensitive child’s emotional need to be seen, emotionally held, heard, validated, made to feel secure.
[..]
Not all traumatized people become addicted, but all addicted people were traumatized.
That is the reality of our culture, where addiction, like trauma, is so commonplace that most people also don’t recognize its presence. Yet it surrounds us, engulfs so many of us, that
our near-exclusive focus on the troubles of drug addiction is itself but another escape from reality.
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Eleanor, James, Jean, … your song – ness
Carl Hart, JoHann Hari, Bruce Alexander, rat park ness
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connections…
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oct 2015 – The Damage Is Done: A True Story
https://www.straight.com/life/544616/dr-gabor-mate-gets-theatrical-damage-done-true-story
Maté is playing himself in a new multidisciplinary production by writer, actor, director, and therapist Rita Bozi.
The Damage Is Done: A True Story combines theatre, dialogue, essay, video, music, and modern dance to explore subjects such as depression, addiction, and suicide.
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oct 2014 – human nature via omega point:
what is it about this culture that makes so many of us unhealty.. sick… et al…
on human nature…
1\ one idea – by nature selfish/competitive/aggressive.. (one this culture promotes)
2\ another.. that there is no nature – empty slate – so can program into anything – so whatever we happen to learn
3\ wired for contact/love/connection/generosity – connection beyond individual.. and whatever interferes with that creates the disfunction..
so society that promotes aggression/competition/property/production… ie: it’s only matter that matters… our form.. physical appearance defines who you are…
creating a society that goes against human nature creates the suffering.. we live in a completely unnatural society.. we live in a society that goes against human nature…
– –
willingness to be puzzled
noam – is tall man happy – willingness to be puzzled
i’ve been fortunate in that .. i’ve been willing to be puzzled
willingness to ask the question – what’s really going on here – instead of assuming that we know..
– –
seeing the truth of how things are
if you could do whatever to change world: i would open people’s eyes to see the truth of how things are.. ie: cutting off head.. cutting off own head; natives on own land.. who’s land
i keep looking for the truth of things.. in touch with my commitment…
how to wake people up…
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let’s leapfrog to a nother way.
do-over ad infinitum.
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interview jan 2016
https://www.thefix.com/gabor-mat%C3%A9-addiction-holocaust-disease-trauma-recovery
Can you act yourself into the right emotion? Let me put it this way, John; the question does not interest me. What interests me is for people to really know where they are coming from and where their actions come from. People can act the right way, but that doesn’t mean they are being the right way. You can’t force emotions; you really have to know what they are. For me, the important question is, what are the actual emotions underneath the action that are driving my behavior and where do those emotions come from? For me, it’s not a question of acting into the right emotion. It’s a question of understanding what are the source emotions from which we are acting. That is the really important question.
huge. we do this everywhere… control/agenda is killing us. and it’s why have we not yet..
[..]
The patients that I worked with—I’m talking about hardcore, street level drug users, people injecting cocaine and heroin and so on—not a single one of them ever came to me and said, “Doc, I was traumatized, and I’m using that as an excuse to do drugs.” They didn’t know they were traumatized. No doctor had ever pointed it out to them. They thought they were just fuck-ups. They thought they were just bad people. They thought they were just addicts. They didn’t realize that they were using the addiction to soothe a deep pain that was rooted in trauma. In all cases of addiction that I have seen, there’s deep pain that comes out of trauma. The addiction is the person’s unconscious attempt to escape from the pain.
[..]
generation after generation, there’s a huge statistical and causative link between that trauma and the addiction. That’s not a theory. It’s just reality.
perpetuate\ing not us ness.. as our trauma
The necessary conditions for healthy brain development are healthy relationships with responsive parents. When the parenting environment becomes distorted or hostile and abusive, you’re actually distorting people’s brain development. This means they are going to be more likely to want to use substances to feel better in their brain in order to achieve a different state of the brain.
[..]
what I think is missing from medical practice. Whether it’s addictions or whatever it is, we are not seeing what’s driving it and what’s underneath it. T
[..]
It’s not that people have a genetic predisposition towards depression; it’s that they are more sensitive so they are more affected by what happens. The more affected you are, the more depressed you are going to get. Depression is a response to what happens.
This is how we want to parent children, and it doesn’t matter what predispositions a child has, if they get these conditions of love and respect in their childhood, they’ll never be addicted, they’ll never get depressed and they’ll never be anxious—not in terms of the medical diagnosis of those conditions.
Any person might experience anxiety at some time or sadness. I’m not talking about that, but in terms of the so-called illnesses, they will never happen. It doesn’t matter what we know about our children’s predispositions. The question is, what kind of childhood do human beings require to be healthy, self-realized creatures? Look at all of the characteristics that I listed.
The question is, why the disease focus? Your question is very disease-focused. How do I prevent a disease? That’s not the right question. That’s already coming out of fear. You don’t want to parent out of fear. The right question is what does a human being need, any human being.
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Stress is the thing that leads to disease or leads to conditions for it, but certain personalities are more prone to this stress.”
This is not really controversial at all because it’s a medical reality. It’s only controversial because most doctors don’t know about it.
[..]
The repression of anger suppresses the immune system as opposed to healthy expressions of anger. It’s not a question of philosophy.
I was a physician for 33 years, and I didn’t begin with any of these assumptions. Nobody had told me about this. I just kept noticing, particularly when I worked in palliative care for seven years. We looked after terminally ill people, people who were dying of cancer, and I kept noticing and kept noticing and kept noticing that these people with auto-immune disease or with cancer typically had very tough childhoods where they survived by repressing their emotions, and that suppression of emotion was tied to their development of disease.
[..]
Evil not as a kind of abstract force or as an embodied devil, but as the expressions of human pain that finds some release in creating pain in others, and that’s unconscious. The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says evil does not have an absolute existence, but has a relative existence rooted in the human unconscious. If you look at people who are willing to perpetrate such things, you look usually at traumatized people.
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For me, it’s not a question of returning to a dream but a question of waking up from a dream. We have to wake up from the dream that it was ever possible to find a beautiful solution to the European Jewish problem by creating suffering for people in the Middle East. We have to wake up from that dream. It was never possible. …We are creating intense suffering for other, and we are going to create intense suffering for ourselves.
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nobody’s linking that to trauma. Like Dr. Oz will have a show on addiction because it’s a big deal now to talk about addiction, but trauma won’t be mentioned. Society and the medical profession are in denial of the role of trauma in this problem. As long as we are in denial of trauma, we’re never going to understand addiction. The aha moment that needs to occur is not that we recognize how bad addictions are, but that addictions are about an escape from trauma, and this society traumatizes people. Life in this society means that a lot of people are going to become traumatized. That’s the aha moment that hasn’t happened yet.
The aha moment where the connection between addiction and trauma is recognized is what is needed.
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To my mind, we don’t need positive thinking or negative thinking; we need thinking. Thinking means you don’t load your point of view with either a priori negative or positive vibes. Rather, you are simply willing to look at what is
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what I recommend is consciousness.
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Emotional isolation is a major risk factor for disease, addiction, illness, death and everything else.
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most common attribute of people who are waking up: loneliness
But our desire to fit in and be accepted is slowly being drowned out by our desire to be free.
like overcoming the big – attachment trumps authenticity.. as a global authenticity.. one ness..
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aug 2016 – shocking truths of what causes addiction – via Gabor.. (45 min podcast)
http://www.growbigalways.com/episodes/gabor-mate
addiction soothes isolation and pain.. – gabor
constantly looking for a way to not be with myself.. – sam – https://twitter.com/SamLawrence
addict: slave in roman times indebt to someone and couldn’t pay debt.. so addiction implies slavery.. a lack of autonomy/control/freedom… so .. any behavior .. substance related or not.. that occurs/craves/find-temp-pleasure in or suffers long-term neg consequences.. unable to give it up.. lacks freedom to give it up..
so anyone of theses behaviors characterised by craving relief… long term neg consequence.. imperent (?) control..
9 min – whatever kind of addict.. same psych dynamics.. at heart of addiction is not any kind of disease or choice.. but emotional pain.. all attempts to escape from emotional pain… lot of pain in our society.. so not understanding addictino is not understanding pain.. in denial of the trauma… that’s at the heart of human addiction in our society…
10 min – what’s it like to be uncomfortable in one’s own skin.. our narrow defn of addiction allows us not to look at that trauma.. not to look at that pain
sam – i’m guilty of that whole us and them thing.. the labeling.. is a completely mired language..
gabor.. doesn’t only apply to addiction.. but mental models in general.. ie: we thought depressions/anxiety/adhd is a disease.. which allows us to not look through society.. what’s actually true.. doesn’t matter what mental condition you look at..we have a continuum throughout entire society… disease model allows us to.. sequester these people .. so we don’t have to look at our similarities with them…
14 min – w/o loving contact.. infants don’t survive.. so drug addicts.. see loss of connection..
reading book about pigmies… have maintained original form for thousands of years till recently… very communal… tremendous sense of security and belonging… gradual breakdown.. esp accelerated under industrialized systems… where people lose community..
16 min – more culturally isolated.. more pain.. more want to soothe paint..
17 min – if say someone is drinking too much.. say.. feeling no pain… so pain relievers.. but also behaviors of addiction: gambling, sex, overeating.. trigger release of ednorphins…
not what the addiction.. but why the pain…
primary problem/disease is the pain experience..
19 min – guilt as denial..
20 min – sam – on the distraction methods we surround ourselves with
21 min – industries arise to soothe pains.. rather than release them.. services/producs..- gabor
22 min – individual level – addiction all about trauma… in form of abuse.. neglect.. hurt.. but can also be developmental.. children not getting needs met.. ie: physically held.. but emotionally ignored.. actually shape brain in certain ways
24 min – social level – stresses people.. ie: more stressed parents.. less emotionally available to kids.. a multi generational.. and cultural transmission of pain.. question of seeing how this culture induces stress on those people.. can’t separate..individuals from environment… so individual help is a cultural/social issue..
yes.. thinking the whole.. voluntary compliance ness – from previous stress
28 min – where rat study comes in.. substances aren’t addictive.. it’s the environment/society..
what have now – highest rates of addiction/suicide/abuse.. was totally foreign to them.. shows.. addiction is response to certain circumstances
29 min – bruce alexander… globalization of addiction.. (2nd best book i’ve ever written).. talks of rat park.. shows addiction is not inborn.. not disease.. but a response to environment..
32 min – so does that mean for us .. we need to change our cage.. – sam
gabor: as soon as brain is developed in fetus.. has to begin with looking after pregnant women and young children… et al… kids well taken care o f…
addiction has nothing to do with telling people how bad drugs are but.. with creating conditions in which human beings develop in a healthy way.. that calls for vast social changing.. rethinking of priorities... on social.. on individual.. not what addiction but why pain.. the essence of trauma.. discomfort/disconnection with self is exactly that.. not sufficient to base on behavior aspects w/o reconnection to self.. is not sufficient…
35 min – nazi occupation.. all jewish babies crying.. picking up on mother’s stress… so i accumulated a lot of pain/fear.. get sense that world doesn’t want me.. plays w/ my attention problems.. because tuning out is a way to deal with it..
book – scattered – not a disease.. it’s from environment.. so i compensate by ie: becoming successful dr and to be wanted by everybody.. which also means i’m a work-a-holic.. emotionally distant from self.. and is what my children experience… we just keep passing it on..
39 min – not guilt.. but lack of consciousness. if approach from position of guilt.. you can’t help them..then saying.. you’re a mistake i made.. so first to deal with is the guilt....so heal self first.. don’t try and fix children.. heal yourself..
42 min – has to be awareness/acceptance that this is how it is.. then an unflinching dedication.. ie: each time problem arises.. another opp to grow/learn.. dedication to expansion.. expansion means .. a letting go..
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crazywise (doc) – (Will Hall, Phil Borges et al)
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human nature talk (2011) with Robert Sapolsky, Gabor Mate, James Gilligan, Richard Wilkinson from
lots of gems.. from Gabor in this 30 min clip.. from zeitgest‘s moving forward film
on why we’re not us.. and our basic needs to be us.. and the myth of who/what we are..
h u g e
all here: human nature
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oct 2016
http://drgabormate.com/trump-clinton-trauma/
The flaws of our leaders perfectly mirror the emotional underdevelopment of the society that elevates them to power.
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Dr Mark Tyndall (@DrMtyndall) tweeted at 8:46 AM on Sat, Feb 04, 2017:
Fixing fentanyl means treating trauma that creates addicts
https://t.co/HjRsFbXCYs https://t.co/xscxeG6wOQ
(https://twitter.com/DrMtyndall/status/827906084912312320?s=03)the first question when dealing with opiate-dependent human beings should be not “why the addiction” but “why the pain?”
[..]
The answer is trauma: deep, unresolved trauma that imposes a lifetime of suffering, fear of reality, isolation, hopelessness and an urgency to alter one’s experience. This is where addiction comes in.
“The meaning of all addictions could be defined as endeavours at controlling our life experiences with the help of external remedies,” wrote the psychiatrist Thomas Hora.
[..]
And what is the nature of the trauma that drives people to desperation?
In my 12 years in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, ground zero for addiction in Canada, all my female patients reported sexual abuse in childhood, all the male patients abuse or neglect of one kind or another.
[..]
As large scale international epidemiological studies have repeatedly demonstrated, childhood adversity is at the core of the emotional patterns and psychological dynamics that drive addiction.
Further, childhood trauma shapes the physiology of the developing brain in ways that induce a susceptibility to addiction. Hence the addiction-prone person finds relief in substances that would not entice others, even after repeated exposure to the same drugs.
In turn, prolonged drug use also changes the brain in ways that further entrench the addictive drive.
Trauma, induced by Canada’s colonial history and far from healed yet, is also what accounts for the high rates of alcoholism and other substance dependencies in our First Nations communities, to say nothing of the shocking preponderance of First Nations citizens in our jails, for legal reasons often rooted in addiction.
[..]
It is not a fault, not a moral lapse, not a sin, not a failure of will, nor yet even an inherited disease, but a complex response to suffering. It is not a legal problem but a human problem, to which the solutions need to be humane in every possible way.
Inclusion, not ostracizing, needs to motivate our policies; not punishment but support, not judgment but empathy.
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on parenting
http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/dr-gabor-mate-and-full-potential-parenting-even-when-it-is-hard
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ayahuasca healing
http://chacruna.net/deep-ayahuasca-healing-truth-who-you-are/
In the mind-identified culture of the left-brained industrialized world we have forgotten that true wisdom arises from deeper within us than our conscious thoughts and formal learning. We forget, in fact, that our conscious thoughts and bookish learning often mask our hidden fears, motives, and pain.
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mar 21 2017 via Gabor fb share:
Dr. Mate is featured on Sounds True: Insights at the Edge podcast, where he shares his views on modern mental health evaluation – specifically the widespread diagnosis of ADHD and depression. http://www.soundstrue.com/store/weeklywisdom…
starts at 3 min –
born in budapest.. jewish – jan 44 – 2 months german war – extermination had not yet reached hungary.. but w/in 5 months.. much of my family to auschwitz.. occupation lasted 1 yr
story that affects most of my work.. day after occupation.. my mother called pediatrician.. because Gabor crying.. of course i will come but informed her.. all jewish patients are crying.. speaks to the essence of childhood experience:
what happens to the parent happens to the child..
6 min – quoting from AH Almaas .. i quote this very often.. in fact.. he may be the one person who i quote most often
http://www.ahalmaas.com/glossary/pain
The child is very open, and can feel the pain and suffering going on in its immediate environment. The child is aware of its own body and can also feel the tension, rigidity, and pain in the mother’s body or anyone else it is with. If the parents are suffering, the child feels it. If the mother is suffering, the baby suffers too. The pain never gets discharged.
that insight coupled with that antidote has informed a lot of my work.. whether it comes to physical illness..addictions or any other afflictions that human beings might face..
6 min – my father came back from forced labor.. mother didn’t know if he was even alive for almost a year and a half.. germans finally expelled from budapest by the russian army in jan 1945…
7 min – a month before the liberation in budapest.. my mother had handed me to a complete stranger in the streets of budapest because she could no longer guarantee my survival.. jews were being deported/killed by nazis.. she didn’t know when it would be her turn.. so she gave me to a strange woman in the street.. and i didn’t see her for a month.. which engrained in my a lifelong sense of abandonment/loss.. which.. at age 73 still shows up sometimes in my relation with my wife
8 min – how that pain transfer has influenced how you work w/patients/addiction: so a number of things happen: 1\the buddha said at some point.. w/thoughts create world.. but didn’t say.. before thoughts.. world creates our minds.. my question is.. ie: there’s a man right now that says – world is a horrible place – direct quote:
if live in a world which is a horrible place you’re going to have a certain attitude towards the world and a certain way of conducting yourself –
this man is president of us and he lives in a world that’s horrible..
9 min – get perception from earliest experience.. so what kind of a world did i get.. i got a world in which there is inexplicable suffering.. for which i have to compensate somehow..one way for compensating/enduring/dealing with suffering is to dissociate/tune-out
look at the (growth) of adhd diagnoses.. what’s really happening.. parents circumstances have become so stressful.. and because parents are stressed .. children are stressed.. these children are tuning out .. to protect themselves.. at a time when their brain is been developing.. and now they’re being diagnosed left/right/center with a so called medical disease.. an inheritable medical disease.. it’s neither a disease nor is it inheritable.. it’s actually a normal response to an abnormal circumstance..of parental stress.. so what i’m saying is that a lot of the adult disfunction mental/physical illness that i see is actually the outcomes of childhood coping mechanisms..
our first question.. why so many people stressed
adhd ness
realized they already have a transcript.. so digging in .. and adding rest on new page: healing (roots of).. also
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find/follow Gabor:
Gabor Maté (born January 6, 1944) is a Hungarian-born Canadianphysician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology, as well as the study and treatment of addiction. In Dr. Maté’s approach to addiction focuses on the trauma his patients have suffered and looks to address this in their recovery, with special regards to indigenous populations around the world. His book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, close encounters with addiction, Dr. Maté discusses the types of trauma suffered by addicts and how this affects their decision making in later life. He is also widely recognized for his perspective on attention deficit disorder and his firmly held belief in the connection between mind and body health. He has authored four books exploring topics including attention deficit disorder, stress, developmental psychology and addiction. He is a regular columnist for the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, he is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. His maternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz when he was five months old, his aunt disappeared during the war, and his father endured forced labour at the hands of the Nazis. He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1956. He was a student radical during the Vietnam War era in the late 1960s and graduated with a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He worked for a few years as a high school English and literature teacher, and later returned to school to pursue his childhood dream of being a physician.
Maté ran a private family practice in East Vancouver for over twenty years. He was also the medical coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital for seven years. Currently he is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre for the people of Vancouver’s Downtown. Many of his patients suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and HIV, or all three. He works in harm reduction clinics in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Most recently, he has written about his experiences working with addicts in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
He made national headlines in defense of the physicians working at Insite (a legal supervised safe injection site) after the federal Minister of Health, Tony Clement, attacked them as unethical.
In 2010, Maté became interested in the traditional Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca and its potential for treating addictions. He partnered with a Peruvian Shipibo ayahuasquero (traditional shamanic healer) and began leading multi-day retreats for addiction treatment, including ones in a Coast SalishFirst Nations community that were the subject of an observational study by health researchers from the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia. Although preliminary and limited by the observational study design, the research results showed that Maté’s claims of therapeutic efficacy were well-founded and that participants had significant improvements in some psychological measures and reductions in problematic substance use. However, when the conservative Canadian federal government learned about Maté’s work with ayahuasca in 2011, Health Canada threatened him with arrest if he did not immediately stop his activities with what they claimed was a harmful illegal drug. Yet, Health Canada’s own research on ayahuasca in 2008 showed that they knew the risks associated with the ceremonial use of the brew were very low, and that it had considerable potential value for spiritual and self-actualizing purposes
forbidden cures et al..
A recurring theme in Maté’s books is the
impact of a person’s childhood on their mental and physical health through neurological and psychological mechanisms, which he connects with the need for social change.
In the book In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, he proposes new approaches to treating addiction (e.g. safe injection sites) based on an understanding of the biological and socio-economic roots of addiction. He describes the significant role of “early adversity” i.e. stress, mistreatment and particularly childhood abuse, in increasing susceptibility to addiction. This happens through the impairment of neurobiological development, impairing the brain circuitry involved in addiction, motivation and incentive. Dr Maté defines addiction as any behaviour or substance that a person uses or takes part in that has negative consequences. The person tries to stop but will crave the substance or behaviour and will ultimately relapse. By this definition there are many things in modern culture that have the potential to become addictive such as gambling, sex, work and of course drugs.He argues the “war on drugs” actually punishes people for having been abused and entrenches addiction more deeply as studies show that stress is the biggest driver of addictive relapse and behavior. He says a system that marginalizes, ostracizes and institutionalizes people in facilities with no care and easy access to drugs, only worsens the problem. He also argues the environmental causes of addiction point to the need to improve child welfare policies (e.g. U.S. welfare laws that force many single women to find low-paying jobs far away from home and their children) and the need for better support for families overall, as most children in North America are now away from their parents from an early age due to economic conditions. He feels that society needs to change policies that disadvantage certain minority groups, causing them more stress and therefore increased risks for addictions.
The impact of childhood adversity is also noted in When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection. He notes that early experiences have a key role in shaping a person’s perceptions of the world and others, and in stress physiology, factors that affect the person’s health later on. He says that emotional patterns ingrained in childhood live in the memory of cells and the brain and appear in interpersonal interactions. He describes the impact of ‘adverse childhood experiences’ or ACEs (e.g. a child being abused, violence in the family, a jailed parent, extreme stress of poverty, a rancorous divorce, an addict parent, etc.) on how people live their lives and their risk of addiction and mental and physical illnesses, as seen in a number of U.S.-based Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) studies. Having a number of ACEs exponentially increases a person’s chances of becoming an addict later on e.g. a male child with six ACEs has a 4,600% or 46-fold increase in risk. ACEs also exponentially increase the risk of diseases e.g. cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. and also suicide and early death.
He argues that patients should therefore be encouraged to explore their childhoods and the impact on their adult behaviors. Overall, he argues people benefit by taking a holistic approach to their own health. For instance, he has seen people survive supposedly terminal diagnoses by seriously considering their “mind-body unity” and “spiritual unity”; going beyond “the medical model of treatment.”
He has also spoken about how the rise in bullying, ADHD and other mental disorders in American children are the result of current societal conditions e.g. a disconnected society and “the loss of nurturing, non-stressed parenting.” That is, we live in a society where for the first time in history, children are spending most of their time away from nurturing adults. He asserts that nurturing adults are necessary for healthy brain development
Books
- Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, Toronto, Canada, A.A. Knopf Canada, 1999 (published in the United States as Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It).
- When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, Toronto, Canada, A.A. Knopf Canada, 2003 (published in the United States as When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection).
- Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, co-authored with developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld, Toronto, Canada, A.A. Knopf Canada, 2004.
- In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, Toronto, Canada, A.A. Knopf Canada, 2008.
and now myth of normal with daniel maté
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is it possible to cure peoplewrong question.. possible for people to heal… but under what conditions.. but hardly a likelihood.. because approaching from wrong directionnevermind don’t get help they need.. get more oppression.. self-perpetuating cycle of taking traumatized people and re traumatizing them.. they won’t give it up.. the more hurt they are the more they need to escape..
addiction was an attempt to solve a problem.. that they don’t know what to do withthe med profession is traumaphobicmore interested in solving your problems and getting you to overcome the behavior.. rather than resolve what’s going on inside..
by doing you’ll never get satisfied when your hunger is about being..
which addict causes more problems in the world
could no longer use black slaves.. so .. 13th amendment.. can use black criminals
deepest reason – denial of pain
aboriginal population suffer most from addition – under colonialism.. benign wings of british empire.. aboriginals displaced.. culture destroyed.. self-image transformed into negative.. and to deal with that..
we’d have to look at ourselves..
we don’t like the trauma story.. in the terrorist story we get to be victims.. (then goes on to show.. we created terrorists..).. do we really understand the source.. what has been our role
brian: is it possible to reduce trauma
brian.. a nother way
gabor: how you do that.. start reducing stress/trauma at first pre natal visit.. by not medicalizing birth.. by supporting young parents to be with their children..
brian: so we have to up our humanity by 10x
let’s try 7 bn x.. we can
addiction showed up in late 18th cent.. because loss of communes
bruce alexander – globalization of addiction.. when people lose their place.. lose connection to culture/meaning/spiritual values.. more dislocation greater addiction..
on trauma.. things that happen emotionally.. messing w immune system.. because not separable.. happening 24/7
self repression as way of coping… because of unshakable union of mind and body
recovery: find yourself..
talking greek island
the more sensitive the child is.. the more affected
if we’re going to become whole (healing) let’s look at everything
there’s no war on drugs.. there’s a war on drug addicts.. not even on drug dealers..
human infant is an attachment machine.. can’t survive w/o it.. so take care of attachment relationship with children at any age.. infants can teach you about it if you really listen..
a and a..
acting out: portraying in behavior what you don’t have words for
usually it has to do with some trouble aspect with attachment
trauma fundamentally comes down to lack of attachment.. not lack of love.. but lack of attuning..
on ah almaas
i’m also looking for a deeper inner healing.. i’m not where i want to be
to 20 yr old self: not your fault the way you/world is.. don’t work so hard to be liked.. you’re ok..
best advise: to thine own self be true.. from aunt – i wish i’d understood what that meant
there’s a lot of people out there that see the truth but they don’t control the media.. so not much validation.. you have to deepen your truth.. never be afraid of your own truth.. and.. never be afraid to let go of it.. if you find a deeper truth.. whatever you do out in the world.. do an equal amount internally..
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advice to younger self – 6 min clip from london real interview
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF_BHZqmt6s]
3 min – to thine own self be true.. i wish i’d understood what that meant
imagine 7 bn grokking it.. a nother way
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“Addiction is an attempt to solve a problem in your life. What happened to create the discomfort with yourself and the present moment that you have to escape from?” – Dr Gabor Maté. Watch an excerpt from the interview, below.
Dr Maté is a featured keynote speaker for the Radical Recovery Summit – a gathering of leaders in the recovery field sharing their innovative approaches to the exploding epidemic of addiction in the many forms it takes. His interview focuses on trauma, abuse and neglect as the real root of addiction and the radical step of reconnecting within for true healing and recovery.
Watch his interview at 11AM Eastern on Saturday September 23rd, 2017, or watch the replay until midnight Sunday evening.
Click here to sign up. http://linktrack.info/.2mbo2
Please share with your networks.
the horse that’s pulling us is the discomfort and lack of safety you experience in your life.. that you have to escape from
addiction not as the primary problem.. but as an attempt to solve a problem..
treatment.. takes a lot of courage and a lot of safety
stephen porges (polyvagal): when people are safe.. neurophysiologically they’re in a diff state when they are not safe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Porges
neocortex not threatened ness
for people to open to their pain/hurt.. they have to feel very safe.. that it’s ok to be that way.. that they’ll be taken care of.. that they won’t be punished/judged/rejected.. they’ll be actually heard..
spaces of permission w nothing to prove.. quiet/safe enough for all the voices
parents just couldn’t see.. because they couldn’t see themselves.. that they had been traumatized..
the most fundamental catastrophe is the result of that first catastrophe which is a loss of connection to your essence..
(still stephen): the real problem wasn’t that your mother/father couldn’t support you.. or maybe even they hurt you.. the problem is that as a result of that you lost a connection to yourself.. that’s the greatest calamity
now.. that’s the good news.. because if the problem was what happened to you and i however may decades ago.. if that’s the problem.. we’re basically lost.. cause it ain’t never gonna not happen
but if the problem is that a result of that.. we lost the connection to our essence.. well that can be regained at any moment.. and that’s the positive news..
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radical addiction treatment
http://www.breakthroughpsychologyprogram.com/dr-gabor-mate-radical-addiction-treatment.html
so on hold and now have read: scattered and hungry ghosts
grazie
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i’m going to boldly say.. most important democracy now segment.. because it gets to the roots of healing addressed in every other segment..
compilation of interviews from 2010 compiled in 2012 of Gabor Maté on democracy now [hungry ghosts just coming out.. other books at that time: when body says no, scattered, hold on to kids (notes on Gabor and attachment pages)]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nddzq8nTZg]
love – indeed a compilation.. notes would match all i’ve taken so far.. (and yes .. dang.. couldn’t not take notes on separate page: gabor on democracy now )
so.. let’s get back to not yet scrambled ness..
ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day..[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…].. a nother way
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2 part interview – the fix – dec 2017
p1 – addiction
https://www.thefix.com/dr-gabor-mate-trauma-underlying-stigma-addiction-interview
In the addiction movement, people talk about recovery. What does it mean to recover something — it means to find it. When you recover something, you get it back. In other words, what we get back is ourselves. That self is never actually lost. If we can identify how we lost the way and how
p2 – trump/trauma/compassion
https://www.thefix.com/dr-gabor-mate-donald-trump-traumaphobia-and-compassion-interview
If people can just listen to the other person’s experience, then they could see them and feel compassion for the pain that they are experiencing. It might be necessary to take away the word addict because the word is now packed with so many negative connotations of stigma. Every time you want to say the word “addict,” you have to say instead: “A human being who suffered so much that he or she finds in drugs or some other behavior a temporary escape from that suffering.” What if we were forced to say that every time we wanted to say addict?
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via Jason fb share
why are so many adults haunted by trauma (interview from june 2017)
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_are_so_many_adults_today_haunted_by_trauma
The essence of trauma is disconnection from ourselves. Trauma is not terrible things that happen from the other side—those are traumatic. But the trauma is that very separation from the body and emotions. So, the real question is, ..
“How did we get separated and how do we reconnect?”
It’s not an automatic outcome of living in the world that we should become disconnected. It’s a product of a certain way of life and a certain way of parenting and certain childhood experiences, where it becomes too painful to stay connected so disconnection becomes a defense.
JN: So, as a society and as individuals, what is the way back to wholeness?
GM: It’s impossible under capitalism, because the essence of capitalism is to separate the mind from the body.
People matter only insofar as they produce, consume, or own matter.
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Bruce and Gabor: in trailer: age of disconnection
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Gabor is often asked about his take on Jordan Peterson. Here’s a Twitter thread on the topic…
https://twitter.com/DrGaborMate/status/1059220087234879488
4/ Peterson no doubt genuinely means to empower young men (and perhaps women) with his “12 Rules for Living”. And indeed, responsibility and knowledge of self are positive and healthful qualities—but ONLY if accompanied by a fully explored emotional life.
5/ Sadly his message, like his health, is being compromised by a choked rage that distorts his world-view. Hence his appeal to those who, perceiving themselves as victimized by the culture & threatened by social change, seek comforting explanations for their anger and insecurity.
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on under the skin w/russell
Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) tweeted at 3:08 AM – 10 Nov 2018 :
.@DrGaborMate with a master class on addiction and trauma. Jaw dropping data.
Listen here: https://t.co/KUf7SZoxko
Spotify: https://t.co/k8YBDUsu4v
#UnderTheSkin https://t.co/12jcaCZXEz (http://twitter.com/rustyrockets/status/1061198852278108161?s=17)6 min – 12 steps don’t talk about pain.. failure to incorporate trauma
9 min – easier to go the disease mode than the pain/trauma mode.. have to look at it w/o judgment and w deep curiosity.. t
11 min – consumerism demands mentality in which i fundamentally believe that i’m insufficient w/o this external fix..t
12 min – society creates artificial needs rather than meeting people’s genuine needs.. because economy relies on that.. t
14 mi – compassion not utopian.. evolutionary/experiential.. mammalians are wired for empathy..
15 min – most of us born open/vulnerable.. when that’s hurt.. trauma
18 min – just as i see anyone open to heroin addiction.. i see sainthood in all of us
22 min – vancouver – worked there for 12 years – portland hotel society.. had not a single patient who hadn’t been sexually abused as a child
23 min – there’s a tremendous relationship between addictions and creativity and mental illness and artists.. writers and painters and musicians and so on..
crazywise ness
and the link i believe (between addictions and creativity).. is sensitivity..
the more sensitive you are the more creative you’re going to be.. but the more sensitive you are the more you’re going to suffer as well.. because you’re going to feel the pain more.. in other words.. you have more of a need to escape from the pain.. and that escape from pain is what drives addictions.. it’s also what drives a lot of mental illness..
24 min – so a lot of them are artists.. very interesting people.. and the thing i appreciated most about them.. they lied/manipulated/cheated.. they had to in order to get their next hit.. but they didn’t pretend to be anybody else than they were.. they’re absolutely willing to be themselves.. they’re liars and – yes doc i stole this – willing to be themselves.. and that’s refreshing.. most of us are over sensed thru a lot of our pathways to social circles.. that people might be nice but nobody’s quite themselves.. and there.. there’s no pretense to be anyone else other than who they are..so that’s tremendously refreshing.. t
26 min – i can acknowledge that part of myself and know that i’d be understood.. only diff between us.. it they had suffered more than me
27 min – i’ve either had less suffering or more help w my suffering.. but morality.. nobody chooses to suffer
28 min – when talk about addiction as brain disease.. maybe.. but as result of suffering
29 min – addiction is an attempt to regulate your inner state to an external behavior.. something about the inner state that’s unbearable..
30 min – the sex addict is not about sex.. it’s about that change you describe.. if the sex addict were about sex.. the solution would be simple.. marry another sex addict.. it’s about that temp state.. regulating that unbearable state..
what the addicts wants is to not be addicted.. and when it’s not craving you’re not addicted.. at end.. when immediately (and short term) think you don’t need it anymore..
32 min – addictions serve a function.. the addict just wants to feel like a human being..t
34 min – we can’t understand why people use until we get what they get from it
35 min – any trauma that hasn’t been worked thru will be passed on to next gen
41 min – we’re failing at treating addiction, mental health, health.. and not because of the science.. not isolated.. have to do w/emotional/spiritual lives.. (i wrote in when body says no)..
42 min – for this society to function it has to separate the soul from the body.. we wouldn’t treat people the way we do if we had souls.. t
45 min – everything is a matter of set and setting
46 min – i realized how my heart had been shut down against love all my life.. my heart had been hurt so early in life that shutting down was the only rational/natural response.. but kept me limited.. so i got why people use it.. addiction is the heart trying to shut down.. just one more modality that we’re foolish not to explore
51 min – r: do you think this could bring about revolution
if you believe you live in a horrible world.. you’re going to be aggressive..t
53 min – that’s what i see.. (when i look at people) i see their trauma..t
54 min – these are traumatized people.. otherwise they couldn’t do it .. they wouldn’t be that split.. and these are the people that our society rewards w power.. that’s the sign of a traumatized society (my next book)..t
58 min – the system wants people who make it palatable
1:04 – ‘nationality’ .. is an addiction.. makes you feel better short term.. rather than an understanding of a common humanity..t
famous people justifying the status quo – ie: pinker.. people who are in denial get a lot of play in the system..t
1:07 – r: how do we popularize these ideas.. g: i wish i had a non glib answer to that.. all any of us can do is use whatever platform we have.. keep looking/refining
1:09 – we have a social structure that induces trauma in a lot of people.. so all this looks perfectly natural.. anthropologists don’t take the assumptions of the culture for granted..ie: human nature is evil/competitive/aggressive/selfish..t
assumption of culture is also that hate is some evil that has to be combatted.. but hate can’t be combatted – so we’re always looking for enemies to fight.. so easy to sell enemies in this culture..t
black science of people/whales
1:10 – first point.. when looking at others.. looking at self
1:11 – the way we treat addiction in this society.. we confuse people w their behavior.. we have to punish the behavior.. no.. we have to understand the human being that just wants to be loved.. and that’s why he’s so addicted.. so how about we treat him w love..t
1:12 – why does society fail at so many things.. we’re not looking at real human beings.. just at behaviors..t
1:14 – in your book.. recovery.. the divided self.. the thing is to get conversive/relations w divided self.. (rather than blame it)
1:16 – my wife is allergic to my romantic eyes/view.. she sees it as a manifestation of me.. she knows there’ll be a downside.. she wants me to just see her
1:18 – you’re not ready to be w your daughter unless she’s pleasing you.. (can’t stand seeing her cry – so offered her chocolate).. but what you do is just be there.. jordan peterson says broken child needs to sit by self.. that makes her feel abandoned.. all she needs from you is to help her hold her anger.. then in future.. she won’t need to fill that hole w whatever
1:20 – what an adult can do a child can’t do.. is take responsibility for self.. that’s why it’s bad to punish kids (time out et al)..
1:23 – hold onto your kids.. h&g.. child w many adults.. human brain needs to attach.. w/o it we don’t survive.. but nature doesn’t tell us who to attach to.. in our culture.. our kids lose contact w adults very early.. result is prolonged immaturity.. resistance to parents..
1:24 – we have to be aware of what we’ve lost
1:25 – r: so if you have a disconnected population where all their energy could be directed toward production (g: and acquisition).. you will create econ success but you will also create dysfunction.. (g: you create addiction.. mental illness.. aggression.. all kinds of unhappiness)..t
huge
1:28 – what we have in jail are the most traumatized people in our society.. and by the way.. if you kill one person you go to jail.. if you kill a million you get a noble peace prize.. and considered a great diplomat.. there’s a bit of a disconnect here.. t
incarceration.. dirty wars.. noble
1:29 – people need compassion not punishment.. ie: harm reduction et al
1:30 – (when asked why.. given that we know so much about what’s not working and what might.. we haven’t changed)..war on iraq.. war on drugs.. are successful for a lot of people of power..t
excellent evidence of war on drugs.. johann hari’s chasing the scream
1:33 – in all addictions.. it’s all the same brain circuits.. denial.. escape.. new forms come but dynamic is old..
solution has to begin at first pre natal visit.. help people heal the trauma
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200 spaces for compassionate inquiry training – a powerful therapeutic approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté for healing trauma and understanding mental and physical illness
https://online.compassionateinquiry.com/p/professional-training
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interview on pain (full notes on pain page):
Dr. Gabor Maté (@DrGaborMate) tweeted at 8:39 AM on Sat, Dec 15, 2018:
A pleasure to speak with @m_smieszek on her #HowWeAreHuman podcast in my original hometown of Budapest about traumas—national, racial, and individual—as well as violence, conflict, addiction, and being with our pain rather than acting it out on others. https://t.co/yLIjF8DQU8
(https://twitter.com/DrGaborMate/status/1073965878859964416?s=03)
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interview with Aaron Maté:
Is there something we can learn about ourselves from Russiagate’s all-consuming prevalence? @DrGaborMate joins me & @GrayzoneProject for a unique take on the psychological dynamics behind it: “America in Denial: Gabor Maté on the Psychology of Russiagate” https://t.co/hylvhiJXOp
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1125769455949185027
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Dr. Gabor Maté (@DrGaborMate) tweeted at 9:01 AM on Thu, Oct 10, 2019:
Thank you again to @rustyrockets for having me be a part of this special event. https://t.co/keozjJMmLy
(https://twitter.com/DrGaborMate/status/1182310279666814977?s=03)@oldvictheatre: ‘The stigma of mental illness vanishes when we realize we are all in the same boat. It cannot be otherwise: there is only one boat’ #WorldMentalHealthDay
there is only one boat.. the myth of normalcy by gabor
But suffering is not the same as disease.
To pathologize certain people as ‘mentally ill’ is to assume a baseline standard of normal ‘mental wellness’ met by the rest of humanity. Let’s dispense with this myth of normality.
The process we call mental illness also reflects the nature of the political, social, cultural and economic environment in which we are reared and in which we live, work, love and seek to be loved.
ie: the sea world of whales in sea world when we could be humans in ie: rat park
Fromm wrote, ‘mental health cannot be defined in terms of the “adjustment” of the individual to his society, but, on the contrary… it must be defined in terms the adjustment of society to the needs of man, of its role in furthering or hindering the development of mental health. Whether or not the individual is healthy is primarily not an individual matter but depends on the structure of his society’…t
whales in sea world when we could be humans in ie: rat park
perhaps 2 convers as our infrastructure would get at our deepest needs ie: maté basic needs; almaas holes law; ..
As Fromm says, it is to the very nature of a society we must look when seeking to understand the sources of mental illness or health. For ultimately, as humans, we are biopyschosocial creates, a fancy word that simply means our biology—including the biology of our brains—is inseparable from our psychological processes or from the social environment throughout the lifetime
The dynamic nature of what we call mental illness also means that healing is possible— it is the same dynamic moving in the other direction, from fragmented to whole. Healing is not the same as pharmacologically suppressing symptoms..t Medications may have a role, as I can both professionally and personally testify, but they are not the answer because they do not address the fundamental trauma of disconnection from the self and from safe and nurturing social affiliations—the disconnection at the core of all psycho-emotional distress and symptomatology. The best case would be that medications allow those who need them the space to do this deeper work.. t
aka: bi as temp placebo
ie: money (any form of measuring/accounting) as the planned obsolescence to get at the root of healing
The stigma of mental illness vanishes when we realize we are all in the same boat. It cannot be otherwise: there is only one boat. In my work with severely addicted people, with depressives, with schizophrenics, with men and women challenged by bipolar tendencies, I have never met one whose dynamics, to one degree or another, I could not recognize in myself.
i know you ness
best med/cure – work on augmenting our interconnectedness
As for healing, although the search for wholeness is a highly personal process, it is equally an expression of a universal capacity that inheres within all of us. It means finding the lost connection to ourselves, for which we require—beyond the limitations of medical diagnoses—compassionate contact with other human beings who can support the very same needs that were not satisfied at some essential points in our lives: the needs for love, belonging, acceptance, and meaning.May we all, my fellow beings in normalcy and dysfunction, attain the ultimate sanity of connection with our true selves, with one another, and with the Creation that lies beyond yet embraces us all.
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from march 2018 interview with tim and gabor – 2:23 hrs – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9B5mYfBPlY] – tweet link below is to 6 min clip
15 min – someone once called me a people whisperer.. always to bring insight and liberation to people
30 min – defn of addiction
40 min – not talking about abuse.. but stressed parent.. tuning out is a coping mech.. programmed to brain.. shaped by environ.. create problems.. ie: add; addiction; depression.. in long run.. from pushing it down because can’t endure/escape the pain
2:00 – that’s what trauma is.. we don’t respond to the present.. we respond to the past
tweet that intro’d me to interview:
Always great to revisit this lively conversation @tferriss . https://t.co/DkYnMPaPyY
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/DrGaborMate/status/11903073775868231693 min – what tools to use to get to why the pain rather than why the addiction.. g: i call it compassionate inquiry
5 min – need to know what trauma is.. trauma is not what happens to you.. it’s what happens inside you.. disconnected from self.. neg view of world/self.. defensive view of other people.. issue is not to recognize what happened many years ago.. but to recognize how they manifest in the present.. then recovery – find self again.. loss of self is the essence of trauma.. real purpose of any kind of healing is reconnection..t
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june 2019 – Dr Gabor Maté on Childhood Trauma, The Real Cause of Anxiety, Our ‘Insane’ Culture and Ayahuasca – 28 min video
“When I talk about being connected to ourselves, I’m talking about actually knowing what we feel and experience in a given moment, and being able to interpret that appropriately. You’ve never met an infant who’s not connected with its gut feelings. By the time you talk to adults, you find many people who even if they have their gut feelings, they ignore them. Something happens between infancy and adulthood that disconnects us. What that is, is our need for acceptance by our environment.”
See the full interview discussing how widespread trauma is in modern society, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7pV0IPWUlI.
28 min video:
i’m an imposter.. i’ve written books and give talks.. but all i’m saying is .. treat children well and they’ll be fine.. don’t and they won’t
3 min – greek word for trauma is wound.. healing involves scar tissue.. bigger wound.. bigger scar.. loss of feeling, reduced flexibility.. a psychic wound that hardens/pains you.. whole life regulated by fear and pain.. trauma isn’t what happens to you.. it’s what happens inside you
5 min – very few people grow up fully untraumatized in this culture..
6 min – also less resilient.. because resilience requires connection
7 min – most people.. and legal system.. ed system.. knows very little about trauma.. so end up punishing rather than rehabilitating
connected to self – knowing self.. feelings.. et al
9 min – we were born w that capacity.. never met an infant not connected to gut feelings.. by the time talk to many adults.. many don’t even have gut feelings.. because they ignore them.. so something happens from infancy to adulthood that disconnects us.. what is that..t
not yet scrambled ness
what that is is the need for acceptance by our environ.. if our environ cannot/will-not accept our gut feelings and healthy emotions.. then the child in order to belong and fit in will automatically/unwittingly/unconsciously repress/suppress emotions and connection to self for the sake of staying connected to the nurturing environ.. w/o which the child can’t survive.. t
10 min – a lot of children are in this dilemma.. do i feel/express what i feel or do i have to suppress that in order to be acceptable.. to be a good/nice kid..t
if parent isn’t in touch with self.. can’t tolerate the child’s feelings.. react in anger.. and the child learns.. i mustn’t feel what i feel.. because i have to belong to my parents.. a tragic choice.. not even a choice.. automatic.. then we get into adulthood.. and.. i don’t even know who i am..t
11 min – fit w econ ..(study/report this summer .. 80% of males in canada stressed in jobs) .. econ needs people who will go into meaningless/drudgery/intolerable (jobs) .. but will put up with it.. so there’s a confluence with the needs of the econ and the way we parent kids.. t
bs jobs et al
the more disconnected kids are .. the more they can fit into the econ.. t.. that doesn’t care about human feelings.. just cares about profit and production.. so just a cycle..
new book – myth of normal in an insane culture
12 min – if you look at sanity as something that’s congruent w human nature/needs.. never mind nature.. just look at needs.. for meaning/connection/validation/belonging/transcendence.. and look at those as needs.. this society is insane because it tramples on those human needs.. that’s what makes it insane.. so normal in society.. they’re conforming to an insane standard
writing another book with my son: hello again.. a fresh start for adult children and their parents
14 min – (on anxiety and panic attacks) in general.. all mental health disorders originates in childhood experience as a coping mech
cope\ing ness
afraid when we’re threatened.. child’s biggest need.. attachment w parent.. so should feel fear when not around.. and when parent is responding to their (natural) parent instinct.. they will respond when child cries out..
15 min – what happens to a person who’s parents are taught not to pick up kids when crying.. now that natural fear that causes the crying.. which brings the parent.. which ends the anxiety .. is embedded in the child.. so what begins as a coping mech.. now becomes generalized
16 min – so .. when i have that anxiety when there’s no immediate threat.. what is that about.. it’s not a response to anything external.. it’s the embedded anxiety that i developed as a child.. in a society that makes people more isolated all the time (so a cry for some desperate help from childhood trauma – normal – needs relief)
18 min – the more you get to know yourself.. the freer you are.. whatever you bring out of self.. will free you.. whatever you don’t will kill you
19 min – align your psyche w body..
20 min – on ayahuasca – under proper circumstances.. can relive childhood experiences.. w the insight of an adult.. so get to know true nature.. get to make friends w it.. a romanticized version.. sometimes just get a stomach ache.. and for some.. fears can be very difficult.. not for everybody.. but for a lot of people can be profound journeys into the soul
but .. an adult not in tune w self.. no? – insight in need of detox
24 min – endometriosis.. fibromyalgia.. all from childhood trauma.. stresses from suppressing self.. their disease is their body saying no
25 min – (advice to 18 yr old) – i was trying to fix the world.. because of stuff i was suppressing.. so.. get to know yourself.. combine curiosity about self.. curiosity means .. you really don’t know.. really open to finding out .. and open to any kind of outcome.. that takes a lot.. because people are afraid of what they will find
26 min – so to 18 yr old self.. relax.. the world is benign.. it will support you.. use it to support yourself.. get to know yourself.. not on selfish needs.. but on real needs.. don’t neglect one (inside) for the other (outside)
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from gabor and russell on virus ness here:
Pandemics & Infodemics – Wisdom In The Time Of Covid-19 | Russell Brand & Dr. Gabor Mate – 25 min video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FEoQOurpGo]
17 min – g: bruce alexander .. written 2nd book on addiction.. called – globalization of addiction.. about dislocation.. addiction is mark of social dislocation.. people were dislocated from the commons.. gave rise to gin craze
very deep.. perhaps we try to get commoning ness back..
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be you. 