Dr. Gabor Maté: Who Gets Sick, and How to Prevent it

you're very sensitive and you're one of these really talented sensitive people who generate so much in this world you also have trouble saying no you see need everywhere and you want to meet all those nights I want to fix it yeah and I believe I have the power to do so is the fallacy but yeah you have the power to make a difference you don't have the part of fixing it's my your legs break down she's gonna break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two so now she's going to break down it's a breakdown she's gonna break it down hi I'm I am Bialik and welcome to my breakdown this is the place where we break things down so that you don't have to and we have um an exceptional exceptional guest today uh who in my opinion has literally helped me break down pretty much everything that I've ever experienced or ever will experience Dr Gabor mate is a highly sought after doctor and specialist um he's sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction stress and childhood development first I'd like to introduce you to the person who's highly sought after for his expertise on just about everything else in my life Jonathan Cohen hello maim you've been talking to me about Dr Gabor mate for years and I pooh-pooed it and I'm publicly apologizing to you for not listening harder sooner and better um this is a book that has significantly changed the way I'm viewing my current health challenges and emotional challenges and it's been an unbelievable journey to read this book with you and the fact that we get to have this man here is uh it's really unbelievable um and thank you I'll keep that on repeat he also breaks down like the causes in our overall society that make us really not understand I consider this The Theory of Everything meaning the the physics theory of everything I think the myth of normal which is his book that we're going to be talking to him about um I really feel like it's the theory of everything he is possibly most well well known for in the realm of hungry ghosts close encounters with addiction which some people say is the most definitive description of what addiction feels like and what it does also when the body says no exploring the stress disease connection and scattered how attention deficit disorder originates and what you can do about it he's also co-authored hold on to your kids why parents need to matter more than peers his Works have been published internationally in nearly 30 languages I mean for many people in those fields I just mentioned he is the really definitive expert and he is also you know entered into the the most modern and Progressive worlds of therapy healing trauma work while also maintaining a incredibly strong connection to our primate intuitive and and Primal existence he he's kind of done it he wrote this book with his son he he has three children he's been with his wife I think 53 years and she's here for part of our interview listening in um it is an extreme honor to welcome Dr Gabor mate break it down it's uh very exciting to have you here and um as Jonathan was just talking about you've been um doing the rounds as it were talking about your most recent book which is called the myth of normal trauma illness and healing in a toxic culture I'm gonna hold it up to the camera like I do um and we debated how to pronounce your name for about a week or so I thought Gabor like Jaja Gabor who was Hungarian you are also Hungarian but it is Gabor gabri in fact their name was Gabor too just when they came to America they Americanized it they Americanized it yeah and what is the mate is it mate actually is the um Hungarian version of Matthias or Matthew oh yeah interesting yeah you know without kind of putting too fine a point on it I would say I have recommended this book to more people since I got it than probably any other book uh that I've ever read with the caveat to these humans that I've mentioned it to um the this is the one book that I believe explains the most things about our experience um and you have written very significant other books about aspects of this book yeah and what this is is um this is an opus of sorts it is really start to finish and I I didn't really know you know I knew of your work and Jonathan's been talking about you for really for years but um what astounded me about this book is it really kind of does go from womb to Cradle to grave as it were from room to Tom that's right from womb to tomb I mean I dog your most Pages really and um you know when you when you have that experience with a book it means that you know there's something obviously that's touching you know very deeply and I God's honest truth I've already started speaking to my children about this book um I've been in a process of you know reanalyzing a lot of things about my life my health my psychology um many of these things happen to come at a time when I was able to make changes not because of the book but with the support of the book yeah um some are dietary um you know summer in conjunction with an autoimmune disease that I've had for gosh 25 years which recently has reared its head and the scope of your experience is incredibly significant and you know almost everything that I would read to Jonathan because basically I would read sections and then I would take it to him and we would kind of go through it and he would either say yeah or we know this or that's true or you've experienced that of course that's right in fact I wrote a book on attachment parenting which contains a lot of the intuitive kind of things that you discuss and you know I had my head served to me on a platter you know for supporting natural birth and and breastfeeding and extended breastfeeding and so by who the same people that you know kind of create the culture that I think you know you so well encapsulate so I'm going to turn this just briefly to Jonathan I don't know where to start and I don't know where to end with this man because I both feel that this is the kind of thing we've been you know trying to to get to you know the reason we created this podcast was to try and bring aspects of The Human Experience that trouble us that that we don't always have labels for or that we have too many labels for um and I I feel disingenuous just to say like everybody needs to read this book and implement it immediately but that's what it that's what it feels like that's my visceral you know kind of reaction well let me just say first of all that before we turn into questions is that um just the um emotion and the comprehensive sense with which you describe your reaction to the book it's just the most profound and Best Buy kind of feedback I could ever get you know I wanted in this book to help people find a map to themselves and not just to themselves but to themselves in the context of the world that we're living in and I wanted people to be moved and touched by the book you know because I really it's really about us as human beings so you're giving that back to me in spades and thank you very much for seeing the book for what I intended it to be so some people because I'm head of English to English translation over here yeah may say what are they talking about right what is a map to yourself yeah and my most succinct summary of This Book to anyone who's out there dealing with you know open quote something in their life yeah the thing that you think you're dealing with is likely not the thing that you're actually dealing with yeah it's a symptom not the cause yeah tell them what I mean well so here's what I think you mean but maybe no we do a reflective listening around here that's great good start so also you're both Canadian you speak the same language so it's sort of yeah Canadian eh so speaking of my own life but if at any time you'd asked me why I was doing what I was doing I was giving you I was giving you one answer but later on with more experience reflection and I would say suffering I realized that what I thought I was doing wasn't what I was doing at all so that the the levers were pulled first by something that I wasn't aware of and so when I talk about a map to ourselves I'm talking about a map to the unconscious drives that really motivate so much of our experience whether we're talking on a realm of politics or personal relationships and the experiences that create those childhood or those unconscious Dynamics so largely um and I'm not the first one to say this it's like we're living in a dream and at some point we wake up and we realize that we've been dreaming and this has happened a lot in my relationship [Music] a lot of times in my political life you wake up and you say I've been dreaming what I thought was reality wasn't reality so if anything this book is an attempt to give people a map to their reality you know I I felt this many many times you know especially when you talked about when you talked about pregnancy and when you talked about um labor and when you talked about you know the that first year in particular of a child's life yeah so that was kind of the first place it hit me and what you say is something that a lot of people do not want to hear and I think that's why people are still not like we still need to keep doing this is that um it matters it matters what your pregnancy is like it matters what what you haven't dealt with that will come up for you emotionally and this is the point of the unconscious right you often quote don't know and it matters how you raise your child it matters what you feel about their autonomy versus yours yeah it matters if you hurt them even if you think it's for their own good yeah and that was sort of the first wow that was the the first wow for me because you know Jonathan and I both come from you know my son was born in that room meaning I we come from you know a parenting style of trying to do what we intuitively believed our species was supposed to do and it's extremely unpopular right so that was sort of the first aha and then I thought oh we're gonna get into medical stuff no then you tackle childhood and the teenage years which extends then into adulthood and what it was was that guess what it matters and this is what I've been this is what I started talking about with my children since I'm reading this book it matters what you eat like it really matters it matters not just for your body for your it matters emotionally and then it goes to the toxic culture we live in and a lot of people I think already sort of tune out right but I mean I can pull up the exact quote but the notion that the consumerist society that we all live in are immersed in and have come to think is normal yeah actually matters for the rest of our physiological hormonal immunological and psychological development an introduction we call David Foster Wallace who gives us this little anecdote of um at a commencement address that he gave before he committed suicide um these two fish that are swimming along and they're accosted by an older fish who says to the morning boys how's the water and the two fish swim for a while and one of them turns to the other one and says what the hell is water correct and there's first of all says that these things are so close to us and so big we don't even see that they're there and I think that's what you're describing here that there's so many things in this culture that like we swim in it like fish in the water but we don't know that we're fixing water we think it's just um uh an inevitable reality uh but so many things in this culture that are considered to be normal are completely abnormal from the point of human needs now there's one more thing I want to come back to just as an example you mentioned autoimmune condition that you have okay now you you can tell me what it is you cannot but you have Graves disease okay hyperactive thyroid thyroid okay here's what I bet I bet that and I'd be delighted If I Was Wrong by the way that all the years that you saw Specialists about this condition did anybody ask you about childhood trauma no stresses in your life how you feel about yourself as a human being nope what I'm saying is that because of the Mind Body is inseparable unshakable scientifically over proven Unity all these autoimmune conditions actually have to do with our emotional lives and how we grew up in this abnormal culture this upsets people because yeah no one wants to I mean sorry I shouldn't say no one many people do not want to go there and one of the most powerful things you talk about especially as a woman yeah fibromyalgia endometriosis multiple sclerosis yeah things that we see predominantly statistically speaking in in women 70 to 80 there we go yeah almost 100 as far as I'm concerned yeah and what you talk about is something that many people don't want to look at so I know it's difficult to go there but here's what I would say to people and I talk about my experiences would you rather hear that you got this mysterious so-called idiopathic we haven't got a freaking clue what causes this condition there's nothing we can do about it except to try and control the symptoms or would you rather hear that this disease that you got is not the thing with the life of its own but actually it's a process that's happening in your body in response to your life in response to what happened to you as a child in response to how you treat yourself as an adult and if you understand all that and gain some agency over it you can actually gain some regulation over that process which message would you rather hear as a human being I'll I'll be honest with you I would like to hear the latter but yeah but I also know that most people do not have the resources that I would like them to have and Jonathan hates when I say that but that is that is not my experience right because people's biggest resource is internal right [Music] my embiotics breakdown is supported by better help unfortunately life doesn't come with a user manual 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intuition right an observation since then in every three of those cases whether it's breast cancer whether it's multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis there's been Oodles of scientific research showing their life should be been stressed in those conditions and yet most people that go to a physician stress trauma never comes up now what I have found is that when people understand the connection between what happened to them in childhood the traumas they endured the stresses they generate for themselves how does their body saying no when they don't know what to say no either in work or in personal life and actually they learn to set some boundaries for themselves there's actually a change in the physiological process why wouldn't there be given that Mind Body are one and Inseparable so I don't find that people are that resistant to this message once they understand it the real problem is that you can go to Physicians trained like me in the Western Medical tradition and despite all the science you never hear this information I want to talk about cancer yeah because I remember the first time I heard someone say that you know cancer could be from um you know anger or repressed this and I remember I said this was I mean this was many many years ago and I said that's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard how dare you say to someone who is dying and going to leave children and a partner how dare someone say that and one of the one of the closest people in my life who passed from cancer was an incredible woman and she was so loving and she was a nurse and she was this like Israeli Sabra and she and I thought how could anyone say that right and I'm reading your book and I realized there is a different message about cancer can you explain that well first of all I'd be just as outraged as you are if somebody went to somebody with cancerous you got this you know whether they were dying of it whether it was dealing with the unit you never say that to anybody you don't push that information anybody um however but however scientifically it's only true like when I worked in palliative care looking after dying people or in Family Practice I mean I had an advantage over the Specialists because as a family physician because I saw people before they got sick so I knew who got sick and who didn't and I knew their family histories and I knew their multi-generational family history tell us who gets sick so who gets sick people who are prone to get chronically ill and by the way we have to nail that we're not talking about causation here yep okay sure there's multiple causes but so we're talking about a contributing factor but a reversible one right and if you reverse it that can have a positive impact on the condition that's the whole point right okay so who gets sick there's sort of full characteristics and you tell me if yours really friends I have all of them go ahead but this is not a Bingo but but tell me if you're everything's a bingo game but tell me if you're an Israeli friend maybe yeah okay first of all people are prone to get chronically ill are ones who tend to put other people's emotional needs compulsively out of their own ding ding ding okay number one number two they tend to be over identified with Duty role and responsibility rather than the needs of the self ding ding ding okay they tend to repress healthy anger they don't know how to set a clear boundary I don't even know what anger is yeah healthy anger we're talking about right okay I throw things you heard the expression the Good Die Young yep that's what that's what it means these are very uplifting what's the fourth characteristic these are these very nice people I worry about people that are very nice you know he knows I can be very mean but yeah yes ding ding ding the fourth is this belief that you're responsible for other people feel and you must never disappoint anybody it's not a belief it's a truth ding ding ding no it's not a truth I know I was being you're being sorry you're being your comedian so okay yeah uh no uh so those are the no why do those traits lead to illness well go ahead we'll let you tell people is it because again as as a neuroscientist you know and having studied no no uh neuroendocrinology or neural yeah psycho Endocrinology you know that the mind and the body can't be separated and that healthy no it's a boundary defense the role of healthy anger is the boundary defense in fact our emotions in general they have one fundamental function allowing what is healthy and nourishing and supportive the love you know and keep up what is toxic and dangerous that's the role of our emotional system now ask you a quick trick question what is the role of our immune system it's the same it's exactly the same if the keeper what's toxic and letting what's nourishing keep letting the nutrients the vitamins the healthy bacteria in the gut keep out destroy what is no in other words the emotional system and the nervous system sorry the the use them exactly the same function and not only do they have the same function they're part and parcel of the same apparatus they're not even separated right so naturally when people repress themselves emotionally that's going to have impact on the immune system how could it be otherwise I want you to take us back one more step yeah pretend like we're not talking about me right now because that's going to get awkward for everyone okay what things in early life lead to those four characteristics okay I mean I read the book so I know but I would like you to tell us no it's fair enough but you're both parents okay I'm looking at the list it's on page 166 and 167. go ahead you're hot you're hired okay uh you guys have both had kids have you ever met a wonderful baby that represses their feelings no okay in other words we're born with that capacity so that between the or enter into the world fully embodied fully in touch with our gut feelings free capable of actually communicating exactly what we're experiencing not in words but in gesture and tone and so on and the time to become adults who repress ourselves something happens so what happens is that in the child is we've got these two needs the need to attach and to belong to the parents in fact we thought that need being met the child can't even survive this is true for all mammalian infants but especially but especially for humans because we're the most dependent and the least mature the most helpless for the longest period of time so that attachment relationship is not negotiable we have to have it do people know what you mean by attachment that sense so attachment is the drive that pulls two bodies together for closeness and proximity so that one can be taken care of or take care of the other and that's a hormonal connection also it's hormonal it's emotional it's neurological we're it's an instinctual right birds have it you know the the infant bird would not survive without it when we say attachment and you're talking about neurological and biological and emotional yeah the immune system function of that dependent human being is reliant on that attachment exactly yeah the the healthy development of that organism depends on that attachment well it's development and maintenance and both I'm I'm a lactation educator counselor so I speak to women I just visited a five-day-old uh yesterday okay and you know the the notion that the smell of a mother is different than the smell of a stranger the voice of a mother the that uh that a mother regulates her body's body temperature according to the newborn's needs and and the smell of the sense of smell is one of the first to develop yes and an infant can tell the smell of their breast spread of the mother from distinguished from other women within a day or two right so that's what we talk about when when people ask me like why why why do I have to keep holding the baby why does the baby want to nurse so much it's trying to attach to you because it's a primate it's a like so here's the thing so he asked what happens what have we tell parents in this culture when we tell them to Sleep Train their babies we tell them not to pick up their kids that's right no you tell a mother baboon not to pick up their kids turn your face off exactly you're going to find out what moderate yourself that's right you know so human beings are trained to go against their own instincts yes human beings are trained to go against their own instincts that's what and this is we're just scratching the surface of what leads to those four characters there was an article in the New York Times two weeks ago that there's no such thing as mother instinct well you tell a mother bear that there's no such thing as much interesting throw a mother cat or even a mother I mean I I will say my my first son was uh placed in the NICU right after he was born yeah and I felt and as did you know my husband at the time I felt a surge of emotion I had never felt when they wield that child away yeah I mean I and you know I'm grateful I had a vaginal birth and an unmedicated one because I needed to be on my feet as soon as humanly possible to start figuring out when I could get that baby out of that in prison um but that I also when my my younger son had a seizure from a fever when he was not even a year year I think that he was not even a year the feelings that came it was like I was I was transported to another level of the existence of trying to keep your human alive I've had mothers who tried to sleep in their babies train their babies on their devices doctors like me because I used to advise I used to advise this myself um they told me they had to stand in a shower that's right and put their fingers in their ears oh friend I know people who go to hotels and leave a husband who has never does not have hormones of you know the woman they go to hotels and leave the husband at home and see what happens so here's the thing but here's the thing with instincts they have to be evoked by the environment they don't automatically work they have to be evoked by the environment but this environment doesn't not only not evoke parenting instincts it actually suppresses them correct because we're told to separate from a case give them timeouts when we don't approve of their behavior now that gives the message to the kid you can be yourself you can have not one of the essential needs of children is the freedom to feel Elder emotions that's an essential developmental need of the child their emotions all their emotions not just the good ones when people say is it a good baby yes it's a good baby because sometimes it's mad and sometimes it's happy and sometimes it's sad and then the infant and the young child needs to have their freedom to have all their emotions that's an essential developmental need you know you you talk about capital T trauma and lower lowercase T trauma which we do here as well and you you know you use one of my favorite things my one of my favorite examples of people saying I have PTSD because he didn't show up for dinner or you know I have PTSD because she dumped me and and it really bothers me also just because you know for someone who studied obsessive compulsive disorder everyone says they're OCD if they like their shoes straight and that doesn't you know identify that I'm laughing because somebody reviewed this book on Amazon and Britain and said it was Marxist psychobabble and I was traumatized to read it I said okay but you won't traumatized maybe you're upset maybe you didn't agree with it but you were not traumatized so we use this word trauma a bit too Loosely correct I went to this movie and I traumatized me no then you just had felt some sorrow you felt feelings right so tell us though about so besides sort of this systematic what was it systematic systematic denial of emotions systematic time we are fully embodied as a small baby correct yeah the other things that lead to these personality types are things that many of us also don't talk about they are abuse they are abuse that leads to trauma I mean those things may be difficult to separate but people really don't want to hear that something that happened to you when you were a child might lead to these personality kind of traits and eventually might lead you to illness tell about tell us about some of those other features well I will but I just push back a little bit again you see people don't want to hear it actually people do want to hear it so in in the book I give the example of the comedian Daryl Hammond um who's been on yeah Saturday Night Live a lot and you know his documentary I mean it's and you saw it absolutely years ago yeah so Daryl had his first Mental Health crisis when he was a student at University and he was given this diagnosis and that diagnosis and this pill and not pillar this combination of pills for decades yep and he saw probably 30 or 40 different psychiatrists nobody had ever asked him what had happened to him as a child and the first time a psychiatrist actually said to him I don't want to call what you have a disease you were hurt badly in childhood he says for Daryl he said that was like a Hallelujah Chorus moment wow and so people actually what would you rather hear again that you've got this sort of mysterious biological maybe genetic brain disorder and all we can do is give you these pills for the rest of your life or as a result of what happened to you you develop certain emotional and psychological ways of being that we call now disease but actually if you learn about how you were traumatized and how to deal with that trauma you can actually ease those conditions like which message would people rather hear I'm saying that people would rather hear that second message that because people abroad have some agency not rather than just being passive recipients of health care now again I'm not even rejecting the use of medications that I've taken them myself and they've helped but I think this whole idea that mental health conditions are simple diseases that are biologically basis not scientific number one according to the research scientific nonsense secondly even worse they disempower people yep I think people would rather be empowered down is supported by Everly well how about you take action today for a healthier tomorrow with Everly well their at-home lab tests and vitamins and supplements help you get the knowledge and support you need to become a healthier you and really I think that's what we all want Everly well is digital Healthcare design just for you at an affordable and transparent price with over 30 at-home lab tests you can choose the one that makes the most sense for you to get answers you need like there's a women's health test or a food sensitivity test it's so simple over one million people have trusted Everly well to support their health and wellness goals and you should too Jonathan and I both took the food sensitivity test and it 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fresh never frozen meals make it easy to fuel up fast when you're on the go in addition to ready to eat meals Factor also has cold pressed juices smoothies energy bites extra protein veggie sides and more to keep you energized head to go.factor75.com break60 and use code break60 to get 60 off your first box I'm going to say that again the code is break60 at go dot Factor 75.com slash break60 to get 60 off your first box [Music] we're speaking about two different fundamental views of our experience as human beings one is the world is chaos anything can happen at any time and there's no control or answers to anything yeah the other is we are a natural part of a biological system and we develop patterns based on the past exactly and as mayam says it's painful to look at that so um it's true it is painful but I think but it's a kind of noble kind of pain a pain that is that's what we call growing pains by the way if you want to grow that's what I say yeah you know you have to have some pain and and uh not that we impose people in pain but most of mental health conditions and addictions and so on the pain is already inside and in fact it's the attempt not to feel the pain that makes people sick so we have systematic denial of um our emotions our emotions we have things like well so so you know then then there's the whole adverse shelter experiences uh list of physical sexual emotional abuse apparent dying apparent being mentally ill apparent being addicted violence in the family a parent being jailed a ranker is divorce neglect the link between these adverse conditions and mental health problems later on in life as in the words of one leading British psychologist is as well established in scientific literature as the link between smoking and lung cancer and yet you go to most psychiatrists right nobody's going to ask you about that stuff go to most western doctors for just I mean and with all due respect to the Western profession and all the lives that are saved because I can already hear the people saying like where are you buying anything I got a new hip I love Western medicine Jonathan had to have a hip replacement um I did think it was emotional and then we looked at the scan and there was no cartilage left so let's establish or shared respect for the achievements and yes and contributions of Western medicine we're not talking about that we're talking about what it misses correct so we're talking about the narrowness of its perspective sure his ideology and that narrowness limits its capacity to to heal and so that's all we're talking about I mean Dr sarna Dr Sarno revolutionized the way we think about back pain back pain I'm also a Sarno person and I have chronic pain I'm sure you're not surprised and so the the notion that most people will already feel a lessening of chronic pain when you learn that it's not that it's all in your head but there may be no physiological basis it is a a vol I describe it as I turn the volume up on everything that happens it's even more complex than that there is a physiological basis right which is what Sarno calls the tension attention so there's inflammation correct and there's clenching tension yes that's physiological but that physiology is related to emotions exactly so it's again it's the non-separability correct of emotions and Physiology I mean that book did it changed my life and I grew up with a father whose back was always going out he was always laying flat and he and I have a very similar personality very similar and sure enough right after my dad died my back went out was flat on my back and this has happened more than once and then I was introduced to that book and started therapy in that kind of Arena great it's just a party over here so we talked about those kind of four personality traits yeah um and so then so of course trauma I mean here's the thing about trauma um in the book I talk about V the form of events yes and and uh her father that was fascinating her father raped her you know she talks about this her own book can she be can she afford to be angry with her father when this is happening what would happen or if she got angry sure she'd be heard badly because her father also physically abused her sure so the child then who's being abused if they even so much as events in the anger at all they're putting us in Greater danger so it's the wisdom of the organism that actually it's protective that's protected that represses the anger but that same protection that same adaptation later on there's a price there'll be a price to be paid later on so whether it's parents who are following the totally misdirected advice of so-called parenting experts and there's all these parenting books out there that are titled by the media they're toxic so many of them I tell people don't even read What to Expect When You're Expecting yeah yeah I just I yeah yeah well you and me you remind me of what Michelle o'don told me who's the of healthy birthing and when I interviewed him he said um he said that ideally a woman wouldn't read any pregnancy books at all she would just sit outside and commune with the commune with the moon she said I like communed with the moon and other women who had had the experiences that I want but I'd like you to talk about something in the book that's also extremely confusing yeah well-meaning loving parents yeah who miss the mark yeah can create the environment essentially for a lower case trauma of its own sort and I don't want to compare what many people experience as capital T trauma however this is something that is so fascinating and disturbing that you can have parents who are loving connected present don't abuse you know don't abuse you overtly don't hate you know and if they are not emotionally available and I know that's a term that a lot of people like when is that I think we know exactly what it means if you have parents who are addicted to work or have other addictions drink to numb out you know any of those things what does that do so look I was one of these parents I don't question most parents love for the kids very few parents don't love their kids and very few parents don't do try and do the best for their kids but the best is limited number one by any traumas that they're still carrying right that they haven't worked out so my wife and I you know when we had kids we hadn't even known that we were traumatized let alone work out our traumas which means that our relationship was very conflicted my trauma would bump against hers and of course it'd be ranker or son Daniel with whom I are brilliant the eldest son I know whom I wrote this book he talks in the book about yes having this nightmare as a child of the floor disappearing from under his feet what he was talking about is he never knew when the emotional atmosphere in the home would turn very tense which were very sensitive child is very threatening so we loved our kids we would have done anything for them but just their own traumas and stresses they couldn't help but absorbing them and Trauma means doesn't necessarily mean something terrible happening drama just means a wound that's actually the meaning of the word kids could be wounded not by terrible things happening but just by the insecurities and and emotional unavailability of the parents furthermore I was a workaholic doctor now I've talked about this before why was a worker like doctor because the message is a Jewish infant under the Nazis in 1944 the message that I got from the world through the anxieties and tears of my mother is that I wasn't wanted now if you're not wanted wonderful way to deal with it it's the try and make yourself important in other people's lives so now they want you all the time whatever tools you got sure in my case that was being a doctor right so I became a workaholic doctor means that I'd rather be in a job than at home that are fully alive and active and kind of activated when I'm working but I'm rather listless and depressed at home and the Beeper is always going [Music] and that's the last message you ever want to give them so it doesn't take abuse right it's just expressed parents especially in a society where people have become so isolated like parenting was never meant to be an isolated couple in the nuclear family home you know I say this all the time yeah I mean how have evolved as human beings was this communal creatures and also sticking a man and a woman together yeah and having a man be the recipient of all of the things that happened in your day and all of your emotions that's actually not what the species evolved to do we were supposed to share that with other women and other people who tend to hold more emotional and social contact and I mean with all this is why when people say oh I don't you should have a man in the birthing room and he needs to be an active part he really doesn't and like yeah the the experience also of becoming a parent was something that was for women the work of women yeah it was the work of that social situation so listen let me tell you something that's exciting um now everything you say is exciting okay believe me that's not true but but a scientist that called quite a bit in this book is a woman called darshi and Arvest and she's a professor emerta at Notre Dame University who studied the Aboriginal indigenous groups Jesus in the new book you'll want to talk about to her when she comes out it's called the evolved Nest I wrote the forward for it at her request is going to be published next year and it's comparing our parenting practices with those of other mammals so I read this book it's totally fascinating um you know what happens when an elephant gives birth when many when the elephant mother goes into labor all the other elephant mothers stand around in a circle so she's not too vulnerable and when the baby plops to the ground they all stroke her with their trunks so that birth was a communal experience now same thing used to be for human beings and so that we live so unnaturally so that the parenting the the parenting I should say this the stress on parenting in this Society is almost unbearable first of all because of all the economic and political uncertainty um and then the isolation then the erosion of community and the extended family um so that parents have an almost impossible job in this culture so it's never a question of blaming parents for anything it's a question of just recognizing the challenges that we're facing because we've become so denatured in Canada you know there are not that many places that people live yeah meaning like if you're in Toronto you either stay in Toronto or you go to Vancouver yeah sometimes you go to Montreal but otherwise you're you stay there and all my friends who grew up in Toronto they all have their extended families around them yeah and when I come to the U.S when we raised our child in Los Angeles yeah we had no one yeah and there are so many more examples of that where U.S uh citizens they they're traveling to different cities much more frequently and they don't have that extended family yeah I would say the same pattern is is increasingly present in Canada as well there's a there's an American political scientist or sociologist Morris Berman who said that if the 20th century was the American Century then the 21st century is going to be the American eyes of the century and Americanization the globalization of the corporate capitalist ethic and its consequences has become Universal now when you talk about loving parents who do their best and you know who who are you know attentive and give the children everything they want there's there's three things that are pointed out you're actually quoting um you're quoting a different study but the things that can be very disturbing to a child uncertainty yeah conflict lack of control and lack of information well no wait no this I quote as part of the HPA access and the these are the triggers for stress in people in general not just correct so but I'm thinking those things also happen in good families right where there's a lot of so that's what I was thinking well of course they do right because if the parents are facing those stresses right it's impossible there's a psychologist that once said to me that children swim in their parents unconscious like fish in the sea yeah so when the parents are upset and stressed because of all because of inequality or economic stress or their own unresolved trauma it's in the water it's it's in the water this is water that could swim in you have a quote I mean this is this is on page 189 everything the corporate Juggernaut foists upon children prefabricated play options video games Mass manufactured toys gadgets peer-centric online platforms and saccharin and superficial television programs targeted at Toddlers and preschoolers along with the mainstreaming of glossy soulless porn inflected depictions of sexuality available to teens and increasingly even younger kids has detrimental effects that's like that's like a mic drop because again these are things that I'm literally talking to my kids about that [ __ ] matters well I caught a psychiatrist um and and also psychologists who studied the impact of digital media on the young kids negative all across the board of course it would be in development to personal development and so on one of the either the psychologists or the psychiatrist like I forget which one said that she sees women though changing the baby's diapers while the baby's looking at her screen absolutely I've seen it no that diaper changing isn't just the physical act it's an act of emotional transaction it's parent whether it's father or mother or grandparent doesn't matter it's the parenting figure and the infant interacting over making the child comfortable correct especially in a vulnerable situation yeah I mean literally then you introduce this all of a sudden there's no relationship no that lack of relationship has an impact on the child's brain development period And so let's say that again that lack of connection with the nurturing band has a negative effect on the child's brain development people don't want to hear that meaning like moms who are doing that and dads who are doing that let's explain why let's hit this harder because here's the thing the human brain develops an interaction with the environment and in the book I forget on what page I quote I quote a study from Harvard published in 2012 not a study but a paper from Harvard Harvard Center and the developing child where they point out that the brain human brain develops um from by an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood and sets all the conditions for healthy learning and behavior that follow all the conditions and then the second sentence they say that the most important quality that affects the circuitry of the child's brain I'm talking about the neurotransmitters the biochemistry is the quality of parent-child relationships in the especially in the early years so the emotional relationship with the parent actually programs the physiology of the child's brain so when you look at what's happening now in our society with these millions of kids being diagnosed left right and center with all manner of diagnosis which you could talk about sure all spectrums of all spectrums yeah yeah and they're wondering and and of course the doctors are still holding on to this idea that you know these are genetic conditions they have their genetic conditions you don't see genetics change that quickly genes don't change in 30 years you know or 20 years or you know um what's actually going on is that the loss of that attuned non-stressed relationship with the adults is affecting the healthy development of the child's brain and no wonder you're seeing more kids with depression anxiety ADHD and so on and then you introduce this thing into the mix that's yeah which actually has been in studies shown to interfere with the development of value brain circuits then you got what you got and then there's all this ranging going on right what's going on with our kids and the New York Times And The New Yorker both have had articles in the past six months about the alarming rise in childhood suicides and it's unexplainable it's not unexplainable people it's because of the despair of children and having lost those healthy essential relationships because of the toxicity of this culture I want to repeat this because a lot of people listen to audio and they're doing other things yeah and they're not multitasking they're multitasking I'm guilty of this I listen all the time yeah and if you're listening right now this is probably one of the most important messages that we have had in over 100 episodes what you said as I heard it was the neural circuitry and biochemistry of a growing child's brain is reliant on a safe present attuned attachment and non-stressed and non-stressed yeah and I want us to talk about what attuned means because I think that is a whole concept that people don't really understand and I'm pulling this apart on purpose because sure I think it's it's absolutely essential that people begin to at least understand the concepts yeah well the tune means that the uh one person gets the emotional space of the other and communicates that I get it you mean understands it understands and gets it now we do this automatically like um until we don't but if you ever sit on an airplane with a with a baby when the baby starts crying almost everybody goes oh you know that awe that that sort of pulling of the face and that sort of empathetic noise that we make that's Attunement we're saying oh kid you're not you're having a heart I usually say can someone put a breast in that baby's mouth wow that'd be a good advice but but emotional response to the child is to share the child's emotional space that's what Attunement means is empathy empathy is a part of it but it's also the capacity to get uh what's happening for the other person no why am I having a trouble with this is it being able to reflect it or share it and understand it it's getting it and reflecting it and not shutting down right not putting a binky in it which is what we do yeah so um that That's essential and when people are stressed they can't be attuned to each other like like as a couple like you would know this when you're one of you are stressed it's hard for that stressed person to be plugged into the other person with two caught up with their own we have no idea what you're talking about you wouldn't I do for example depressed mothers can to do them with their kids right not that they don't want love the child not that they're not desperately devoted to the child their brains just can't do it right and what happens in the child's brain when it's trying to attune to this unavailable Source you can look at the electrons of holograms at six months of age this has been done that's his favorite hobby is looking at electroencephalograms the kids are six months of age and this has been done comparing the ECG EEG story of infants six months of age of mothers who are depressed and those who are not and you can tell from the EEG of the child whose mother is depressed and who isn't in other words the Charles Bane circuitry is programmed by the mother of the emotional states also we've seen I mean and Studies have shown this you know even before we could look at this in humans we're not that different I always say this we're not that different from other animals especially mammals you can see this in you can see it in rats I mean you can see it you see it in all systems right and we think we're the exception because we build buildings and we you know create God and we you know do all these other things well when you were studying Neuroscience did you ever run across the work of yak banksep I don't think so bnk scpp because he said exactly what you said he pointed out an accordion yes I remember he pointed out that we share emotional brain systems with all mammals yep so we have circuitry for anger and circuitry for love and for for grief and panic and for fear and survival and for play and for seeking right and we seek and we share these now these so this circuitry is there but it depends on the environment to evoke their activity when when the environment is unnatural in fact Contour natural as it is in this culture that then those circuits don't get expressed humans are everywhere with tremendous potential yeah it's when you place people in an environment where they cannot Thrive and there are no resources for them to thrive that you see and also I mean in your documentary incredibly powerful to see the work being done in prisons yeah yeah I mean that oh you know it was very moving there's a circle of men in a prison and what is the woman's name who does this unbelievable work I see Horsemen yes and she she stands in the middle and she's got a microphone and I was thinking why is she shouting so loud it's so that everyone in this ginormous Circle could hear and she said if you grew up in a situation where yeah you were hit where you were beaten where you were spanked take a step into the circle and everybody steps forward and she keeps asking all these questions if there was you know if there was not a parent if you did not believe you were loved just the the numerous systems that have bought into the toxic culture and that are part of it is like a continuing problem that is honestly very overwhelming and I see why people drink to forget what's going on in the world well when you look at when you when you look at the um the prison system most people there are are are highly traumatized people and so what we're fundamentally doing and fundamentally doing in this Society is really creating conditions that traumatize people yes through the pressure on families through the stress on parents through the fact that in the United States 25 of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth which amounts to a massive abandonment of the child sure is what it is it's the only way the child can experience it through then not to mention racism yes and inequality and so on and then so we traumatize people that act out their traumas and all we do then is we lock them up and throw away the key and we punish them for the trauma rather than using if we have to isolate people from society because there might be dangers rehabilitate them you do the work that's necessary and those whether whether programs in prisons whether Fitzy's program there's another program called the Epp Enneagram prison project well so um the wonderful people doing their CPP those killers they transform they talk about one of them in the book but it's trauma that drove them there when you hear the trauma they become different people so this is a I think a really good place to lean into what many people know you predominantly for which is a addiction yeah and the study of addiction um a very close friend of mine um expressed that she has never heard her own addiction understood more than the way you describe the notion that you can get to a place where you literally do not care if you throw away everyone and everything for pursuit of a chemical experience and in the same way when we talk about for me at least when we talk about crime and crime that is as you just said Often perpetuated by hurt people right who often are are in a place either of addiction in many cases there's drugs or alcohol involved but the notion that you can be in an emotional environment where you have lost the ability You've Lost That tenderness that vulnerability you've lost the ability to care yeah about not only the life of another person but about your own life yes so can you speak to that because a huge component of this conversation sure so um for the last 12 years of my medical path I worked with North America as the most conservated area of drug use and uh Jonathan you've been have you been to the downtown inside in Vancouver I have yeah yeah so it's shocking to go there it's shocking from anybody it doesn't matter where people come from when they see that area is shocking so there's thousands of people um within a few Square book radios injecting and inhaling and ingesting drugs of all kinds and these are people living with HIV often hepatitis C poverty multiple jailings and so on you work in this population for 12 years I was working with them for 12 years yeah in fact I was the physician at what was it that time North America's first supervight injection site right where people would bring their drugs and inject under safer conditions using sterile water needles and all that which the Americans by the way try to oh it was force the Canadian government to shut down but thank God that didn't happen it's good we have a Puritan Nation to keep you all in order yeah so anyway I was there for 12 years and so in those 12 years um I had not a single female patient who had not been sexually abused as a child say that again I didn't have a single theme of patience in 12 years who had not been sexually abused and all the men had been severely abused some of them sexually some of them in other ways now free enough that was my observation then you have the large-scale studies that we've already referred to the adverse childhood expansion studies that show the same thing and also this is highly underreported especially for men to report sexual abuse highly underreported so we have to also take all of these statistics with a grain of salt yeah there's so many people also in denial depression yes remember those the studies still show that more of those experiences that you have the greater your risk of addiction later on in life but so by the way also the greater the risk of autoimmune disease and and mental health conditions and so on but specifically addictions so the by the time a male child has said six of these sexual or physical emotional abuse etc etc his risk of becoming an injection using drug addict is 4 600 greater than that of somebody else 46-fold increase now why two reasons first of all as we said the brain develops or the impact of the environment and the condition and the circuits in the brain that are prone for addiction right get affected by that early trauma number one number two when I ask people not what's wrong with their addiction but what's right about it so if you guys have addictions I'm not going to ask you what or when we've talked about it but no but you know I've talked about I've had Behavior addictions I've never had a substance one but I'm not going to ask you what your addictions was I'm just gonna ask you one simple question if you guys are both going to answer it no what was wrong with it what was right about it what did it give you temporarily it makes you feel alive it makes you feel like good uh uh like you don't have to care yeah me you don't know but who what kind of person oh a person who's in pain in pain and who now here's the thing something happened to you so the addiction wasn't your problem your addiction was your attempt to solve it I mean it's a symptom right yeah well it's not just a symptom it is a symptom yes but it's also an attempt to solve a problem correct the problem of pain or the problem not being alive so the question then is my Mantra here is not why the addiction but why the pain why didn't you feel alive because something happened to you that cut you off from yourself and that's trauma we're talking about something happened to you that gave you a lot of pain that you needed to numb that's trauma so that's the essence of addiction is trauma the addiction is not the primary it's not genetic it's not genetic the whole idea of addiction is being genetic which is still the Mantra well and right it's just scientific nonsense this is also one of the things people ask me a lot because I'm a science person is this genetic is that genetic is anxiety genetic and here's what I say we will never find a gene for name a personality thing you don't like about yourself name a diagnosis that you've been given but what we do in inherit is coping mechanisms we inherit an environment we inherit a whole world that we live in with whatever skills our possibly loving but likely traumatized themselves parents have given us there's a group of genes that the more than you have the more prone you might be to be addicted yes or to be have a mental health condition at the same time you can have those same genes and have no condition whatsoever depending on what the environment does so what are these genes then in fact you can have a gene that under this has been done genes that under circumstances make you more violent yes under other circumstances make you less violent so what do you think the gene is for the genius for sensitivity yeah which is it just the next thing I was going to ask you about which is just what you're talking about our capacity to be affected by the environment and the more sensitive you are sincere is from Latin from a Latin word sincere to feel the more sensitive you are the more you feel the more pain you feel the more you have to run away from the pain the more likely to be addicted so the only thing that's can you say that again well the more pain you have the more likely you want to escape from the pain right by numbing yourself and the more sensitive you are the more the more the more pain you're going to feel yeah also the more creative you're going to be Yeah the more insightful you're going to be the more intuitive you're going to be um depending on the right environment it also means that the more pain you have the more you have to harden yourself by the way this is where hard and the criminal comes from they Harden themselves because of the trauma it's also biblical Pharaoh hardens his heart I feel hard inside yeah and then you don't feel then you have no empathy and and you become ruthless so that sensitivity can lead you to all kinds of different uh outcomes depending on what happens in the environment well and this is something also that you know and this is in Dr sarno's work you know he there's some large-scale study where you know they took a large variety of patients who all had a diagnosis of herniated disc but they didn't all feel pain that's right and they had almost identical scans whereas if you were to show it to someone a classical Western surgeon oh gotta operate got it my dad had three vertebrae fused you know and what that says is that there are certain people for whom they're gonna experience their body differently their environment we talk about we are both very sensitive people you know there's this sort of joke and it's on sitcoms and in movies that like men are such babies when they're sick but there is there's a different and there's a different perception of so here's where my wife who was here at the beginning of this interview and had to fly home now if she was here she would talk to you a lot about this men have become babies now that's a that's an actual dynamic and that speaks to why more women develop autoimmune disease because they're more worried about how their husband's going to react when they get cancer than when they get it and when I read that I said that's me yeah that's right so they so that's my mom it's my grandmother Yeah the more stress you absorb and and then this is patriarchal culture yes women are acculturated to to absorb the stress of their men now there was an article in New York Times during covet times just a couple years ago called Society society's shock absorbers and uh it was about how women take on the stress of their families than their men over on kovid and when they can't alleviate the stress they feel guilty so let's look at an interesting medical statistic in the in the 1930s the gender ratio of multiple sclerosis above one to one in Canada was you know what it is now it's three and a half women to every man now why should that be the case genes it's not genetic it's not genetic no it's not it's not the climate of the diet sure because that hasn't changed I mean diet doesn't help but yes no but the users of inflammation and things like that but no I'm talking about the gender of issues got it it happened the diet is hadn't changed more from London than the other what I've changed is that women in this culture used to have the the job of being the stress observers the shock absorbers they still have that role then they've taken on an economic role sometimes because of the choice to express themselves in the in in the workplace yes beautiful and sometimes because of economic necessity but nobody is taken away from them the responsibility of emotional character well and the notion then that you hire someone who has to leave their children that's right to raise your children I'm sorry I have a really hard time with it I have a really and it's it's very it's very confusing to me so that what's happened is is that women have not taken extra stress on in a more isolated Society where there's less support no wonder there's more to Multiple Sclerosis amongst them no wonder there's more divorce honestly because you come home and you just have a pile of work and forgive me a husband that often needs to be taken care of and no no my wife could tell you that because in our marriage there's been a real Dynamic that she absorbed my stresses yeah she's the one that takes the antidepressant yeah or deals with the anxiety yeah she's the one that um uh has to take care of everything including this hobby yeah you know yeah and and and in our marriage and also have her own life and identity because that's also important our marriage has been let me tell you like a 53-year process of women's Liberation because she said to really liberate herself yes from the gender or the culturally determined gender role that she was programmed to take on as a child yeah and and this choice of you know authenticity and attachment quite honestly um we quite agree retrospectively that had she been able to be more herself and had trusted herself she would have left me at a certain point you know many women say that if I was healthier I would have left and that would have been good for our kids yeah oh uh and and and for her and for me what does that feel like for you to say that it's just the truth but what does it feel like I've dealt with the remorse already I've had a lot of remorse of that but again you know I was the way I was unconsciously yeah right but you both did the best that you could yeah but the point is it's it's women in this culture who have to suppress their authenticity even more than men do and that's why they have moral immune disease that's why they are more prone to non-smoking related cancers that's why they have much more depression and anxiety you know and it's not gender determined it's a culturally determined gender role that determines it we're talking about these systemic problems yeah but as soon as we start to recognize that we are in the water to go back to the beginning of this then we do have the opportunity to start noticing yeah and to start on a path of healing which means that we move away from a reactive cycle yeah and we get to have some agency what is it what is what is practically this is something we were fighting about not fighting but this is something we were talking about because you know this this is very digestible I think everyone can and should read this I mean I literally said to my my almost 17 year old we have a book club now and I am assigning him this after letters to a young Poet by rilka so oh really so I I said this is this is completely digestible yeah but the question is that I'm interested in what is next for people so you read this book yeah you get maybe a little you will you'll get relief there's a tremendous sense of relief and even reduction in some of the pain that you're experiencing but what's what do you practically do you're you're me well not me you're someone else okay well look and you wake up and you're like oh my gosh everything mattered everything they did I love my parents but does it mean you go into therapy you start digging you start meditating you take Ayahuasca which your work on Ayahuasca is also fascinating and we don't have time to get all all up into it but next time next time what do you do okay look so let me be specific okay you mentioned your workaholism okay yes so there's a chapter there on that if you haven't noticed this uh she skipped that one I did this exercise where in your life do you have trouble saying no yes so it sounds like name an area well it sounds like work is an area that you have told the same moment well yeah okay but also everywhere okay yeah but let's stay with that one if that's okay with you sure okay um so work you have trouble saying no and so you are very busy you're tremendously creative um you're very sensitive and you're one of these really talented sensitive people who generate so much in this world you also have trouble saying no um you see need everywhere and you want to meet all those I want to fix it yeah and I believe I have the power to do so is the fallacy but yeah you have the power to make a difference you don't have the power to fix it okay um just as all of us do now the second question is what is the impact on you of your difficulty saying no my health suffers okay and the people closest to me Jonathan and my children suffer the most okay okay so I'm being honest of course you're being honest and I would have said the same thing with myself you know but as a matter of fact my wife or even if you met only four years ago or five years ago said to me buddy you've written a book called when the body says no no right one called when the wife says no right okay because of my work callism so I get it I will get it so this is not an inquisition I'm just trying to follow you asked me what we do yeah yeah yeah okay then the third question is what is the belief behind my difficult to say um that uh people will not think well of me or in other words you lose the attachment uh yeah so that uh the attention between attachment and authenticity something and you want to say no right but you don't say it right for the sit for the fear of losing the attachment now here's the thing as an infant as a young child you have no choice in the matter you have to choose attachment right you don't anymore right you can choose authenticity you know and so that's but anyway so that's the impact and the belief is if I say no people won't like me okay the next question then is who would you be if you know how to say no this is Byron Katie's work we talked a little bit about this it's a similar question yeah who would you be if you know if you know how to say no I've been myself if I knew who that was yeah and I mean I'd have free time my health would be better you'd be free right yeah okay and there's a final question which is what are you not saying yes to because um when we're yep so busy not saying no right there's often a yes inside that wants to be expressed but we don't make space for it no I'm not saying that yes now by the way this little word no you've had children what's the first word they started saying when they're one and a half we didn't use the word no we said not four no not what you said what what the kids say is you know no right why the kids say we called you know in our ignorance we call that the terrible twos because we want our kids to be compliant but actually that's Nature's Way of helping to develop the child's will right because if you don't know how to say no oh yeses don't mean anything at all so what am I not saying yes to I'm not saying yes to quiet I'm not saying yes to really being in my body I'm not saying yes to actually feeling my feelings and processing them I'm not saying yes to play okay to free time I could go on but you have to get on a plane I got it those those are huge okay yes so honestly enthusiastically what to do sit down once a week and do this exercise but really be with it right I mean you have a very [Music] um you have a mind that flies all over the place sit down with a piece of paper not with a computer piece of paper do this exercise with those six questions not in abstract but where this week where this week did I not say no what was the impact this week or we not saying no what was the belief this week or might not uh behind on us say no right who would I be if I who would I be in if I had said yeah no and and so on I'm telling you if you just do that exercise right that itself will help to change you but so when you're asking what do people need to do they need to commit to their healing there you go not just to talk about it I'm very good at talking about healing I'm much more reticent than actually engaging in it you know we all are sure so this is where we have to just actually make a commitment I have to ask yourself what is important to me so that's that I think that's the first question I think it's extremely helpful for people to hear that you don't need a retreat you don't need a shaman you don't need to have some massive intervention you need to start by asking yourself how you feel and going through that process that you just outlined there's all kinds of resources out there and you don't need necessarily any fancy Retreat any big cosmetic experience well I I would say you need this book though I'm serious I use this as a guidebook this um this literally has been um an incredible I mean I don't even there's not we're starting a book club we have all the notes already worked out it's unbelievable we thank you for your time and if you miss your flight please come back and we can talk more see you in two hours well thank you for having me it's such a pleasure to meet you both really is and uh thank you you scored very high on the authenticity scale in in my books anyway thank you I I think it's important especially as someone who you know struggled before I got pregnant you know was not a different person when I was pregnant and was not a different person you know after I gave birth um I want to be clear that when when he talks about you know depressed you know depressed mothers and their interaction um with babies uh you know the idea is not a for you to feel guilty uh if you were or depressed and if you had impaired you know interactions with your child I also want to say and I I do wish I had asked when he was here a lot of those studies are um severe depression beyond the scope of kind of what a lot of women experience you know what we call sort of like baby blues which can be postpartum depression but it is normal to have a drop in hormones and a drop in expectation you've been like looking forward to giving birth and then like oh the thing just cries and needs to be changed and nursed all the time so he's not talking about that but a lot of these studies are from you know situations where the mother was unable to care for herself and was still trying to care for and some of these are animal studies um and I hope that that still has you know validity I think Gabor really explained you know I think a lot about that um but a lot of extreme stressful situations that lead to again mothers not being able to care for themselves is some of that interaction that we're talking about many of us are not at our best when we give birth and especially if we had a difficult or a traumatic birth or having trouble breastfeeding or whatever it is um you are not damaging your child irrevocably and I think especially you know what he's saying is that you can intercept a lot of this stuff even I mean he's even encouraging me to do so and I'm 47 you know almost um anyway what I was told about him is that he you know speaks very definitively and and clearly about kind of large categories you know the things that we deal with and I feel like we got we absolutely got that but also I was really happy to be able to kind of like joke with him and ask things you know in a more kind of back and forth Forum because he's very academic and there's so many places you know do that but I wanted to have it really feel like he was visiting our podcast you know he was visiting like our space I mean I literally asked him what it felt like and he said something like oh I said but what if like I it was great like I thought it was really you know he's very human I mean you also wanted to make it very specific and there was like two key takeaways if nothing else in this entire podcast before you you mean or well I think for for me yes uh but also I think for Humanity in general because why not the emotional system in the immune system are the same functioning system that was so cool so I really do believe in patterns and I know that you like very specific things I like to sort of think a little bit like a system level but I think these this merges both of them it's both a system and a very specific if our if the role of the immune system is to protect protect take in what it needs and keep out what it doesn't right that is the exact same system as the emotional system right it's the same function so if one of those systems is off right is it wildly surprising that right the other system will also be off it's amazing but but so much of what he talks about you know for him it's just like he knows it like he's read the studies he's done the work but for a lot of people when he says like well you know mind and body are one a lot of people are still like well like that's something you say in a yoga class you know it's something that like you hear on one of your meditation apps right it's it's something you put on a t-shirt but this is a tote bag this is exactly why that information about the immune system and the emotional system being the same to me that's like oh the mind and body are the same right here is the scientific explanation of what that is and we had a little bit with Joe he tried to do that also with us when we had that interview dispenza yeah and he tried to explain that and other people have explained it but that is so concrete and specific no he's he is other level not just because also we didn't get to talk about this I think he was a high school teacher for years and then went back to school to become a doctor he's he's witnessed I think thousands of births meaning like he's he's and I love that he was that doctor being like take this pill like you know dude like cry it out with your baby you know he was that guy and now like if you watch his documentary which I highly recommend I think it's been viewed over like seven million times or something um he he talks about the ecstatic transcendental experience of accessing other parts of your brain that are waiting to be accessed you had a second point that was a takeaway I want to know about transcendental experiences that are accessing part of my brain but what's the second part that's the second takeaway uh the second takeaway was that the neural circuitry and by and biochemistry of the brain grows and builds in relationship to an attuned connection most people who hear that either are going to dismiss it and say like that's bull I don't know or they're going to say oh my God everything that I experienced was what my mother's experience was my father's experience whatever was happening in your home that's this point whatever was going on not even for you for the people who are supposed to care for you and be attuned to you that's what made your brain grow and chances are and don't blame me for this blame this guy gamma Monte for saying all of that that you experienced when your brain was developing is not done it is going to keep being compounded by then our culture any trauma you may experience with if you're a woman or a vulnerable population you're going to experience likely you're going to experience some trauma in your childhood seniors or college Years or Beyond right so he expands on that and says the childhood experiences create our unconscious drivers that motivate us and so if you are a person who what was the things puts other people's needs before your own feels a tremendous sense of Duty and responsibility feels what were the other things um is a nice person a person who's always there for someone I'll bring you a meal oh you're sick let me do it oh you need an ear I'll listen to you right those people tend to have their bodies start showing that they're struggling so he goes from so like brain development trauma coping and he talks about attachment versus authenticity we're taught at a very young age because he's big on that authenticity we didn't get to talk about that there's a systematic denial of our emotional state that we learn from a very young age and we choose attachment over authenticity because we have to sacrifice authenticity in order to survive because attachment is the primary need for us well so and when I say you know whenever I talk to people about for example the cried out method which he talks a lot about when I say to people a child whose needs are not responded to will stop asking for their needs to be met people don't like to hear that no he learned to sleep through the night no he didn't or she didn't they they learned that if you have needs at hours that are not convenient for a parent they're they're not going to get answers but but also what people say is oh but what am I supposed to do and like that's rushing to the that's right you know the conclusion of the solution like I can't afford a nanny it's not about that it's the structure of our culture that says this is how you raise a child yes absolutely and even Beyond sleep yeah If the child is scanning the environment yeah and seeing how stressed the parents are right and recognizing oh there's no you can also be unconscious yeah just scanning we're all scanning all the time right we're watching we're observing we're sensing the emotional state of the people around us and if their emotional state is so busy so full so distracted so distressed confusing even that the child can be well there's no room for me to have needs right now and I will choose attachment over actual authentic expression what does it look like it looks like I will be obedient I will do whatever it takes to not to not be hurt or you have the opposite where it's I will act out act out act out in order to create space for myself and then you'll get the swingers you know what this sounds like it sounds like a lot of grown-up relationships right if you're being hurt in a relationship your choice is get as small as you can correct act out to get attention correct or leave and then you're alone but that's and that's that's usually why you go back that's getting withdrawn yeah fully no but we're just gonna act out all of that and we were talking our little gang here we were talking about attachment attachment Styles and these are all different ways kind of a you know this same thing right how were you responded to what interaction did you have before you even remember guess what it's probably part of how you interact now when he talked about um you know children need to be able to express a full range of emotions what do you understand that that means someone who's an extremely attentive loving father go ahead when a child cries what don't you do you don't shush them it's okay don't worry stop crying why can't you say it's okay I don't know that it's okay I don't know what they're actually going through there we go my favorite thing the parents do you know what your child falls down it's okay you're okay and you want to reassure them that the universe is fine but like you just said the difference between a parent who is attuned and aware and holding space for their child to have their own emotional experience the kid falls down You observe and wait versus oh my God that's such a big fall are you okay where does it hurt etc etc the difference is you out try and allow them to have their own emotional experience and you witness so the notion of holding spaces that you are I mean I don't know how to else to say it be Beyond using the same word to define the term which you know you're not supposed to do holding space is as a witness you are literally allowing that other person to exist great no shushing let them have their own experience what else don't you do when my son would fall and we would rush and pick him up he would like start to cry yeah he was reacting as much to our concern for him literally react he can feel what you're feeling exactly I say this to breastfeeding moms everything you're feeling is in your milk so when we learned to wait a second deal with our own oh my God is he okay ourselves he would look at what had happened to him he would pop up he would go I fell down yeah and he'd point to his knee and then he'd be back playing in two seconds sometimes they're hurt what happens when they get hurt hold them let them cry uh-huh or see what they want and let them cry often it would be picking them up and often I would pick them up and hold them because he would come in for a hug and then he would like wiggle away after less than a minute and he would want to go play again tell me about other emotions what happens when a child is sad or disappointed I mean again the best thing that we've tried to do was to allow them to have that okay so what does that mean what don't you do distract food don't feed it yep it's very hard you want to feed it when it's hurt feed it distract it just move it away what happens when I think I've told this before when my children were when when I was when we call it we when we were divorced when we were newly divorced and they they wanted their dad what did I want to do let's write a letter let's do it and Siggy said no you say yeah I miss I miss our family too so when you we had an interesting experience where when we were newly divorced my we also tried to do that yeah we tried to hold space yeah and my son threw us a curveball which was he would keep himself in a tantrum-like state for like really extended periods of time and like I'm talking like multiple hours right and so when we got help and we were like oh he's just like he's stuck in a loop that he can't get himself out of and so these parents who were like trying to let allow him to have all of his emotions the advice we got was like okay allowed that to happen but if it continues for like 20 minutes yeah okay separate but separate people it's important because people will be like oh you have to let them have everything right and then we were throwing this curveball right and so we had to say we hear you we acknowledge we empathize we say yes I know that's hard for you there you go to your dad yep and we have the next five minutes to be said yep after that we're moving on right and so and sometimes they'll still be upset but what you show is the ability to to move on so when a child is sad or disappointed you know what what a lot of parents and again a lot of well-meaning parents do is they try and explain why you shouldn't be sad right my ice cream cone fell on the floor you can get another one it's not such a big deal it may be in your family you got another one we are not buying another one because in many families that was your ice cream cone and you can share mine or whatever it is maybe but also well that's what happens when you are not looking where you're going and that's not helpful right well and and again a lot of parents do that well-meaning like I'm teaching consequences right but what a child wants to hear is oh your ice cream cone fell on the floor and that really is a major bummer that's right and sometimes you can get a new ice cream cone and sometimes you can't but the notion is that's what that's and I'm not trying to say that like Jonathan and I did it right and our kids are perfect but what this man who is far wiser than we are what what Gabor is trying to say is that the things that we've been told are the normal ways to go about not just parenting everything it's actually not normal and as an adult if you've ever been in a relationship where someone effectively shushed you you know what that feels like it doesn't feel good I I just raised my eyebrow if you've been in a relationship where someone has said I told you so it feels the same as when you're a child and someone says that and I was talking to somebody the other day and I was like we're just children who are bigger we're just kids who are bigger so when I was talking about the neuro circuitry and the Brain I was you know I was trying to talk about the growing neural circuitry and then I started to talk about adults and you're like don't you know keep those two things apart but where I was going is that our brains are always in response or in relation to the people around us and so again if there's an openness if there's an Attunement with someone else and they have availability emotionally if they have availability with attention then are literally our brains are going to fire differently in relationship with them absolutely and also you know what he would say is that was all it was programmed long before you know I say to you I I didn't make you this way I found you like this like that's true we find people exactly where they are we may trigger things in them you know that they hadn't had triggered in a minute but that that's there I mean that it's it's there and then the environment and the other things we do around it you know can make it Sprout up or not the other thing that we didn't get to talk about which is extremely important um that I should have talked about with him you know he he supports the field of Psychiatry um abstractly and also has a tremendous amount of criticism of the use of labels which is something that we use a lot here and it has already started me thinking differently about the way we talk about things the way I talk about the diagnoses I've been given and you know so much of that is probably for an entire other episode because his notion is not that terms are not helpful descriptions are not helpful they can often you know guide us to the next pathway or Therapeutics or whatever but this idea that once you slap a label on it you know you get put into a box that does not take into account all of the things happening you know outside of that box and what happened before we boxes even were invented um and it's a really really important and and nuanced discussion of what Psychiatry gets is wrong and how we can start to build a larger understanding of what those terms are for what they do and how we can you know direct our health around them I don't want to bring everything back to the Michael Singer episode but we also touch base on attachment to story attachment to labels in that and I started to say like what if that isn't the case what if there's another perspective to be had look we're going to start the map to your self-study group yeah I would like him to move in with us and just tell us things all the time he said it takes a village even to raise adults for more breakdown to the one we hope you never have we'll see you next time she's gonna break it down for you [Music] free down it's a breakdown she's gonna break it down

Channel: Mayim Bialik

Views: 352,597

Keywords: mayim bialik, big bang theory, amy farrah fowler, mayim, celebrity news

Id: KWz9I-7TAcs

Length: 98min 10sec (5890 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022