Keynote ACES to Assets 2019 – Dr Gabor Maté – Understanding addiction as a result of trauma

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well further ado ladies and gentlemen please welcome back Gabor to the stage thank you [Music] so I actually I promised a friend of mine to invade personal greetings to somebody in the audience and the somebody's name is Lisa Moore known to her big sister Mandy as wee bear and Lisa apparently is the first principal first female principal of the roughest school they say in Scotland so welcome if you at least say you're here your sister loves you brain development no I'm not talking about the pants good intentions I'm not talking about whether the parents love their kids or not I'm not talking about do the pens through their best let me tell you something even parents very often even parents who by any definition actually abuse their kids in their own way they love their kids that's just happened to be their best and that's their best because that's what ever raised tragic example of died in Canada which I'll tell you but in the world what we're talking about here is the degree of stress that the parents carry and the degree of trauma doctor parent unresolved trauma not trauma but unresolved trauma but the parents carry that's gets in everybody passed on to the children that's what we're talking about so at the University of what can give him one example of that physiology be how that works at the University of Washington in Seattle the United States they did an EEG study electroencephalograms electrical brainwave studies of six month old infants whose mothers had postpartum depression and they compared the Charles eg the electrical printout of the brains activity with six months all those mothers were not depressed and you could tell from these Charles EEG his mother was the president news wasn't in other words the child's brain circuitry is programmed by the emotional states of the mother this is pre verbal so when you do the a studies this is a limitation of this that is not that is anything wrong with them but this is one limitation of that they can't tell you what the mother's emotional States was doing pregnancy they can't tell you what was the mother's emotional state in the in the first year of the child's life the first two years and those are the most important times of brain development so by the time the eight studies come and the things that people can actually recall much of the essential brain develops has already happened so what I'm saying is that it's in a sense it's more difficult even if studies would would indicate because much of what goes on is is somewhat prenatal and certainly pre verbal for which there's no code there's no recall memory and I'll talk to you about memory later but let me now talk about mental illness for a while and I will take questions during this this one-hour period I showed you I believe I attempted to show you that addictions are actually a compensation for some losses no hard these losses accrue by the way so given the information I gave you on brain development what happens when we look at the lives of addicts so in a Downtown Eastside in 12 years in Vancouver I did not need a single female patient who had not been sexually abused not one in 12 years these people did not blame or try to slough off responsibility or I was abused and they're from an addict for me they didn't know the connection they just thought there were bad people so it's not that they came to me with this excuse it's simply when I asked them and again if that was only and the male's were similarly abused often sexually certainly physically emotionally and if this is only my own personal experience it wasn't very interesting but I don't have to tell this audience that now we have these massive population studies they studies and it doesn't matter where you do them they come up with the same correlations but the more adversity there is in childhood the greater the risk of addiction which of course makes sense because the more adversity there is no more pain even 1/2 it's not why the addiction but why the pain not only that based on what I just told you you will understand that the brain itself does not develop the wage hood under those adverse conditions no I am NOT saying that everybody was traumatized become addicts becomes addicted I'm not saying that they don't but addiction is not the only outcome of childhood adversity mental illness autoimmune disease malignancy now that the behaviors of all kinds so I'm not saying that everybody who's traumatized becomes addicted I am saying that everybody was addicted was traumatized and now there may be some of you in the audience who might think to yourself well I had a perfectly happy childhood and I still an addiction problem usually that takes me three minutes it's what I call the happy childhood challenge anybody thinks that a happy childhood and they became addicted anyway or develop mental illness anyway and if you want to find out just a miserable childhood actually was put your hand up and talk to me it takes only a few questions I'm not looking really because what happens is that whatever happens to you you think is normal you have nothing to compare it to and not only that the human mind has ways of dealing with all that pain which is to suppress the pain so while you're happy memories might be quite accurate you don't remember the unhappy ones I'm making a general statement I cannot possibly prove it to you but I can't really demonstrate if anybody wants to talk to me about it but but to come back to my original point I'm not on my bad parenting here I'm not I'm not pointing playing it I'm not pointing the finger of blame at parents I was at home with that child and when I became an adult and a parent I was far from everyone thought my trauma I did pass it on to my kids because I wanted to and by the way I got bad news for you we always marry somebody exactly at the same level of trauma revaruraa it's an iron law there are no exceptions don't come in Tony oh my husband is will comet eyes I don't know what to do about it I'm gonna oh you're my wife or my spouse partner cuz I'll sit here you're at the same level of trauma otherwise you wouldn't be with them which means that usually people are the same level of trauma which they haven't resolved yet are now raising kids I guess what inevitably and unknowingly and unwittingly and unconsciously and completely non deliberately they passed it on to their kids now I told you that I was developed I was diagnosed with a DD in my 50s and the hallmark of course is the ordinary tuning out the absent-mindedness difficulties staying present so what I was going on and this was considered to be a disease and I didn't know anything about drained it all and that information had not crossed my path yet but I knew that the disease model didn't work it wasn't accurate why did I know that because I knew that tuning out absent-mindedness dissociation is not a disease not a disease what is it actually it's a coping mechanism it's an automatic coping mechanism of the human brain when is that when when is it involved it's involved when a person see if I were to stress you right now or stress you right now what options would you have you could leave that's called flight you could assert yourself and tell me to shut up doesn't fight and if you couldn't do either because I was that much more powerful but there were nineteen hundred people here in the room with you you could ask for help but if you were stressed and there was no help for you and you couldn't fight back or escape then what would you do you wouldn't do anything your brain would do it for you you would dissociate that's one of the defenses so that the suffering wouldn't be so unbearable so it's a coping mechanism so I knew that ad E was not a disease there was a coping mechanism what I didn't know and found our only almost by axis was the information on brain davone's that I gave you so you know those of you that know my personal history a Jewish in Flint in Hungary in 1944 under the Nazis I spent my first year in the Nazi occupation with my grandparents being sent to Auschwitz and my mother and I barely surviving in the ghetto Budapest my father away in forced labor what was her state of mind and therefore what was my state of mind I'm not gonna read you a quote here the child is very open and can feel the pain and suffering going on in its immediate environment the child is aware of its own body and can also feel the tension rigidity and pain and the body of the mother or anyone else he's with if the mother suffering the baby suffers through the pain never gets discharged the organism does not develop the confidence that it can regulate itself that things will happen the way they should if the pain is frustration continue they will have a disintegrating effect on the organism and the child will experience organismic fear for it's very survival how you deal with all that there's a two-month oh there's a six-month-old you dissociate when you're dissociating when your brain is developing and not dissociation now because the wired into your brain and 50 years later you're diagnosed with the so-called disease which began as a coping mechanism now if you look at say ADHD there's no other explanation for it this whole idea is a genetic disorder is nonsense because he was a genetic why is it increasing so much in Western society genes don't change in 10 years 20 years 30 years 50 years 100 years is because parenting has become so stressed and kids are picking on a sensitive kids genetically sensitive kids they're not worth it for ADHD they're just sensitive which means they're more affected by the environment that means they have more vineeth to dissociate for example or develop other brain defenses which I'll talk about in a moment while what I'm saying to you as fundamentally mental illness begins as the coping mechanism during the during the period of brain development in the early years and later on those coping mechanisms become problems which we then diagnosis diseases know I thought so for a long time now I'm not gonna give you some but my first book was actually an idiot sheet scared of minds but then he go back to this article from the Harvard Center on the developing child that I quoted you before and what do they say in their abstract here's what they say growing scientific evidence demonstrates that social and physical environments the threatened human development because of scarcity stress instability and by the Veit poverty should be listed as one of the adverse childhood experiences we know what poverty does to the child's brain boy static scientific evidence demonstrates that social and physical environments that threaten human development because of scarcity stress or instability can lead to shortened physiologic and psychopathology psychological adjustments that are necessary for immediate survival adaptation but which may come at a significant cost to long-term outcomes in learning behavior health and longevity Sasa has the american pediatric Association journal Pediatrics from the Harvard sentence of up Center in the development child in 2012 in other words the way kids cope with early adversity halsten and your those intolerable times and those same coping mechanisms become sources of what we call pathology later on and there in a nutshell you know mental illness and thus the relationship between aces and mental illness because under those conditions and parental stress in general why are some a MOOC is being diagnosed with every manner of disorder device that the so called diagnosis called oppositional defiant disorder in North America I'm sorry in in Britain yeah you know what it doesn't even exist there's no such thing as the oppositional defiant disorder which I'll prove to you in a few minutes these diagnoses describe things they describe them rather accurately to give you a printout of the traits of the ATD mind and psychology and personality that's me it describes me but it doesn't explain anything about me it doesn't explain why I develop those traits so diagnosis can be helpful in that they describe something and they give us a way towards approaching that that particular person but they don't explain anything so depression we might say to me oh how does depression become a coping mechanism well it's in the word itself what does it mean to depress it needs to push down let's see if it's real and the fuel wants another cookie before dinner and you don't give it to them of course what else of a human being do when they're frustrated a tree oh by the way that's not the difference between the need and a desire people doesn't know the difference many adults don't know the difference I need you don't eat it you want it it's not the same thing but the table throws a tantrum what are then we talk to do with the two-year-old with the tantrum well as I said earlier in North America how the teaching is you give them a timeout now what's the timeout mean time on means that you're staying for the kid the parent doesn't know this the parent just wants the kid to behave but what are we actually doing we're saying the three-year-old kid I know exactly what your biggest need is and that's the attachment relationship with me without which you cannot survive their final two biggest fear is your biggest fear is the loss of that attachment relationship and guess what kid should you displease me I'm gonna threaten you with your worst fear and we think will be too big we bring about the kids this way what we're actually doing is we're stressing that his brains they have high levels of cortisol and under conditions of high cortisol important brain structures do not develop so we don't even parent the way we need to parent and parents are taught to be this way or even worse or not even worse but equally in North America at least we have what's called sleep training retraining kids to sleep how do we do that by not picking them up when they're crying at night now why is the kid crying the kids crying because it might be hungry or uncomfortable but that's fine we're not torturers we're told by the doctors and the Steep training nurses to check if the kid needs feeding or changing and do that but if they just find is they want attention and contact with you don't pick them up and then they'll go back to sleep and you know what I used to advocate this when I did a lot of babies as a family physician whitey I used to tell parents to do this not knowing what harm I was doing because why is the kid crying because they have in need the only way to signal not need is crying and what we saying to parents is ignore the child's biggest need guess what the kid after three nights go back to sleep it works why does the kid go back to sleep because they give up it's too painful the brains post-ops asleep so they don't have to be there for that suffering and what have you taught them and what have you done to their brain development no just so much I want to tell you dr. Turner dr. Garcia not as I'm not at the University who you must invite here sometimes study the optimal parenting environment and she found that the optimal parenting environment is actually the hunter-gatherer tribe now there's a number of features in the hunter-gatherer tribe that are very distinct from the way that we parent in the hunter-gatherer tribes is a Google Earth 50 to 80 to maybe hundred people kids are brought up by all the adults so children have multiple adult relationships not just a single father or mother or this isolated family in a nuclear family in it by the entire Drive so children very secure and there's a wonderful book called children of the forest although by British writer about the pygmies over the pygmies raised the kids in their natural environment as a group that's the fun so it's multiple safe attachments for these kids that's the first thing the second thing is average when people don't hit their kids usually don't hit their kids now let me tell you an interesting fact when they when the pilgrims from Britain for England in those days came from North America these Christians they were appalled by the parenting practices of the natives this was recorded at the time why were they appalled because the natives didn't hit their kids and to the Christians reared in the gentle spirit of Jesus not hating kids was a ministry spare the rod spoil the child so they didn't hit the kids so the kids are not have to be afraid of the adults around them thirdly they didn't the kids cry soon as the kid cry they picked them up if I didn't ever even put them down in the air cornea no Jodie I think was a Sioux elder told me in Canada a native elder told me that in our tribe kids are not even don't even touch the ground for two years they're always being held by somebody and if they cry certainly they're picked up immediately so these are the know here's the problem for us to age modern civilization is that they're human evolution began at this wall over here and with every human beings on earth for hundreds of years not our species but various human types and if human evolution began you know two and half million years ago when we first departed I think from our ape-like common ancestor that was shared with the Ori brought this for two and a half million years and for hundreds of thousands of years of doing existence if that be can set that wall over there and if our present time is this wall over here then unfilled this long ago we lived in hunter-gatherer tribes in other words what we call human nature evolved in a setting entirely different in which we live now so now we have a society in which never mind multiple parents and in a community parenting even the biological parents often don't see the kid the whole day it's completely unnatural no I'm not advocating going back to hunter-gatherer days by the way I'm only saying what we've lost and we have to be aware of what we've lost what we've lost as attachment and why do they have to be aware of it well I talked about gravity the reason you're fairly certain that I'm not going to fly out towards the ceiling is because the force of gravity is pulling me towards the earth that's the attachment force I don't have to think about gravity Sir Isaac Newton discovered its workings but you know he didn't have to worry about that because he was gonna walk on the ground he was gonna float off to the ceiling well what if he landed on the moon all of a sudden what if you sent on a mission to the moon where the gravitational force is much less than that of the earth now you have to be very conscious of gravity because if you didn't if you weren't conscious of it you could compensate for it and if you couldn't then compensate for it you couldn't survive on the moon if they're heavy boots for example that's what's happened to us that gravitational force of attachment that worked naturally in the context of the hunter-gatherer tribe has been completely or almost completely lost to us now we have to compensate for it now we have to study it now we have to be aware of it because most of us were no longer raised in ways that promoted fully healthy attachments and I'll talk about some of the implications but to go back to the tree rule then who was crying because they didn't get to cooking and we give them a timeout well pretty soon we give it give the child a message that good luck is don't get angry that's not the message the child receives the message the child receives is angry little kids don't get love and what's the child's option the child can stay angry and and and and then threaten there the attachment relationship was of which you can't live we can pushed on he's angry and depress it guess what anger is sorry the guess what depression is most people are depressed are pushing down their healthy anger if you've ever been depressed you know this now does depression involve brain chemicals of course it does I'm you know but my basic orientation individual is a depressive you know and the first time I took an antidepressant was in my 40s and they didn't take three weeks or six weeks to work at two days I was in two days I said to my sister-in-law you mean people feel like this normally clearly there's something chemical going on my brain what happened to my brain in my early years that serotonin circuit goes off signals and circuits didn't develop properly because of the conditions under which I spent particularly my first year and a half of life so it's not a question of is it psychology versus physiology it's a question that it's all one unit but it does become a big big there's a coping mechanism ADHD because the core mechanism depression does anxiety does because anxiety but what is inside you about and by the way anxiety is the fastest growing diagnosis in North America right now probably here as well what is the anxiety about in the beginning is that is the fear of loss and something that you need and when youngster anxious you cried and when you cry the world is supposed to come and take care of you well what if it is a crazy world of ours in this denature world of ours the parents no longer know how to take care of you because of their own stresses and from us and because of the economic pressure under under and because of the psychological issues that they have well then the anxiety becomes endemic in you it just becomes rooted in here and now you're anxious but it just began as a fear of loss of attachment which is good I should have that fear because that kept you close to your parents psychosis it's interesting what psychosis these studies by the way also show an increased risk of psychosis depending on childhood adversity and despite that fact according to studies that I've seen when people and I were here and a half our workers the family practice consultant to a psychiatric Department in one of the major hospitals in Vancouver people who never asked about Chavez and that's what the studies show as well and last fall or summer I became involved in a criminal case I was asked to give an opinion I'm not gonna go into all the details three psychiatrists that included this guy three forensic psychiatrists four and a half hours each four hours reagent view they all reported that he had a happy childhood I talked to him for 45 minutes the one of the second actually noted that that that the prisoner said that his father drank a fair bit or drank a decent amount that's how you put it he just noted that the prisoner were the defendant said that the his father drank a decent amount but never asked any other questions I thought this guy with 45 minutes he said he had a happy childhood I said okay how much did your father drink Oh every day and what was he like my dad yelled a lot what's that like for three years and how's he mother through the Verico she was very upset about it his brother broke his arm he was four years old and set fire to his hair his father was an alcoholic he was bullied in school and this is the happy childhood that three psychiatrist reported in their forensic report and I'm not blaming these people they're dedicated professionals it's just that we ignoring the obvious we become unconscious of attachment and we become unconscious of the insults that attachment losses imposed on human development now psychosis well let's say I believe that the Martians I was gonna say let's say I believe that the federal government is government is spying on me but these days that's not so paranoid I mean that's just realistic thinking but but let's say I believe that Martians are spying on me with a view of controlling me for hostile purposes I'm psychotic I got this delusional belief but what if that delusional belief actually reflects my emotional experiences in it as a child what if I fall small and helpless and controlled by creatures from who made me suffer and what if the psychotic belief is a way of escaping from the pain of not having in love the way I wanted to be loved I'm not saying there's nothing going on a brain physiological level of course there is but one more time the two can't be separated I'm going to talk about one more dynamic and then take 10 minutes for questions I talked about the importance of the tribe in raising a child and I've talked about the importance of attachment no attachment is important for birds birds already don't survive without attachment relationship so the vows will be wired for attachment so you know the takling hatches from the egg and sees the mother the mother duck and then you know what that process is called it's called imprinting when the talking says to himself okay this is the creature that's going to protect me nurture me she's gonna be my mentor and my defender and my model until I become an adult duck that's what imprinting means and it's an attachment dynamic now it's well known what happens though if the duckling hatches and the mother duck is not there the Ducks still in France but on who anybody know anything that moves could be a horse of the auger and a kind of a moving toy because the Ducks brain is wired for attachment its Bala to be wired for attachment but it's not wired to attach to any one particular creature a human brain is also wired to attach but we're not wired to attach to mom and dad now we're we're not wired to attach the moment that because mum and dad he died so that then what now in the hunter-gatherer tribe when his multiple out of attachment figures mum and I may die but the charge is already in a safe network of attachments what happens in our society is our children of stole wire to attach but nothing in their brain tells them who to attach to that's the job of the culture to provide the right attachments and the human brain can handle what we call an attachment Boyd an attachment void is when there's no attachment figure and you're a dependent person your brain can't handle attachment void so it has to fill it with somebody just like the duckling fills it with that horse so when young kids are separated from their parents at an early age for example descent to daycare they have an attachment void will they fill it with with whoever's around and who do most of our kids in our culture's spend most of their time these days with other kids and other attachment dynamics become transferred to the peer group now they become peer attached and the problem at Birth Hegeman is they become fear oriented which means we got our orientation a sense of direction how to be Auto walk how to talk from the people that were attached to now they're getting all that from their peers and you could see the impacts of that in the teenage gangs and you can see that in the internet where people go Facebook or they have attachment needs that are being pseudo met because what happens in Facebook people have friends people who like each other it's completely phony because nobody knows their real self will be seized their real self it's the desperation to meet their attachment needs through the peer group and that's a disaster for child rearing it's a disaster for education because we learn from the people that we're looking to for attachment so the teacher may be the best trained pedagogy with the greatest information if the kids are not looking to her they're gonna learn nothing from that so in order to educate kids we have to attach them to us that's why I'm saying that the education is not about the conveyance of information it's about the promotion of the human brain development by providing healthy relationships and discipline we think that discipline has to do with punishment nor doesn't what's a disciple disciple is somebody who follows you why do they follow you because they love you Jesus had disciples not because he threatened them or because they loved them and those teachers that get it they have such a good time in the classroom and they're so effective but they're not educated in this again attachment is not really hard as far as I know in faculties of Education it is the most important dynamic so this very impatient completely undermines child development No let me give you an example and by the way when it comes to addiction in what context do most people first meet their addictive substances in the peer group there's no point you know there's no point telling kids not to use drugs if they're not looking to us it is more important to them to fit in with the peer group than with us technique Norway then laugh at the information we give them the way you prevent addiction is by maintaining healthy relationships with kids now they'll listen to you when you're talking about drugs or anything else and if you don't have that relationship is a two ensconced and too focused on the peer group it's like throwing beans at a wall as they say in garyun it just won't stick and so attachment is meant to serve healthy parenting because the attachment is meant to make the child give you follow you listen to you but when attachment works against you when the chest goes or anything to the peer group all you can do is increase the pressure when you lose your natural Authority which comes from the child's relationship to you now you become authoritarian which is not the same thing there's a huge difference between authoritative and authoritarian and many of the parenting practices that are advocated these days are a thought arian either permissive which is not good or authority and which is also not good rather than authoritative and novice and now we come to the so-called diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder let me give you an illustration would you mind standing up here for me so I'm gonna come down here okay so if you put your hand out I push on you so what do you do as soon as I push on your hand use this you push back okay so you push back you oppose what I was doing right this man is the oppositional defiant because because he was opposing what I was doing but did you notice something there was the relationship here it was only pushing back because I was pushing on in first why do we diagnose the kid instead of looking at the relationship when kids become peer granted it seems totally unnatural to them that parents and other outgo should be telling them what to do or they push back that's natural and not be diagnosed as oppositional defiant disorder which is nonsense because if my foot was broken or if I had a flu wouldn't make any difference to me whether the 19-hundred over here in the room with me over I was by myself no my foot be just is broken well fluids would be just as a rabbit but could I oppose you if you weren't here if you know what I'm talking about go back to your home this evening shut yourself in a room by yourself make sure there's nobody else there and I'll post somebody and if you manage to do successful they put it on YouTube for God's sakes I want to saw how you do it opposition only by definition implies the relationship instead of diagonals indicate water we look at the state of the relationship and let me come back here to something that Harry Burns said in his TED talk and and also last night on on a news program we talked about kids acting out do use that face here acting out L to denote bad behavior yes okay that's not what it means acting out doesn't mean being angry or destructive oppositional or arrogant or rude or any of that stuff asking out means that you're portraying behavior something you haven't let to slip the words to say in language in the game of charades we're not allowed to speak what do you have to do you have to act out yes kids are acting out they're acting out their emotional dynamics they're acting out their loss of attachment they're acting out their frustrations because the needs aren't being met what is their biggest need healthy attachments with adults and that's what these kids are acting with and what do we do will you punish them for it we exclude them for it we ostracize them for it in other words we do to them what we then later do to the adult addict is we deprive them of human relationship and we think this is the way to bring up human beings the bit I just told you about P orientation and it's devastating impact on parenting and how to reverse it and in education as well is in the book hold on to your kids why parents need to matter more than peers which I wrote with the brilliant man whose theory I've just given you his name is Gordon Neufeld and is a to my mind the world's leading developmental psychologist we have seven and a half minutes I'd like to pause here for any questions I know I've said a lot and but I hope that answers some of your questions got me more time for questions later my problem is I've way too much to tell you and I'm gonna make a request first of all I have a hearing problem III don't think here well and and the second problem is that you you guys gonna speak well so I would ask you to speak slowly so I can understand what you're asking me okay and now how does this gonna work I'm like the Arthur my summer you gotta make okay so it just gives anybody yeah what questions do you ask in the happy childhood challenge yeah what about it what questions do you ask if there's anybody here believe that every father that I want to talk to me about it is anybody any takers or no yeah but if you have it coming up here to the front with you if you're willing to greater would you mind coming on stage thank you hi what's your name she needs a mic Julian isn't yeah did you say Julian hi well thanks for coming up and peaceful the micro-sim oh yeah yeah thank you so thanks for doing this and if you're not comfortable with anything I ask you okay so the first thing is you had some mental health or addiction issue at some point in your life yeah I don't need to know what it was around it doesn't matter okay but your dad yes please tell me about you have each other and I am a mom and dad's her still together today they were both schoolteachers and my dad's always been really passionate and looking at the curriculum for kids and here's what I do i and I interrupt a lot okay the first thing I noticed is you haven't even begun to answer my question okay you've begun to talk about your parents which tells me that focus is external all right yeah do get other people more than yourself tell me what you're happy child not about what your parents did or who they were hold on my question and by the way I know you're probably nervous and share a bit difficult is what there's only 1900 people and I think Holy See always loved the saket and I was always you know what I never worry about foods or you know being looked after and we couldn't greet holidays I had a little brother and a little sister okay so obvious questions nobody ever sexually abused you no not inside the family not outside the family no okay your parents didn't drink no very minimally that was never a problem no your parents didn't fight and no not significantly no sir pants [ __ ] that's how Burnett's don't know taking cytosine when they were fighting over you see what would I hear if I was a fly in the wall what would I know apparently when I was a little girl one of the first things I say it was to enforce earthier did this new way when I was a little girl one of the first things I say it was doing to force her fear which was me I think packing up and my mum and dad's anxiety about bringing up this heads so who's in society are you talking about what's up you said don't be a horse or a deer is that means that it's all don't force her deer don't force her yeah you said this it must have been like my mum seen in my dad's we're never trying to bring out this baby that they maybe don't know what to do given okay but but again if I was the witness in an episode of the fighting what would I say loud voices or no yeah how long no no not very late okay and do you have kids so I've had snow um how would you live being when you first heard this loud voice good to say how old would you have been when you first heard loud voices well I must have been you know maybe one or two do you know anyone you know a one-year-old no not mainly have you seen any one or two year olds never anybody any relative any friend anybody yeah okay all right what is the one you would feel when they hear yelling uh-huh we ever unhappy or anxious kid we ever unhappy or sad or anxious as a child yes probably yeah and who did you speak to about it and nobody expected people to read my mind all right if you had a five-year-old who was anxious yes who would you want her to talk to if you're the mom who would you want your child to talk to me okay if your five-year-old was anxious and she didn't talk to you how would you why would you want her to talk to you right away because then hopefully it's helping reassure and if you five your design choice and she didn't talk to you how would you explain that I would be hurt I'm not asking how you feel about it I'm asking how you explained it why she's not talking to you I guess I would see my cats demonstrate in the behaviors that maybe is shown or something yeah but what's happening for them that they're not talking to you and they're fishing anyway they're pushing down their feelings feelings they don't trust you enough mm-hmm what's it like for a kid not to trust their mother at age five that's getting back to your childhood okay no how you dealt with it as you pushed it down yeah okay all you have to do is imagine another kid in that same situation and you see it right away okay ever bullied in school and yeah and who did you talk to her okay and if a kid was bullied in school would you want him to talk to if your child was bullied in school who you wanted to talk to and anybody a teacher a friend or you as the parent hmm what does it feel like for a child to have nobody to talk to well what's it like to feel good what's it does it feel like to be bullied in the moment and you talk to nobody about it ya know on the first day of the life if you felt only do you think you kept it in order think you cried and the first day of your life what about us what about the second day of your life from the second day of life you felt lonely or in pain do you think you'd cry or if you could keep it in I think you sure you would and today if you feel lonely in in pain what do you do with it never I cry but Andy asked for help and yeah I I asked for help and I've been very lucky - yes excellent and what would it be like today for you as an adult to have nobody to us help from what would that be like three today not as a three-year-old if I roll as do you now what would that be like for you very easily turn and very sad I imagine that for a small child okay yeah and there's your childhood yeah okay thank you that's it I think it's over I think that just went on for the lunch break is that right ladies and gentlemen dr. [Music] [Applause] [Music] baby [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: ACE-Aware Scotland

Views: 60,214

Keywords: Gabor Mate, Gabor Maté, trauma, Suzanne zeedyk, connected baby, addiction, ACEs, TIGERS, drug addiction, therapy

Id: MyC1DWEHY9w

Length: 54min 4sec (3244 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019