The Trauma Of Abandonment | Dr. Gabor Mate

when I was a year old my mother actually gave me to a total stranger in the street to save my life because she didn't know she'd be alive the next day so I didn't see her for a month deep sense of Abandonment not being wanted now I don't recall that I can't recall being handed to a stranger in the streets of Budapest because there's nothing to recall with the brains organ than the brain the hippocampus that encodes recall memory is not developed and yet it doesn't develop till later but the emotional implicit memory of Abandonment is deep in me foreign emotionally that translates into biology so it's not that there's biology here and our emotions here it's that the emotions and the biology are completely inseparable and what happens on the emotional plane inevitably will have its manifestations and a biological plane so what you lose emotionally translates into biological events in your body and that begins with brain development I began to be interested in brain development when I was diagnosed with ADHD I was 53 I think 54 53 and [Music] um within a couple of months two of my kids were diagnosed which seemed to go along with the mainstream medical view that what we've got here is a genetic disorder which I never bought into for a minute and why didn't I buy into it because although I didn't know anything about the brain or how it developed I knew something tuning out the absent-mindedness that characterized is not a disease inherited or otherwise what is tuning out it's an Adaptive response to the stress so that if I were to stress you right now but I mean though that is to be verbally abusive emotionally insulting domineering you would go into a stress state and how could you deal with it well you could just walk out the door or you could stand up and say you can't talk to me like that I will not accept it and if you couldn't walk out nor did you have the strength to confront me to fight back if flight or fight wasn't available to you there's still a third thing you could do there are what 100 200 people here in the room with you you could ask for help but what if you couldn't do any of those things then how would you handle the stress well you wouldn't your brain would handle it by a number of defense mechanisms the Salient of which would be dissociation you dissociate all sudden you're not here now you're not suffering as much so simply A coping response is all it is the way we adapt to early stress helps us endure that difficult period in the life of the helpless child but those same adaptations become sources of pathology threaten your health threaten the length you know your longevity even so what's adaptive in one situation what's meant to be a temporary state it becomes a long-term trait and when it goes from state to a trade know it's a source of dysfunction and pathology so that's what I intuited about about the tuning out but what I didn't know and this is astonishing is is the how the brain actually develops another brain develops it's an interaction with the environment so the brain is not genetically programmed the potentials are genetically set and the trajectory of development in terms of what circuits will develop when that's set generically but how are they will develop how successfully they will unfold and connect and what systems in the brain will become to dominate that's not a genetically programmed that depends on the interaction of that individual with the environment the most significant factor shaping the physiological development of the brain is the emotional relationship with the parenting environment and the necessary condition for optimal brain development which is so rarely available in North America are parents who are emotionally available consistently available non-stressed non-depressed and mutually responsive or attuned to the child now anything that interferes with the capacity of the parent to offer those qualities to the child will have its impact on brain development so if you look at my ADHD it's really easy to understand I was born in Budapest hunger in 1944 Jewish parents this is a second world war and when I'm two months old the Nazis occupy hungry the genocide had already exterminated most Jews in Eastern Europe and I was hungryster but the day after the Weymouth the German Army marches The Budapest my mother forms a pediatrician and I'm two months old and she says would you please come and see Gabor because he's crying all the time and the pediatrician says of course I can't but I'll tell you all my Jewish babies are crying now what are you supposed to be going on I mean as infants what do we know about Nazis Hitler genocide Sycamore War nothing what are responding to stress of our mothers and the stress of our mothers program our brains now what do you do as a two-month-old and that was my first year of my life when your mother is depressed terrorized in grief over the death of her parents in Auschwitz the absence of her husband you know forced labor can is it two month old is a six-month-old what do you do with that pain and stress you tune it out but when do you tune it out when your brain is developing when every second there are periods in the first year of life when every second in this space of time millions of brain connections are being made guess what that adaptation of tuning out becomes goes from a temporary state to a trade and so 52 years later I'm finally diagnosed with ADHD why my kids my kids grew up in Vancouver no war my kids weren't abused there was no substance addiction I wasn't an alcoholic or anything like that I was a workaholic physician why was I a workout like physician because the message I got from the world very early on is I wasn't wanted not because my mother didn't want me but for the child to feel wanted the mother has to be happy the most to be emotionally present and children when they don't get that it's all about themselves children are truly narcissistic in that sense it's not a pejorative just a statement of reality they think it's all about themselves they think it's all about themselves when you see a narcissistic personality what you're seeing is a highly traumatized person who still thinks it's all about him because he didn't get those needs met as the child so he's still trying to get it pay attention to me so the personality that we don't develop actually is an adaptation and then when I was a year old my mother actually gave me to a total stranger in the street to save my life because she didn't know she'd be alive the next day and so I didn't see her for a month deep sense of Abandonment not being wanted now I don't recall that I can't recall being handed to a stranger in the streets of Budapest because there's nothing to recall with the brains organs in the brain the hippocampus that encodes recall memory is not developed and yet it doesn't develop till later but the emotional implicit memory of Abandonment is deep in me so that when five weeks ago I arrived home from Vancouver from Philadelphia from a speaking engagement I'm feeling really good about myself I think I'm really centered and grounded and my wife does not pick me up at the airport or she texts me saying I'll be 15 minutes late I go into a rage what's that rage above the woman whom I need is not here for me that's an implicit memory and we're governed by these implicit memories until we become aware until we become conscious until I can notice that anger rising up in me aha anger arising uh-huh what's that about I take that hand talks about calming first of all you recognize that there's an emotion arising inside you and then he says you accept it right now there's anger and then you hold the anger mindfully like you'd hold a baby then you look what is it actually all about and then the inside comes aha this is old stuff well then nothing to be upset about right so the the solution is mindfulness but I'm laying at the problem for you which is the implicit memories that with my children and so so since I wasn't wanted I have to compensate now how do you compensate for not being wanted by making yourself needed they may not want me but they're going to need me so this is going to be on all the time and I'm available for all my patients all the time 24 7. and I'll never say no to taking on more patients because that's another sign that I'm being wanted right we're needed where does that leave my kids with the sense that they're not wanted because daddy is not around and mommy is so stressed because Daddy's not around so they they tune up now they're diagnosed with anything genetic disease nonsense multi-generational trauma and stress being passed on as it affects brain development and if you want to understand why we're seeing a preponderance of childhood development disorders like all these diagnoses autism 40-fold increase but all these diagnosis behavior problems the school problem the learning difficulties you know what we're looking at we're looking at the biology of loss as it's affecting the brains of our children and then how we respond to it is with medications and behavioral control instead of saying what's going on here or what's going on here is there are children are acting out their lost attachment relationships [Music] thank you

Channel: Way Of Thinking

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Id: P087SYOV6_I

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022