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

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (01:27):
You can be yourself or you can be accepted, but
not both at the same time. At some point you
start wondering who the heck are we? Anyway, you know
him as the best selling author I have a number
of books for his work on.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
The relationship between addiction and childhood development. Please help me
welcome doctor Gabor Mate.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
The top regrets of people who die before that time?
You know what it is that they weren't themselves. They
spent the whole life time to please others. That's the
top regret.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
How do we fix broken people? Before we jump into
this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this
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(02:14):
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Speaker 2 (02:19):
The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Jay Sheidy, Jay Sheddy see nsy Holy sid Hey everyone,
Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health and
wellness podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
one of you that keep coming back every week to
become happier, healthier and more healed. Now, today's guest is
someone that you absolutely adore, that you love, that I

(02:45):
admire so deeply. I feel honored whenever I'm in his presence.
I'm a huge fan and follower of his work, and
I would also like to say that we've been developing
a little bit of a friendship behind the scenes, which
I'm very grateful for as well. I'm speaking about the
one and only Gable Matte, who spent twenty years working
in family practice and palliative care experience and worked for

(03:07):
over a decade in Vancouver's downtown East Side with patients
challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. Gabor is the
best selling author of five books, including the award winning
in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Close Encounters with Addiction.
Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker, highly sought after for

(03:27):
his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship
of stress and illness. And Gabo's latest book, The Myth
of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture,
remains a best seller globally, and I highly recommend you
get a copy if you haven't already. If you have
a copy, grab one for a friend. And really this

(03:49):
would be my recommendation. Make it your book club pick,
for your local book club, for your online book club.
Make it a book that you discuss and share. Please
welcome back to on Purpose Gabble. Let's say thank you
for being here. I am fondly remembering not only the
last interview we had, but the last time we were
together in Vancouver, when I saw you just before my

(04:11):
show and we spent a few moments together, and I
genuinely look forward to seeing you whenever I can, so
thank you for doing this well.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
It's such a pleasure. And I remember bicycling down to
your hotel and I wasn't in a great state, and
we talked and that helped the grant me. And then
I think it was my idea that we should meditate together,
and we did and I was just so helpful for me.
So it's just good to sit with you in any capacity.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Now. Well, I remember I walked away from last time's
conversation both times, the first time we recorded and second
time from that. And I always feel you create tiny
mini shifts in my mindset through very subtle points you make.
And it takes someone who's deeply studied their subject, not
just theoretically but practically to be able to do that.

(04:59):
So thank you. But let's dive straight in. I want
to ask you this question. I've been I've had the
burning desire to ask you this question. So I read
this quote the other day and it says it's by
Frederick Douglas and the quote goes, it is easier to
build strong children than fix broken men. And my question was,

(05:23):
how do we fix broken people?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
There's a wonderful song by Leonard Khne called come Heal
or come Healing, so it begins, or gather up the brokenness,
bring it to me now, the fagance of those promises
you never dared to vow. And then he says, at
some point, and here's the answer to your question or

(05:47):
troubledness concealing and undivided love the heart beneath his teaching
to the broken heart above. So this poet prophet, poet
visionary thing, we have two hearts. There's the brokenness above
and the underdighted love that's below, that's underneath. He's saying,

(06:08):
there's the broken heart above, and then there's a heart
beneath that teaching the broken heart. So that implied in
that is that nobody's broken. Then underneath the brokenness there's wholeness.
So and that's not only Leonard Cohen. Any spiritual teachers
you know will tell you the same thing. So it's

(06:31):
not a matter of fixing anything broken, it's it's finding
the wholeness that's underneath the brokenness. Now, Douglas is totally right.
Studies have shown that if you get children who suffer
for the first three years and then things get okay
for them, they do much worse than those children who

(06:52):
are well treated and have a good life for three
years and then everything goes to pieces. The latter group
does much better because those words are it says the
child is the father of the man, so that what
happens early in life shapes our worldview and our sense
of ourselves. So yes, Douglas is totally right. But ultimately,

(07:13):
when I look at people, whether they agree with me
or don't, or whether they are suffering or not, or
whether they even when they do terrible things, there's a wholeness.
There's undivided love underneath it isn't there. There's a shore
right now in Los Angeles by somebody who's in a

(07:34):
death row prison in Texas and his name's Obi, sentenced
to death and he's on death row, has been for
the last twenty years a while these appeals wind their
slow way through the courts. If he wins the appeal,
the best think you can hope for is life without parole.

(07:54):
And he's in love with life. He's had a transformation,
he's dealt with his addiction, he's dealt with his brokenness.
He learned meditation. He's an artist, and some of his
artists being shown in Los Angeles right now. Unfortunately I
can't go see it because it's only open certain days

(08:14):
a week and I'm not here. But there's somebody who
came from a totally broken childhood and found a kind
of presence. If you saw him, you and I could
only envy the kind of presence and at least to
speak for myself, can't speak for the kind of presence
and the kind of engagement life that he's got in

(08:35):
the death ro a person, Well, if that can be healed,
if that brokenness, the wholeness can be under discovered underneath,
there's not be broken.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Very well said, I would agree to. At the core,
at the root of the essence, none of us are broken. Yeah,
and our engagement with that which is broken and imperfect
often rubs off on us. But what would you say
the most detrimental experiences that people have in those three

(09:08):
years that end up creating horrific ripple effects long term.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Anything that makes them disconnects from themselves, from their true cels,
from their gut feelings, from their connection to their bodies.
Anything that deprives them of hope. Now, I remember taking
part in a retreat once. It's called an enlightenment intensive,
where you do intensive spiritual work. I won't go into

(09:37):
the details, but please go into the detail. Well, it's
it's diads and two people at one time, sitting across
from each other in the meditation posture, putting a question
to one another. First, one person ask the other one
listens and then the search places for four times, and
then you get a different partner and the question is,

(10:00):
tell me who you are. The original question comes from
Ramana Maharshi, who's work, I'm sure you know, one of
these Indian Rishis and gurus, who just asked everybody, tell
me who you are. And the idea is that by
emptying your mind and saying whatever is in your head,
clearing out the mental space, the direct experience of who

(10:23):
you are will come to you, a direct experience, not
a thought, not an emotion, but a direct experience. No,
I never had the direct experience, and I was embittered
at the end, and that the very last diad person
said tell me who you are? And I just started
shaking and the whole body was tinging, And instead of

(10:47):
paying attention to that, I plunged into bitterness, and I said,
is it my fault? They turned off the light in me.
They killed the light in me so early, so I
truly believed that the light in me had been killed
by what had happened to me as an infant. And

(11:08):
for much of my life even I had to become
a healer. And even after I became a healer that
was respected by so many people. I thought I could
help heal everybody else, but I can't be healed myself.
So to go back to your question, whatever early experience
kills you of faith in your own possibilities, that's what's

(11:31):
so damaging. And for that, it could be evidence or
experiences of severe abuse. It could also be a very
sensitive child who the world doesn't see for who they are,
who the world doesn't permit to express themselves, so they
shut off from themselves, you know, to be accepted by

(11:51):
the world. So any early experience that deprives you of yourself,
and that happens to a lot of us. So trauma
is a huge specter. But anything that breaks your connection
to yourself and you and your genuine, not your false
egoic belief in yourself, but your genuine belief in your wholeness,

(12:12):
that'll do it, and that happens to a lot of us.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
I've always personally experienced it as the volume of my
inner voice. Yes, so I found that at different points
in my life my inner voice was extremely loud and clear,
and not only could I hear it clearly, but the

(12:37):
direction was clear. And then I've had moments in my
life where as you're referencing disconnected from yourself. Yeah, that
voice is extremely quiet, maybe even non existent, or it's
screaming out for help.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
It's I mean, the voice of your and yourself is
very quiet, correct, it can. Well, the Bible talks about
the small still voice. They actually call it that, a
small still voice, and it really takes attention to notice
it because there's so much noise in the world, and
so much noise in her heads, and there's all these
other voices that are much louder, you know. The singer

(13:17):
Sheryl Crowe, she had breast cancer and she said afterwards,
and this could be and I quote this in The
Metal Normal and it could be right out of my
own work. But she doesn't know about me. She just
came to this awareness because the disease start or something.
And she said that she always used to be serving
other people and trying to meet other people's emotional needs,

(13:37):
and the breast cancer. Now she's actually listening to herself.
And she says, there used to be these loud voices
inside myself telling me that whatever I did wasn't right enough.
She says, now I've still those voices, you know. So
on the one hand, the voices of self disregard and
self loathing or self seduction are very loud, and that

(14:01):
two voice, for most of us is just so quiet,
so it takes a lot of attention to notice it.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
A lot of what you're saying today, we experience it
as this idea of people pleasing, shape shifting, mediating, wanting
to make peace, often in our families, in our friend circle,
all of which are can be good, noble things, but

(14:32):
often we find ourselves disconnected from ourselves trying to play
these different roles. Not only does that seem to be
stemming from a form of trauma of being disconnected from
yourself early on, what steps can one take to regain
one's connection with oneself so that we're not running around

(14:53):
shape shifting people pleasing, but at the same time have
genuine connections with others.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
In the book, we talk about the tension between authenticity
and attachment, and authenticity being connected to our true selves,
our God feelings, which is necessary. Nature gave us a
good feelings for good reason and give us the emotions
for a good reason. Attachment is a need to belong,
and if it can be authentic and belong, that's ideal.

(15:20):
So if if you can find relationships. I mean, you
can be our true selves and be accepted and loved.
That's ideal, but a lot of our families of origin
and our parents just couldn't give that to us. They
had their own limitations. They couldn't see us, so they
don't traumise like I did as a parent. And so

(15:40):
kids then get the message that you can be yourself
or you can be accepted, but not both at the
same time. At which point, for sure, survival stay, for sure,
survival's sake, we go with, well, whatever we need to
do to get accepted, and then we get that message
reinforced in school and on the playground and with our
pa years and at our work, and at some point

(16:04):
start wondering, who the heck are we anyway? And whose
life am I leading? Anyway? Well, how to get back
to it? Here's the question prior to your awakening, and
I'm sure that for your awakening was probably both a
series of unique events, but also it was a long

(16:27):
term process. For me, it was mostly process rather than
distinct experiences. But say, prior to awakening, did you sometimes
know that you're not being authentic? Because I sure did.
I didn't know why I was choosing not to be authentic.
If I wasn't even choosing it, I just wasn't. But

(16:48):
something you meannew Well, here's the question. Who inside us
knows only that authentic self that's always there. And so
I say to people, don't try and look for the
authentic self. Just notice when you're not authentic. Just notice
when you're not saying no, when there's a note that

(17:09):
wants to be said. Just see what you're not saying yes,
but there's a yes that wants to be said inside you.
Notice the impact on you when you don't assert your
true self. How do you feel after its resentful or
shamed or tired or whatever. So notice the difficulty being

(17:31):
authentic and ask yourself, well, what is the belief that
I'm caring that? If I'm authentic, then what? So in
other words, all that noticing, what does that do? Who's
the one that's noticing it is the authentic self. So
just by asking those questions, you're strengthening, you're empowering that

(17:53):
authentic self. And just going back to that, the heart
underneath is teaching booken art. Above all that wholeness is
teaching the disconnection. It's always there.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
I find that in between those two hearts and in
between those two layers, there's almost a layer of guilt
and shame. So when we go against our authentic self,
we do it because we're scared of whether we feel
guilty or we may feel shame or fear. And if

(18:28):
we act authentically, we then sometimes feel guilt for acting
that way because of how it impacts others, or shame
and fear. So walk me through the construction of fear
and guilt and shame, which seemed to be such like
if you thought about the emotions we all experience most

(18:48):
on a daily basis, I mean, let me ask you that, actually,
what do you think? What are the emotions that you
believe people are experiencing most often, most repetitively on a
daily base says I.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Was going to give you an easy answer to the
shame guild fair question, but then you threw a curveball.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Sorry I went off. I following I'm following my authentic voice.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
No, I love I love curveballs. I just have to
think about it. So what are the emotions people experience?
My stuff? And I think anger, rage, and resentment. I
think there's a lot more of that than we acknowledged,
not often unacknowledged, experienced but not acknowledged for fear of consequences.

(19:34):
I think also love, that'd be also enough often afraid
to acknowledge because it's so vulnerable. And we might see,
if I want you to love me, but I'm afraid
to be vulnerable, then I may try to impress you,
which may be the closest thing I can get, so
that you'll pay attention to me, you know, so that

(19:57):
emotions shame, I think is very frequent for a lot
of people. That has to do with trauma more than
anything else. Fear is something that people experience a lot,
much more than they can admit to themselves. Joy people
are not so afraid of it. Well you know what
that might be. Joy has been very difficult for me

(20:19):
in my life, and I think some point of actually
some part of me used to say, what right do
I have to feel joy when there's so much suffering
in the world. Now that's logically a good question, but
it's a nonsensical question why Because there is a lot
of suffering in the world and there's a lot of
joy in the world, and the one doesn't negate the other.

(20:42):
So for me it was like, what right do I
have to experience joy when my grandparents died in ashoals.
I quote this in the Myth of Normal. My friend
and colleague and teacher Besil Vanderkolck, psychiatrist who wrote the
book The Body Keeps the Score. He said to me,
once go or you don't have to drag our shirts

(21:04):
around with you all the time, which means that you
don't have to allow not to forget about our shirts,
but not to let that control your consciousness, which means
you do have the right to feel joy. You do
have the right to be happy even as the world suffers,
not because the world suffers, and not ignoring the suffering

(21:25):
the world. But there's no contradiction.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Let's dive into some of those emotions because and I
love how they were easy answers for you and then
the curve world. But I think, as you said, fear
is a repetitive daily emotion thought for so many people,
a lack of safety emotionally, mentally, physically, on so many levels,

(21:50):
we feel unsafe. Yeah, how does one process and heal
through and with fear? Because it seems to be so consistent.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
The way that fear shows up in most people's lives
is in the form of anxiety. See, we are wired
for fear. There's a great nurse psychologist died a few
years ago before his time, doctor Panksep, and he identified
all these emotional circuits that we share with other mammals,
and fear was one of them. We have a circuity

(22:22):
for fear, a good thing. We're not afraid we die
are there in nature, you know. But that can become anxiety.
So let me tell you a story. I want to
show you. There's bracelet that I'm arning.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
It is beautiful, and I never thought at everybody wearing
a bracelet, but I was given this just shortly after
the time that I met you. And this comes from
a place called Haida Guai and either Guay's Islands in
northern British Columbia where I live. There used to be
known as well. They used to be known as Hideaguai
them at the British colonization they became known as the
Queen Charlotte Islands. That's really fun because I was speaking

(23:01):
in London once actually a couple of months ago, to
an audience of twenty one hundred Britishers, and I said,
does anybody in this audience know who the hell Queen
Charlotte was. Nobody knew. Apparently she was some German princess
who married King George the Matt King George who was

(23:23):
King of England when America became independent anyway, so the
British came, they named it Queen Charlotte Islands. All of
a sudden, these indigenous people, whose ancestors have been living
there for something like thirteen thousand years, all of a
sudden they were living on not on high to Go anymore,
which means land of the people, but they were living

(23:43):
in Queen Charlotteland. So I was giving a trauma workshop
there for hider people. That's when they gave me this bracelet.
And the meaning of the carvings means these words matter.
At the end of two days, almost at the very
end of the trauma workshop for the height of people,
a woman in her seventies at least comes up and

(24:04):
she said, I used to speak perfect Haida until I
was five years old, and then I forgot my language.
And even when I've gone back to school as an
adult to learn my native language, the words don't stick
in my brain. And I said, what happened to you, Well,
what happened to her. She went to the residential school.

(24:28):
Residential schools over the Indiandous kids were forced to go
run by the churches mostly, and she dared speak her
native language, and the teacher took a stick and beat
her mercilessly in her body and her head and her limbs. Oh,
native kids. In my own lifetime is when I was
a teenager in British Columbia, a four year old Indian

(24:51):
they're not Indian, Indigenous Canadian, a First Nation kid spoke
their own language. That have a pin stuck in her tongue,
so they literally as I said to her, look, you're
losing your language. Was your organism protecting you. It was
your fear system telling you that if you do that again,

(25:13):
you know you might not survive. Because she hated herself
for it. She hated herself, hate herself for the anxiety.
She hated herself because I was so passive, she said.
I said that passivity was your organism's only way to
protect you, because had you fought back, or had you

(25:37):
asserted your right to speak your language, much worse would
happened to you. So that fear protected her. But it
translates into anxiety where it's no longer fear of a
specific thing, it's just fear of the world. Now the
rate of anxiety, so we have a system for fear.

(26:01):
And the greatest danger to a young child is the
loss of relationship, because without relationship can't survive. I mean,
we're protected, we're defenseless, we're vulnerable, we'll helpless. So the
loss of protective adults is the biggest fear that the
child has. In this society, a lot of parents can't
be there for their kids the way they need to be,
the way they want to be because of the stresses economic, social, racial,

(26:26):
pot goal, whatever they're going through, just the nature of
the disconnected culture that we live in. Parents are not
there for the kids the way the children need to be.
The fear becomes chronic anxiety that we're never safe, and
now that becomes part of our sense of self. So
what you say, but this lack of emotional safety, what

(26:47):
it actually is is that early childhood fear is when
the child is afraid, they will ask for help, but
when repeatedly the help is not available and the adults
don't come because they're too busy to stress to traumatize,
to be occupied, to downtrodden, or too propagandized by parenting

(27:09):
experts to ignore their kids' cries. That ty gets the
message that there's no safety, So that original fear that's
meant to result in a cry for help not becomes
chronic anxiety. So fear not dealt with gets ingrained as anxiety.
It's no longer going but anything specific, it's just being

(27:33):
in the world is a source of fear, but you
shouldn't be.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
It almost feels like, as you were saying, that what
should result in a cry for help externally, yeah, becomes
a perpetual cry internally without a feeling of being able
to help yourself exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
You know that Beatles song help Help, I need somebody,
not just anybody, and John Nnen sings, and he was
a very traumatized child, as you know, whose father left
him when he was born, and whose mother abandoned him
a few years later. And then he sings in his song,
when I was younger, so much younger than today, I

(28:15):
never needed anybody's helping anyway. But now those days are gone.
I'm not so self assured. So I opened the door,
you know, please help me. No that's not the way
it was. When he was younger, so much younger than today.
He needed everybody's help in every way, but because the
help wasn't available, he had to shut himself down and

(28:37):
make himself so like a self created, self sufficient person.
Only later on as they realized, you know what, I
actually do need help. But he was never that person
who didn't need He just believed they didn't need help.
Why did believe that as an adaptation because the help
wasn't there. So so many of us. One of the
biggest things that people are faith to do is to

(28:57):
ask for help when I get workshops, and I myself
as my automatic reaction when somebody offers help, Oh no,
it's okay, I'm fine, even though the help would be
very welcome.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
You know, how do you find that? Because I feel
so many people today have someone in their life who's
closed off from help. It might be a partner, it
might be a child, it might be a parent. We
all have someone in our life who, in our limited
capacity but a little bit of awakening, we can notice

(29:33):
that someone is really closed and won't receive help. How
do you help someone who is rejecting help or not
accepting that they may need it because of the position
they've experienced based on what you just said.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
I myself used to believe I was one of these people.
I actually used to believe. Can you believe this? I
used to believe that every bils could be stressed, but
I couldn't be. I used to feel like that too,
that I can help. I can help everybody, but I
don't need help myself, you know. Yeah, So how do
you help something that you help them by accepting them

(30:10):
That's what it is for them right now, and not
trying to push your help on them, because when you
try and push up, you're just going to get resistance.
So you if you can handle it, you can be
around them and be open, but not insist or try
and improve to them that they need help. Life will
teach them. When I meditate these days, I do the
Compassion meditation, which says, you know that may I face

(30:35):
and overcome all of life's inevitable setbacks and challenges and
failures with patients understanding strength and determination, and may I
rise above them with compassion and morality and integrity and
wisdom and mindfulness. If we can stare on people compassionately

(30:56):
without trying to prove to them that they need something
that they don't believe they need. Then at some point
life will being a challenge that may prove to them that, yeah,
they need help. And if you're still around open, then
they'll reach out to you if you try and convince them,

(31:16):
bring them over, prove it to them, force it on them.
And I believe I've done that. I've done it with
my own family, I've done it with others. You just
invade resistance. So the best way to help people is
not to help unless the help is invited.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
And that's almost what most of us don't want to
hear because we want to again, going back to our
earlier point, we want to fix and solve and make
everything nice and perfect right now. Yeah, And I guess
that is also a form of trauma. There's something there
as to why we want that.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
And when I write about people who are prone for
chronic illness, it's often people like autoimmune disease, for example.
It's often and this is not just finding. Other researchers
have found this as well, that there are people who
tend to ignore their own emotional needs and are compulsively
consumed with the emotional needs of others. And they tend

(32:17):
to believe that in a metanormal I quote an obituary
and obituaries are really interesting to me because they often
highlight as laudable qualities the very things that I think
contributed to a person's death.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Let's talk about.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, there was a book written by an Australian nurse
twelve years ago now called The Top Five Regrets of
Dying People. And she, like I used to work in
pallid of care, working with dying people, as you mentioned
in the introduction, and for seven years I was the
medical coordinator of Big palliad of Care and the Dying

(32:54):
People at Vancouver Hospital. And this nurse, also a poet
of care health worker, wrote book the Top five Regret,
the top regrets of people who died before that time.
You know what it is that they weren't themselves, That
they spent a whole life trying to please others. That's
the top regret. Now, this this obituary, you have to

(33:15):
believe that I'm not making us up. This is a
physician in Canada with that age seventy two of cancer,
and the obituary says Sydney and his mother had an
incredibly special relationship a bomb that was apparent in all
aspects of their lives until her death. As a married
man with young children, Sydney would have dinner with his

(33:37):
parents every day. Then he would go home as his wife,
Roslyn and their three children waited for him with another,
yet another dinner to eat and to enjoy. Not wanting
to disappoint either woman in his life, Sydney kept eating
two dinners a day for years until gradual Waitkane began

(33:58):
to raise suspicions. This man suffered from two fatal beliefs.
And when I say fatal, I mean fatal. One is
that he was responsible for other people feel and the
other is that he was never disappointing anybody. Now, so
many of us go through life like that. You know, no, actually,
I'm not responsible for how you feel. I'm responsible for

(34:21):
how I act, for how I speak, what I do,
and what I say. I'm not responsible for how you feel.
In response, when you were in Vancouver and you contacted me,
and if I hadn't feel like seeing you, but I
hadn't slept all night, say because I was up with
some other duty or looking after somebody, and if I

(34:43):
had said yes and still come, make you for coffee
because I had fear of disappointing you, and because I
didn't want you to feel disappointed. What would that have
meant for me? It would have meant for me more fatigue,
and probably I would have resented the hell out of you,
even though I was pretending to be that. You know,
you know, thank God and you. On the other hand,

(35:06):
if I said no, if I was authentic and I said, look, Jerry,
I'm sorry, I'm so glad you're in town, but I
was up all night, I just you know, now, if
he had felt hurt and perceived yourself as rejected by me,
that's not on me. That's your interpretation of my behavior.
Nothing do with me. I just said what was true

(35:28):
for me. So but that fear of disappointment. Had I
been afraid to disappoint you because I don't want to
lose your friendship, and I don't want to lose your friendship.
But if I believe that, if I'm authentic, I'm going
to lose Jay's friendship. That's going to keep me in authentic.
And you never know me, and even when you like me,
there's still going to be a fear in me. What

(35:50):
if he really knew me, you know, so it doesn't
even work. But we're we're so afraid of disappointing others.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
And then one day I may feel we have an
authentic friendship because I can notice that you're not being
fully yourself. Yeah, and then then I can even feel
that way you can let me down even by trying
to be everything I wanted you to be. That's what
I find so fascinating in life, is that you can
let someone down even after becoming everything you thought they

(36:18):
wanted you to be.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Well, exactly, Well, go back to the example of coffee.
If I said to you, Jay, I'm sorry I can't
do today, which honors you more. If I believe that
you're so we can vulnerable that you can't handle or no,
or if I honor you by telling you the truth,

(36:39):
which shows you more respect.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Definitely there, so that.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
I can be everything you want to be and still
not honor you.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Yes, Yeah, it's fascinating how we can be so opposite
in our perceptions and viewpoints. Yeah, And a big part
of that comes also. We talked about fear, but I
wanted to talk about guilt because.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Oh yeah, guilt, guilt. We don't want to say about guilt.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
No, well, I want to hear from you about guilt.
But when I think of guilt, I think it's such
a strong driver for so many actions in the world today.
It is we're guilty of something in the past, and
therefore we do something strange in the future of the
present that we wouldn't have done. We feel guilty right now,

(37:29):
and that makes us say something that we don't mean,
or something that we exactly. How do we untrap ourselves
from the trappings of guilt?

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Great, Let me tell you a story so you know.
In the Bible, the Naild Testament, Moses is a Hebrew
boy born at a time when the Pharaohs soothsayers declare
that some Hebrew male born or his time will rise
up and challenge the pharaoh. So they decide to kill

(38:05):
all the Hebrew newborns by throwing him into the Nile River.
But Moses's mother rather than throws the boy into the river,
but in a ricker basket, and so Moses flows down
the river and he gets plucked out of the water
by the pharaoh's daughter, who adopts him. So this Hebrew

(38:29):
infant is adopted into the royal court feel like a
prince that's why Walt Disney could make a film called
Prince of Egypt. You know, all this happened just so
Walt Disney could make a film. In any case, there's
an extra biblical legend. It's not in the Bible, but

(38:49):
it's an ancient legend. You think, what the heck is
this guy talking about? It just asked them about guilt
and he's talking about No.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
I love this. This is my favorite type of ansense,
is when I'm curious and I'm following because I don't
know where.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
You're going, Okay, but believe It'm not going to come
back to believe.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
I believe, I trust you.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
So the legend is that Moses is a toddler and
the pair soothsayers divine that he might be a danger,
which eventually he proves to be, so they decide to
put him to a test. They put in front of
him too sparkling objects. I don't know if you remember, but
in the Bible, Moses is the speech impediment and it's

(39:25):
his brother Aaron who has to do the speaking for him.
How does he get the speech impediment? Well, the pharaoh
soothsayers say, well, this point needs to be examined. And
they decide to put him to a test, and they
put in front of him two sparkling objects. One of
them is a royal diamond of Egypt and the other is
a sparkling member of glowing member of coal. Now, if

(39:46):
Moses reaches for the royal diamond, it means he's got
oil ambition and he needs to be killed. So there
is this little toddler delightedly looking at these two scintillating objects,
and his hand starts moving towards the diamond, at which point,
standing behind him is Gabrielle. Gabrielle, which is the Hebrew

(40:09):
version of my name Gabor, by the way, and grabs
his hand and takes it away from the diamond and
puts it to the coal. Now, Moses, finishing the motion
that kids will do, picks up the coal, puts it
to his mouth and burns his lips. And that's how
he develops suspicion impediment. Now here's my question to you,

(40:30):
is the angel Moses's friend or enemy?

Speaker 1 (40:34):
He's trying to be a friend, but.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
But he heard him had to hurt him to save
his life. Right, he's a friend guilt is that kind
of a friend? Okay, Guilt comes on in early childhood,
not because you did anything wrong, but because your sense
that whatever you did displeased your parents and you can't

(40:56):
afford to do that. So there needs to be an
internal mechanism that keeps you close to your parents. That says,
for example, if you're authentic and you're sure your anger,
you won't be accepted. The better will be an internal
mechanism to keep you on track. So guilt comes along

(41:18):
as this friend that says, no, take your hand away
from where you want to put it. You have to
stifle your real desires. So guild comes along to maintain
a relationship, not because you did anything wrong, because the
two year old, three year old they can't do anything
wrong by definition. That may those things that are not good,
and they need to be taught not to do it.

(41:39):
But it's not wrong. There's no guilt there. There's no
I'm going to do something evil here, you know. So
guilt is totally not appropriate, and there's ways of teaching
children without guilt. But guilt comes along to keep you
in mind. Now is that you're friend or your enemy.

(42:01):
It's your friend, but it's hurting you. The problem with
these early friends and I call them sometime. People don't
like this word, but I say call them stupid friends.
The stupid that comes in the fact they don't realize
that you're an adult. You can make your own decisions
now and look after yourself. You don't need to be
controlled by their advice that was meant for a two
year old. So that's where they they're just not educable.

(42:26):
So when I say to people these days now, most
people who feel guilty when they act a little bit
on their own behalf. I say to them, for God's sakes,
have a party. Celebrate I've done something for myself. You
call your friends, you know, have a celebration that you
were so quote unquote selfish, Like Sheryl Crow said, all

(42:48):
these voices that always told her that she has to
ignore herself and serve others. Now she doesn't listen to
them anymore. That's the guilt. So you know, recognize the
guilt and say hello to it, thank it. Now. Is
there such a thing as health remorse? Yeah. If I
promise to meet you for coffee and I don't show
up because I find something more pleasurable to do, I

(43:12):
should feel some remorse. So remorse is about specific that's
healthy remorse. You know, if I break my word, if
I hurt somebody where I you know, I should feel remorse.
But that's not a long term thing. It's not the
chronic guilt that you're talking about. That's not something what
would happened a long time ago and now it limits

(43:34):
me or controls me. It's a healthy remorse for some
specific thing that's different from guilt. Guilt is this old
friend that's along outlived their usefulness.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
And the challenge is that we still treat it like
a today friend exactly. It's almost like we're so scared
of breaking that dependence as well. We thinking, well, I
feel guilty that I'm not around, so I'll stay around
this individual, this group of people, whatever it may be.

(44:08):
But there's a part of me that wants to depend
on them as well, and I don't want to break
free completely as well, because I don't even know what
that looks like. Like you're saying, like, as an adult,
you can take care of yourself, you can walk your
own path, but you're actually scared of doing that, and
so you accept the pain of guilt because it allows

(44:28):
for dependence.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Well, that's a good point that I often say to
people you're going to have pain one way to the other. Yes,
which pain would you like? Because sometimes in life there's
no pain for your options. You can have the pain
of suppressing yourself for the sake of being accepted, or
you can have the pain sometimes of being yourself and

(44:49):
not being accepted. You can have pain one way the other.
Now I have my own bias that the pain of
not being ourselves ultimately it is about far the greater
and the more chronic pain, and that the pain, the
short term pain of being ourselves brings liberation and genuine independence,

(45:10):
which means I can have genuinely independent the relationships with
other people who are willing to accept me as independent.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
You know.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
But in the short term, which pain do you want?
There's no pain for you options.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Yeah, for sure. That you reminded me of this beautiful
idea that Tikna Han shares, that there's familiar pain and
unfamiliar pain, and these are our two choices and the challenges.
We're so scared of unfamiliar pain that we would rather
choose familiar pain and go through the same pain because

(45:48):
we know how it's going to feel exactly, and we think,
or at least I'm aware at least I am conscious
of how bad it can get exactly. But hearing you
speak being independent or being dependent both as pain, Yeah,
but the pain of dependence far out weighs the pain

(46:10):
of independence.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Well, just put a bit of a nuance in there, ultimately,
I mean, I mean, technadon also talk about inter being.
How we all in there are so in a certain
sense we do depend on each other, you know, and
that's okay. The question is to be dependent in each
other authentically or inauthentically. The fact that I'm independent doesn't

(46:32):
mean that I'm not going to reach out for help
or that I won't offer it, But it does mean
that I will be honest with you, and I won't
pretend to be somebody else that I'm not so that
you will accept me. You know. So there's anything interesting
word difference between two phrases that sound very familiar. One

(46:54):
it's called individualism, and it's it's called individuation. Now, rugget.
In individualisms, I don't need anybody, and you know, me
against the world. And this is the North American capitalist ideal,
you know. Well, human beings never would have evolved. It
would been those rugged individualists, the rugged individus wouldn't last

(47:15):
more than one generation. But individuated means that we can
be ourselves, truly ourselves in genuine relationship with others, not
rugged individualists. I mean, the most boring people are rugged
individualists because they all look the same, you know. So

(47:39):
you can be individuated and be truly yourself and still
belong and still vulnerably desire human contact, you know.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, I can agree more. I think there's a lot
of rhetoric around we don't care what anyone else thinks
and it doesn't matter, and you just do your own thing.
And it's almost that's almost a bitter response as well,
because we do have to care what people think. If
we lived in a world where you didn't care what

(48:12):
anyone thought, yeah, it wouldn't be that healthy because we
would do all sorts of obscene, horrific things.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
I trace it differently.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
I'm intrigued, Yeah, I'm intrigued.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yeah, I don't care what anybody thinks, but I do
care what I do and how it affects other people,
you know. So there's another spiritual teacher, Gunner Rotana. He
wrote a book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I've
just been working through recently, and he's talking about a
higher morality that comes from being true to yourself as

(48:45):
any touch and he says, well, you don't need rules
anymore because it's like Saint Augustine said, love and do
it You're will. So if you actually love the world,
you don't have to give yourself rules because that love
will dictate it how you like towards other people, I
can't worry about what other people think. Look, if I

(49:05):
worry about other people think, I would not have written
any of my books because each of my books challenged
the reigning orthodoxy, insane medicine, you know, or whether it's
or under tention, devastated, or stress and disease or addictions.
And if I'm write a book, I'm saying something that
I'm not saying that I invented it, but that I've
come to understand and fervently believe and want to communicate.

(49:29):
But I can't worry about what other people think. Or
when I make a political statement, I'm responsible for what
I say, how I say it, but not what other
people think about it. But that doesn't mean that I
ignore other people's experience. So as long as my intention
is purely to speak a truth, and I do so

(49:49):
with integrity. I can't worry about what other people think.
I can't. But that doesn't mean I'm going to go
around just doing terrible things because I don't care what
you think as long as I convinced that what I do.
If I've done that kind of inventory, and I haven't always,
but if I do an inventory, But well, what is

(50:11):
my intention here?

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Is there a hierarchy of pain or hierarchy of trauma?

Speaker 2 (50:17):
What do you mean bierarchy?

Speaker 1 (50:18):
I feel like people feel like, well, this trauma is
worse than this trauma, and this trauma is better than
this one. We often hear about that as a conversation.
Is that accurate?

Speaker 2 (50:28):
So one could say so because if you look at
a child who says sexually abused as opposed to a
child whose parents just can't honor and accept and validate
their emotions, Well, my god, you're talking about two different
set of experiences, so that there's certainly horrific things happen

(50:51):
to some people to wound them, and other people suffer
wounds in a very different way. But the question is
is it useful to make that distinction. It's one thing
to recognize it, but let's say, let's say you're my
four year old. You come to me and you say
that I'm afraid of so and so, and I say,

(51:14):
snap out of it. Only cards are afraid and to
get out of here and take care of yourself. And
then you went to your mom. I said, I tried
to talk to daddy. But you know, would it be
helpful for your meta to say, oh, snap out of it.
Think all the kids that are being sexually abused, Think
all the starving kids, think all the kids that are
being bombed. What are you complaining about? Would that be helpful?

(51:37):
So that it's not a helpful game to play, I
don't compare people's traumas. Traumas simply means a wound, and
people are wounded in all kinds of ways. When I
try to help people, the least helpful thing I can
do is to tell them that somebody else's trauma is
much worse than mine, much worse than yours. So objectively, yes,
practically it's not a helpful distinction. People are wounded, and

(52:02):
you have to tend to the wound whatever it is.
You know, if you came to me with a cut
on your arm, and he asked me to stitch it up.
It wouldn't be helpful for me to tell you that, oh,
what are you worried about? There's people with broken irons
out there or people broken So no, it's not a
helpful thing to engage in, even though there's truth in it.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Yeah. What's really fascinating every time I speak to you,
girl boy, is that there's such nuance subtlety. And there's
a quote that I want to share with you to
get your thoughts on. I want to bring it up here.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
So this quote is from f Scott Fitzgerald, Okay, who
famously wrote the test of a first rate intelligence is
the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at
the same time and still retain the ability to function.

(52:59):
One should, for example, be able to see that things
are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Absolutely. So that's brilliant. And what Fitzgerald is talking about
there is what it's called integrative intelligence. And integrative intelligence
is when you can say, on the one hand, on
the hand, both things can be true, and I need
to somehow come to some conclusion about them without rejecting

(53:31):
the one truth or the other. Now, little kids are
totally incapable of integrative intelligence. So a three year will
either say I hate you, daddy or I love you daddy.
But they can't say I love you daddy, but I'm
very angry with you, which is really what's going on.
It's either a love or hate. So integrative thinking is
a capacity of intellectual and actually emotional naturation. A lot

(53:54):
of people are completely incapable of it. It's one or
the other. You talked about the the deadness of the
heart and the moral apathy, and all my life since
I've been conscious of the horrors, including and beginning with
the Holocaust that nearly killed me and killed my grandparents,

(54:20):
nearly killed my parents and I. When I became conscious
of that at age eleven, what happened was that my
parents had a book on a high shelf they didn't
want me to read. And when I was eleven, I
climbed up on a chair and it was a book
called The Scourge of the Swastika, and it was about
it was the first book about the Nancy horrors. And

(54:42):
I saw photographs and I read the story, and for
years jay afterwards, literally every day in my head would
be busy. I'd spin say, how is this possible. How
is the heart not broken every day? I'm asking you
now because I'm wrestling with this question. I suppose I
have an intellectual answer, or more a point maybe along
the lines of fish what Schell says, how can her

(55:03):
heart be broken and not be broken at the same time?
Because I think both are necessary.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
And I find everything all across the world that occurs.
I feel like people's hearts are broken, but they break
an ache for different things. And I think that that's
why the words of Fitzgerald resonate so strongly with me. Yeah,

(55:33):
because just to repeat those last two lines, one should,
for example, be able to see that things are hopeless,
yet be determined to make them otherwise. And you know
what you're saying. It's how I was trained in the
monastery as well. The goal was always how can you

(55:55):
be a helper? How can you be a server? How
can you be useful? How can you help heal? Like
that's what you look for in moments of tragedy, whatever
they may be. And I just think that not much
unites us on the heart level as equals across the world.

(56:20):
I don't think there's many things that we look to
globally as the human race, as we were once referred
to a call to that creates a sense of connectivity
and there's genuine fear that makes us feel well, if
my break my heart breaks for this, then what if

(56:42):
what will happen to my heart?

Speaker 2 (56:44):
That the grief might be too much to bear?

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah? Or not? That I mean more so that well,
if my heart breaks for this event, some part of
it is yes, there's too much to think about, for sure,
it's overwhelming. And then the other side is, well, if
it breaks for this, then is it allowed to break
for that as well? You know, this idea of holding

(57:07):
two opposing ideas seems to be such a need in
the world, like just generally, like even the belief of
I have to work on my health, that I'm happy,
I'm alive, Like these are two opposing ideas, Like we're
not looking at it from I'm unhealthy or I'm healthy.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Well, you know what's interesting there is that when I
was working palliative care, sometimes people would say to me,
and this is amazing, I don't recommend it, but they'd
say they'd be dying, they actually be dying. They'd have
a couple of weeks left. They say, Dog, I don't
explain this exactly. But this disease is the best thing
that have happened to me. I don't wish it on anybody.

(57:46):
But what were they talking about? Now? There's a guy
according the mythal normal who wrote a book called Blessed
with a Brain tumor. Blessed with a brain tumor. You're
Australian guy who was dying. Was a brain tumor, they'd
have surgery, did accept treatment. He also had a spiritual transformation,

(58:09):
has lived longer than his prognosis. I don't know what
his current status is, but we're a book called Blessed
with the Brain Tumor. And by the way, he developed
a brain tumor that is acted the same spot that
used to point at with an imaginary gun to shoot
himself in the head when he was thinking of suicide.
I said, what do you mean Blessed with the brain tumor?

(58:31):
And he said, well, knowing that I'm going to die,
but that I might means that every moment is precious.
He says. That means I'm when I'm talking to you
or anybody else, I'm fully aware that this may be
the last conversation we'll ever have. That means that every
moment is absolutely precious. I've never been so engaged with life,

(58:53):
and that's what people meant. And so that even the disease,
that war was going to take the lives, they'd say,
And why because the disease taught them to be authentic
for the first time in their lives, and they found
out that was much more precious than anything else. No,
that's not a bargain i'd recommend to anything. I'm just
telling you that I've witnessed it, and it's quite astonishing

(59:18):
how many people do find authenticity. To go back to
our previous theme, they value that over anything else, over
even longevity. Now most of us would probably run the
other way. Again, I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying
I've seen it.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Yeah, but it's always those opposing ideas, that feeling of
I'm good and I want to be better. Yeah, I'm
a good husband or a good dad, or a good mom,
or I'm a good whatever. At the same time, I'm
not good enough, like you know whatever. It may be.
Not that that's negative, but the idea of I know

(59:56):
I can do more and I want to do more.
So they said, you need for this dichotomy almost to
be held well, is there, Well, the ability to hold
those two opposing ideas is needed, right, Like, because you don't.
I don't want to live in a world where I
think I'm perfectly healthy, everything's amazing, because then I may
miss certain challenges. And I also don't want to live

(01:00:17):
in the other world of oh my god, like everything's
falling apart and I'm dying every second of the day.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
But what if we just looked at it in the
unitary way, Then it's a matter of growth that I'm
not as fully grown as I might be. But there's
nothing wrong. Yes, yes, so you know I'll be eighty.
You know, let me talk about you say eighty eighty. Yeah,
I know it's a big number.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
You're doing great, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Well do the numbers. I was born in forty four.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Yeah. I always forget. Yeah, I forget when I'm with you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah. And there's this expression. I've been thinking about this recently,
this expression growing older. So we could just say being
older or becoming older or getting older, but we say
growing older. That's an interesting phrase, isn't it, Because actually,
as we get older, we shrink. So what are we
talking about growing older? Well, because growth being an emotional

(01:01:12):
spiritual process that continues that can continue forever. So for me,
it's not a matter of I'm good, but I can
be better. It's a question of can I continue to grow?
Not what there's anything wrong now, but can I continue
to grow? Which is really the essence of life. As
long as there's life, there's growth, isn't there? You know?

(01:01:36):
And the growth maybe at some point purely physical, At
some point physically there might even be contraction, But spiritual
and emotionally they can always be growth. So it's rather
than a dichotomy, it's more like a unitary process.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
I do appreciate that. I do feel that. What is
You just sparked something for me. You were giving this example.
The story just told about how the gentleman, when he
thought he was going to commit suicide, he would hold
his almost like a gun to his head. Yeah, and
that's the place he developed the trauma.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Yeah, the tumor.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
How does trauma intercept the body in that way like this?
That feels such like a physical example of that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
I can give you other examples.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
When I was working in palliative care, I was looking
after a young woman. She was thirty eight with als
AMT traffic light as crosses, which is a disease, and
the nervous system you basically get paralyzed. The muscles that
or the nerves that activate your muscles just die their
hard and that's what's closest means. So they they become

(01:02:49):
rigid and they become unable to move. This woman, she
was a dancer, beautiful woman, and we talked a lot
in her last weeks. She told me that all her
life she used to have this dream of being buried alive.
Boxton unable to be unable to move. She was a

(01:03:13):
dancer and she began to notice that on the dance
floor she couldn't execute the movements anymore. Something was wrong.
So she was diagnosed at ALS and she went to
the office of the ALS Society and on the wall
there was a poster that said having ALS is like
being buried alive.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
The cellist Jacquelin Duprey was a great classic British classical cellist,
died in her forties. She was a big international rocket
star in the classical music world. She died of MSS
multiple scrosses. She couldn't move anymore by that By the

(01:03:52):
time she was in the lily twenties, she couldn't play
the cellum anymore. When she was eight years old, she
said to her sister, He'll don't tell her mommy this,
but when I go up, I won't be able to
move or walk. Now, all of these people, these three people,
the guy with the brain tumor, the woman with the
LS jacking, the prey, they've been deeply traumatized in childhood.

(01:04:16):
I'm not going to go into how, but they had been.
That woman's dreamed that she couldn't move or walk was
literally an expression over emotional experience in her family of origin.
In her deathbed, nobody came to see her from her family.
She was all alone, like she had been all her life.
She couldn't be herself. She couldn't speak, or move or

(01:04:39):
get enough air to be herself. So that dream was
metaphoric to start with, then became a physical reality. Now,
how does the metaphor does or how does the emotion?
How does the trauma translate into physical reality? That has
to do with the scientific little secret. Don't tell any
doctors this because might not know what to do with it.

(01:05:01):
But well some of them don't. They're not taught in
medical school. Mind and body are unseparable. Our emotions, our
nervous system, our emotional system, in our brains and our bodies,
our nervous system, our horomonal apparatus, and our immune system
are actually one system, all serving survival and growth and reproduction,

(01:05:24):
and so they're not separate. Even to say that they're
connected it is a bit false because it's one yes, yes, no,
Which means that what happens emotionally can have a significant
impact on the nervous system, on the god, on the heart,
on an immune system, and on hormones. Just obviously, so

(01:05:47):
without going into the mechanisms of how trauma effects, but
trauma can affect genetic functioning, our chromosomes function, chroma can
effect our immune system. Actually, for example, study that I
callte women with severe post traumatic stress disorder have doubled
the risk of ovarian cancer, according to a Harvard study

(01:06:08):
a few years ago. Well, but that means that the
severe emotions endured by the woman with PTSD can declare
themselves in a form of malignancy because they affect the
immune system and the molded the symptoms, the lesser risk
of avarian cancer. So mind and body being one unit, obviously,

(01:06:30):
our emotional lives and emotional traumas and wounds can show
up in our physiology, which is why autoimmune diseases are
much more common amongst racialized women, both in Canada and
the US, because they hurt a lot more as women
and as racialized people. So it's just all one thing.

(01:06:51):
And again, is that a new finding or is that
something or is that an ancient wisdom? And it's both.
It is both modern science not taught in medical schools
for reasons that are interesting but rather distressing, and it's
ancient wisdom as well. It's all one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
And with that approach, I mean, we can't minimize the
number of steps and the uniqueness of those, but the
hope is that people can work medically and mentally to
be able to release that trauma.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
I have photographs on my on my cellphone, on my
computer of a woman that I met five years ago.
I gave it talk in London on this subject of
mind body unity and how stress and trauma can lead
to autommune disease and the automn diseases where the immune
system attacks the body itself, and this woman sent me

(01:07:47):
photographs a year ago now. When I met her, she'd
been diagnosed with autiomn disease called systemic loopus, which has
got a typical presentation of what's called the butterfly rash.
So her face is red like here like the wings
of butterfly, with the body of the butterfly as a
red rash over and it's called the butterfly rash. It's
typical of that disease. And she sent me a picture
of her fingers. When she was diagnosed, they were like

(01:08:10):
yellow as wax because the blood supply had been constricted.
She was told that you got this disease. We don't
know what causes it, can't cure it. Probably it'll get
worse and you'll be on medication first of your life.
I could saying these photographs, you could actually show them
because she's given me permission. She sent me a pictures

(01:08:31):
of ear ago faced at the beautiful pink as anything,
no rash, fingers are as pink as mine, yours, No medication,
no treatment. She just dealt with the emotional part of
it all her life. She had suppressed herself, just along
the lines I've been talking about. She dealt with her trauma.
She's become fully authentically and vigorously herself the disease is gone,

(01:08:53):
doctors would say. Of some doctors said, well, that's just
an anecdote. Yeah, it's an anecdote, but happen to be
a tool anatgot. I pay attention to anadlos. Not only
that this has been studied systematically by others, and there
are people who once they deal with the emotional side
of things and take charge of their lives, they recover
from diseases that are supposed to have been hopeless. And

(01:09:15):
if you just look at the example of Stephen Hawking,
the great physicist, who was diagnosed with ALS at age twenty,
he lived another fifty five years. Now the disease progressed,
but he outlived this prognosis by a good half a century. Folks,
I hate to tell you this be doctors don't know everything,
and especially we don't fully understand. I should say as

(01:09:37):
a profession the wonder's workings of mind and body and
the spirit and how they all interact. So when you
look at the indigenous healing practices, like the North American
natives that got this medicine, will four cardrance, which is
the physical and the mental, which means also the emotional

(01:09:58):
and the social and the spiritual and those four quads
have to be imbalanced for us to be healthy. No,
they didn't have the science we do, and they didn't
have the amazing achievements of Western medicine, which are truly miraculous,
but they did have a wisdom that if only we
adopted then combined it with the incredible achievements of Western medicine. Boy,

(01:10:20):
what a health system you could possibly have, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
That's definitely there. Yeah, what you're helping try and build
for the future, and all of our platforms are dedicated
to that. Hopefully we can get to a place for
that integrative, holistic viewpoint.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
And there are more and more physicians practicing that way.
You know, there are people functional medicine and integrated medicine,
not as holistic as I like them to be, but
far more realistic than mainstream medicine. And these are medically
twained physicians like I was. So there's not like some
fly by night alternative weird orccult. I mean, these are

(01:10:58):
just doctors who, like myself, at some point, came to
terms with the limitations of their education and needed to
infuse some more ancient wisdom into how they practice the
arts of healing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Yeah, boy, I'd love to end with I'd love to
hear from you what your wish, your prayer, your hope,
however you'd like to word it. For humanity is right
now today, at this time. If there's some words that
come from your heart.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
If you could just wake up to our possibilities. You
know that, you know the famous story of the body
where he's walking along the road and somebody sees them
with this vadiant face and confident gait, and he says,
who are you a god? And the Boddy says, no,
I'm awake. And if only we could be awake to

(01:11:48):
our possibilities, like in every conflict, on the deepest human level,
it's so unnecessary. We could actually be a human race together.
It could be that we don't have to hurt ourselves,
we don't have to hurt others, we don't have to
take from them, demand from them. We could be this

(01:12:13):
is actually possible for all of us. Since that is
possible for all of us as individuals and for all
of us as creatures, let's just wake up to our possibilities.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
It's beautiful. Gebele, thank you so much again for your time,
your energy, your presence, and everyone who's been listening or
watching at home. If you don't already, please do grab
a copy of the book Myth of Normal because our
first and second conversations were very different, and I guide
you towards the book for the deeper resources, the step

(01:12:43):
by step guide. It's what I try and avoid doing
in these interviews is minimizing the amount of work it takes,
or oversimplifying what Gable's beautiful work does in his deep books,
because I believe he and everyone else would want you
to take those steps. So I wish you all the

(01:13:04):
best in your journey of trauma, illness and healing. And Gabor,
I thank you for your work and your contributions today
as well and forever to humanity.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Well, it's always so peaceful to be with you, and
believe me, these days I enjoy you know it's of peace.
So thank you so much, Thank you, so much, thank you,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with
Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma and how to
heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Everything in nature goes only where it's vulnerable, So a
tree doesn't grow over it's hard and thick does it.
It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Gabor Maté: Why Your Trauma is Showing Up as Guilt, Fear, and Shame & How to Untrap Yourself from the Past