Dr. Gabor Maté on How to Process Anger and Rage | The Tim Ferriss Show

[Music] let me come back to the rage for a second because i would love to get your advice or at least hear of some of your learnings over the last decades because i recall from our first conversation that you know in your 40s your successful doctor you're driven workaholic you had challenges in your marriage your kids were at least based on my notes afraid of you at points because of your rages right what have you learned about rage and anger how do you relate to it or metabolize it and i ask as someone who has a long history of [Music] running on anger as a maybe a corrosive fuel of sorts so i would i would love to just hear you expand on that in any way that makes sense so was a great neuroscientist his name was yak pancek pank scpp who tragically died a few years ago of cancer and he distinguished a number of brain systems that we share with other mammals they include care he capitalized these so you see a re care then something he caused grief and panic then fear lust seeking play and rage these are all brain systems that we have they're all necessary for mammalian life they're all necessary another by ragey means the anger that arises when our boundaries are being transgressed if i were to infringe on your boundaries either physically or emotionally the healthy response for you is to mount an anger response no get out stay away that's healthy healthy anger is in the moment it protects your boundaries and then it's gone it's not necessary anymore however if your boundaries were infringed as a child but you could not express it it doesn't disappear it gets suppressed it becomes almost like a volcano that's gurgling and and bubbling inside you but it's had no expression now why did you suppress it because if you're being well are you being very public about this so i'm sure you'll allow me to mention it but you've some time after you and i talked you actually publicly acknowledged that you'd been sexually abused as a child yeah i did now when that's happening to a small child the last thing you can afford is to is to be angry because if you get rageful at the boundary invasion you're gonna get hurt even more so suppressing that rage becomes a survival mechanism nothing wrong with it it's the right thing to do you don't do it your brain will do it for you automatically as a way of preserving your life or your your relative safety but the race doesn't go away what happens then later on as an adult something triggers you and also it just explodes out of you and you have no control over it now it's no longer a response a healthy response to the present moment but it's a response to the past and just as my hurt and sense of abandonment and enrage was triggered by my wife not picking me up at the airport so a person's rage can be triggered by something relatively minor but all of a sudden this lava flow just explodes out of you and the difference between healthy anger and by the way suppressing healthy anger is also unhealthy for you we can talk about that but just as healthy anger expresses itself does its job and then it's gone rage the way such as i'm describing such as the way i used to experience it and probably as used to experience it the more it explodes the bigger it gets that's what happens to me it doesn't pass through me sorry no i was just reinforcing that by saying you know i've i've worked with certain therapists who've said you know punch a pillow express the rage let it just pass through you like the wind but that isn't in fact what happens with me and i know i'm not the only one it actually magnifies and intensifies and extends this feeling exactly because it recruits more brain circuits into its service so that's the difference between healthy anger on the one hand which is an essential boundary defense and by the way so much parenting advice in this culture tells parents to force kids to suppress their anger really unhealthy advice and there's healthy anger then there's that rage that you and i have both experienced that to work with that no it's look if you're gonna punch a human being and there's a pillow to punch instead better to punch the pillow right no question about that but there's a technique of dealing with it no that's not how you learn to process that rage because it needs to be processed how do you approach the processing what is a more effective prescription or one possible way of thinking about it or approaching it well if i was working with you i would encourage you to fully experience the body experience of rage what's happening in your body and you'll find that it's not just an idea in your head it's something that dominates your visceral experience of yourself your muscles your breathing your abdomen your entire nervous system and um there's ways of just helping you experience it experience it by recognizing raising the awareness of of being with it now that there's a wonderful buddhist the lineage spiritual teacher meditation teacher called tara brach who talks about rain recognize allow investigate and nurture so you recognize oh yeah this is happening to me right now okay i'm gonna allow it not along it in the sense of i'm gonna act it out on somebody else but i want to be with the experience and then investigate okay what is this really all about and then nurture that little person that had to suppress all that rage it's a nutshell view of it but in other words there's ways of working with it through the body that doesn't involve either suppressing it or acting it out but in experiencing it you

Channel: Tim Ferriss

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Id: Yh1-y3TzSO4

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2022